College Graduation

So on the last day of July 1942 I was graduated from Iowa with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering. The exercises were held in the auditorium of the Memorial Union building and my parents and brother Vincent drove down from Gowrie for the event. For some reason I don’t recall I didn’t ride back with them, but came a day or so later, I suppose by bus and the M & St L passenger train. On the way back my father developed one of his “sick” headaches and Vincent drove a good part of the way, even though he didn’t yet have a driver’s license.

Since leaving Iowa City them, I have been back two or three times, the last time being in 1985 when Jean and I drove from Michigan after attending Laurel and Mike’s wedding on our way to Gowrie. I was rather disappointed and in a way disillusioned in what had happened to the town and the campus. When I was there 1940–42, there were wide open areas in the campus; in 1985 many more buildings had been erected, particularly on the west side of the river between the Wuadrangle and the field house. That area had used to be a wide open field, used for intramural sports.

Other changes had also occurred on the campus; for example one quadrant of the Quadrangle had been town down for some reason (actually the part in which my dormitory room was located the first year I was at Iowa). Also the downtown business area adjacent the campus looked seedy, perhaps because business had moved to shopping malls on the outskirts of the city. But there seemed to be litter on the streets, different than when I was enrolled there.

I suppose the change from a campus with wide open spaces between buildings was inevitable, but it left me with a feeling of disillusion.

During the second year I was at Iowa (perhaps it was the second semester of the first year) I was invited to become a member of Tau Beta Pi, the honorary engineering society and Phi Lambda Upsilon, the same for chemistry. The initiation fee was $25 for the engineering fraternity and $15 for the other. These fees were high for me in my financial position but I came up with them. I recall discussing this with one of the members of Tau Beta Pi and he indicated that if I felt that I couldn’t pay the fee I would still be admitted.

I guess I am glad now that I decided to join, although I have had no or little contact with either fraternity since I graduated. Actually in recent years I have received an annual solicitation for a contribution from Tau Beta Pi but so far at least I have not responded. It was been a matter of personal satisfaction to me that both of my engineering daughters joined me as members of Tau Beta Pi.

Admittance to Tau Beta Pi involved participation in an all-night initiation procedure which involved a question and answer period by the older resident members. Following this there was a period in which the initiates started the lengthy process of carving a replica of the fraternity key from a block of wood. This task was not completed that night but eventually completion was achieved. A replica of the chemistry key was also required by that fraternity but in this case a simple plywood outline was all that was mandated. Somewhere I have the two replicas.

On graduation from college my parents gave me a pocket watch and I bought a watch chain and a small pocket knife to put on the other end of the chain (using some money I had received after my Uncle George died — apparently he had some funds derived from distribution of income from the farm which he hadn’t used). 

For a long time I wore my two fraternity keys on this chain, but eventually I stopped and the keys now reside in the safe deposit box.

I continued to wear the watch my parents gave me, and later the watch I received when I had worked 25 years at Shell, but as it became harder and harder to have them serviced, I had them both cleaned and repaired, stopped using them and they too reside in the safe deposit box. Since then I have resorted to using cheap pocket watches which I have purchased for $5 to $10 at such stores as Kmart. Eventually they deteriorate and I simply replace them. However the last one (as of 1997) has continued for a long time (perhaps 10 years) and though showing signs of age is still reasonably functional.