Teachers and Classes at Fort Dodge J.C.

Some of the teachers at the college were rather colorful characters. The dean of the junior college was Harris Dickey, who had enough independent income from farm property that he wouldn’t have needed to work but was the kind of individual who felt he needed to do something constructive with his life. There was a New Deal program when I was at the college which provided funds for a work program for the students. I was a participant in the program and worked for Dickey maybe an hour or so a day, perhaps not every day. I can’t remember ever getting paid directly, maybe what I earned went toward the tuition.

I took one class from Dickey — European history — which I thoroughly enjoyed. This was in my second year at the college when the technical courses available were limited. I suspect that the contact I had with Dickey working for him and being in the history class may have led to my receiving the Alice Granger scholarship that enabled me to attend the University of Iowa. I would think he would have had a role in awarding the scholarship.

Another colorful character was the spinster math teacher — Ethel Shannon. She wasn’t a particularly good teacher and my facility in the use of math in my later engineering classes was hampered. The English teacher, Ruth Goodrich, was a good teacher and I liked her. The chemistry and physics professor was Chaoman. He was a reasonable enough teacher but nothing exceptional. The only teacher I really didn’t like was “Horseface” Thiele, the P.E. instructor. The only good thing I can say about him is that I got through swimming, so I didn’t have that hanging over me when I got to Iowa. I never did really learn to swim and haven’t been in a swimming pool since I climbed out of the pool at the junior college.

The first year at the junior college approximated a full year of an engineering curriculum though the fact that physics was included was out of order for most engineering curricula of the time. The second year had only about half transferable subjects (calculus, quantitative analysis and organic chemistry). Even these, for example the organic chemistry, were only partly transferable and I took the full organic class at Iowa. As a consequence I needed to take a summer session to finish at Iowa and I also needed to petition for using my European history credits as a substitute for the freshman surveying class, etc. I had intended to take a full additional year to finish but the war hurried things along.