Williams College - Gulielmensian Yearbook (Williamstown, MA)

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WILLIAMS COLLEGE The Class LEN JACOB, In. President ll95l ROBERT I. GENIESSE Secretary Class History The sign on the right read Pine Cobble School and as I passed up a small raise in the road a white House of Usher reared to the left and to the right loomed a great, grey, stone, Tudor Morgue. I hesitated for a moment because I was pretty nervous. This was the fall of 1947 and I was coming into Williamstown for the first time for a four year visit. I man- aged to find my way down the ehn lined, brick walled, white columned street and over the hill into the Business District where I had some trouble finding the administration building. Once there in Hopkins Hall I went to the Treasureris Office, deposited my dollar bill, received my key, and asked direc- tions to 44 Williams Hall to meet two fellows, the names of whom I had already forgotten. Mr. Copeland had told me their names in a letter l had received during the summer, but they were only the first of nearly a thousand I was to forget in that first epic week of meetings, library tours, cheeeesed smiles and squeesed right hands. The room was much small- er than I had expected and nearly void. Both became very unimportant, for I soon learned that I was not limited to the two bedroom - one living room unit for which 1 had the key, but in a few short days my limits included all the suites of that entry. As thc years have passed these limits have ex- panded until now on the eve of graduation they reach into every corner of the campus. The bareness of those Hrst rooms have been filled with victory banners, Pal cariacatures, some books, party pictures, old rugs and chairs bartered for from Kelley and Halfacrc, and in the last two years goal post timbers. My mansion has grown larger and more richly fur- nished than I could have dreamed of. Initially, I was concerned by the size of my class, but at the first orientation meeting a gentle voiced, white haired man, Dean Brooks, told me to look Hrst to the left and then to the right, and, then, that only one of the three would finish the four year course. The mortality has not been nearly as drastic as that first shock would indicate. There were about three hundred of us altogether, all coming from twenty states north of the Mason-Dixon line. The only two rebels among all these damyankees were two Texans who had been headed for Wil- liams and Mary and got lost. A small few came from West of the Mississippi, almost all from the New England area, New York and Pennsylvania. There was one lad from Copenhagen whose presence confused me until the Bowdoin Plan came out in our sophomore year. He had come to beat the rush. I went along with the crowd as soon as I could to the hawkers of the Business District and bartered for a little peaked purple cap with a knot on the top. Once out on the campus like that I began to notice the heavy winter flying boots, the faded kakis, the leather flight jackets with the painted symbols and names of the planes made famous dur- ing the war, all worn by my fellow undergraduates. Until then these names and legends had been known to me only through the newsprints and family stories, for when the war was over, I was a mere sixteen. That was the way it was with most of the rest of us of the class of 1951. We all began to hear murmurings that the last summer session had been held. VVe began to talk to tired men who had been on the campus for as umch as six straight terms without a single summer vacation. NVc also heard that jobs were getting harder and harder to get as the colleges and universities of the land turned out bumper crops of young bachelors of arts. Though these things were beyond the sharpest focus of our attention, they did introduce into us the awareness that we were the first class to enter Williams under normal con- ditions sincc the war's end. From 1939 to 1947 all the classes had come through under the same stigma of acceleration, war pressure, and lack of the fraternity system now such an in- tegral part of our lives. As this Senior year moves along it becomes obvious that we will also be the last class to enter VVilliams before another national emergency interrupts the norm. Though our education will not be changed as far as time is concerned, the presence on the campus among the lower classmen of a new unrest, tension, and aimlessness reaches us. Since the class of '51 has been cut from the past by war and now from the future by the threat of war, it stands alone in the past decade and possibly for the next to come as being the only normal class of the college. This is the only normal aspect of the class. Without the links to past and future it has gone ahead with individuality and force. The Spring of our Freshman Year saw President Baxter initiate the two and a half million dollar fund drive, the great success of which was announced this fall. VVhen it was begun, the Freshmen were issued a special invitation to attend a college meeting designed to gain complete college support for the drive. Per- haps it was thought the freshmen were not aware of all Page 28