161

He came to his feet as if released from a tight spring, brushed past the lectern and strode to the front of the stage. The sleeves of his gown waved wildly with his swinging arms, and he moved his head from side to side so that not one person would miss what he had to say. Then his voice boomed out.

“The course we steer is well charted.”The audience settled back, reassured.Even the language was familiar.The day had started out like a nightmare. The procession had

wound its way toward the gymnasium through a cold, damp mistwhich shrouded the campus. Everyone had nervously fidgetedwhile the chairman, who had obviously mislaid his notes, searchedthrough one pocket after another. Acting out a role in anyone’sbad dream, he left the stage, then returned, still without them.

Nevertheless, Wat Tyler Cluverius was duly introduced. Fromthen on he took command.

There had been no few misgivings about the appointment ofthis retired Navy officer. To follow Ralph Earle, who had beenimmensely popular, was not an easy succession. Then, too, therewas the matter of Admiral Cluverius’ “advanced age”—pastsixty-five.

The reservations about age were swept aside when AdmiralCluverius first moved on campus like a conquering armada.Maybe he was not young, but no one was more youthful. Youth,he said, was the one thing which his new life would have in common with the old. He spoke of his near-half century of “rigidroutine of peace” and “active endeavor of war,” a career whichbegan as midshipman on the battleship Maine and carried him to the position of chief of staff of the United States fleet. He had known Admiral Earle well, had been his classmate at Annapo-lis, and had commanded the U.S.S. Shawmut in the mine-layingoperations of the North Sea under his direction. To Ralph Earle’smemory, no one would have greater allegiance. Moreover, thenew president announced that he had come to Boynton Hill withthe one intention of completing the “Ralph Earle program.”

He wasted no time.By June, at the first commencement at which President Clu -

verius officiated, the major part of the expansion was either finishedor well on its way.

It was the 75th anniversary of the school’s founding, appro -priately raining, when the largest class in history passed over thenew footbridge which curved across West Street. The bridge,which Ralph Earle had almost boyishly wished for and talked

CHAPTER IX

The Hard Corner of the Past g g g g 1939–1955

You will find us well housed . . . We pos-sess an able and earnest faculty. Behindyou stands a united board of trustees.

—Philip M. Morgan to PresidentCluverius at Inauguration

President Cluverius

162

about since 1926, was named for him. “But it doesn’t have any-where to go,” he had been reminded again and again whenever he had been persistent.

Now it had somewhere to go—for just across the way was theresplendent, towered Alden Memorial Hall, made possible by thetrust fund set up by Professor Alden before he died. As beauti-ful and as functional as such a hall could be, no expense had been spared from its high massive ceiling beams and stained glassmedallions to the hand-carved limestone figures which representedMan’s cultural interests.

The addition to the Salisbury building had been completed forseveral months, with its great hall (the best for lecture purposesin the school) named for Professor Kinnicutt. Later, in the fall of 1940 at Homecoming, Dean Roys—carrying a new shovel andwearing a broad grin, both of which had been waiting for a goodthirty years—broke ground for the new Mechanical Engineeringbuilding. Wallace Montague, chairman of the Ways and Meanscommittee for developing Ralph Earle’s plan, called this buildingthe “remaining need . . . the last building needed to complete thewest campus.” And so it seemed, at the time.

On Commencement Day in 1940 Dean Jerome Howe had lis-tened attentively to the speaker of the day, Charles FrancisAdams. He had pronounced the names of graduates as theyreached for their diplomas; he had attended the president’s recep-tion, the activities during the afternoon, and the Senior Hop atnight. Wearily he wrote in his journal at the end of the day,“Arrived home 2:30, rather tired.”

As a postscript he added:“The Institute affairs have kept our minds somewhat off the

dreadful news from France where Paris has fallen into the handsof the Germans.”

W.P.I. had been founded at the conclusion of a war in 1865; its 50th anniversary had been observed on the brink of a war; now its 75th was at the edge of another.

There was an awkwardness when the country marked time fora year and a half, with the pace alternating between preparednessand indifference. One day there was a draft registration, the next,a tea dance “to lighten student mood.” One evening the studentswho had signed for the Voluntary Military Instruction Coursedrilled in Alden Memorial; on the next, the Interfraternity Ball washeld for the first time in the same place.

A German Jewish refugee spoke at a meeting of the Cosmopoli-tan Club; Admiral Cluverius acted as Santa at the Faculty Christ -mas party. There were Junior proms, Tech concerts, the TechCarnival, and the usual class rivalry. At the same time there werelectures about chemical warfare, drills for civil defense, and anintensification of the Civilian Pilot Training program by theAeromechanics division.

Finally came the Sunday afternoon radio bulletin announcing

Worcester Tech will definitely carry for-ward its building program. It believes thatthe strengthening of its engineering fa -cilities is the best contribution that can bemade to national defense.

—The Journal, July, 1940

We are most desirous of the bridge acrossWest Street, together with the grading ofthe hill to west of the dormitory. The cost is considerable but these two willgive our college a completed and hand-some appearance everywhere it touchesthe city. —Ralph Earle, 1933

It is an earnest hope that some suitablebuilding will be erected to bring studentstogether at least once a week.

—Yearbook, 1908

163

the attack on Pearl Harbor. Almost with relief America got onwith the grim business of war. Selective service, which had al -ready taken its toll from enrollment, became more demanding.Soon the professors themselves were leaving—Plimpton, Merriam,Schwieger, Maxfield, Holt, Kolb, and Feldman—all borrowed forthe duration of the war. The Admiral himself was called back toactive duty, as secretary of the Naval office of Public Informa-tion and as a member of the Navy Board of Production Awards.The Journal captioned a column “The Admiral” for exclusive listingof the president’s many speaking engagements, chiefly in regard tothe presentation of Navy E Awards.

An accelerated program was announced for Tech almost atonce; defense engineering courses were offered in evening andsummer classes; Signal Corps trainees were housed on campus.Then in 1943 Tech was chosen as one of twenty-two colleges to direct the Navy program known as V-12.

Lieutenant Commander Albert Schwieger, the young profes-sor himself, was named in command of the Tech unit. The de-tails of transfer to a naval school were as many, but not as diffi-cult, as might be expected. The Mechanical Engineering build-ing, just recently completed, had left the old building convenientlyvacant to serve as quarters for the Navy seamen. The dormitorywas commandeered as officers quarters and additional barracks,while the non-enlisted students were transferred to fraternityhouses and private homes.

The Navy’s preliminary investigation had made some verycomplimentary appraisals of Tech and its facilities. First of all,Percy Carpenter’s Physical Education Department was found tobe so adequate that overnight it could be transformed into awartime training center. Doc Carpenter had been an exponent of physical fitness long before Chief Petty Officer Charles R.McNulty came to supervise the Navy’s program of that name.When later Doc sometimes led the calisthenics drill, the stalwartNavy men had all they could do to keep up with him. The ob -jective Navy survey showed that Tech had more intramural con-tests than any other school in the United States. It also showedthat Tech had the most equipment per man in comparison withother schools. Top mention was given to its safety maintenanceprogram, and Arthur J. Knight’s good housekeeping received spe-cial praise. The most happily received commendation of all wasTech’s scholastic rating—as tough as any school in the country.

William W. Locke, Jr., professor in Electrical Engineering, whohad been superintendent of the dormitory, shifted easily to theresponsibility of housing and feeding the Navy boys. There werethe classes, musters, and disciplines which are part of any officer-training school. And the old Tech bell was mustered into service forsignaling traditional Navy time.

The change-over to a wartime school was negotiated with littlemore confusion than the delivery of ten cases of peas addressed

The men in blue quickly became andwere proud to be Techmen.

—Albert Schwieger

Lieut. Commander Albert J. Schwieger

164

to Worcester Poentheshories Institute Dormitory. Needless to say,it was convenient as well as impressive to have a built-in Admiralon the Hill for reviewing purposes.

Juggling the curriculum to fit two classes of students was thetask of Francis Roys, head of Mechanical Engineering and formany years chairman of the committee on Courses of Study andDegrees. Now he had been also named Dean of Engineering.

The campus activities which were not suspended were onlyhalf-heartedly continued. The 1893 class held its fifty-year re -union, but they, too, were preoccupied with the war. “If fiftyyears have not sobered us,” said one of them, “the times in which we are living have.” A special officer was named for polic-ing the campus, blackouts and civil defense drills became fre-quent, and shortages developed of fuel, food, and especially oftime. There also was a scrap-metal collection, which Jerome Howereported poignantly in his personal journal, “I gave up my saber.”

This world war, in contrast to the first one, had little glamour,especially when “missing” or “lost in action” reports began al -most at once to appear on campus. In the final tally the names of forty-three Tech men (of the two thousand who served) were inscribed on the memorial plaque. Up to June of 1946, when the V-12 program was terminated, a total of 767 officer candidates had been enrolled in the Tech V-12 program.

There were more confusions getting back to peace than therehad been getting into war, involving a complete reshuffling ofcurricula, buildings, and personnel—with scores of instructorscoming and going within a few years. There was even a renamingof buildings. The new Mechanical Engineering building had been dedicated as the Higgins Laboratories in memory of MiltonPrince Higgins and in appreciation of gifts from the Higgins family.This left the old M. E. building like a lost child without identifica -tion. Habit was so strong that even after a large granite wall slabgave it the name of Stratton (in memory of Charles G. Stratton,senior member of the W.P.I. board and a generous contributor) thebuilding henceforth usually had to be labeled twice whenever men - tioned—“Stratton, or the old M. E. building.”

When Atwater Kent died, leaving a bequest to Worcester Tech,the Electrical Engineering building became his memorial in nameas well as in much of its work.

Even the president had a moving day, climbing up two hills toDrury Lane, where the home once occupied by John Jeppson, afounder of Norton Company, had been given to the school by hisson, George, a former student of Tech. A widower, AdmiralCluverius occasionally had the help of faculty wives as hostess at hisreceptions, and sometimes the great house on Drury Lane was opento guests with no Admiral in attendance at all. The happiest timeswere when his little granddaughter Peggy visited with her mother tocharm everyone, especially the Admiral, into flagrant subjection.

Now the job is education for peace, andthe greatest responsibility falls upon theteachers. —Wat Tyler Cluverius, 1947

Out of this wartime melting pot came aserious, hard-working and stable studentbody whose academic and social behaviorwas basically true to the traditional crim -son and grey of W.P.I.

—Albert Schwieger

Perhaps this is the last time you will haveto rebuild a world.

—Wat Tyler Cluverius, 1945

165

The Admiral had the ebullient good spirits of a child, and itwas in his relationships with children that people were best per-mitted to glimpse the gentleness which made the Admiral’s dig -nity all the more effective. The neighborhood youngsters cameregularly to his office window for candy and conversation. Therewas always a treat, too, for any little dog visitor.

The president’s schedule of Navy E presentations did notlessen for many months after the War, and the innumerable re -quests which came to him for speaking ranged all the way from a children’s pet show to a dinner for Winston Churchill. Tothe Admiral, one was just as important as the other. One speechof which people never tired was his account of the Maine disasterin the Spanish-American War. Children—well, everyone—especi -ally loved the part when he left the sinking ship and stopped topick up the captain’s dog, which had been literally paralyzed byfear.

As far as anyone knew, President Cluverius prepared very littlefor his many speeches. Rarely did he use a note. But the wordswere as facile and ready as his ideas, and he had command ofboth. Accompanying him on many of these occasions was a Techalumnus who had been the first Tech man to become Mayor of the City of Worcester, Andrew B. Holmstrom, a vice-president of Norton Company and a former officer in the Navy himself.

One Memorial Day the two men visited a nearby town andfound themselves on an improvised stage near the War monu-ment. The Admiral gave a sparkling review of the Civil War,describing in detail each battle in which the local boys had fought.As he talked, Andy Holmstrom noticed that his outline followedthe information on the monument.

“Aha,” he said to himself, “I’ve found out one of the Admiral’ssecrets.”

The denouement came when an official confessed that througha mix-up of delivery, the monument really belonged to anothertown. Its information pertained only in part to this one, but therehad been so few persons to know the difference that the townfathers had simply let the monument stay there undisturbed these many years. No one enjoyed the story more than did theAdmiral.

Paul Swan, who had become W.P.I.’s publicity director andassociate dean, also accompanied the Admiral on many trips. Whenout of town the president would condescend to call the young professor by his first name, but once back on campus he alwaysreverted to “Swan”—conforming to his custom of addressing menusually by their last names. This impersonal formality was asmuch a characteristic of the president as was his forthright speechand vigorous good humor. After an enthusiastic reception at analumni dinner he would immediately move along to the door,allowing no anticlimax of generalities. When once outside and inthe comfortable back seat of his chauffeur-driven car, he would

We are lucky to have the Admiral devot-ed to us. He has spread our fame all overthis country. He has told everybody fromMaine to California that Worcester Tech men won the war with a little help,of course, from the Navy.

—Aldus Higgins, 1948

Wat Tyler Cluverius

166

for the first time relax and say to his young companion: “Alwaysleave on the crest of the wave, Swan—always on the crest of thewave.”

The Admiral did not lose his bounce even in the post-war ad -justment on Boynton Hill. His letters in The Journal were as regular as always, his engagements just as frequent, his presencejust as impressive. To be sure, there were 600 students when hethought there should be 900. Costs had increased, there was adecrease in investment returns, the school was operating at adeficit with a reduced staff. “All is well on Boynton Hill,” henevertheless told the Alumni Association. “Spring is coming—sometime,” he added almost wistfully for the Admiral, beforemaking resentful mention of the Korean War, which threatened so soon to disrupt the normal resumption of schoolwork.

The Navy V-12 program had so successfully demonstrated thefeasibility of an engineering school’s serving for officer-trainingthat in 1951 a Signal Corps Unit of the Reserve Officers Train-ing Corps was established at Worcester Tech. Involvement in its program was basic requirement for two years, a voluntaryoption for two more. Colonel J. E. Foster became the Institute’sfirst professor of Military Science and Tactics. By virtue ofROTC, students were recommended for draft deferment untilafter graduation.

The ROTC unit was provided a headquarters in the old Dean -ery—née Jennings, née Thompson house—which had been dis-carded as a home when fuel rationing could not keep up with its drafty interior and open staircase winding up its three-storiedheight. Even with its new military status and with its lower windowsbarricaded for security purposes, the old house could never standat attention. Upstairs the Commander’s desk sat uncomfortably ina feminine bedroom papered with a profusion of red roses as afinal ludicrous touch.

When later the Deanery was torn down to make room for Techtennis courts, the ROTC unit moved to the Riley House. Thishouse was actually the Higgins home first occupied by MiltonHiggins when he became Superintendent of the Washburn Shops.After his death the house had been occupied by the family of hisdaughter, Katharine Higgins Riley, and the house had adopted the Riley name. Mrs. Riley had bequeathed her home and propertyto Tech, hoping that it would become a student center, which itdid for several years before being superseded by the facilities ofnew dormitories.

Many student activities had moved to Alden Memorial. TheMasque or Tech shows were revived; dances became frequent;and the Musical Association extremely active, especially after thethree-manual Aeolian Skinner pipe organ was installed in 1942.In a later year a carillon was added. Twice a day its tunes chimed over the City in one of the most pleasant gestures evermade by the Institute toward the community in which it lives.

The most important of these problems isthe maintenance of student strengthW.P.I. does not intend to recoup its losses by lowering standards.

—Wat Tyler Cluverius, 1949

Your eye is clear, your heart is strong,your enthusiasm is unabated.

—Thomas S. Roy in trustee tribute to Admiral Cluverius on his tenthanniversary as president, 1949

There is every indication that war is inthe offing. We are committed.

—Wat Tyler Cluverius, 1951

167

The carillon was a gift of Mrs. William Binns Smith, who thusand with many other gifts to Tech memorialized her husband.

Alden Memorial was an ideal meeting place for the FacultyWives, who had formally organized in 1924 eventually to be -come the W.P.I. Women’s Club. The room reserved for the ladiesbecame known as the Janet Earle room, in affection for the Ad -miral’s widow. She was also remembered by the continuation of theJanet Earle Fund.

Upstairs in Alden Memorial were quarters for bachelor instruc-tors; downstairs, of course, was the library. Emily Haynes hadmoved in with the books when Alden was first opened, but sheretired two years later after forty years of service. Mrs. Bonnie-Blanche Schoonover became her successor in 1942.

The auditorium in Alden adapted itself well to alumni func-tions, assemblies, and departmental lectures. Professor Coombs,retired but still very active at eighty years, gave hymn books forthe great hall. The elderly professor was often seen on Tech’scampus in his role of secretary of the Worcester Draft Board. And seldom was there an alumni occasion when he did not ap -pear, usually as marshal, sometimes with the old battered um -brella which for so many years had stood in the corner of hisoffice as reminder of what he could do with one.

The alumni had become increasingly influential in determiningInstitute policy. In a survey of “What do they do after they leavethe classroom?” the answer was “Just about everything.” Fifty-five per cent were in industry, nine per cent in public utilities,seven per cent in education, and five per cent in government. The rest were distributed in a wide variety of occupations.Longevity was obviously a common characteristic. In 1941 therewas still at least one alumnus living from every one of the seventy-one graduating classes. Many Tech men resided in WorcesterCounty, the officers and managers of Worcester industries. Morethan a hundred were at Norton Company as superintendents ordepartment managers. Three Norton vice-presidents, the presi-dent and chairman of the board also had been Tech students, giving the community frequent reason to be thankful that GeorgeI. Alden and Milton Higgins had not spent all their lives onBoynton Hill.

At Tech’s first reunion after the war, more than a thousandalumni members sat down to dinner. The anticipated joyousnessof the occasion was dulled by the loss of so many classmates during the war and by the recent death of the alumni secretary-treasurer, Herbert Taylor. Herb had fought his own valiant bat-tle against tuberculosis for many years. In the March Journal

he had introduced Donald E. Smith as his assistant “not only torelieve a rather heavily loaded executive, whose health has beenunstable, but also to expand the program.” The next issue of The

Journal reported Herbert Taylor’s death.The two projects which Professor Taylor had relentlessly pro-

What a whale of a reunion we are goingto have when this business is over. Butthis is not the year for it.

—Herbert F. Taylor, 1944

Emily M. Haynes, Librarian

168

moted were the Alumni Fund, started in 1924, and alumni par -ticipation in student recruiting. The Techni-Forum was a develop-ment of this latter interest, a program in which principals, science instructors, and guidance counselors were invited to cometo Boynton Hill to make their own appraisal of the Institute.

Publicity had been a divided load shunted from person to person for many years. In the old days the very word had beenavoided as sounding too commercial, but in 1925 Charles J.Adams, the professor of English, had been appointed with candor“to direct publicity.” An excellent speaker with a brilliant reper-toire of stories, he developed a series of radio broadcasts, an -nouncements, and lectures. It was he who conceived the idea of aTech’s Founders Day to be observed each year on November 11.

When Professor Swan inherited the task of public relations, hecontinued the observance of placing wreaths in Rural Cemetery,where all the founders of Tech (with the exception of JohnBoynton) had been buried. Then the group of school officials and student leaders climbed the long hills to the little town ofMason, New Hampshire, there to place on Mr. Boynton’s me -morial stone a memento of a school’s ever-growing gratitude. Re -naming the yearbook the Peddler was a by-product of this em -phasis on history, and thus grew the legend of John Boynton as apeddler—a romantic, but nevertheless exaggerated impression.

In the redistribution of departments after the War, English(which now was headed by Edwin Higginbottom) and Mathe -matics (under Raymond K. Morley) both moved to Stratton, “orthe old M. E. Building.” By this time both departments had ac -quired new status, the first for its inclusion of literature as well as composition, the second for its higher and deeper technicalapplications.

Professor Morley, who had been the Sinclair professor ofMathematics since 1921, provided a good bridge from the old to the new approach. He was entirely familiar with the old andundisturbed by the new. With either one it was impossible to countthe pieces of chalk as they broke off into the waste-basket from Professor Morley’s restless fingers while he lectured. Thisscholarly professor, with his helpful way of translating the ab -stract into the tangible, produced an understandable set of modelswhich were envied and imitated by mathematics teachers acrossthe country.

Meanwhile the Mechanical Engineering Department was stretch -ing comfortably in its new quarters, the Higgins Laboratories,where in 1949 Gleason H. MacCullough, an acknowledged expertin applied mechanics, had succeeded Francis W. Roys, who was becoming increasingly active in administrative duties. Almosthalf of the degrees granted by Worcester Tech were from thisdepartment of Mechanical Engineering. The new laboratories,their own best testimony to the development of mechanical engi-neering, provided space for experimentation in heat transfer, lub -

Edwin Higginbottom

Raymond K. Morley

169

ricants, fuels, structure of metals, ventilation, heating, refrigeration,metallurgy, and internal combustion. Upstairs, M. Lawrence Priceand B. Leighton Wellman supervised the work of students in fivewell-lighted design rooms. (These two professors had for sevenyears shared an office in the old M. E. building.) Professor Well -man had recently completed the manuscript of his comprehensiveDescriptive Geometry and could declare in an entirely convincingway, “Engineering is design.” There were many to say that hisbook was the best of its kind in the country; even he had to admitit was the biggest.

The Higgins Laboratories had been the first building erected on campus for academic activities in thirty years. That is, with theexception of Kinnicutt Hall, which in 1939 had been added to Salis -bury for the departments of Physics, Chemistry, and Chemical En -gineering. There had been such an increased interest in these areasthat very soon afterwards the space proved inadequate again. An -other appendage added to Salisbury was this time utilized by ErnestWilson (who united the Chemistry and Chemical Engineeringunder one head in 1940) as a unit operations laboratory for Chemi -cal Engineering. There, according to undergraduates, the ChemicalEngineering majors had “more air per capita to contaminate.”

But not for long. Hardly had the laboratory been finished be -fore Professor Wilson needed still more room. So did MortonMasius and his Physics Department, of which he had becomechief in 1939. Prophetically, the classes of these departmentsspilled over into eighteen rooms of other buildings.

Electrical Engineering, with Theodore H. Morgan since 1931,had had its own kind of progression from electric lighting to elec-tronics. It had become clear that this department could not be disassociated from the others on campus, and more and moreoften Hobart Newell found himself out at the Alden HydraulicLaboratory handling the electronic phases of hydraulic research.

No facility of the school was used more extensively for re -search and defense than this laboratory, its unique value comingfrom its natural resources as well as from its leadership. Duringthe War the applications of flow phenomena became immeasur-ably diversified. Hydraulics found itself involved in ballistics,propulsion, turbulence, diffusion, aerodynamics, oceanography,fog dispersal, ship resistance and a dozen other related problems.The laboratory had made projectile, hydrophone, and endurancetests; it had calibrated ship logs, made flood control surveys andrecommendations, and, of course, had modeled many dams andrivers.

Charlie Allen retired from teaching, but not as director of thelaboratory, in 1945. For two years more than a half century he had been accumulating medals for his pioneer work in hydraulics.For the same length of time he had been giving his incomparablelecture on Gasoline, Its Uses and Abuses. “Never once has he, hiscigar, or his audience exploded,” marveled The Journal. When

We strive to equip a man with his sleevesrolled up, ready to go to work, to set him on the threshold of his career, wellequipped for his task.

—Wat Tyler Cluverius, 1947

Hobart H. Newell

170

members of the A.S.M.E. stood in deference to Professor Allenwhen he entered their meeting in 1947, he showed his surprise,but soon recovered composure with a wave of the hand: “Not me.I’ve paid my way.”

Indeed he had paid his way, receiving only half salary for histeaching schedule, the rest of his livelihood earned by consulting.All office expenses of the lab, the furniture, telephone, and evenstamps he had paid for himself. He made no complaints, and he would have been the first to say that the most valuable thinghe gave to the school was his successor, Leslie J. Hooper, aWorcester Tech graduate. Professor Hooper, who had affiliatedwith the laboratory in 1927, had widely extended its research, butalways in the best of Charlie Allen traditions.

Since 1900 the great area of the laboratory grounds, which in -cluded two hundred and sixty acres of land and three ponds, hadbeen available to the students of Civil Engineering for a practicearea. There they had camped for three weeks of the year and hadlaid out their imaginary railroads and highways in ideally simulatedconditions. They even helped to cut the many cords of wood forCharlie Allen’s wood stoves until oil and steam boilers were in -stalled as concessions to progress. “What shall we name thispark?” he asked the students one day when they were clearing a fire road through the woods. “Back Acres,” said one of the boys—giving the area a name so appropriate that it has never neededanother.

Arthur French had retired as head of Civil Engineering in 1933, as an instructor in 1938, but could be seen almost any dayof the week in his emeritus corner of Arthur Knight’s little officein Boynton. There, puffing his familiar corn cob pipe and throw-ing his long legs over the edge of the roll top desk, he kept good track of his old department, with special interest in the consulting activities headed by his successor, Andrew Holt. Pro -fessor French himself, until well after eighty, supervised manymunicipal and industrial building projects in the City. He wasalso instrumental in formulating Worcester’s building laws and insupervising the construction of every building on Tech’s campussince 1899.

The Washburn Shops reflected the changes in engineering morethan did any other department of the school—the Shops, that is,and the Power Laboratory, which had been completely revampedeven to its new chimney stack. The old forge shop had been re -placed by a modern welding shop under the direction of CarlJohnson, the Horatio Alger professor who had had no formal education but was already the author of textbooks which wereused in every important engineering school of the country.

A start had been made in 1931 to refurnish the Washburn Shopswith modern machinery; in 1952 there was another spurt of en -thusiasm when the old Rawson coupling was adapted to Armyhelicopters. But it was not the same. Gone now were the old over-

A college needs equipment, books, build-ings, playing fields and money—but mostof all, it needs men, men like CharlieAllen. —Tribute to Charles M. Allen

from the A.S.M.E.

171

lords of the Shops and the Foundry—Pa (Howard P.) Fairfield,Pop (Walter M.) Monroe, Louis Rawson, and Burton Gray. The superintendency shifted from one person to another; theequipment became more and more obsolete; the facility was usedless and less for teaching purposes.

Tradition reared up in protest every time there was mention ofabandoning the commercial work of the Shops. Besides, it wouldbe unpleasant to dismiss the faithful persons who had workedforty years and more with very low wages. “They told me thiswould be a steady job when I came here,” muttered Thure Johnsonwhen he heard the rumors. He had worked in the Shops for sixty-four years.

The old building was almost deserted, leaving only a few work -men and the Aeronautical students upstairs, now disturbing noone with their noisy aerodynamic equipment. The graduates fromthis option were numbering more than three hundred, reflectinggreat credit on Tech’s instruction in their subsequent experience.

Professor Merriam, who was justifiably proud of his hard-working honor students, tempered the schedule with a few well-timed social occasions. In a revision of Mountain Day, which inearly years had been a traditional holiday for the whole school,the Aeronautical students once a year deserted campus to climbMount Monadnock. Once on top, they were probably not sur-prised to discover that the agenda of the day included ProfessorMerriam’s lecture on the history of Aeronautics.

There was a trend toward integration of instruction on BoyntonHill. This was in sharp contrast to the older pattern in whichdepartments had existed almost like small separate kingdoms. Thechange had come mainly because life itself had proliferated in somany directions, and periodically, in trying to keep up with thespecialties, Tech had had to gather them up into basic groups.“The number of hours demanded of each student has becomeunreasonable,” was a faculty statement made in 1893 that had had to be repeated many times. Now there were new pressures. “En - gineering Gets Exciting,” reported a Journal headline, “HighlyTechnical.” Some of the excitement was due to the world-widerenaissance of the rocket experimentation pioneered by Tech’s ownRobert Goddard.

In addition to what—for lack of a better word—educators re -ferred to as “sophisticated” courses of the physical sciences, therewere pressures from the humanities and extracurricular activities.The Honor Plan, introduced in 1937, had already provided somelatitude by extending the privilege of options to good students.And several of the departments were offering post-graduate work,a development which was as controversial as it was inevitable.

The old guard hesitated even to use the words “graduate study” lest they reflect on the undergraduate work of the Institute.When President Earle announced the graduate level in 1933, hehad merely said, “We have embarked on a new plan.” In 1940

The work will eventually open a new field in engineering; a fact which is onlybeginning to be recognized.

—Robert H. Goddard, 1936

The inquiry is also sometimes made as towhen the research will be completed. Theanswer is that it will probably be the same year the automobile and the air-plane are completed. It has not the final -ity of building an individual machine, butis a new method of transportation, whichI feel certain will have many more appli-cations than the sending of recording in -struments into the high atmosphere, im -portant as this phase of the subject is.

—Robert H. Goddard, February, 1936

172

the trustees were said “to approve a fifth year for selected seniors.”“This is not a post-graduate department,” they hastened to add,“but a means whereby we can furnish additional education”—shades of the Institute’s first year, when the board had modestlyissued “diplomas” instead of “degrees.” Nevertheless, the newwork in the 1940’s led to a master’s degree. It was graduate work, and it brought strong new colors to old patterns.

The summer courses offered during the War were renewed andstrengthened under the direction of Donald Downing in 1950, and later by Kenneth Merriam. And the School of IndustrialManagement was organized in 1949 with twenty-nine men fromtwenty-two local industries in the first class. Championed byPresident Cluverius and industrial leaders such as Wallace Mon -tague and Philip Morgan, this program was supervised by a teamof Tech men which included Albert Schwieger as director, Ed-win Higginbottom, and Ernest D. Phelps. Industrial Management,which offered a four-year series of evening courses, had as one of its main objectives a cross-pollination of ideas between theindustrial and academic worlds—almost as much an experimentin group relationships as in adult education. There were un -believably good results, handsomely fulfilling Ichabod Washburn’swish that the school might be closely allied with the real work ofthe world. The School effected a balance of theory and practice ona higher level than even Mr. Washburn would have dared todream.

The summer school, the ROTC unit, the graduate program, and the School of Industrial Management were all helpful in in -creasing the enrollment of the Institute. At the same time, finan-cial reports made better reading, especially after the receipt ofseveral bequests such as the gifts from Charles L. Allen, officer ofNorton Company and a member of Tech’s board for many years,and from Mrs. Theodore T. Ellis, the widow of a Worcester publisher. An unexpected gift came from Mary Ellen Butterick,her estate having materialized from the dressmaking pattern busi-ness—the first in the country—started by her parents in Sterling,Massachusetts, in 1863. And there had been many surprised andbeaming faces on campus that morning in 1951 when it wasannounced that Forrest W. Taylor’s real estate holdings, theirvalue estimated at two and a half million, had been left to theInstitute. Mr. Taylor had had no relationship with W.P.I. other thanthat his sister, Agnes, had married a Tech alumnus, Harry P. Davis,chairman of the board of the National Broadcasting Company.

In the years of Dr. Homer Gage’s treasurership the endow-ment had been raised from $500,000 to more than four million.And in 1947, after the War, a million and a quarter had beenadded in a campaign for endowment, salaries, and a new build-ing for Civil Engineering. Bookwise, the school had never beenin better shape. The trustees were nevertheless reluctant to build,

There is always the need for one newlaboratory building at the Institute.

—Ralph Earle, 1931

Donald G. Downing

173

largely because of inflation, the uncertainties of returns, and general economic instability. Admiral Cluverius was disappointed.So, too, was Andrew Holmstrom, a Civil Engineering graduate,who had been chairman of the fund-raising campaign.

Meanwhile the Civil Engineering Department was being squeezedinto tighter and tighter corners of Boynton Hall and into anassortment of borrowed spaces in other buildings. Since 1912,when Acting-President Conant first suggested a Civil Engineeringbuilding, the department had been patient—proposing plan afterplan for quarters of their own. The department had been ready to move into Stratton in 1941, when the Higgins Labs were built, but the Navy V-12 had come along as preemptor. For someforty years, sympathized The Journal, the Civils “have had plansfor a better life.”

There was “better life” in Civil Engineering and in Tech’swhole school spirit when, after so much waiting, Admiral Cluveriusannounced a building program. It was to include the erection of a Civil Engineering building, another extension of Salisbury, re -modeling of Boynton Hall and the Atwater Kent Laboratories, an additional field house, campus lighting, and general repairs.

The Admiral, who thrived on action, bombarded people withhis plans. His step seemed to have even more bounce, his voicemore excitement, as he planned a tight schedule of alumni visits.On Saturday’s Homecoming Day in the fall of 1952 he greetedtrustees and alumni, then on Monday kept an appointment inPhiladelphia, with no one, not even the Admiral himself, suspectingthat all was not well. Part way home, in New Haven, he becameso ill that he was moved from the train to a hospital. There he diedas heroically as he had lived—alone.

It had been exactly thirteen years and a day since this vigorouspresident had first assumed office. His predecessor, Admiral Earle,had died four months after a hurricane; his own death occurred a fewmonths before another natural disaster, the tornado of 1953.

For Worcester Tech it was the same man, Stephen D. Donahue,who reported all of them—the hurricane, the tornado, and thedeaths of the two presidents. In all these events this alumnus wasdeeply involved—especially in the tornado, which destroyed hishome yet spared his family; and the moving account of his mixed reactions became a classic for the ten thousand other persons who were similarly made homeless by the experience.Steve, City Editor of the Worcester Evening Gazette, had man-aged the part-time assignment of directing W.P.I.’s News Bureausince 1928.

After the turmoil of 1952 Worcester Tech had an afterwave of unpleasantness which brought with it the emotional debris oftwo wars, a reconstruction period, and the loss of a president.When a whole world—or even a small world such as that onBoynton Hill—has such a thorough shaking, there has to come

The most pressing need [for Civil Engin -eering Department] is that of adequatespace to carry on its work.

—Arthur W. French, 1925

174

a time of settling. People get misplaced, circumstance does notcooperate, and timing is wrong.

There were several such years of upheaval before a new pat-tern could even be seen. But by 1955, after the brief presidencyof Alvin E. Cormeny and the inauguration of Arthur B. Bron-well, strong exciting colors were beginning to show. The enroll-ment was reaching up again toward the 900 mark, the school had come to terms with reality by terminating the WashburnShops, the curriculum had been stabilized with a reasonable pro-portion of humanities and graduate work, and the Civil Engineer-ing building (named Kaven Hall after Moses Kaven, a generous benefactor of previous years) was opened for classes. The bigheavy drafting desks, used almost continuously since the schoolbegan, had been moved down the long hill to Kaven, and while it had been a-building, Professor Holt and his professors had collected a group of pictures illustrating the accomplishments oftheir graduates—their trophies—to decorate its wide corridors.“I’ve waited forty-five years for this day,” said Arthur J. Knightat the dedication, breaking his precedent of not speaking in public.

“When we get the Civils out of here—” had been the cry of thegrowing Boynton Hall staff for many years. There were severalsummer months during the remodeling of Boynton when everyone

was out of the building with the exception of the switchboardoperator. Partitions were put in; partitions were torn down, sometimes revealing old blackboards still covered with chemistryformulas written there by Dr. Fuller. When the staff moved back,the Alumni Association (now with Warren B. Zepp as secretary-treasurer) was given the spacious quarters of the old design room.David Lloyd, the first person in Institute history to bear the titleof business manager, was eventually given a big corner for thecorralling of several financial functions which had been dis-tributed among many persons since the retirement of Emily W.Danforth, financial secretary for forty years. Now there was ampleroom for the president, the registrar, and the Placement office. Onthe third floor were classrooms for History, Languages, Economics,Government, and Business. Also in Boynton there was a newoffice for Admissions and Students with a new director, DonaldDowning, and his associate Ernest W. Hollows. Jerome Howe, asprevious Dean, had meanwhile retired, and Paul Swan, AssociateDean, had become president of Leicester Junior College.

Since its organization the Institute had had a strong tie withthis school in Leicester. Almost all of the founders of Tech had been either graduates or members of the board of what hadthen been known as Leicester Academy. The Earles, from Leices -ter, had helped to strengthen the tie, and there had been manytrustees and teachers who served both schools in the capacity of directorship.

Three times between presidents of W.P.I., in extremely try-ing transition periods, Dean Francis Roys had acted as chief

The great illuminating scientific power ofthe next half century will be a simple,single well-balanced course of liberalculture upon a scientific basis. Every in -stitution will tend in this direction by thesilent but intelligent adjustment, year byyear, to the necessities of the hour.

—John Woodman, 1868

Arthur B. Bronwell

175

officer on campus. Rangy, long-geared, the Dean was known bythe students for forty years as Spider Roys. He had had a heavy load for much of the time, carrying one-third of the school’sinstruction in his department of Mechanical Engineering, besidesbeing chairman of the committee on Courses of Study and De -grees and chairman of the faculty. All the way he had fought thebattle, sometimes an unpopular one, for a strong undergraduateprogram. Named vice-president in 1956, Dean Roys held thatoffice until 1963, when he retired after fifty-three years of dedi-cated service to Tech.

Dean Roys was also chairman of the board for a time until hewas succeeded in 1954 by Philip M. Morgan. Mr. Morgan was theson and grandson of two former trustees and for a period servedon the board simultaneously with his father. Under Morgan leader -ship the school was guided through a time of reorganization muchas it had been organized under the surveillance of communityleaders. There was no gainsaying the editorial comment made bythe Worcester Evening Gazette that W.P.I. was a “famous techni-cal school, founded as a community institution and grew up as one.”For anyone who overlooked this traditional community participa-tion and support, there would be trouble.

School started in the fall of 1954 with a sense of well-being,two hurricanes, and an unbeaten, untied football season, whichrivaled the year of 1938, when weather and football had had asimilar collusion.

Doc Carpenter, who retired in 1952, was still on the bench towatch the Engineers win and to share the satisfaction of his suc-cessor, Robert W. Pritchard.

Varsity athletics had had short shrift during the War. There had been hardly enough men to fill the spots on the diamond inbaseball. Intramural activities had been nevertheless strong, es -pecially after Aldus Higgins had given playing fields for soccerand tennis (Edwin Higginbottom was coach for both) in the name of the Class of 1893. But with the exception of Pete, themascot, commended by Admiral Cluverius as “presumably a goodstudent and well behaved,” no one had received any awards. Withthe victory celebration after the football season in 1954, teachers,trustees, teams, and students agreed Worcester Tech had turnedthe hard corner of the past and was headed in a new direction.

Still—over the campus could often be heard the metallic clang of the old Tech bell, its sound covering the grounds like aheavy blanket of reminder. More than likely it was only a call for Nils Hagberg, the campus chief of police, but sometimes in aneerie moment there were persons who wondered who was ring-ing it— John Boynton or Ichabod Washburn.

g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g

176

Salisbury Laboratories, with the addition of Kinnicutt Hall

Administrative group, 1940. Standing: Taylor, Kolb, Miss Rugg, Miss Haynes, A. J. Knight, Locke. Seated; Howe, Cluverius, Roys

177

The Earle Bridge, a gift of Paul B. Morgan

Earle Memorial Square, where city meets campus Destroyer U. S. S. Earle

178

Alden Memorial Hall

179

Alden P. Johnson, step-grandson of George I. Alden from Mr. Alden’s third marriage. Mr. Johnson is now chairman of the Alden Trust.

Medallions, designed by Wilbur H. Burnham, adorn the center panels of nine windows in Alden Memorial Hall

180

President Cluverius pays homage to prom queen

Tech Band, 1949-1950

181

Herbert F. Taylor, in one of his last official appearances as Secretary-Treasurer of the Alumni Association, presents cup given by Class of 1917 to class having largest attendance at reunion

Tech Masque in Alden Memorial Hall

Tech Carnival, originated in 1916

182

Undefeated tennis team, 1943

183

Left: Pete, at the end of undefeated football season, is served steak by George Andreopoulosunder supervision of Pete’s master, Donald T. At -kinson. Pete, purchased for two dollars in 1933,lived to be seventeen years old. To the end, ac -cording to Don, “Pete carried himself with the distinction of every Worcester Tech graduate.”

President Cluverius and Doc Carpenter in nostalgicmoment near the end of both their careers

Football in undefeated season, 1954

Stratton Hall, or old M.E. Building

184

Higgins Laboratories