Queens College - Silhouette Yearbook (Queens, NY)

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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

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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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college resembled nothing so much as the waiting room of a maternity hospital while the fate of the Brooklyn Bums hung in delicate balance. The men working in front of the administration building had a gay good time moving the road back and forth as the spirit moved them, though nothing seemed to move them very much. For months catching the orange bus was like a 440 dash over hurdles. The Playshop pro- duced Bird in Hand, and The Fan, the latter giving Ambrose Gariano a chance to strut his stuff which he made the most of. Gabby Fontrier made with the famous Jabberwocky, and Mary Innes and Sol Berkowitz gave out with music they thought up out of their own little heads. All of which had the net result of bringing down the house. A national defense theme made no considerable difference to collegiate life. College radio programs were orientated around the theme of consumer problems, and under the guidance of Dr. Persia Campbell the first consumer conference, gathering together local captains of industry, was held. People stopped forgetting to pick up their Times or Tribune in the morning, but all in all, no one was sufficiently upset to be prevented from having a wonderful time at the Winter Wonderland Dance that Milt Matthews and Bob Peterson worked over. This was Friday, December 5. Monday morning was traditionally reserved for a detailed discussion of who came with whom, what was worn, what he said, and the ways of a man with a maid. But these locker room conferences hit a snag. On Monday morning there was everywhere one topic of conversa- tion, one theme of thought, one frame of mind. The attack on Pearl Harbor knocked everything else from our minds, and to a man the college gathered about radios to hear Presidenti,Roosevelt's address, a declaration of war on japan. On Tuesday student representatives gathered for a Defense Rally in the auditorium, and outside many more stood to listen to an address over the P.A. systems, by Dr. Klapper and Dean Kiely. The full implications of what was happening hit home with a bang when Dr. Klapper interrupted the Dean's talk to ask stu- dents to take all your belongings and go home. At first we thought it was a joke, but the concluding - and may God be with you was too convincing. Quietly and quickly the students obeyed. Doubling up in cars, running for buses, thumbing rides down by the gate, every person in the school was off the grounds in fifteen minutes. 59