Kenyon College - Reveille Yearbook (Gambier, OH)

Page 8 text:

Out of Yesterday . . . came increasing world strife which burst on America in a flash of blood and hate at Pearl Harbor. Kenyon responded rapidly and in two months the accelerated program was effected to meet the needs of the men and the country. Kenyon men, one by one, joined to serve against two fanatic ideologies of evil. Many faculty members were called away to serve the country in various capacities. The school dwindled and the importance of lib- eral education seemed less in the face of the technological urgency of the moment. Again Kenyon opened its gates to the Army: to an Air Corps meteorology unit and later to Army language students in the ASTP. Stu- dent reservists drilled and trained and called themselves 'The Kenyon Commandos.” Marching songs were heard before sunrise and a new seriousness prevailed. Civilian enrollment dwindled to about fifty. Philo- mathesian, Nu Pi Kappa, IRC, Tau Kappa Alpha and other organizations were dormant. An Army obstacle course and calisthenics replaced track, lacrosse, baseball, polo, and tennis. Old Kenyon and Leonard Hall be- came barracks. Fraternities struggled to con- tinue. Some traditions were abandoned but the buildings seemed as noble, the campus as green; and the pastoral valley surrounding Kenyon's hill lay in quiet beauty, waiting. A thousand of Kenyon’s men were scat- tered all over the world; forty-one did not return.

Page 7 text:

3L C ((eye l eawal rSeuwahenA Out of a Long Past . . . J ENYON COLLEGE was founded in a fresh, new territory of the infant nation, a nation so young that many of her founders still lived. Kenyon was built to serve, through education and religion, the people who came westward to settle the green fields of Ohio in the days following the War of 1812. Kenyon's beginning was as rugged as the oaks and maples along her bright river and as solid and secure as the native rocks in the four-foot walls of her first great building. The development was slow but fervor for a great institution was with those men in England and America who made her beginning possible. Bishop Chase exhibited to an incredible degree the work and determination that assured Kenyon's initial success. Many things came and passed: the college farms, the Grammar School, the Kenyon Military Academy, Harcourt Place School. Others came to remain: an excellent academic tradition, the Middle Path, the Divinity School, the singing, the ivy, and the spirit. Between 1845 and the present, Kenyon’s development has been period- ically interrupted by wars. During the Mexican War, the students formed the Kenyon Guards and trained to aid their country. In the Civil War, Kenyon men were separated by their political choice. The Kenyon Light Guards drilled daily. The College gave nine generals and one hundred and thirty-six officers. The bloody war took the lives of seventeen of them. The great names of Stanton and Hayes fired her pride. Troubled years and pleasant years followed; presidents came and passed; the century gave way to a new one. Soon came the first World War and four hundred and thirty-five men from Kenyon were drawn in; eight gave their lives. Again the students drilled in the park. The college welcomed the training at Kenyon of an Army SATC unit and Kenyon's background helped many men work better and suffer less in the mud of France. Finally the peace came and the development of Kenyon continued for a score of years. New buildings rose: Leonard and Peirce Halls, the Swimming Pool, and Power Plant. Aeronautics, horsemanship, and play production were intro- duced into the college. The Kenyon Renew was born. The college's fame spread.

Page 9 text:

The College Reawakening came with the peace. The war had changed the world and the minds of its men. Kenyon undergraduates returned to continue their work again. And her older men began a program to provide for her greater improve- ment. The Kenyon Development Program began to raise two and one-half million dollars for needed new buildings, higher sal- aries, and more scholarships. Temporary barracks went up on Harcourt Place to pro- vide for the unprecedented number of stu- dents. Barracks were extended to the fields behind Bexley Hall to provide for all the married men and their families. New men from throughout the free world came to Gambier; from Norway, France, England, and Iraq; from the ranks of the Under- ground and from Fascist prison camps. The College welcomed back all its men at a Victory Reunion in July, Again Ken- yon songs resounded between the three Halls. Generals Perrin, Allen, and LeMay were honored for their brilliant war work. In the autumn-colored park gathered the world guests of the Conference on the Heritage of the English-speaking Peoples. Professor Harold J. Laski of the University of London, Ananda Coomaraswamy of Boston and India, Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, Denis Brogan of Cambridge were a few of the distinguished men to attend this, the first of such significant conferences. While in these ways meeting the de- KENYOH