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Class
of 1951:
We writers dwell on the metaphor, the analogy, the contrasts of time. We search the past. Nobel laureate William Faulkner said the past will remain with us, for the past is not dead-it is not even past. And history is not a chain of events that was, but a seamless community of events that is. So now, we look back-as we have so fondly resurrected our past this weekend. And we see what will be a brighter tomorrow for this ageless campus setting. I feel highly honored, a member of the Class of 1951, asked to speak at this alumni gathering, having been recruited from a distant age when this already-great institution was in the freshman years as a university. And all of us…so young, so full of dreams,…came here to accrue our own memories more than fifty years ago. And especially do we now honor the Emeritus Alumni shaping the strong legacy of Florida State College for Women. I often wonder, asked to speak before such distinguished people, why they would turn to a newspaperman, given the often-held view of the media in today’s confused society. But there may be a reason. It seems a surgeon, an engineer, and a newspaperman were arguing about the Creation- which of their professions was the oldest. The surgeon says “it says right there in the Book of Genesis that a rib was taken from Adam to create Eve… and that has to be a surgical accomplishment.” “Wait a minute,” says the engineer, “it also says in Genesis that before Adam and Eve that order was brought out of chaos. Now that’s an engineering feat.” “Yeah,” says the newspaperman, “But where do you think the chaos came from?” Doubtless, you remember the chaos caused by those of us who wrote and edited The Florida Flambeau. But, now… a Class at age fifty and even those before us. And a double honor-recognizing this Sesquicentennial Year: The Florida Legislature signed the bill on January 24, 1851, creating the Seminary West of the Suwannee. Yes, half of the century and fifty years that began in the middle of the nineteenth century-Florida’s first institution of higher learning, which at it’s feeble origins included the male species. Here they trained cadets for the Civil War-cadets who fought at the Battle of Natural Bridge under General William Miller, successfully defending the capitol city from a Federal invasion force marching from St. Marks. Yes, some of us have come back here where we shared these times so long ago across these red rolling hills, towering pines and gothic spires, so frequently washed with Tallahassee rain. A place so long dedicated to the education of the women of Florida. And out across an old flying field with oily runways and plain military buildings and barracks that we knew as West Campus. My memories, my images, ever so vivid even today, probably are similar to yours, rooted in the naiveté of our age. We were, like this university, beginning our journey, our destiny with those four undergraduate years. For two days we’ve resurrected memories and shared them… and now we’re seeing this place again with such amazing, satisfying revelation of our school in full maturity, eager to help shape the twenty-first century. Only recently, from a vantage point high above Tallahassee, I was drawn back to our time here. From Tallahassee’s highest point, twenty-two stories jutting up, Florida’s Capitol runs up into the blue heavens on a spring like day, towering over the treetop green hills. And I see Tallahassee’s ever green and grassy, echoing the lyrics from the old Bing Crosby and Bob Hope road to somewhere song from a movie of our time. Down below, amazing change that shaped this great university: The law school and beyond the Westcott Plaza to the classic old campus dotted by clusters of taller, more massive structures. And beyond, the new proud symbol, Doak S. Campbell Stadium. Much change since our June night in 1951 when they presented our diplomas from the green floor of that then-brand-new-steel-ribboned stadium. Perhaps the only remnant remaining from our time is the grass. But, seeing all this, there arises a spirit, a seamless continuity of a rich history, a proud legacy, that still moves us. Suddenly, I’m 18 again, living in former Army air Corps barracks at Dale Mabry Field- a human fragment in the post-World War II beginnings of Florida State University. Fresh out of Altha High School I was in a man swarm of war veterans in Army khaki, Navy dungarees, and paratroop boots, talking about the Big War as the beer flowed on West Campus. Across Tallahassee’s hills, reachable by a fleet of buses, was an intellectual bastion of womanhood, in ivy-laced academic cluster with a long, socially regimented tradition as Florida State College for women. Not that the male species was hardly unknown. During World War II Army air Corp pilots-including Chinese airmen- were trained at nearby Dale Mabry Field. While they flew P-38s, many were frequently down to friendly earth, occupying this serene little campus. And more than 400 FSCW graduates served in the war, including Lt. Marion Phillips, class of 1932, killed when a plane in which she was a passenger crashed into an Italian mountainside. By war’s end, Dale Mabry Field was closed, the hotshot pilots leaving… and The Florida Flambeau lamented the lonesomeness with the headline: "Dateless Saturdays Threaten When flyers Leave Town.” But Dale Mabry would not be a ghost. It was transformed. FSCW had grown so fast since 1943 that even the women had temporary housing in four Dale Mabry buildings, while a new dormitory-named for Sarah (Tissie) Cawthon-was being built and would be completed by 1947. And from Gainesville, University of Florida President John Tigert reported in September that an astounding number of men-8,400 wanted to enroll: classes were to begin in three weeks. That was 2,230 more than the Gainesville Campus could handle. So Governor Millard Caldwell asked President Doak Campbell whether the women’s college could teach a thousand men if the state furnished living quarters and money for additional faculty. Campbell agreed, provided the money could be released at once. The availability of the recently deactivated Dale Mabry Field gave Dr. Campbell the beginning. Within two days, plans were complete. Thus was born the Tallahassee Branch of the University of Florida, with Dr. Milton Carothers, FSCW registrar, designated dean. And Tallahassee, liquor –dry, home of Florida government then controlled mainly by a rural political faction known as Pork Choppers, would never be the same. Nor would we. And “Dateless Saturdays” lamented by the Flambeau, vanished. The campus was suddenly, unofficially coeducational. Flyers had returned, along with seamen, soldiers, wearing parts of their wartime uniforms, carrying books, riding yellow school buses, sharing classrooms with fellow students in saddle oxfords, bobby socks and sweaters and flowing skirts. Some 600 men were enrolled. And the infamous, former air force major Otis McBride became dean of men… a summons from McBride, which was frequent, became known as a “Notice from Otis.” And in my barracks he was a frequent visitor barking like a drill sergeant at ex-GIs who sometimes were less than orderly, and they seemed to care little about McBride’s rules, having lost their innocence in a war fresh in their memories. It was a strange new world-a student wearing war-surplus Navy dungarees and T-shirts and pinching pennies for 50-cent veal cutlet lunches at the Sweet Shoppe, walking that long College Avenue journey to a downtown pool room or the Florida, State and Ritz theaters. Or wandering through the Old Capitol and brushing by cigar-chomping Pork Choppers and Blue Chickens and Lamb Choppers in the hot corridors and listened to searing debate and roaring oratory. Or spending hours in the then –New Supreme Court Building reading all those cases that defied my understanding. Suddenly ex-GIs, single and married, occupied wooden barracks; baby clothes waved like flags from clotheslines…then there we were, hanging out at the old officers club-the student O Club. Here a Pensacolian known as Rube Askew, emerged as a popular campus politician. Even then, Reubin O’Donovan Askew had a detectable sparkle in his eyes-he knew what he wanted, and he would work hard to achieve success. These first male students were not stereotypical Joe College in a frat beanie and navy blazer. They sat in classrooms wearing combat boots and field jackets. They were building their war-delayed future. But FSU, or “Tally U” as some would label it, was on the near horizon. Senator LeRoy Collins’ legislation-resisted by Florida loyalists-passed the House 80-7 and the Senate unanimously. Some students squeezed into Governor Caldwell’s office in the Old Capitol, applauding the signing of the bill establishing Florida State University on May 15, 1947. Graduating senior women in 1947 found their diploma was unique; it was the only one to include the names of two institutions, Florida State College for Women and Florida State University. Change came quickly in our time. The men formed the University Government Association, fraternities sprung up to match the female Greeks; the literary magazine The Distaff; became first the Talaria, then, in honor of a new name on campus, Smoke Signals; the yearbook became the Tally-Ho, and the girls camp on Lake Bradford would eventually become the Seminole Reservation. We argued about athletic names from a long, widely circulated list sponsored by the Flambeau- Crackers, Rebels, Statesmen, Tarpons, fighting Warriors, Seminoles. Some of the names didn’t make the final cut- Polly-Wogs, Sunshiners, Red Tide, Galloping gophers, Swamprats, Tallywhackers. Tallywhackers! Now you don’t have to be too much of a country boy to understand the true meaning of that expression. Imagine Bobby’s Tallywhackers! How about them ‘Whackers? But fortunately, we chose Seminoles, winning by 110 votes, with Tarpons- the familiar name of the women’s swim team- the No. 2 challenger. And naturally, there would be football, a dream from the beginning- even though the yearling athletic department under Dr. Howard Danforth was predicated on Simon-pure sports, strong on the intramural variety, including gymnastics, volleyball, swimming and finally baseball and basketball…remember, the fist nickname-“Bufs.” Yes, there would be football for Tallahasseans knew this was a new day. The first coach, Ed Williamson, former high school coach, led the first unnamed FSU team to a smashing season on zero wins and five losses. The first team battled Stetson University in Centennial Field a long block south of the Capitol in October in October 1947. The score Stetson 14, FSU 6. We’ve all seen that classic photo of the first team-some of our friends… Harry Hughley of Pensacola who helped pioneer WFSU radio…Wyatt (Red) Parrish of Chipley, who later won the Silver Star as tank commander in Korea… Joe (the toe) Crona of Pensacola, who became a Pensacola bank president… D.L. Middlebrooks, later a federal judge, and Phil Rountree, Ralph Chaudron and Chris Banakas, who later became coaches and education administrators. And remember, Chris Banakas became the first Emmett-Kelly like clown for Jack Haskin’s Flying High Circus. And Dr. Danforth assembled the athletic staff, bringing Don Veller from Indiana in 1948. Now Don Veller is a beloved legend of this school from those formative years and later as golf coach and golf writer. How I remember the angry wrath of Dr. Danforth, less than amused by two of my Flambeau sports cartoons. I portrayed him feeding a bottle of milk labeled “Simon pure” to a baby who looked like Don Veller who was scrambling out of a playpen toward the big competition. Then I drew the parking lot at the FSU athletic department-a limousine for the volleyball coach and a Model-T Ford for the football coach. Dr. Danforth was much displeased. I see our times through the
prism of a campus wannabe journalist, first walking into the Longmire
Alumni Building and asking Editor Helen Hobbs if I may join her mostly
female Flambeau staff…remembering the first male students who
broke the gender barrier as Flambeau writers and editors- Bob
Cooksey, Arthur Cobb, Wayne Bell, LeMoyne Cash, and Lonnie Burt, who would
remain on campus as one of FSU’s first sports information directors. And
then working with such friends as Earl Dobert, Harry Ryder, Montrell
Sessions, Joel Smith, Anne Marie Gregory, Betsy Blanton and Scott Marshall
grinding out editions of the Flambeau. How I remember those hot
nights in the composing room of the old Tallahassee Democrat building,
piecing together pages of the Flambeau as if we were publishing The
New York Times. By 1950 we had expanded the Flambeau to semi-weekly with Tuesday and Friday editions. And Editor Earl Dobert, the Tampa firebrand, would bring his own brash style to onetime sedate Flambeau during our graduation year-including a radical story that drew the wrath of Dr. Campbell and echoed the more conservative, segregated times. The story focused on faculty members who voluntarily taught poor black Tallahassee children to read on weekends. Innocent enough, we thought, but the President feared the Pork Chop Legislature might be less than friendly with appropriations. As the second male sports editor of the Florida Flambeau in 1950, writing a column called “Seminole War Chant,” I campaigned to match our intrepid Seminoles against the Gators. The young Seminoles under Don Veller were then mired in small-college competition playing such giants at Millsaps, Troy State, Howard College, Suwannee, Tampa, and Mississippi College, emerging twice as champions of the Dixie Conference. When I chanted FSU was ready, echoing student signs suddenly appearing at football games “Bring on the Gators,” the Florida Alligator sports editor bellowed back in an unfriendly, almost arrogant rebuff. His lead: “ How dare that little girls school, hoping to play our mighty Gators!” Thus a fierce rivalry was in the making. I wonder what that old Alligator sports writer would say today. And then we were watching the rising steel of a new stadium, then the dedication by Governor Fuller Warren and by the decades of the 1950s the Seminoles would struggle to build a legend, first under Don Veller, then Tom Nugent, Bill Peterson…well, you know the rest, the building years now shrouded by the glories of Bobby Bowden. And in 1951 all of us would sit there as graduates in that small stadium…and that little stadium growing and expanding and today it’s wrapped somewhere within the massive architectural structure symbolizing the Seminole’s national stature. Ironically, the stadium complex is larger than the University of West Florida, where I teach writing courses. And thus from those feeble origins were born a legend and the coming of the Pow-Wow, Homecoming Parade and the famous football cheer coined by an FSU legend himself, Doug Bonifay of Pensacola…long before Chief Osceola on horseback, long before the Tomahawk Chop, long before the legend of cousin Bobby Bowden. Long before Buddy (Burt) Reynolds, Bob Urich, Faye Dunaway, Rita Coolidge. And I repeat the story, told by the late D.L Middlebrooks and told by Bill McGrotha in his book, Seminoles! The First
Forty Years: One evening at a place east of town called the Edgewood Club, football warriors gathered after a game. During the evening, Bonifay was moved to climb upon a table. Likely, given the flow of the evening, he was assisted. “FSU one time,” he hollers. Then come the cheers. “FSU two times!” he bellows, now encouraged by the response, and waving his arm. More cheers. “FSU three times!” he yells throwing up both arms. “FSU all the damn time!” screams Bonifay. And the place is bedlam. Rapidly, as we know, the cheer grew… leading to more anthems on the long march of the Seminoles into National prominence. But our coming-of-age experiences here were far more than football; by 1950 this was a growing, expanding academic institution. Doak Campbell wanted to make this new university the best in the South. His 50-year plan and vision gave us Cawthon Hall, the Music Building, Senior Hall, the first men’s dormitory. And we watched the old 1895 McIntosh House, which stood on the site of the Florida Supreme Court Building, moved to a sixteen-acre plot across Tennessee Street from the campus as the president’s residence. There was criticism in the press for spending $90,000 for the FSU president’s home. But it’s commanding view conveyed the image of a university in the making. And then up the street, the new Senior Hall, my first experience in a real college dorm as a first-semester senior after three years in barracks. But when Louise and I married, it was back on West Campus, living in the married quarters for our honeymoon semester, rather austerely with a hot plate, icebox, two army bunks shoved together. Here we find the many contrasts of our time when Jett Munroe was queen, Bob Lanigan was class president and Rube Askew president of the University Government Association and Doug Alley wrote the FSU fight song. And sitting in Westcott auditorium listening to folksinger Burl Ives, including a little politically incorrect ditty that stirred the student audience: “Two old maids playing in the sand, one wishing the other was a man.” …And moonlit nights sitting on Music Building steps with my future wife…dancing to big-band music of Vaughn Monroe and Freddie Martin…riding a city bus back to campus after a movie singing Gene Kelly’s “Singing in the rain.” And the great Flying High Circus, a symphony of athletic skill and beauty that put FSU on the road to excellence. And then returning to the Sweet Shoppe. And the familiar face from behind the food counter looked at us, smiled and said, “Yes Earl and Louise, two veal cutlets.” And of course, memorable teachers: Dr. Daisy Parker teaching us Florida Government and becoming a mentor for our campus president who would be elected Florida Governor in 1970 and become the first to serve eight years… Dr. Parker made us aware of the value of understanding democratic government… And journalism professor Earl L. Vance, wearing his polka-dot bow tie and pin stripe suits and beginning his Socratic discussions in Journalism 101 with “Now just between us girls…” Mr. Vance taught the real value of learning to read- and think for yourself-to learn to write and to write about what you know. Even today I convey his philosophy to writing students I teach at the University of West Florida. He was a strong advocate for the liberal arts in preparation for journalism. He remains an inspiration for me as a journalist and for the generation of journalists from the late 1940s and early 1950s. Sadly Mr. Vance was drawn into a disagreement with President Campbell over the philosophy of the College of Journalism, which regrettably was dissolved when the University of Florida established the College of Journalism and Communications Arts. But he will be remembered by our generation of journalism graduates. And Dr. Rogers, head of the history department, with a snowstorm of white hair, lecturing word-for-word from his own excellent textbook, History of the Floridas- whetting my interest in history. And tall art teacher Ann Kirn, teaching us about drawing and painting in that sunlit top- room of Westcott Hall… and I became convinced if preferred cartooning to the abstract world of fine arts. Many are the images: There on Bryan Hall Green, members of Kappa Alpha staging their Secession Ceremony in Old South garb in the tradition of their founder, Robert E. Lee, and drinking their moonshine and a campus actor named Joe Yon as Jefferson Davis delivering the fiery oratory. Then, many years later,
being invited here by President Stanley Marshall along with the editors of
The Miami Herald and Tampa Tribune to develop a new approach
for operating the Flambeau. During the turbulent 1960s the Flambeau had finally lived up to what lived up to what the newspaper had been called during the FSCW years and during our time-“a radical red rag.” Meeting with the student journalists, I saw them not unlike our generation, including young Doug Marlette, later a Pulitzer-Prize winning cartoonist in charlotte and Atlanta whose work today for Newsday is in national syndication. Those students were, like Earl Dobert, like all of us, eager to change the world. In Dobert’s case-of-course-he was eager to needle Doak Campbell and disagree with Reubin Askew’s campus government policies. And we editors recommended that the Flambeau become independent of the administration- and today the Flambeau is independent as are most college newspapers All of us I’m sure, have been shaped by the many images that make us proud of its academic and research achievements and makes us especially proud on cool, crisp fall Saturdays when Seminoles are on national television. We’ve heard the many success during this marvelous spring reunion-the stories, the nostalgia, the past colliding with the present. Yes, the generation that is now being the Greatest Generation was here, helping begin the FSU tradition- a generation now in social Security latitudes; and the other classes, before and since, proudly claiming many outstanding individuals of high achievement and stature. Each fall, amid the autumnal atmosphere of falling leaves and the thud of football in the air, I think of how a time –honored women’s college suddenly found its destiny at Florida State University. And, even now, I still hear Doug Bonifay’s ageless chant: FSU one time! FSU two
times! FSU three times! -Well, you know the rest For you were a part of this
very special place. In a special time. A cherished moment when
we were present at the creation. Thank you. #jeb# |