University of Kansas - Jayhawker Yearbook (Lawrence, KS)

Page 22 text:

THE JAYHAWKER fi. I. JOE GEORGE settled back against the sun-baked steps of Ad, contentedly surveying the campus through half-closed eyes. The whistle had just blown and students were streaming out on the campus from every direction, to engage in their ten-minute socials. There was elated confusion, then the new silence of 25 minutes before the hour. He shifted his books from his lap to the pavement and stretched long legs. It was great to relax here in the sun for awhile great to sit and muse over the events of the past few weeks. It had all come so suddenly. Unexpected orders and he was going home. Like FRED JOHN- SON, this veteran he met yesterday, said, there was a thrill to meeting the Statue of Liberty head on. Fred, a former air corps ground crew member, had been through the mill from Africa to Italy, and now he wanted to go to school to become a.CP.A. Through a haze of memories George recalled how he had dreamed of going back to school. He guessed that all the other fellows had dreamed about that, too. MlLLARD MUSSELMAN, a Lawrence radar-navigator, said he thought of home and school all the time, even when he was sight-seeing in Pompeii. A former K.U. student, Musselman was going to continue his air corps training by studying aeronautical engineering. DICK CARMEAN, a fighter pilot, was at K.U. in the good old days and wanted to get back home to gather up his pilot ' s wings from over the Hill. All the fellas George had met had said they weren ' t thinking of home as merely strawberry sodas and football games and slender-legged girls. Men like ARTHUR COATE, an air corps cadet, and JACK GREER, overseas for 34 months, wanted to quit playing hookey from mechanical en- gineering and business administration. Coate, who left K.U. in ' 44, had been gone such a short time that he still missed school, and Greer, a former K-State student, had been gone so long that he wanted to get home. But school had seemed pretty impossible back in 1943. Time had dragged for George and for fellas like this RAY HARTLEY, a figher pilot he had met, who had accumulated 226 points before he got home. Then the G.I. Bill of Rights came along. The allowance that would start for George soon wasn ' t a fortune, but combined with what he ' s saved from his flight pay, it was enough to help fulfill his dreams. This educational benefit wouldn ' t just last a short time either. After he ' d finished a year satisfactorily, he could go on with his course for a period equivalent to the amount of time he ' d been in the service. Those thirty-six long months in the service took on new significance when Top: Left. Dick Car-mean, Junior in Schoo) of Business; Right, Robert Haynesivorth, first year Law student; Left, Fred Johnson, Fresh- man in College; Bottom: Right, Ray Hartley, Graduate Student.