Queens College - Silhouette Yearbook (Queens, NY)

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got fully accredited by the State Department of Education, and the weary rumor that the Science Building would positively be started in 1942 didn't get a rise from anyone but lower freshmen. Ken Milden- berger won the Playshop award for his original play, Hypothetical Hurricane -a cool ten bucks, and had it produced in true Playshop manner. Beside the purely dramatic, everybody in the place was in a furor about Orientation, A.M., the varsity show, produced, written, and scored by students, and the whole campus hummed For Further Details See My Heart for weeks afterward. The Silhouette contest was pretty dramatic too. There were about forty entrants altogether, sternly admonished by the press to wear bathing suits, and evening dresses-but without any accessories. That last sounded immodest as anything, it didn't turn out to be. The consensus of opinion later was that we had some pretty nifty little jobs at school, and the john Powers chose Betty Ann McCann as niftiest. Hell week was hell as usual, what with six red devils madly chasing an innocent maiden with their wicked looking pitch forks, while a very buxom angel lolled on the roof of A building, a barrel clad eccentric paced up and down the road in front, and two gay-ninety cuties rode a tandem round and round the campus. Hellzapoppin, incidentally, was still packing them in on Broadway, which is perhaps an explanation of the college mentality during the time. Then, of course, Gabby Fontrier played an original piece in a recital of student compositions, which included opus one of both Sol Berkowitz and Norman Phillips. We were pretty impressed. The strange, damp currents of the world outside wafted in now and again, but always attuned to the college media. There was, for instance, the British Relief Hop where Joyce Surber trilled. Ruth Lerman appeared on the campus with two visiting British sailors, and the last of the Peace Rallies was held. Alice Duer Miller's visit to the campus resulted in a 51,000 relief drive. But then too, there were Parents' Night, and book reports overdue, and the shivering prospect of finals when our sins would be visited upon us. Then too, was the first honest-to-god graduation, and the anticipa- tion of being seniors. Considerations, these which still dwarfed all others in the summer of '4l. We had not yet come to December 7. 57

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At the very end of the term the C.C. comprehensive results sound- ing a note of grim realism were published, along with a sheepish admis- sion by Dr. Rivlin that no conclusions could as yet be drawn from the experiment. But didn't we just though. january 1941 started quite a year. Week after week national obituaries made the headlines. The tragedy of France, and the tragedies after-less shocking, as time went on, of Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete, Norway, Sweden. The political maps of modern Europe weren't used in the history courses. Geography was what the second page of the Times said it was. And in the midst of all this, the same old preoccupa- tions, assignments overdue, term papers to be written, dances and parties to go to, clothes, cars, ships, and sealing wax, and the rest of the college rigmarole went on in the same old way. Delmonico's was selected for the Junior Prom, desperate class officers, who turned out to be Mike Santopolo, Graham Tahler, Lillian Lari, Margie Collins, and Dave Sinowitz, tried to put the bee on us for thirty-five cents class dues. As if they didn't know better. Queens 56

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SE IUHS We registered in September 1941 as Seniors. Seniors! It can't be,'y we said to ourselves in awestruck tones. Our four years couldn't have slipped by unwept, unhonored, unsung. No-we want to go back, to live again those happy carefree freshman days. The hell We did. But there were fundamental differences that term. For one thing dedication day unnerved everybody by dawning bright and clear. By noon sufficient threatening clouds had amassed to restore the college's emotional stability, and with the wind and the wind in our hair we gathered to titter at professors in full academic regalia, to accept the flags twenty-nine colleges and universities sent us, which nobody has seen since, by the Way, and to see the gift of our shiny new alumni asso- ciation, an oil portrait of President Klapper. For another thing, the Dodgers got to play the Yankees in the World Series. Little knots of people collected in what was still a parking field behind B building, listening tensely to the radio broadcasts of the game. Teachers dis- missed classes, women fainted, strong men shrieked, and in general the 58