A Farewell to Arms

The class of 1947 was, in the words of one graduate, "all mixed up."

While soldiers were marching through the Yard, male students faced the imminence of the draft while women and the ineligible struggled to make the best of their college years. The class also saw 10 of its members loss their lives in World War II.

A normal undergraduate experience was impossible for the class of '47. Many professors and graduate students were gone; student activities collapsed; and the Navy occupied Eliot House.

This class was at the center of some of the most significant changes in the character of the College this century. While the G.I. Bill forever changed the regional, ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the College, the beginnings of "joint-education" offered new opportunities to women and broke down the most significant educational barrier between Harvard and Radcliffe.

At a time of both excitement and disruption, the Harvard experience, Thomas L.P. O'Donnell '47 writes in this year's class report, was marked by "urgency, dislocation and opportunity."

"It was funny time to go to school," says Carl A. Lindblad Jr. '47.

Life in the Service

The class of '47 was fractured from the start, entering the College in three waves: in June 1943, November 1943 and March 1944.

Most students were civilians and immediately moved into one of the three houses--Dunster, Lowell and Adams--that the armed services were not already using for their units. Eliot and Kirkland houses and all of the Yard dorms were being occupied by military personnel.

Most of the students entering in 1943 and 1944 knew that it would not be long before they would join the uniformed ranks marching outside their windows.

"Most of us were under the shadow of the draft," Lindblad says.

"The minute you were 18, they would take you," says William L. Frost '47.

Most students either joined the Navy V-12 or Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) programs. As participants, they would be formally enlisted and trained in the Navy while they remained at Harvard and prepared for active duty.

The Navy students who were drafted would often spend only a semester in their original house before moving into one of the military houses.

At that point, they were moved into Eliot or Kirkland, where they had to make their own beds (the other houses had room service), go to bed at 10 p.m. and rise at 6 a.m. for morning runs and drills.

Perhaps the most profound effect the war had on the officers' lives was to disrupt the ordinary progression of a college career.

Because they had to spend time in active duty, service officers were away from Harvard for fairly long periods of time, during which they could get College credit. They were never together at Harvard, and nobody kept the same roommates from year to year.

"I had six roommates in 19 months because of the all the drafting business," says Frost.

At the same time, the V-12 and NROTC were considered good deals for service officers while they were at Harvard.

The officers had their tuition paid by the government and were given $75 a month in spending money while they were at school.

And, since they entered the armed forces toward the end of the war, their active service did not always bring them into the thick of the fighting.

"I'm embarrassed to talk about my Navy career, I had such a good time," Sidney F. Greeley '47 says.

The Homefront

By the summer term of 1944, the civilian population of Harvard had dropped to low levels not seen since right after the Civil War. The numbers went still lower as the term progressed.

But for those civilians remaining behind, life was changed in big and small ways.

Anne Ginsburgh Wolfe '47 recalls the "brownouts" during her first two years at Radcliffe, in which city lights would be dimmed or turned off to aviod attacks by submarines or warships.

And sit-down food service was replaced by cafeteria-style dining.

"The prominence of the war was certainly all around us," says Pat Crockett Olmsted '47. "To get to class, you had to wade your way through drilling soldiers."

Many Radcliffe students were crowded out by the military when the Women's Auxiliary Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) set up headquarters in Briggs Hall.

Harvard also was unable to provide more residential housing, and in 1944 Dunster closed, leaving only Lowell and Adams.

"The choice of housing was very limited," says Monroe S. Singer '47, one of a number of students who was ineligible to be drafted and thus stayed at Harvard continuously until 1947.

As the military presence increased, Frost says, Harvard seemed "a dinky little college" to those who had not yet been drafted or in the service.

Upper-class students were leaving at the rate of at least 15 per week when the draft age dropped from 20 to 18 in the spring of 1944, making the class of 1947 the dominant class as first-years.

The dwindling number of civilians affected student life in a number of other areas.

As more students entered the service, extracurricular activities faded.

The Advocate published its last wartime literary magazine in the fall of 1943 before collapsing for almost four years.

The daily Crimson was no more than a myth for the class of 1947, for "Cambridge's only breakfast table daily" had been replaced by The Service News, a twice-weekly paper that was almost entirely military in flavor.

Unlike The Crimson, which had usually functioned as the undergraduate mouthpiece, the Service News published mostly military news and had no opinion page.

The Lampoon was the only student publication the appear continuously through the war years. One issue was written entirely by the president and illustrated almost entirely by hid wife, but the Lampoon averaged nine issues a year during the war.

Even that staple of the Harvard experience, the Harvard-Yale football weekend, disappeared during the war.

The informal wartime football squad played only local teams such as MIT, Boston College, Boston University and Northwestern University.

Still, athletics remained one of the few extracurricular activities that attracted student participation during the war years.

Greeley recalls his first year at Harvard, when there were so few teams around to compete with that the "Dunster Funsters" house football team played--and beat--Boston University's varsity squad.

Athletics and activities were not the only aspects of student life affected by the war. A social life also fell by the wayside as many students kept constant come-and-go of Harvard men made it especially difficult for members of this class to get to know one another.

"Socially speaking, people came and went, and it was different from today in that it was difficult to make any lasting relationships," says Louise Connelly Sullivan '47.

Radcliffe women remember watching friends leave for the war, and corresponding with them while they were overseas.

"I was fortunate in that the people I knew came back," Wolfe says.

Academics

The demands of the war had a lasting effect on academics for both Harvard and Radcliffe.

Many graduate students and professors were involved in the war effort, leaving Harvard short-handed.

Frost notes that one of his tutors was a retired high-school teacher who Harvard had hired to teach while the Faculty was depleted.

"More responsibility was put on [the student]," he says. "There was less guidance."

Still, students at Harvard were working harder during the war than ever before. V-12 participants and those in the ROTC were required to take a fifth course every semester in physics, engineering or naval history.

"The Navy imposed sort of a national standard that if you didn't take five courses, you weren't working hard enough in college," O'Donnell says.

Harvard added a summer term so that students could complete their degree requirements more quickly. Unlike the relaxed peacetime summer school, the wartime summer term featured a full list of course offerings.

Fall 1945, the first post-war term, also marked the end of Harvard's free elective system and the inauguration of the General Education Program.

The Gen. Ed. program required students to take courses in each of three broad course areas--natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities.

The class of '47 also witnessd the beginning of "joint-education," as Harvard and Radcliffe classes combined in 1943 in response to the reduced Faculty.

Perhaps the most significant effect of the war, joint-education gave Radcliffe students the flexibility and variety of a Harvard education.

"It completely broke down the separation between Radcliffe and Harvard," Wolfe says. "The [Harvard course] catalog was completely available" to Radcliffe women.

Mixed classes led to the integration of the Widener reading room in the fall of 1945. Previously restricted to the much smaller Radcliffe Study in Widener--often dubbed the "black hole of Calcutta" by disgruntled students--Radcliffe yearbook tables in what the Radcliffe yearbook referred to as "Harry's Club,"? a reference to Harry Elkins Widener '07, the library's namesake.

"When I think of it now, I can't believe that we stood for it. there was a tiny little room where they crammed the Radcliffe women, and only the women going for honors could use the whole library," Sullivan says.

Wolfe says that she feels joint-education was "quite liberating" compared to the previous system. Most Radcliffe alumnae seem to agree, even though they may realize today that equality was not yet complete.

"I used to wonder if they marked us easier, because we got higher marks than the men did, but I didn't feel that our education wasn't taken seriously," Sullivan says.

The Great Return

Just as World War II brought women into Harvard classrooms, military programs and the post-war G.I. Bill increased diversity at what had been a primarily elite, local institution.

The lack of available college students made admissions much less rigorous than they had been before.

"It was fantastically easy to get [in]," says Frost, who says he had friends from other schools who came to Harvard for an admissions interview and then were accepted to the College the next day.

The wartime programs and, to an even greater extent, the G.I. Bill put a Harvard education within reach for thousands of students from various ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

"Quite a few people were sent to Harvard by the Navy who were not admitted to Harvard through the usual admissions process," O'Donnell says. "The G.I. Bill really changed Harvard forever. It much more democratic and diverse."

Dr. Harold L. May '47, one of a handful of blacks in the class of 1947 , says the G.I. Bill did much to increase the minority contingent.

"After the war, the integration of the races became more complete, and I'm sure the G.I. Bill had an effect," he notes.

The G.I. Bill was one of the factors that brought an unprecedented number of students--almost 3,000 undergraduates at Harvard alone--to the College the spring term of 1946 in what became known as the "Great Return.:

The huge influx of students was mostly composed of older men recently discharged from the services--from classes as far back as the class of 1943--reaching for their last chance at a degree.

The Navy still occupied Eliot and Kirkland houses in 1946, University dormitories overflowed with returning students. Even with at least one extra person in each suite, students were forced to set up beds in the gymnasium of the Indoor Athletic Facilities (now the Malkin Athletic Center).

Housing for married students was especially in short supply because many of the returning students had wed in their years away from Cambridge. Many were turned away by the Harvard Housing Office and resorted to hotels and hastily erected structures by the Charles.

Life began to return to normal by the fall of 1946. Discharged soldiers swelled registration almost to the unusually high levels of the spring 1946 term and student life resurged as extracurricular activities emerged from dormancy.

Harvard lost to Yale in the first post-war football game, but as the Harvard Album (as the yearbook was then called) notes, "the more or less alcoholic nature of the festivities washed away some of the bitterness."

June 1947 brought a Class Day and Commencement that were practically indistinguishable from pre-war ceremonies.

The War's presence was still strong, however, because less than half of the 769 seniors who received diplomas in 1947 had entered as members of that class.

The three-term wartime schedule meant that some class of 1947 men had been receiving diplomas as early as 1945 while others were still second-term first-years.

In a fitting closure for a class whose lives were, in O'Donnell's words, "ordered by the war," Secretary of State George C. Marshall gave the now-famous 1947 Commencement address in which he first described what became known as the Marshall Plan.

Still, most students say they did not then appreciate the significance of his words.

"We were so impressed that the secretary of state had come to talk to us, but we were just too excited to understand the importance of his words," says Dana F. Bresnahan '47.

The Marshall Plan--which proposed heavy U.S. involvement in Europe's reconstruction--was particularly fitting for a class that had spent two years at war and two at peace.

Yet the same turmoil that made the class of 1947's experiences so rich and diverse also made it difficult for its members to know each other.

It has taken 50 years of reunions to truly bring this class together, and alumni stress how much closer they have become since their college years.

The standard joke about Harvard's class of 1947 goes something like this: At your 25th reunion you think you know your classmates, and at the 50th you'd swear they were all your roommates.Courtesy Harvard Yearbook PublicationsDuring the "Great Return,' many students were forced to sleep in the Indoor Athletic Building, now the MAC.

And sit-down food service was replaced by cafeteria-style dining.

"The prominence of the war was certainly all around us," says Pat Crockett Olmsted '47. "To get to class, you had to wade your way through drilling soldiers."

Many Radcliffe students were crowded out by the military when the Women's Auxiliary Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) set up headquarters in Briggs Hall.

Harvard also was unable to provide more residential housing, and in 1944 Dunster closed, leaving only Lowell and Adams.

"The choice of housing was very limited," says Monroe S. Singer '47, one of a number of students who was ineligible to be drafted and thus stayed at Harvard continuously until 1947.

As the military presence increased, Frost says, Harvard seemed "a dinky little college" to those who had not yet been drafted or in the service.

Upper-class students were leaving at the rate of at least 15 per week when the draft age dropped from 20 to 18 in the spring of 1944, making the class of 1947 the dominant class as first-years.

The dwindling number of civilians affected student life in a number of other areas.

As more students entered the service, extracurricular activities faded.

The Advocate published its last wartime literary magazine in the fall of 1943 before collapsing for almost four years.

The daily Crimson was no more than a myth for the class of 1947, for "Cambridge's only breakfast table daily" had been replaced by The Service News, a twice-weekly paper that was almost entirely military in flavor.

Unlike The Crimson, which had usually functioned as the undergraduate mouthpiece, the Service News published mostly military news and had no opinion page.

The Lampoon was the only student publication the appear continuously through the war years. One issue was written entirely by the president and illustrated almost entirely by hid wife, but the Lampoon averaged nine issues a year during the war.

Even that staple of the Harvard experience, the Harvard-Yale football weekend, disappeared during the war.

The informal wartime football squad played only local teams such as MIT, Boston College, Boston University and Northwestern University.

Still, athletics remained one of the few extracurricular activities that attracted student participation during the war years.

Greeley recalls his first year at Harvard, when there were so few teams around to compete with that the "Dunster Funsters" house football team played--and beat--Boston University's varsity squad.

Athletics and activities were not the only aspects of student life affected by the war. A social life also fell by the wayside as many students kept constant come-and-go of Harvard men made it especially difficult for members of this class to get to know one another.

"Socially speaking, people came and went, and it was different from today in that it was difficult to make any lasting relationships," says Louise Connelly Sullivan '47.

Radcliffe women remember watching friends leave for the war, and corresponding with them while they were overseas.

"I was fortunate in that the people I knew came back," Wolfe says.

Academics

The demands of the war had a lasting effect on academics for both Harvard and Radcliffe.

Many graduate students and professors were involved in the war effort, leaving Harvard short-handed.

Frost notes that one of his tutors was a retired high-school teacher who Harvard had hired to teach while the Faculty was depleted.

"More responsibility was put on [the student]," he says. "There was less guidance."

Still, students at Harvard were working harder during the war than ever before. V-12 participants and those in the ROTC were required to take a fifth course every semester in physics, engineering or naval history.

"The Navy imposed sort of a national standard that if you didn't take five courses, you weren't working hard enough in college," O'Donnell says.

Harvard added a summer term so that students could complete their degree requirements more quickly. Unlike the relaxed peacetime summer school, the wartime summer term featured a full list of course offerings.

Fall 1945, the first post-war term, also marked the end of Harvard's free elective system and the inauguration of the General Education Program.

The Gen. Ed. program required students to take courses in each of three broad course areas--natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities.

The class of '47 also witnessd the beginning of "joint-education," as Harvard and Radcliffe classes combined in 1943 in response to the reduced Faculty.

Perhaps the most significant effect of the war, joint-education gave Radcliffe students the flexibility and variety of a Harvard education.

"It completely broke down the separation between Radcliffe and Harvard," Wolfe says. "The [Harvard course] catalog was completely available" to Radcliffe women.

Mixed classes led to the integration of the Widener reading room in the fall of 1945. Previously restricted to the much smaller Radcliffe Study in Widener--often dubbed the "black hole of Calcutta" by disgruntled students--Radcliffe yearbook tables in what the Radcliffe yearbook referred to as "Harry's Club,"? a reference to Harry Elkins Widener '07, the library's namesake.

"When I think of it now, I can't believe that we stood for it. there was a tiny little room where they crammed the Radcliffe women, and only the women going for honors could use the whole library," Sullivan says.

Wolfe says that she feels joint-education was "quite liberating" compared to the previous system. Most Radcliffe alumnae seem to agree, even though they may realize today that equality was not yet complete.

"I used to wonder if they marked us easier, because we got higher marks than the men did, but I didn't feel that our education wasn't taken seriously," Sullivan says.

The Great Return

Just as World War II brought women into Harvard classrooms, military programs and the post-war G.I. Bill increased diversity at what had been a primarily elite, local institution.

The lack of available college students made admissions much less rigorous than they had been before.

"It was fantastically easy to get [in]," says Frost, who says he had friends from other schools who came to Harvard for an admissions interview and then were accepted to the College the next day.

The wartime programs and, to an even greater extent, the G.I. Bill put a Harvard education within reach for thousands of students from various ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

"Quite a few people were sent to Harvard by the Navy who were not admitted to Harvard through the usual admissions process," O'Donnell says. "The G.I. Bill really changed Harvard forever. It much more democratic and diverse."

Dr. Harold L. May '47, one of a handful of blacks in the class of 1947 , says the G.I. Bill did much to increase the minority contingent.

"After the war, the integration of the races became more complete, and I'm sure the G.I. Bill had an effect," he notes.

The G.I. Bill was one of the factors that brought an unprecedented number of students--almost 3,000 undergraduates at Harvard alone--to the College the spring term of 1946 in what became known as the "Great Return.:

The huge influx of students was mostly composed of older men recently discharged from the services--from classes as far back as the class of 1943--reaching for their last chance at a degree.

The Navy still occupied Eliot and Kirkland houses in 1946, University dormitories overflowed with returning students. Even with at least one extra person in each suite, students were forced to set up beds in the gymnasium of the Indoor Athletic Facilities (now the Malkin Athletic Center).

Housing for married students was especially in short supply because many of the returning students had wed in their years away from Cambridge. Many were turned away by the Harvard Housing Office and resorted to hotels and hastily erected structures by the Charles.

Life began to return to normal by the fall of 1946. Discharged soldiers swelled registration almost to the unusually high levels of the spring 1946 term and student life resurged as extracurricular activities emerged from dormancy.

Harvard lost to Yale in the first post-war football game, but as the Harvard Album (as the yearbook was then called) notes, "the more or less alcoholic nature of the festivities washed away some of the bitterness."

June 1947 brought a Class Day and Commencement that were practically indistinguishable from pre-war ceremonies.

The War's presence was still strong, however, because less than half of the 769 seniors who received diplomas in 1947 had entered as members of that class.

The three-term wartime schedule meant that some class of 1947 men had been receiving diplomas as early as 1945 while others were still second-term first-years.

In a fitting closure for a class whose lives were, in O'Donnell's words, "ordered by the war," Secretary of State George C. Marshall gave the now-famous 1947 Commencement address in which he first described what became known as the Marshall Plan.

Still, most students say they did not then appreciate the significance of his words.

"We were so impressed that the secretary of state had come to talk to us, but we were just too excited to understand the importance of his words," says Dana F. Bresnahan '47.

The Marshall Plan--which proposed heavy U.S. involvement in Europe's reconstruction--was particularly fitting for a class that had spent two years at war and two at peace.

Yet the same turmoil that made the class of 1947's experiences so rich and diverse also made it difficult for its members to know each other.

It has taken 50 years of reunions to truly bring this class together, and alumni stress how much closer they have become since their college years.

The standard joke about Harvard's class of 1947 goes something like this: At your 25th reunion you think you know your classmates, and at the 50th you'd swear they were all your roommates.Courtesy Harvard Yearbook PublicationsDuring the "Great Return,' many students were forced to sleep in the Indoor Athletic Building, now the MAC.