Interview with Chuck Merry and David Hathaway, class of 1957
Interviewed by Julia Stringfellow
Location: Lawrence University Archives
June 11, 2008
Transcription completed August 2008
1. Could each of you please state your name?
D: Dave Hathaway, class of 1957.
C: I am Chuck Merry, class of 1957.
2. What did you get your majors in?
D: This is Dave, I got my major in Biology with an honors thesis.
C: I'm Chuck, and I majored in Math.
3. Why did each of you decide to attend Lawrence?
D: I was introduced to Lawrence by my brother who attended here, and my family and I decided that attending a small school was best, and I lived in Waupaca at the time. It was the most convenient.
C: In my case, my family had no history of going to college, so it was an entirely new experience when as I grew up that kind of seemed like what I wanted to do. I grew up in Milwaukee, and growing up in Milwaukee, the people that I knew that went on to college in most cases either went to the University of Wisconsin at the extension center in Milwaukee, they either went there or to Marquette, probably the majority of them went to what was then Milwaukee State Teachers College, which is now UWM. So those were kind of the logical possibilities for me, although my family had no money, so that was an issue, but I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about that, but then in the summer between my Junior and Senior year in high school I went to Badger Boy State at Ripon College, and that was a groundbreaking moment for me because I realized that there were such things as small colleges that were very comfortable and very friendly and coincidentally the counselor for the part of the dormitory that I lived in was a Lawrence grad by the name of Cal Atwood. So I became aware of the fact that there was a Lawrence College. After spending the week there and Dave will probably mention this, but Dave was there also, we didn't know each other at the time.
And so I went home and entered into my Senior year and started looking at schools and so forth, and wound up visiting both Ripon and Lawrence and applied to them both. My visit at Lawrence was a very, very positive experience, and turned out very well, as was my visit to Ripon. But thankfully, thankfully I enrolled at Lawrence and got financial aid, and it was a marriage made in heaven.
D: Chuck is way too modest. In fact, he was an excellent runner and he was a good student, and Lawrence was glad to get him.
4. Well, what was the transition like going from high school to college? Was it a smooth transition? What was that like?
D: This is Dave again, for me it was difficult and fearful. I came from a small high school, Waupaca at the time had about 350-400 students, and Lawrence represented a larger school and of course, we were as all Freshman were, we were insecure.
I'd like to comment a little on the setting. Our parents, both Chuck's and mine, were products of the Depression and we were born during the Depression, so we had known years of war, and we had known years when our parents were struggling financially. For us the opportunity, at least for me, I have to speak for myself, but the opportunity, the chance to attend Lawrence was a big opportunity in my life. This was pointed out by my brother, who emphasized the individual teaching possibilities here, the student to teacher ratio, really with a poor understanding of that concept I came here. Lawrence at the time had just had Nate Pusey go to Harvard as president and Lawrence's reputation was sky high at the time. We were termed at the time the "Harvard of the Midwest" in large part I think because of President Pusey. But Lawrence had enormous pride; most of us were from Chicago, Milwaukee, or small towns throughout the upper Midwest. We had very few foreign students, we had only a rare black student,
I think it was fair to say we were provincial but we were terribly thirsty for knowledge. It was a time when the post-war boom was taking place and college graduates had multiple opportunities. Once we became involved in Lawrence, we recognized what a fine education we were getting. In a sense we had the feeling that the world was in our arms. It was a wonderful time. Especially in those days when mass media was not really very present in our lives, we had radio and only rare television, so you didn't have universal knowledge of other opportunities. You sort of extended your horizons to a place within travel distance essentially. For me that was only fifty miles away.
C: I arrived at Lawrence and coincidentally my roommate, I had gone to high school with. And he was the first member of his family to go to college, so between the two of us we had little knowledge of what we were getting into, what college life was all about, we had no background, and I think our mothers together drove us up here, I think we probably had all our belongings in one or two suitcases, and we were just as naïve and unsophisticated as two people, two young men could be. In fact, we still are! But thankfully we were surrounded by many other Freshman who were equally as naïve and equally as unsophisticated, although there were some of course who were much wiser in the ways of the world than certainly my roommate and I were, or Dave Hathaway for that matter.
D: Oh now!
C: But to our good fortune we came out of a very good, very strong Milwaukee high school that just did a superb job of helping us to deal with the challenge of Freshman classes, although they were far, far more difficult than we ever imagined they cold be. Those first few weeks, the first month, particularly Freshman Studies when you had to read, write a paper and discuss books, it was all very new, very exciting, but very, very intimidating, as was writing a paper very, very intimidating. We managed and gradually grew accustomed to the world we were in. Our whole life revolved around the campus, we rarely left the campus, because there was no need to do that.
D: I'd like to add to Chuck's comment about being naïve. We truly were. I think this was sort of across the board, some of the student from Chicago, urban areas, and perhaps more affluent, were a little more world savvy, but we were not. We came with high expectations, we expected to work hard and we expected to achieve. At that time, college graduates, it was the post-war boom era, and it came more slowly to central Wisconsin perhaps than some of the larger urban areas. But we saw this as a golden opportunity and we all appreciated it, whether you were here more as a casual students or as a very serious student, this was a wonderful opportunity that we did not ever expect to have. Once we got to Lawrence we appreciated the value of what we were seeing.
There's one other thing. I think most people when they came in those days had some ideas about their aspirations and their life goals, but they generally dealt with business or the professions for the men, and perhaps law. Or for the women, the old joke about the Mrs. Degree was first and foremost. Women in those days, if they weren't married by 21 or 22, began to feel way out of step with the times, it was panic-ville, which was absurd, where current generations show that they don't marry at all. It was a different time; women usually aspired to teaching and nursing, that was the standard idea, while the idea of having an independent woman, a working mother, was unheard of.
5. While you were here at Lawrence, what were the dorms that you lived in while you were here?
D: Chuck and I both started out in Brokaw. In those days it was only very old, it wasn't antique. It was a pretty good dorm. And of course the girls were across the bridge in Ormsby. And that was an ideal situation for us, to keep both feet on the floor in our dorms.
C: Because I live here in Appleton, and there are reasons for me to be in and out of Brokaw on a regular basis because that's where the Registrar is and that’s where Financial Services and a lot of offices there, and I have occasions to stop in and see people. I am invariably struck by the fact that my recollection of Brokaw which goes back to 1953 when I arrived as a Freshman was that it was this giant dormitory with wide halls and high ceilings and so forth. And now you go in there, and I suspect Dave feels the very same way, you can't get over the fact that the hallways are so narrow and the ceilings are so low, and it seems so incredibly medieval. At the time it was an enormous building in my eyes and that's because of the way I viewed the world. So I lived in Brokaw my Freshman year, I lived in a old house that was on College Avenue at the time, it was called Lawe House, it has since been torn down where Plantz Hall is across the way. There were four of us that shared two rooms, and Joe Hopfensperger was the house father at the time. Then my Junior year I moved in the fraternity house and I was a Beta and lived there only one semester.
And at that time, this is a piece of history that I treasure, my own personal history, at that time there was a room in the basement of Main Hall that was for two men that were involved in sports and needed financial aid. In the middle of my Junior year, one of the two men living in that room in the basement of Main Hall became president of the Beta house, and so he had to move into the Beta house. S o I moved into the basement of Main Hall, and I lived there for the second semester of my Junior year and all of my Senior year with another fellow. And it was a once in a lifetime experience, because it was just a little tiny room in the southwest corner of Main Hall, the corner closest to Ormbsy. I have no idea when that tradition began, and I have no idea when it ended, but we had no shower facilities, we had a bathroom that was down the hall, and we had just this little tiny room with two desks and a bunk bed, and it was very primitive, but we thought it was a wonderful arrangement. So that was my final resting place at Lawrence.
That's very cool to have lived in the oldest building on campus.
C: With the cows and the pigs and the chickens, they were gone.
6. What activities were you both involved in? You were in Beta Theta Pi and David was on the Presidents Committee and on the Lawrentian staff.
D: I was on the Judicial Board, and fraternity activities, dorm counselor, president of the Freshman class, president of the pledge class, did my honors thesis. There's just tons of things going on, and Chuck and I both were involved. I didn't keep very close track, now that I think about it. I was excited the whole time to be involved.
7. Where there any activities in particular that were your favorites?
D: I think student government, faculty relations, fraternity activities for the first two years. The last two year when I was here I focused much more on my studies, because I was in pre-medical studies and that was very competitive and of course you were frightened to death at the time that you won't get into a good medical school. So I worked hard on that, and also I developed, I started to work on my Senior thesis and that took a huge amount of time. Athletics, I wasn't involved in athletics, but as a sports fan, the first two years I was really interested in football and things like that. And then there's a transition that many students go through and hey turn their interests elsewhere, and I guess that took place probably my Junior year.
C: In my own case, starting my Freshman year, I had a college job. As part of the financial aid package, I worked both, at that time Brokaw Hall had a kitchen, and all the freshman men ate in the dining room of Brokaw. I worked in the dining room, either the kitchen of the dining room, and I also worked in the library.
In Carnegie Library.
C: Well, that's right. And at the time the head librarian was Hastings Brubaker, who was everyone's friend and was a delightful man. But the woman who essentially ran the library from an operational point of view was Miss Bennett. Miss Bennett was a stern woman who took no transgressions, but I got along just delightfully with them and the job. To the best of my recollection, I think I was paid $.50 an hour, which may have been more than I was worth. But I enjoyed both the jobs, and certainly working in the cafeteria was for other Freshman man who worked alongside me and we had a lot of fun as it were. Although it was not always fun, because the head dietician for the college at the time was a woman who spent a fair amount of time at Brokaw was the legendary, at least in our minds, Iva Welch. Not to demean you, Julia, but she was about at tall as you are, which is saying she was not very tall. She was just a might of a woman with a steely gaze, and she ran a very, very taunt ship. Whether it was the way the freshman men behaved in the dining room, or the way we as workers handled our jobs, but it was a delightful time in my life.
There's a couple of stories I'd like to tell about working in the dining room. One is about my freshman chemistry class was from Dr. J.J. Sjoblom, who was a bachelor. And ram rod straight, if he was ever known to smile, it certainly…
D: We all missed it.
C: In any case, I have a long history of falling asleep, whether it's in classes or in meetings or reading a book or whatever. And I can remember clearly one day I had nodded off in Freshman chemistry, which was not something I ever, ever wanted to do, certainly not in Dr. Sjoblom 's class. Because he was a bachelor, he ate a lot of his meals in the freshman men's dorm. And that day, probably at lunch, when he came through the cafeteria serving line, I was heavily dishing out peas or whatever. And Dr. Sjoblom looked at me with that incredible gaze of his and he said, "We're not working you to hard are we, Mr. Merry?" And I think I probably just about passed out because I realized I'd been discovered.
Beyond that, working for the college, and I have to include the fact that after that Freshman year of working for the college, at the time there were coin operated washing machines, this is a story that Dave knows as well as I do. There were coin operated washing machines in the dormitories, three or four dormitories, coin operated. A senior, a senior Beta in my freshman year, had the job of repairing or servicing the coin operated washing machines so that when he graduated, that job had to be passed on to another student. And fortunately, his name was Ralph Turk Tippet, and Turk passed the job on to me because I was a fraternity brother and a friend and so forth. So for the following three years I didn't work for the college anymore, but rather I had a little toolkit and had my name and phone number posted in the laundry rooms where the machines were, and if there was a problem, they would call me. Fortunately, the problems generally speaking were very simple, because I certainly had a limited mechanical aptitude. But I did it for three years which was a wonderful arrangement.
D: Girls dorms got first attention, boys dorms waited two or three days, I should point that out.
C: And I think at this point I'll probably turn the conversation over to Dave so he can describe how on once occasion he and another dear friend of ours assisted me with the washing machines. So here's Dave to tell a story that he loves to tell.
D: Well, at that time Park House, which is now the president's residence, was a dormitory. And my friend had a female friend who lived at Park House. And so we figured out a scheme to get him in to see her after hours. And what happened was that we borrowed Chuck's toolkit and proceeded to go over around nine o'clock and repair a perfectly healthy washing machine. When we were there, my friend contacted his friend who came down to witness what we were doing, and to show his knowledge, he took his screwdriver that had a poorly insulated handle, stuck it into the back of the washing machine, and got a terrific shock. And his arm wet numb and dead for abut two minutes! And he was stumbling around the basement, I was terrified because I thought he really might be hurt and I didn't know what was going to happen. Needless to say, we never tried that trick again. And Chuck never reported us, which is a good thing.
Let me slip in one thing here. When you asked us to do this, I was thinking of the student interests and their aspirations and so on, and I came up with a bunch of words which in comparison to today's students, these words were never heard: ecology, environment, oil and gasoline, conservation of natural resources, and finding ourselves. Instead, what was on the minds of most of our students, for the women, there was a strong thought of marriage, soon. Just the idea of being married was very satisfying. Men were very eager to choose careers, military service was on the minds of everyone because it was obligatory, especially for those in ROTC, we had an Air Force ROTC program, soon after we left they were taken in and inducted. Owning a car was kind of a dream, there were a few illegal cars on campus but otherwise they were outlawed and you had to get special permission. I remember a student being suspended through the action of the Judicial Board which was a combination of students and faculty. A student was suspended for two weeks, and this put him in a bind when it came time to take his finals. He graduated a subsequent year. It was just the idea that it was very strict. So we did not have automobiles. And of course on the minds of most men were Liz Taylor, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, and you name them. The best literature in most fraternity houses was the recent issue of Playboy.
C: All of that, we were incredibly for the most part I think, virtuous, happy, Eisenhower was president in the 1950s, we graduated in 1957, and those were incredibly gentle years. The country was not booming, but the country was not depressed, Communism was a threat, but it wasn't eminent in Appleton, Wisconsin. Even though as you know, Julia, Joseph McCarthy was from Appleton, and the McCarthy hearings were held while we were students here. To the best of my recollection, we were enthralled by the McCarthy hearings.
D: We would go to the basement of the Union because there were few, few television sets. The other thing about that period here, we had little exposure to international events. We would have students, an occasional foreign student, so that was our contact. And we would know the news through the newspaper. But because of lack of television, we didn't see these things. Faculty, I heard a highly respected member of the faculty in those days describe our particular class and our generation of classes, as "apathetic, complacent, and do nothing." In later years, I've looked back and that was hardly the case. I think our motivation was more idealistic and we did things as a class and with careers, but we were not strongly into business. Most of us had a life of service in mind, especially teaching, nursing, medicine, law, it was a different time, but we were not rebellious, the biggest thing we seemed to complain about was dorm hours, and things like that.
8. I was wondering when you all came to Lawrence, the Union was fairly new, it had been built a few years prior to you coming to Lawrence. I was wondering if you could tell me about some of the different activities that took place in the Union, or was the Grill there when you were students?
D: Yes, there was a Grill. A lot of bridge games and poker games took place in the Union. The prom and big dances, and we would have guest speakers who would sometimes appear there, sometimes they had appeared at Convocation, but they also would show up there. We did not have drinking in the Union, we did not have a Viking Room downstairs. I think there was ping pong in there, wasn't there?
C: Yes, we played ping pong.
D: It was used a lot, but it was, I think the absence of alcohol on campus was a big, major difference, and the absence of co-ed dorms. We were pretty prim and proper, either by necessity or force.
C: I should mention talking about the Union, I think the configuration of the Union was basically the same as it was today. The Grill and Riverview Lounge and the lower level, but there were no offices, there may have been a Union manager. Now there are several offices in the Union and so forth, but the Grill for some students is perhaps much like it is today. It was a very popular spot in terms of where they would go in the morning, where they would go between classes and so forth. For others of us it wasn't nearly as popular, but certainly it was. And back in that era, there was a fellow behind the counter of the Union that everyone knew, and his name was Clarence. And I have no idea what Clarence's last name was, but he was just a wonderful person and he knew all the students, and he was just part of the institution. At the time I think we probably thought Clarence was older than the hills, and Clarence was probably forty years old if I were to guess.
But certainly the Union was the hub of activities on campus, and where organizations would meet and so forth and certainly as Dave said, for dances they'd bring in a band and play in Riverview Lounge, and the dances and proms and the fraternities and sororities had dances, and they were a big event on campus. The girls would often times wear formals, and the men would wear coats and ties or sport coats. Jeans hardly existed at the time.
D: Some of the jocks would wear jeans.
C: I suppose they did.
D: But in that Union too, in that main lounge, there was a small stage off to the side. Those have now been converted into offices. In the front side of the Union there was a little alcove, and you could put on small drama performances there so the drama department did so. It was a multi-purpose building, and it certainly met our needs at the time. And in fact, Professor Chaney gave a Convocation once, and he was lamenting the fact that Lawrence students in those days did not have greater interest in the world about them and were too provincial. In his giving his talk, for some reason I remember this, he has a difficult time recalling it now, he says, but his famous quote was, he would go through and tell Lawrence students don't do this, and they don't know what's going on in post-war Europe, etc., etc., etc., but quote, "they had the best Union in the country." And he made that line repeatedly, I would think five or six times in the course of the talk, of course, leaving us all with a hug sense of guilt, and we didn't go there for the next hour.
9. Now I've heard that one of the popular traditions was to go outside on Union Hill and sled down during the winter and try not to fall into the river. Did students actually do that?
D: Yes, there's one great day. I think it was John Ellen, who on a snowy morning, it was always up to the president, you'd be in your dorms and you'd wait until about seven o'clock to see if the president had decided if we were going to have school that day. I don't know the details, but one student, one enterprising student, got the word to the president that there was some condition that would absolutely prohibit school. And President Knight was taken in by it, and he said there would be no classes that day. And whatever it was, it was a hoax, but it worked, and we got off. And of course they did slide down the hill that day.
C: Also, there were a handful of students on campus that were skiers. More than a handful probably, Dave and I were not skiers, but I can remember the skiers when the weather was right and the snow was deep enough, they would walk over there with their ski boots on and skis which at the time looked like something from outer space for those of us who weren't skiers, and they would ski down that 75 foot hill. I'm sure they did that hoping to impress the ladies which they probably did. Other than that…
D: They slid on cardboard too because that was impromptu and you wouldn't have to have any equipment for it, anything to get coeducational experiences underway.
C: There's a wonderful story that Dave and I remember about the Union that I want to share. This happened our Freshman year, there was a group of Betas. We keep referencing the Betas because that was a big part of our life. Well these fellows were more creative than some, and they posted signs at Ormsby, they had made the signs themselves, that they were going to be holding cheerleader tryouts in the basement of the Union. And they posted these only in Ormsby where there were just Freshman girls. And of course Freshman girls being Freshman girls, were just all a twitter at the possibility that they would be able to try out to become cheerleaders. And they posted a date and a time for the tryouts to take place. And the fellows who had organized this were probably three or four seniors I would suspect. They showed up and they were there with clipboards and names and everything else and were in a row to judge the tryouts. And of course the girls, many of whom had been cheerleaders in high school showed up and I have no idea if it was five or fifty or five hundred, it wasn't five hundred, I know that. But they showed up and went through this whole scam. And while the girls were jumping and leaping and cheering, of course they were scoring on their clipboards.
I can't recall how it all came to light, but it was a classical small college, 1950s kind of a prank. And I know Dave would agree with me, when we look back and of course we tend to look back and think of the fun times and some that were not so much fun. But we had a lot of fun and our pleasures and our fun generally speaking was incredibly innocent. In retrospect it was just a delightful four years and laced with those kinds of things which I think were harmless but entirely enjoyable.
D: There was no drug culture. There was the alcohol culture which goes back time in memoriam. Drugs weren't even a consideration. I think in those days that marijuana was becoming a consideration at some other places on campus, but I would guess there wasn't any in Appleton.
C: The most powerful drug was probably a cup of coffee. Many of us didn't drink coffee.
D: Chuck gets his drug when he runs, I have to throw that in. He gets a real high then. One other thing, and this is always commented on by other alums from generations back. The attire was very important. Most of us, the ideal college guy in those days was a Joe College, and Ivy League was kind of the vogue. Most of us when we entered college had no quote "Ivy League" clothes, so that was an aspiration for the men. The women generally had combed hair, make-up, quite nice clothes, usually a sweater when they went to class, and they almost always wore skirts, unless it was a recreational activity, as opposed to the current dress.
The professors almost invariably wore a coat and tie. I think when you say that these days some people conjure up the image of the 1890s when there were the high white stiff collars. We aren't that old, but we're old enough to remember when professors did wear suits and sport coats and they made an attempt to have not an aloof, but a dignified appearance, let's put it that way. The faculty as I remember, at no one time when I was at Lawrence was I treated with condescension or disdain because the faculty really was helpful. And I don't think that's changed today. I think it's the real glory point of this school.
That's a constant definitely.
C: And the faculty were highly available if you needed help or if you wanted to discuss something that you didn't understand, their level of availability was very, very high. It certainly was not uncommon for faculty to invite students to their homes, for a meal or for a glass of wine. Or they would meet the student in the Union to talk about things. Some people, Hastings Brubaker I think, again, the head librarian had a table for two that was virtually his in the Union. It was not uncommon that his friends and students would sit with him on a regular basis at the Union. But certainly that was a hallmark back then as it is today that the degree to which they made themselves available and made the students feel comfortable was just delightful.
D: I'd like to add one thing about the behavior of students in those days. The personality cult seemed to grow in post-war years as the world shrunk and transportation became better, and television and movies and we realized there was a charming way in this world. As opposed to our parents who had to work for many years and were in simpler environments and they did not have the sophistication or poise. Consequently when we came, it was sort of accepted among the students that you wanted to be quote, "well-rounded." The faculty were for the most part very scholarly and very talented and very bright and had high aspirations for us as academicians and students. When we sort of had this broad concept of being well-rounded, it meant to grow your personality and be charming, be smart and all of these things. All of this was quite superficial of course, and it was for this reason that many of the profs scoffed at the well-rounded aspirations that we had. Whereas we were trying to break into an adult world and thought those were the necessary ingredients.
10. Well speaking of professors, I was going to ask was there a particular professor that really significantly had an impact on you, when you look back that is the one professor that stands out? It could be more than one.
C: In my case, I majored in Math and took a number of course from two members of the math department, Dr. Stewart, who was known universally as Jeb Stewart, because of his Southern heritage, and I think his initials somehow were Jeb. Jeb was a Civil War general. So he was known as Jeb Stewart and was just a wonderful, warm, welcoming man, and beloved by many. The other math professor was Dr. Berry who I can still remember to this day how in Calculus classes he could draw three-dimensional examples on a blackboard, but he was incredibly bright and very talented and a real powerhouse. And then I took several economics classes, one from Dr. M.M. Bober who was I think nationally renowned as an economist and incredibly modest. But when Dr. Bober spoke, the world listened because of incredible depth and knowledge. It was quite a treat.
Then the other member of the department was Dr. McConagha, Mac as he was known, and beloved by everyone. I've got a couple of Mac stories that I have to share that Dave has heard more than once. Dr. McConagha was a superb economist, but also very, very kind and very, very gentle and had a style of teaching ad a style of communicating with students that was unique. I can remember on once occasion when I walked into class and I was wearing a letter sweater with a big L on the sweater. And Dr. McConagha looked at me, and as only Dr. McConagha can do it, he said, "Mr. Merry, Mr. Merry, Mr. Merry," which was typically the way he broached talking to his students. He said, "Mr. Merry, tell me Mr. Merry, does that L stand for Learning?" Which was a classical Dr. McConagha.
And the other story that I love to tell, a mutual friend, a close friend of Dave and mine, was not the world's greatest student. And he took every class that Dr. McConagha ever offered, which was on his part a very wise decision. Back in those days, for exams, the professor would write the question on the blackboard and you'd have a blue book in front of you and you'd write the question in the blue book and follow the question with your answer. And our good friend, we'll call him Smith, Smith got his blue book back with the exam and he had written one of the questions, and he had followed that with his answer. And Dr. McConagha, he had script like a little bird, little tiny, tiny script, and what he aid following the question, he said, "Mr. Smith, up to this point you are right." But people who knew Dr. McConagha better than we do could tell stories, and what a delightful, wonderful, beloved man.
D: I guess my favorite faculty member was Marshall Hulbert, who was the Dean of the College when I got here and he served as president until Dr. Knight arrived. And Marshall and I became extremely close friends. He was obviously the important man and I was just a wee student. He and I took a liking to each other, as the years passed and as I got to working with some of the other professors, sometimes I would become very frustrated with them and really want to vent. So I would go in and vent to Dean Hulbert, and he was very friendly and he would listen to me and then he would sort of laugh at me and say, "Well, I hope you get over this soon." But it really helped anyway. But he was one of my favorites. The other one, or course Bill Chaney came here the year before Chuck and I arrived, and Bill Chaney was very popular among the whole student body. I didn't take a course from him, nor did Chuck, but we did subsequently after we retired, just five, ten years ago, we took courses. So I guess the President Knight was extremely impressive to all of us, and he sort of set a gold standard for fluency of language and speaking ability and setting our aspirations high. He was extremely well-liked by the students. And a personal favorite for me was Margaret Shay Gilbert who was an instructor in Biology, and she worked with me on my Honors Thesis.
11. I was going to ask, what were some traditions that you all were involved in? I noticed in the Lawrentian there was a picture of you with other Betas that said you'd gotten your rock back.
D: I saw it this morning. You were there, you and Borgie and Ross.
C: Well, I have to share one tradition that I was part of, and there was a prom every year. And there was a campaign to elect a prom king. And every year typically a couple of men would run fro prom king, and there'd be a campus wide election to select the prom king. And my Junior year, I ran as a candidate for prom king. And again, because we were so Greek centric in those days, every fraternity would offer up a candidate or two. I can't even remember who the other candidate was, I think it was…
D: It was a practitioner, wasn't it?
C: No, a Sig Eph. We ran a campaign, and the campaign theme was Charlie Carnation.
D: Because of Guys and Dolls.
C: It was a Guys and Dolls kind of a theme, which the fellows thought was really terrific, because they could wear dark suits and felt hats and we just had a delightful time with signs on campus. I remember a member of the class of 1956, Win Jones, which was a very talented cartoonist had done a caricature of me which we made into lapel stickers or something like that. But then we had pictures taken around Appleton. We had pictures taken in the City Jail, of Charlie Carnation and a couple of his dark suited men behind bars. We had pictures taken at the railroad yards, hanging from the side of a box car, and we had pictures taken in bars in downtown Appleton, and we were carrying violin cases and pistols. We had pistols, I can't imagine where those came from anymore.
In any case, it was a delightful campaign, back in that era, the president's home was where the president's office is now, next to the Union, and there was a garage alongside the building. We arranged to kidnap Dr. Stewart, Dr. Jeb Stewart, and we arranged for him to be in the Union, and Charlie Carnation and his dark suited men came in, took Dr. Jeb Stewart who probably weighed all of 115 pounds, and carried him into the garage, and we had borrowed a car from the local Buick dealer. We opened up the garage doors, and with a couple of fellows in the car with Dr. Stewart, we kidnapped Dr. Stewart and drove out of the garage down past this library which was then a street. That was all part of the campaign theme. But interesting enough, for some years afterward, because I lived in Appleton, I would occasionally see faculty members of my era, more than occasionally. It was surprising to me how many of them remembered the campaign, and they would say, "Mr. Merry, that was a wonderful campaign." And it was certainly fun for all of us who were part of it. We won the campaign, we won the election.
D: Indirectly that refers to the fraternities, because there were five then. They were a core part of the campus activities, including academically. I think fraternities have changed, and in my own four years here, I became appreciative of the local Beta chapter and through my knowledge of the prejudice of the national Beta chapter or Beta organization and so on, I lost interest in the national. But locally the fraternity sponsored scholarships, the competitive athletics, many social events, and did good work civically to some degree. In contrast, to today, and Chuck and I have a more disparaging outlook on them now, but at the time they were very valuable to this campus. And so with the sororities, but they did not have housing facilities. The houses provided by the fraternities were good physically for the college and also I think academically and socially.
12. With the overall ROCK, I've heard so many stories about this, but were either of you involved in helping move it?
C: Not directly, but certainly we observed it and so forth. To the best of my recollection, when you wanted to move it you called Piater Trucking, there was a tow trucking service in Appleton. They would come with their tow truck and they would have the equipment in there, you couldn't lift it, it was too heavy to lift. They would move it as directed by whomever was charged with doing that. To the best of my recollection, I think Ripon stole it on one occasion, didn't they?
D: The picture that I saw this morning was of you and other Betas after the ROCK had been returned to Ripon, so it had to take place our Senior year.
C: It was part of the Ripon/Lawrence football rivalry. I think they stole up here in the dark of night and stole it. And I guess that now that I think about it, as part of the prom king campaign, we moved the ROCK from wherever it resided to I think in front of Main Hall or to the south side of Main Hall. We painted it, and we painted it with the sentence, "I was moved to vote for Charlie Carnation." That was part of the campaign. I'm not sure, I think the ROCK has been lost.
Yes, I'm not sure where it is. I hear different theories.
C: It was a class, there was a class subsequent of ours, maybe ten years subsequent, they buried the ORCK .When they returned for Reunion some number of years later, they dug it up. They didn't physically dig it up, but they arranged to have it dug up.
13. What was the relationship like between the students and the faculty and administration? It seemed like it was a very close relationship.
D: I think it was highly respectful. Any jokes involving faculty were gentle and kind. The faculty was extremely fond of being close to the students, so I think we had an excellent relationship that way.
C: The faculty were of very modest means, the pay scale in that ear, I dare say it's the same today, but the pay scale in that era was very, very modest I think. Everything about so much of Lawrence was very modest. They were wonderful people. I think many of them lived within walking distance of the campus, which is still true today. We were a student body of 700 perhaps, maybe 800 at the highest in that era. The number of faculty members was a fraction of what is it today. It would have been much easier for them to walk. Obviously it was a much less expensive way to lead your life if you could walk to and from your job.
D: There was a more formal teacher/student structure to everything in those days. Today you see a much more casual friendship. They were always friendly to us, but it was clear they were superior and they were the respected adults. There wasn't a lot of buddy- buddy kind of relationship.
14. I have just one more question to ask, but I was going to ask if either of you had other stories you wanted to share?
C: We have many stories, but does one come to mind.
D: I am especially fond of Marshall Hulbert, and I would like to tell a story about him. He and I were close, and this was probably during my Sophomore or Junior year. I was moaning about the curriculum, and how I didn't like certain professors and I really couldn't see, the big thing was I didn't see why pre-medical students had to take so many liberal arts courses. Why did I need literature? Like all young people, I thought I knew way too much. And he patiently listened to me complain about this. As I pleaded my case and thought that Lawrence should really change. And he jokingly said at the time, "Well David, just remember, all these liberal arts courses will someday give you something to do when you retire." I thought, "What's the message there? What's he really trying to tell me?" The end result was the first day of my retirement and I lived in Neenah at the time, I started classes at Lawrence. It was just wonderful because I came back and I took an Art class and I had never had time for that when I was a student and it was wonderful.
15. Then my last question was, now that you come back to Lawrence as an alumnus, how has Lawrence changed and how has it remained the same?
C: I'm not a good judge of that because I graduated in 1957 and moved back to Appleton in 1962. For the first 20 or 25 years I was involved in other activities, married and raising a family and so forth, so I wasn't as involved in the campus as I am today. I was always in and around the campus, and we'd go to hear speakers, I'd go to Convocations, and football games and so forth and so on. So I don't see change in the way that other people do. And just a year ago, we had our fiftieth reunion, and we had classmates back who had not been back since June of 1957 when they graduated. They were dumbfounded even though there are many of the old buildings still standing, there are many others that are new. Even like this library has replaced the old library but is not the old library. For those people, it was dramatic, all the changes and the growth and so forth.
And I have to make one comment and this I have heard from several people who have returned after many, many years. It's not uncommon for them to say that they were very apprehensive about returning because their memories are memories from the 1950s. They feared returning because they feared that it wouldn't be the same as it once was. I think invariably once they are back on campus and once they see some old friends, it's like the clock has been turned back 25 or 40 or 50 years. They are just thrilled to be here, but the return is, for many of them, very difficult. In fact Dave and I have a dear friend of ours who we talk with occasionally and so forth and he doesn't want to come back because he fears that its is going to have changed so much. And maybe he's dealing with some other issues that we are unaware of.
D: And Chuck and I in contrast, since we've been around most of this time, see it as yearly progress, yearly growth, the beauty is just as great. It's hard for us to say anything that is sad about it. We like it.
C: And today the sun is out, the landscaping is beautiful, everything is green, I think the campus is certainly better maintained than when we were here as students. There's more landscaping, more greenery, it's just a beautiful, beautiful place to be. Which is not to say it wasn't beautiful when we were here, but it was different.
D: Of course I notice how much the trees have grown, I would say the average growth of the trees in front of Main Hall is about 25-30 feet.
Yes, they are beautiful trees. If you have nothing else to add, I'll go ahead and turn the record off.
(After the recorder was turned off, Chuck and David began talking about Freshman Studies, and the recorder was turned back on.)
D: Every alumni group that comes back, the first course they always ask abut is Freshman Studies, because it was the intellectual awakening for us. And you just came form Po Dunk and you suddenly were in a big person's world and you understood the universe. It was a thrill.
C: I think another fringe benefit of Freshman Studies was because there was so much interaction between the professors and students. You really got to know Freshman classmates better than you otherwise might have known, because you were all in a position where you were expressing opinions and asking ideas. Because many of us were not necessarily shy, but we didn't necessarily meet people easily. It was a wonderful way to get to know or become familiar with your classmates even though the classes were small. Nevertheless, that was not the intent of it, but that was certainly a by-product.
D: My first nine week session in Freshman Studies had a loaded class, and there were students from Milwaukee, two students in particular I can think of, and another student from Appleton who was eventually summa cum laude. We were in this intense discussion group of 23 people as I remember it. And we went at each other tooth and nail. For four years I respected those people. What made me think of this was Chuck was saying that you got to know them so well. Well we were young and scared and we really didn't know how to talk around an issue very well. And we took each other on, and we had just a depth of knowledge in the first nine weeks that you probably wouldn't acquire for two years over your other classes. It was great.