These turned up last week, artifacts from a very brief window of time. They were in a box of materials that had been kept and carefully notated by Frances Brotzen, then co-Master of Brown.
Bonus: The littlest archivist.
It’s my two-year-old granddaughter, helping her mom sort slides up at Creighton. Lots of archivists wear purple tutus these days.
It was so nice outside today I almost forgot to write a post. After a brief moment of panic I remembered that I had something ready. Remember this post from last week about the origins of the Rice NROTC unit? It drew an interesting comment from Wayne Collins, ’48:
I was one of the 200 to apply for the first NROTC class at Rice Institute in the fall of 1941. Applications were accepted from the freshman class and the members of the Sophomore class that would agree to complete the 4 year course. As I recall the NROTC building was complete when I arrived on campus in the fall of 1941. The shooting range was near where the south gate is on West University. After the physical which many more passed than the 110 available slots the powers that be felt sure the test we were to take would cut the numbers down to 110. To their surprise none were eliminated so we were run back through the physical. I was eliminated for overbite. After the Mid-term test and the famous washout of freshman there were openings in the first class of NROTC. I applied and this time passed the physical which turned into another story later in the spring when the Bureau of Medicine questioned why I was fit in February 1942 and not in September of 1941. Captain Dupree, the first C.O. of Rice NROTC solved the problem and I remained in the unit, called to active duty with the unit July 1, 1943 and remained at Rice for my junior year. As a member of the Drum and Bugle Corp, with 3 others I shared to top floor of the Faculty Tower. Members of the first year Rice NROTC were commissioned with the rank of Ensign USNR at the end of their 3rd year in February 1944. At least one a Second Lt. in the Marines, the rest to various assignments in the Pacific and Atlantic serving on Surface Ships, Amphibious Forces, Underwater Demolition [forerunner of Navy Seals] Submarines, and Naval Aviation. A large number of this class returned to Rice in 1946 and graduated in the classes of ’47 and ’48. Rice being Rice I was told when I attempted to register as a senior I did not have BA 200 and EE 300. When I said I completed Navy Navigation instead of BA200 and Naval Gunnery and Ordinance instead of EE 300 I was told “Mr Collins the war was over”. I picked up a couple of electives and had two great years joining the class of ’48.
I then heard from Wayne’s daughter, Cristle Collins Judd, ’83, who sent me via email a handsome picture of Wayne in his NROTC uniform in 1942:
Equally interesting, she also included a short piece from a 1943 Thresher about her dad leading a Naval Orchestra at a sophomore dance–the first I’ve ever heard of this group:
(I couldn’t help but notice that one of the folks in charge of decorations for this dance was Lawrean Davis, last seen on these pages in the “Lawrean and Wally” video from October.)
Bonus: Here’s a website that Wayne’s family put together for this 87th birthday a couple of years ago. It’s worth clicking on for the photo of him with the bottle alone.
Rice v. Tulane, October 1946. A big Rice contingent made the trip. They would have us believe that they behaved like angels.
I’d only ever known this curtain in the gym to be blue.
This is a Houston Chronicle photo that I grabbed off the internet.
(Incidentally, the ghastly blue suit that former AD Chris Del Conte had made out of a piece of that blue curtain is in the Woodson. It weighs roughly a ton.)
This striped curtain is new to me. It looks pretty gaudy, doesn’t it?
These images are pretty fuzzy and all scratched up on top of it, but I’m hoping someone will be able to give me at least an approximate date. I’m thinking it must be early or mid-60s. Nice hats on the band, by the way.
Unexpectedly, I had a bit of a tree day today and it was a lovely day for it.
First, I have learned on good authority (from not one, but two reasonably reliable sources) that this is a pistachio tree:
Second, in attempting to confirm this I sought out Rice’s wonderful arborist, Neville Mann, and I came upon him in the very act of planting a new tree out by the RMC courtyard:
Actually, Neville (in the green shirt) dug the hole and some kids were filling it in. It turns out that today is a Jewish holiday, Tu b’Shevat, a sort of Arbor day type of thing also called “New Year for Trees,” and the Hillel students were helping out in celebration of the day. It’s a bur oak, like the other new trees in that area, and it’s really in quite a prominent spot.
As I looked through the files I’ve scanned over the years, I was moderately surprised to find that there is a tremendous amount of material in there about trees. It was a matter of great concern from the very beginning of the Institute, even before we settled on our current location. Here’s an 1892 receipt for rental of a horse and buggy used to take a trip to look for trees to plant on the original downtown site. (They chose elms, by the way):
Here’s a kid in a campus oak, circa 1917:
And here’s General Pershing with the pecan sapling he famously helped plant in front of the Administration Building in 1919 (note Tony Martino down in the hole):
Finally, here’s a 1923 memo to the Board from Mr. Cohn, Rice’s long serving Business Manager, about a major effort to plant new trees on campus. Stop and think about this for a minute. These decisions were really visionary and have had extraordinarily long lasting and beneficial consequences. These trees are one of our greatest glories.
While digging around for more information about William Ward Watkin and the Naval ROTC building (which I didn’t find) I came across this very informative article in a 1941 edition of the student magazine, The Owl, about the origins of the Rice naval unit. I was most interested in the description of the rifle range being built by the handball courts but the mechanics of how the unit was organized and run are probably more important.
Here are the links to the earlier discussion about the location of the rifle range.
Also many thanks to reader Wayne Collins for his comments on this post about the NROTC program.
Bonus: I was over in the old Physics Building the other day and Ann Mikus, the friendly and helpful department administrator for Political Science, shared this photo of the gorgeous view out her window this autumn.
This might be the best tree on campus, at least in the fall. Who knows what kind it is?
I know I’ve mentioned before that to me one of the most puzzling aspects of the archives is what passed at different times for comedy. Without the context it’s often just gobbledygook, but last week I actually understood a joke I found in the back of the 1934 Campanile. It turns out not to be a great joke, but it’s not completely without merit either.
The picture caught my eye because it’s girls playing basketball. But where are they? They most definitely are not in the Rice fieldhouse.
The caption reads “Jump higher, girls! We want our quarter’s worth!”
Now, part of the joke is obvious, right? Just guys leering at girls in shorts, which is, of course, always entertaining. But what’s this “quarter’s worth” business? It just so happens that I know the context for that because of these two flyers I found a couple of years ago pasted in a student’s scrapbook from the mid-1930s:
I’m not sure this information makes the joke any funnier, but we’re now able to kill two birds with one stone–it cost a quarter to get in to see the girls play and the girls played at St. Paul’s gym across the street.
(For the curious among you, I’m posting early because I’ve got an all-day meeting today.)
I’m very happy to report that I don’t know anything about this.
As I was trying to find a picture of Jim Meador yesterday, one of the places I looked was a big thick file called “Old Football.” It’s filled with things that don’t necessarily have a logical home elsewhere–lots of action shots of unidentifiable games and very old images. This type of thing, mostly:
In the entire folder there were only two images in color, so of course they caught my eye. Here’s the first one:
I was a bit surprised by it. I realize this is college rather than the NFL, but 1 is still an unexpected jersey number for our defender there. I flipped it over and was delighted to find it labeled: “Ndukwe Kalu.” (The picture isn’t dated, by the way and I also don’t know who we’re playing here. Anybody?)
One of the things most people probably would not guess about me is that I’m a serious devotee of sports talk radio. It’s the only thing I can listen to in the car that doesn’t end up with me filled with rage. I just get a kick out of it—the juvenile banter, the endless arcana, lunatic callers with bizarre axes to grind, statistics. And don’t even get me started on the commercials! I find the commercials absolutely riveting, a glimpse into the male psyche that’s hard to find anywhere else: ads for testosterone enhancers, weapon storage, hot wings and beer. I’m not even going to get into the terrible pathos of the ads for Valentine’s Day presents for wives and girlfriends. Anyway, my very favorite sports talk show, “In the Trenches,” is hosted by former Packer tackle Greg Koch, (who, sadly, is an Arkansas graduate)–and none other than N.D. Kalu! (Here’s his website.) Rare is the day I don’t hear at least twenty minutes of these guys and they are, for better or worse, entirely responsible for my growing appreciation of play at the line of scrimmage.
As I said to Mr. Rice History Corner just last night, you gotta love a man with a big cigar.
Bonus: This, by the way, is the other color picture from the folder.
For reasons that are far too boring to go into here, I spent much of the afternoon looking for something in one of the old alumni scrapbooks. (I talk about these behemoths here.) Anyway, these scrapbooks are just crazy and every time I open one there’s going to be a trip down a rabbit hole.
Here’s the first unexpected thing I ran across:
I looked pretty hard but couldn’t find a photo of Jim Meador, the student. He came to Rice from Tennessee in 1933, the middle of the Great Depression, a time when many students didn’t have their pictures taken for the yearbook. He did indeed play football, first as an end and then as a fullback.
Naturally, I did find a lot of pictures of James Craig, the actor. Here’s a link to his imdb listing. It looks like he had a nice, long career–lots of westerns.
Wowza
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