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Volume CXXXII, Number 19 |
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The Bowdoin campus rises to the challenge of war
KID WONGSRICHANALAI
STAFF WRITER
But aside from playing host to future officers, Bowdoin College also received a number of distinguished guests during the war years. Foreign dignitaries came across the oceans and somehow found themselves in little Brunswick, Maine. Among them were Andre Michalopoulos, the Greek Minister of Information in exile and Sir Samuel Runganadhan, advisor for India to the British Minister of Foreign Affairs. By far, however, the most popular guest of the war period was none other than First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. A guest of the Delta Upsilon Fraternity, Mrs. Roosevelt arrived by train on December 12, 1942. Throngs of young Bowdoin men and faculty members dressed in their finest tuxedoes crowded around the First Lady throughout her visit. A group of 200 eager individuals greeted her at the train station and accompanied her to President Sills' house where she dined. The First Lady then took a tour of campus, rested, and joined President Sills, Dean Nixon, Maine Governor Sumner Sewall and other guests for a banquet at the Delta Upsilon House. Mrs. Roosevelt then spoke in the First Parish Church on conditions in Great Britain. "Everyone is fighting the war," she said, describing British civilians and their amazing efforts to keep support their armed forces and to keep their island empire up and running. Thanking the members of Delta Upsilon, who had been instrumental in bringing the First Lady to campus, President Sills paraphrased British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill by remarking, "It is not often that so much pleasure is given to so many by so few."
There was to be, during this war, however, much more pleasure. Keeping the spirit of the College alive, administrators also attempted to keep up with tradition. During this period of global crisis, President Sills celebrated his twenty-fifth year in office on April 31, 1942. Faculty and staff members joined students to congratulate the President with an evening of singing and dining at the Moulton Union. As the sun hung low in the sky far to the West of the Bowdoin College campus a crowd of students-so young and still uncertain about their world or their future-came together with smiles, cheers and laughs as if a great reunion was taking place. Forgetting their troubles, whether they be academic or military, for an evening, the men swelled in spirit and in pride as their thoughts concentrated on the fatherly figure who had been the College's head since William DeWitt Hyde's death in 1917. The students began to sing a song that Sills himself had composed for his alma mater and his boys:
Rise sons of Bowdoin, praise her fame,
And sound abroad her glorious name;
To Bowdoin, Bowdoin lift your song,
And may the music echo long
O'er whisp'ring pines and campus fair
With sturdy might filling the air.
Resounding cheers and shouts filled the air as someone yelled, "We want Casey!" Suddenly, the sentence was picked up and all along the Quad, the plaza between Hyde and Appleton Halls, and in front of the Moulton Union, there was only the crowd and the chanting of "We want Casey! We want Casey!" Surrendering to the admiring crowd President Sills, attired in a fine tuxedo, stepped out from Moulton, acknowledged this gratitude and hoped that better times were in store for his students after the war was ended.
Bowdoin men, then in the service all over the world, also wrote their congratulations to Sills. In responding to one such letter, the President wrote, half in jest:
Thank you very warmly for your congratulations on my twenty-fifth anniversary as President. I told the students a while ago that I only hoped I would live to see this war through as I had the first war so my administration would not be formally designated-from war to war.
Sills' impressive tenure was not the only great anniversary to be celebrated. On June 24, 1944, Bowdoin College brought out its very best flags and china to ring in its 150th anniversary. Articles about the College were published in many different newspapers-the New York Times declared Bowdoin, "one of the most American of American colleges" and "a champion of liberalism"-and even Times magazine ran an article, which found its way to Bowdoin men all over the world. On the day after the College's grand celebration and annual convocation-in which hundreds of former students, wives, and towns people joined in the festivities-the New York Times again ran an article honoring the College. Noting that only ten students (three more than the first Bowdoin Class to graduate) were graduated at the ceremonies, the Times also spoke highly of Bowdoin's sons in the service of their country-almost 2,200 in total. The New York Times' reporter also obtained two congratulatory letters, which were sent to the College. One was from Lt. Gerhard Rehder of the Class of 1931, who was serving in overseas. It read:
Perhaps it is fitting, too, that a school that has grown up with our Republic should mark its anniversary with so many scattered over the world fighting and working for the preservation of the ideals which the Republic and the college exemplify.
The second letter was from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt had entertained Kenneth Sills on at least one occasion:
The fact that Bowdoin has lived and served throughout almost the entire life of the United States gives to its Sesquicentennial celebration unusual significance. It can name among its alumni distinguished leaders in almost every decade of the Nation's history. That is no mean contribution.
The people of this country are grateful for the early establishment of Bowdoin and for its one hundred and fifty years of service. I trust that in the years ahead Bowdoin will not only continue its contributions to the leadership of this country, but will continue to grow in prestige and influence.
Amidst these celebrations, Kenneth Sills must have thought often of the men who were beyond the seas, wishing that they too would be safely home with the college that had been their home. Aside from the normal routine of administrative work, Sills and Nixon also spent tireless hours writing to Bowdoin men in the service. They kept up long correspondences and many of the letters are both touching and speak to the strong relationship that the Bowdoin president and dean had with their boys. "Since Pearl Harbor I have made it a rule to answer every letter I receive from Bowdoin men in the service," noted the President in a letter. Sills' words went to the far corners of the earth; he wrote to a student: "I believe it is true that the sun never sets now without finding a Bowdoin graduate."
To be continued.
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