Rice History Corner

This afternoon completely by chance I stumbled across an amazing picture. I was randomly–randomly!–leafing through folders in the photo files and my heart leapt when I saw this:

There are almost no good images of the Rice board before very recent times. I’ve looked, and looked intently, to no avail. They didn’t sit for group pictures as they do now and there are only scattered individual portraits in our files. For some of them we have no picture at all.  What instantly caught my eye here was that both George Brown and Harry Wiess are in this one.

But it took several more minutes for the reality of this photo to dawn on me. It was taken after the Baccalaureate service in the spring of 1946. William Houston, who’s also here, had only just been named Rice’s second president in January. The other thing that happened in January was a first for the Institute: four lifetime trustees stepped down from the board. Up until that moment the only way a trustee left was by dying. The four who resigned, all elderly men in 1946, are all here: J.T. Scott, Benjamin Botts Rice, Alexander Cleveland, and Edgar Odell Lovett. Their replacements–Lamar Fleming, Bill Kirkland, Frederick Lummis, and Gus Wortham–are also present as are the three younger men who had come onto the board during the war, George Brown, Harry Hanszen, and Harry Wiess.  This was a moment of profound generational change and set in motion the dramatic changes that would come to the Institute in the years following World War II.

A special edition of the Thresher came out on January 10, 1946 to announce Dr. Houston’s selection as president and it included this deceptively simple announcement of something that would prove to be of momentous consequence:

They are, left to right, Lamar Fleming, William Kirkland, Gus Wortham, Frederick Lummis, George Brown, Edgar Odell Lovett, Alexander Cleveland, William Houston, Harry Hanszen, J.T. Scott, Benjamin Botts Rice, a photobomb by Rice Physics Professor H.A. Wilson, the baccalaureate speaker, Rev. Henry Van Dusen, and Harry Wiess.

Bonus:

Thinking about those early Rice students and the loyalty and friendship that endured among them I was reminded of a set of images that I probably should have talked about earlier. It starts with a picture that I’ve looked at countless times over the years, one taken at commencement in 1930:

This is a pretty neat picture. That’s the architect of our early buildings, Ralph Adams Cram, at the podium and you can see quite a few notable Rice faculty members and trustees sitting behind him, from Griffith Evans at left all the way over to Dr. Lovett at the right. There’s also a great view of the canvas backdrop covering the Sallyport that confused me in the early days of this blog (a full five years ago!)

None of that is what I’m interested in.

What I’m interested in are the speakers, emblazoned with “Star Electric & Engr. Co.” This seems to have been the first time the commencement program was amplified. (When you think about it, that must have been a huge relief.) It wasn’t until I noticed this ad from the 1923 Campanile, though, that I really got curious:

Surely everyone remembers my kodaking friend Carl Knapp ’16, and Edmund Dupree ’16 was of course the first student to enroll at the Institute. Here’s a picture of them in about 1915 in the bowels of the Mech Lab:

The real surprise came when I discovered we have a small collection, a single box, of things from Dupree. Out of that box emerged an image of the Star Electric shop at its original location on Capitol Street in downtown Houston. That’s Carl in the cap behind the counter and Ed Dupree right next to him:

By 1930 Knapp had left the enterprise to work for the River Oaks Corporation but Dupree was still there when Dr. Lovett decided that Rice could go ahead and install some amplification for commencement. Rice people stuck together.

Bonus:

The spirit of pride and ownership engendered in those early Rice classes was something that stayed with them for the rest of their lives. Their sense of themselves as pioneers grew rather than faded after their graduation and their loyalty to the Institute and to each other was fierce. In later life they became the founders and backbone of the Alumni Association, they raised funds, and they turned out for every event held on campus. There are pictures of the same faces, year after year, growing older, everywhere in the archives. 

The first five graduating classes called themselves “The Frontier Five” and they met at every Homecoming until they were gone. Here’s one of my favorite images, part of the class of 1916 at their 40th reunion:

I’ve written about so many of them. That’s Norman Hurd Ricker at left, next to him is Carl Knapp. The big guy is Tiny Kalb and on the right is William Nathan. I’m not sure but I think the tall woman at right is Miss Red.

As the 50th anniversary of the first graduation approached, Harry Bulbrook ’16 went about designing a special badge for those first five classes to wear at Rice events. I’ve never found one but you can pick them out in Homecoming pictures for a very long time. Here’s bunch of the at a buffet table in 1969:

I can’t tell you how much I admire them and how much I admire the Institute that helped produce them.

Bonus:

Since last week’s post about the origin of the freshman beanie I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how to characterize the particular quality of those early Institute classes. I still haven’t committed to any particular language but I did go back and have another look at that 1921 R Book from which I’ve drawn a couple of posts.

There’s a section in it called “Student Spirit” that I think gets at what I’m talking about:

It’s that idea of democracy and self-reliance that is so notable among these students. They felt free to build their own traditions and govern their own relations. It wasn’t that they were unsupervised by the adults on campus—trust me, if they violated rules real wrath would be unleashed by the administration–but that that they were allowed and then exercised a great deal of creative freedom as long as they stayed within the rather limited number of hard and fast rules. It gave them the sense of pride and ownership that is so easy to see in this excerpt. It stayed with them for their whole lives too. Anyway, I’m still thinking about it.

Bonus: Every time I see this window open I wait a minute to see if the Pope will come out.

One more from this batch, just so we can all enjoy the sparkly dresses. Who doesn’t love a sparkly dress?

As usual I found this great picture while I was looking for something else:

My first reaction was simple bliss. Not only is it fully labeled and dated, it also features a fantastic lineup of Rice personages.

My second reaction involves the structure behind them. What exactly was that? It looks pretty rough.

If you have time to waste zoom in and check out the RC can in the kid’s hand. I’d forgotten about those pull tabs!

Bonus: The Rice bee hive has been very productive. And also delicious. My fingers are still sticky.

Nancy is the best. It’s just that simple.

One of my favorite things about the early years of the Institute is their home-made quality. With no traditions or even examples close at hand the students merrily made up campus life as they went along.  Most of their organizations and events, from the band to the clubs to the newspaper, started in this unsystematic way. A whole social world grew up and then was lost and replaced with the advent of the college system in 1957. Pieces of the old ways survived that transition, though, and it’s always fun to see them crop up.

I was therefore delighted to come across this clipping from the Semi-centennial in 1962, in which the Reverend Oscar F. Green, ’16, sort of off-handedly describes the nearly accidental origins of the freshman beanies, which lasted roughly until 1970:

Just for fun here’s young Mr. Green in the first volume of the Campanile:

Bonus: The leaves are finally falling in earnest, a sure sign that it’s mid-winter.

Michael Carroll, Rice’s Dean of Engineering from 1988 to 1998, passed away the other day.  He was a remarkable man in more than one way, deeply intelligent and fantastically well read but also joyful, curious, and full of the spirit of adventure. The official account of his life and his many and varied contributions to Rice and to the world is here, and our mutual friend Patrick Kurp has also written about him on his blog here.

All I can add is that I loved every single minute I spent talking with him. He gave me one of my first doses of real honesty about the state of higher education, both the funny parts and the tragic ones, an eye-opener that I sorely needed at the time. He also penned one of the greatest memos I’ve ever come across in the archives (and I’ve read a lot of memos). He could, I think, make absolutely anything funny.

This is what it felt like to be around him:

Michael Carroll, Rest in Peace.

I accomplished exactly nothing that I meant to today. Instead I went out for lunch with some old friends, attended a 15-year-old’s birthday party, and got my nails done with my lovely daughters. It was great!

Still feeling a bit light headed, I offer this afternoon two great photos that aren’t of Rice. They’re a couple of aerials that came to us from the Bellaire Historical Society. The first was taken in 1936:

The second is undated and you can actually see Rice in the top right hand corner. I’m hoping one of you can date it:

I’m at a loss.

How about a caption contest?