University of Maine at Portland - Reflection / Umpire Yearbook (Portland, ME)

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College was itself seekjtag a new home, the Deering acreage had been dimished from three hundred to eighteen acres. Portland Junior College was conceived during the hard times of the thirties. In the early years of the Great Depression,sevetal local men became concerned with providing an effective advanced education for the aggregation of high school graduates 'who Found themselves unable to afford, or to attend, colleges in other areas. By cooperation with the trustees and the staff of the Portland Young Men's ChriStian Association which shared the concern for higher education, the group evolved a plan whereby college coursa would be offered inexpensively in Portland through the use of the facilities and rooms of the YMCA build. ing on Pores: Avenue. In 1933, the legislature granted the assembly the tight to award degrees and four reputable Maine colleges, as well as Boston University, promised their aid. Two freshman programs were announced for that initial year: one in Liberal Arts, acceptable to Maine colleges; and a second in Business Administration, identical with that offered by the well known Boston University College of Business 11 Adminisuation. The Dean of that Branch, Everett W. Lord, directed five fulltime instructors and several professors who engaged in the planning and development of the inStitution. Seventy Students comprised the complete enrollment of the Elm year. Seven years later, Portland Junior College was accorded two distinct honors: it was recognized by the United States Office of Education as an accredited Junior Coltege; and secondly, it was approved as a unit of the Civilian Pilot Training Program by the Civil Aeroaautics Adminisuation. The former event is notable for its own sake; the latter is of significance because it marks the beginning ofa deep involvement ofa very singular man. Luther I. Bonney was one of the original group of concerned men who had provided the germ for the institution, and he was appointed a Dean of the college. A graduate of Bates College, a scholar of Latin and Greek, he re-entered the world ofeducation from the world ofbusiness in 1933 The student body was reduced to a mimimum of fourteen in 1943 when, with the necessities of the broadening War, Pres.

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Egan: Roosevelt called out the Army Enlisted Reserve and with Lathes: Students who had been involved in the Film Training gimm. The college then suspended all further scholastic activ. --for the duration of the great conflict, and many students WEDsetved in the Second World War were never to return. The veterans who did return in 1945 made it clear that they meld eagerly endeavor to complete an interrupted education or 7 study for a degree. All were well provided for under the Mes of the GI Bill and the attraction of an education basically Hammad by the government drew large numbers of ex-Gls who liiid'never finished high school or who had lacked the proper iWSiccourses necessary for admissioanhe college's initial enroll. meet 0f seventy swelled to two hundred and fifty before alarm 3559;:an further enrollment. The original quarters at the Lee : marial Building on the corner of India and Congress Street mead woefully inadequate before the end of the fits: six week 35' m..T-he tilesses were then moved to the Mountain View Retreat :amnaj Center in South Portland. They remained in the Federal Ptmect which was intended for the service of shipyard workers antiiJn july of 1949, the search for a permanent home turned ' parately to the Deering Estate Six acres were purchased from the estate in September of 1946 including the now decrepit Mansion outlying barns and 13 sheds, and the ancient Cape God on Brighton Avenue. The proud Mansion had fallen into immeasurable disrepair when the college assumed ownership from Deering Neyes. The gates were tumbled and askew; grass and weeds had grown through the cracked pavements and rotted floorboards; and the great paneled federalist door had long before been broken down and now hung awry. Inside, destruction by vandaLs was beyond repair. Where once poets, prisonetst Vice Presidents, generals and rebels had walked in carpeted halls and danced in plush, crystaLiit parlors, there now remained only decayed walls, bare and broken floors, shattered windows and overturned banniSters. The sad assembly of monumental disrepair was torn down a few years later, in 1952. The great gatreted barn, built in 1804, was of a firmer construction and still basically sound; the aged Cape Cod was converted into comfortable Office space adequate for the college's small administration. The barn was restructured inside into a spacious auditorium, and redesigned outside into 3 handsome, white, multiAwindowed landmark, catefully preserving the radial, ieaded-glass windows that had flashed in the sun ofmany a faded summer. The basement was transfoxmed into a knotty pine student lounge, and a section was converted into showers; the assembly hall above could accomodate four