Update: The link to my earlier post about Blayney is here. The location of the photo with the castle is discussed in the comments.

Another thing I found in Mr. Wheeler’s scrapbook was this striking image of Rice’s first German professor, Lindsey Blayney, and his wife Gertrude:

The picture is labeled “Commencement 1917” and I’d guess it was taken in the calm after the ceremony. They would have been standing just north of the front edge of this photo below, which is why we can’t see the screen they mercifully used to put up to shield attendees from the summer sun:

It must have been taken, I think, just before he left for service in World War I, as his service dates are listed as 1917 to 1919. I wrote about him way back in 2011 after I discovered this photograph in his papers–it may well be the single best image I’ve come across in all these years:

Bonus: Here’s Blayney’s tribute to Rice, written on the occasion of the semi-centannial in 1962. It’s really something. It’s a pdf so click on it for the whole experience.

Extra Bonus: I went down in the parking garage under the Jones School and got my retiree parking sticker!