Rice History Corner

This is one of those that’s so hard I put off writing it as long as I could. I was deeply saddened to learn a couple weeks ago of the death of Neil “Sandy” Havens ’56. In an unsettling coincidence it happened that the day he passed away I was working on a post about this photo of Sandy and his beloved wife, Helen ’57:

I was so taken with the joy on their faces that I did some digging and discovered that it was from a story about Sandy becoming Master of Jones College in 1970. I laughed too, thinking it funny that they looked so happy about getting such a hard job, and thought that he’d be delighted to see this. So he won’t see it after all, but there’s a lot of comfort in knowing that he got to live it, one of so many joyful moments in his long tenure at Rice.

This 1989 Houston Post article does a wonderful job of capturing who he was and his unique service to the Rice community:

As head of the Players, Sandy directed multiple shows year in and year out, beginning in 1964 with A Man For All Seasons. His choices for productions were often challenging, sometimes even risky, with the Rice Players frequently presenting plays that had never before been done in Houston. He also inspired college productions and taught virtually all the drama classes at Rice for decades. Through it all he was kind and generous, committed to his students and his craft, with the humanity of one who spent his life surrounded by great and sometimes provocative literature. He was also flat out fun to be around, engaging, funny, always happy to hear about the new things that were going on at Rice. He took the time to help me whenever I asked and I will always remember with gratitude his willingness to tell me about the Rice he knew. Among many other things, everything I know about the basement of Fondren in the 1950s I learned from him!

Here’s Sandy, an undergraduate in the spring of 1955, on the steps of ChemLec as Henry V on the eve of battle:

Sandy Havens, rest in peace.

Bonus: Smiling again, surrounded by smiling students. I don’t have a date for this but I’m pretty sure that’s Rice’s Dean of Social Sciences Rachel Tolbert Kimbro at left so maybe she can tell us:

Anyone who’s been reading this stuff for a while knows how fond I am of Norman Hackerman, who I think was a good guy and an underrated president. But as much as I admire him I never expected to see this:

I was hoping against hope that he’d stepped in and taken over during a real game but alas, it was just the pre-season intrasquad game. The opposing coach was Frank Vandiver! Even better, the half time entertainment was the Derrick Dolls from the Houston Oilers. I’d have paid money to see that.

I have no idea who won but I bet the victory party was a blast. A lot of fun was had in the 1970s.

Bonus: I’ve learned over time that if you see something inexplicable on campus it’s probably either art or some sort of experiment. I’m betting this is art.

Extra Bonus:

I’ve reached a point at Rice where it is not easy to surprise me but today I was surprised twice. This is the most recent one, from the Houston Post, December 29, 1964:

We have a pretty thorough list of famous visitors to campus in the Woodson but these two are not on it. (Curiously, another visiting royal also slipped past the list makers.) There’s not a whisper of this visit in the Thresher either, as the campus must have been deserted

Bonus: They’ve been working on freshening up the crosswalks for a couple of days now.

There is very little in this picture that I understand. I’d recognize Priscilla Huston’s smile anywhere and I think I also understand the telephone next to her:

Otherwise I’m going to need someone to explain all this to me. Mainly I’m interested in where this is and also in that thing that looks like a school bell above the phone.

Bonus: One of the old squash courts is now a very nice volleyball lounge. Walking in there produced quite a strange sensation.

When I was working the other day on the post about the crowd at a 1956 basketball game I got interested in one of the Rice players, Temple Tucker.  Tucker was a star for the Owls in the late ’50s and was inducted into the Rice Athletics Hall of Fame in 1999.

If you click on the image below you can read about him and his career:

Rice Institute basketball player Temple Tucker

What jumped out at me here was the Billy Wohn Award for the most valuable player that Tucker received after his senior year. This rang a tiny bell in the back of my mind. I couldn’t immediately place who Billy Wohn was but the date gave me a pretty good idea. The fastest way to check if my hunch was right was to head over to the RMC and look for the plaque. And there, sadly, I found him:

The Rice Institute was still a very small place in the summer of 1953 and it’s almost impossible to imagine the impact of such a tragedy on this little community. I went back to the alumni scrapbooks to see what might be there and came upon this newspaper article about the creation of the Wohn Award:

The donors who created the award were Wohn’s classmates, most, maybe all of them now gone themselves. Jay Weidler was a survivor of the crash that killed the other ten.

If you look closely at the plaque you’ll note that it was presented by class of 1955 forty-five years after the crash, in 2000. That’s a long time to be thinking about the loss of so many promising young men and a testament to the lingering sorrow that so many carried for all those years. At Rice’s 2001 Veteran’s Day service Rear Admiral Austin Scott, Jr. ’55 spoke movingly about these deaths and about our duty to remember our dead. Here’s a link to a post I wrote about this but I’ll reproduce his moving remarks again here:

Bonus: Here’s Billy Wohn, number 20, driving for a layup. December 30th, 1952.

The Woodson recently received a small but exquisite collection of Rice related materials from Gerald Moorhead ’69 ’71. Among the treasures is a box of 8×10 photographic prints, most taken around campus. The natural assumption is that Moorhead took them but I don’t know that for sure. I’ll show you more beauties later but for today here are several scenes from Beer Bike, 1967. It’s hard to pick a favorite but if forced, I believe this is it. He looks almost noble, doesn’t he?

Tea Trike was a thing back then:

I love this guy. He’s my runner up for favorite picture:

Every batch of beer bike images I’ve ever looked at has something in it that I can’t explain and this one is no different. Anyone have thoughts on this next one? He looks a tad bit out of place.

Bonus: With Beer Bike upon us once again a loyal reader sends this image, which he correctly labeled Calm Before The Storm.

Extra Bonus: Here’s my own shot from yesterday. I don’t even know what they do in there but whatever it is it apparently requires them to be fenced in.

I am fascinated by this image of a full gymnasium and leaping cheerleaders. There’s something almost otherworldly about it:

I found this write-up of the game in one of the old alumni scrapbooks:

We had a very good season that year, going 19-5 under coach Don Suman. The Owls were even ranked in the top twenty for a couple of weeks before running into the buzzsaw of the Southern Methodist University Mustangs in Southwest Conference play. Three of Rice’s five losses in the 1955-56 season came at the hands of SMU, who finished the season ranked seventh in the nation.

Bonus: The only other photos I can recall just now of the gym this full were from President Eisenhower’s visit in 1960, when it was quite full indeed–and without air conditioning on a very warm evening.

Extra Bonus: I was walking in front of Lovett Hall the other day when I was suddenly struck by something I’d never noticed before. What the heck is this??

It’s a rainy day today, which reminded me of this charming image:

But what do these people have in common, besides a shared conviction that they won’t melt in the rain and the fact that they’re all really nice? It took a little bit of work, but only a little bit, because I had a pretty good idea of why this particular group would have been assembled for photos.

And I was correct. A quick search of old Rice News copies turned this up:

Great teachers are our true treasure.

Bonus: Speaking of treasures and of great teachers, this turned up the other day. What Miss Keating had bound and labeled is a copy of Dr. Joseph I. Davies’s entire course of lecture notes for Biology 100, which he taught for decades.

One of the contrasts that never fails to entertain is the one between undergraduate hijinks and the serious discussion thereof by senior administrators. This one is a classic, with the Committee on Outdoor Sports handing down their verdict on Sammy regulations:

Some of these guys would have passed out if they’d seen the MOB.

Bonus: As you can well see, the correspondence is addressed to Doug Harlan ’64.  Thinking about it for a few moments I realized I have the perfect image for this post. It was taken in 1961, when Harlan was a freshman. I believe that’s him, second from left.

Update: The first time I got interested in the 1926 Math Department photo (five years ago!) I found myself perplexed about the location of the group and had to go out to look for it. It was changed from the time of the photo and now it’s changed again from what it looked like five years ago.  I’ll put the new pictures down at the end.

Let’s look at this photo one more time:

After I got over the shock of Miss Hickey, the second thing I noticed was — where are they? I just couldn’t quite place it.

Luckily there were only a small number of buildings in 1926. At first I thought it might be a part of Chemistry that was remodeled but the bricks weren’t right. So I just walked outside and started looking. Ten minutes later I had it:

That’s a wheelchair lift, by the way:

The reason I couldn’t identify it right away is that there seem to be precisely zero pictures of this spot in the Woodson. Aside from the apparently compelling need people have to photograph the front (and only the front) of buildings, this is in a weird little notch that lacks some of the charisma of the rest of the Physics Building.

This is the closest I could get. If you could see through H.A. Wilson’s little building it would be right there:

And here you can see it on the Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson drawing, just to the right of the “Print within red line” notation:

Update: The wheelchair lift is gone.

And this ramp has replaced it, apparently with Divine approval:

Bonus: