University of Miami - Ibis Yearbook (Coral Gables, FL)

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I o the CLASS of 1956: if When you arc graduated, the University will be just ten years old. In the history of the institution these first ten years will no doubt be spoken of as pioneering years devoted to the work of establishing a university in this territory. You have had a part in this pioneer work. ★ Some later classes no doubt will have the advantage of greater equipment and material resources, but there are also advantages in pioneering. You and your predecessors and colleagues have built and established with the University many of its codes, traditions, institutions, and methods. I hope that the strength and independence of character and judgment which you have developed in this pioneer work will more than make up for the lack of material resources which we would have liked to place at your disposal. if We wish for you great success in carrying out all of your high resolves and purposes. B. F. ASHE PRESIDENT

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TRUSTEES ☆ B. F. ASHE V I RGIL BARKER RAFAEL BELA UNDE VICTOR ANDRES BELAUNDE ROSCOE BRUNSTETTER WILLIAM C. COFFIN BERTHA FOSTER J. T. HOLDS WORTH W. B. LONGENECK ER ORTON LOWE GEORGE E. MERRICK MARY B. MERRITT JAY F. W. PEARSON HENRY S. WEST

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A I lie hirst I en ears of a Out of the roar of a JjSfcJ T hurricane it was born. 3 And as the devastating wind-ball twistednorth-5 ward, the papers carried the brief but sufficient statement: The University of Miami will open as planned. The University was conceived during those exhilarating, pipe-dream days of the late lamented boom. Things were done in a grand and sumptuous manner in that get-rich-quick time, and the University was to throw open its doors with some ten million dollars in endowments behind it. The people of Miami, and especially of Coral Gables, had rallied behind the proposed University, and contributions were abounding. It was quite the thing to give half a million or so to tin institution that was to do so much to transform pioneering Miami into a cultural nuc teus. Parties and concerts and rallies were held, and the money-flushed populace was generous. It is not surprising to note the enthusiasm and lightheartedness of the founders in those days. Southern Florida has long been vaunted as one of the last remaining frontiers of the United States. In those exciting boom days. Miami must have been the twentieth-century equivalent of a mushroom mining town of the forty-nine era. Every one was crazed with the thought of more-money and plans for the erection of bigger and better buildings. The unfinished sky-scrapers, apartment houses, and hotels which were left stranded after the boom tidal wave had subsided stand, jagged upon our skyline, as mute testimony of the brain fever that ravaged this section of the country. Naturally, in those fast days, the conception of culture was badly neglected, and it was only in a comparatively few. far-sighted, and wise civic leaders that the idea that a univer- UNIVERSITY sity could give this community life a deeper meaning was nurtured. Those hardy souls fought great opposition. Miami is essentially a sport town, a vacation center.” people scoffed. The climate is more conducive to basking in the sun than to studying and scholarship.” But pioneernig skin is tough, and these men and women, with their ideal, fought on. It was in 1925. at the height of the building prosperity, that the University passed from a talking stage and was placed in the hands of a committee. A charter was obtained. In 1926 things began to move. A Board of Regents was created. It was composed of outstanding attorneys, authors, artists, jour naiists. musicians, bankers, economists, contractors. agriculturists, and financiers. The men and women who composed the first Board of Regents deserve mention here for their fortitude and vision. They were: Judge William E. Walsh. Dr. Ruth Bryan Owen. Crate D. Bowen. Frederick Zeigcn. Thomas J. Pancoast. George Merrick. Clayton Sedgwick Cooper. Mitchell D. Price. Frank B. Shutts. James M. Cox. Bertha Foster. Victor Hope. Henry S. Hubbell. Telfair Knight. Burdetter G. Lewis. John B. Orr. J. C. Penney. Charles F. Baldwin. Edgar P. Fripp. Vance W. Helm. Hamilton Michelson. and Joseph H. Adams. Then it passed from the committee stage to the action stage. On a hundred and sixty acre site, ground was broken for the administration building January 14. 1956. On February 4. the corner stone was laid with impressive ceremony. A crowd of 7.000 people assembled for this momentous instance.