The Men & the Boys

On the walls of Memorial Church, built in 1931 to commemorate Harvard's fallen soldiers in the "Great War," are chiseled the names of over 550 students from the College who had sacrificed their lives in World War II.

But while Harvard mourned her fallen sons, it was the ones who made it back, and an influx of G.I. Bill veterans, who were to permanently alter the fabric of undergraduate life--from housing and classes to the social life and topics of debate on campus.

The students were older (the average first-year age was over 20 years old), more experienced, more studious, more vocal and some even brought their families.

The population of the College exploded as G.I.'s were admitted. The Class of 1950, with 1,645 members, grew so large because over the half the class--896--were returning veterans. The Admissions Office reported in 1946 that "it seems probable that there will never again be as many men registered."

And while the numbers reflect a vastly different Harvard being shaped, it was in the lecture halls, dining halls and social mixers where the unwritten divisions between veterans and non-veterans were either solidified or slowly faded, and a new College community was shaped.

With Open Arms

For its part, the University gratefully welcomed the returning victors, and former students who left for the war were welcomed with open arms by the University.

"With anxious pride, Harvard awaits the day of your return," President James B. Conant '14 told students leaving for the war in 1943. Three years later, with the war over, Conant wrote that the guiding purpose of the College should be "to use its resources to their utmost in the service of the generation who education has been interrupted by war."

The college went to great lengths to track down the students, trying to account for all of them. The ones who were killed were added to the wall in Memorial Church, and the ones who survived the war were asked to return to the College.

In fact, of the 3,600 students who interrupted their education for the war, more than 2,500 had re-enrolled by 1947.

And returning students were not the only ones enrolling at Harvard.

Under the G.I. Bill, officially known as the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, veterans received stipends to attend college or vocational training.

In the five years after the bill's passage, nine million veterans would use it to gain more education--and Harvard was no exception.

The admissions office loved the new onslaught of applications. They were able to exercise an "unusual degree of selection" among applicants, the office reported.

However, while attempting to raise academic standards overall, they recognized many of the soldiers did not come from the same academic background as the prep-schoolers that were applying.

Besides, "a little salt-and-pepper" kept the place exciting, reported Bruce Harriman '50--a bomber captain in Europe who entered Harvard in the summer of 1946.

Their worldliness more than compensated for their academic backgrounds, the College reported. The presence of veterans "stimulated" the college campus.

"[Their presence] made the class a little more serious, and the intellectual discussions a little more serious," reminisces Robert J. Blinken '50, who also was a Crimson editor.

"Most of us were respectful of our older classmates because we were aware of places where they had seen active duty in places we read about in the newspapers," says Melvin L. Zurier '50, who entered Harvard after secondary school. "We were rookies."

Hurry Up and Wait

After years of rigid military discipline, the veterans were well suited to the University's bureaucracy.

"The vets do exactly as they are supposed to do. They are very good about it. They cooperate wonderfully," said Helen McCloskey, a Coop employee during book ordering.

Non-veteran students sometimes resented the long lines at the bookstores caused by the paperwork the veterans needed for repayment under the G.I. Bill.

"All I could see in every direction were lines stretching out to infinity under a snowfall of veterans' authorization slips," one student wrote in a Crimson op-ed bemoaning his life as a non-veteran. "And you didn't think there were any of them left, did you?" he continued.

But the vast increases in undergraduates tested many University resources. The College began running a three-term year--fall, spring and summer--to graduate students in three and a half years. Veterans were granted "war service credits" for training and experience they gained in the military.

"There were so many people that I found the freshman advisors quite inadequate," says John F. Woolverton '50, who was stationed in Europe. "There wasn't very much direction."

In fact, although the college population stood at 145 percent of its pre-war population, there was no increase in the number of tutors in the Houses, leading to grumbling among students.

Non-veterans often found themselves intimidated by the G.I.'s.

"It's difficult enough to enter Harvard as what turns out to be naive freshman, but on top of that you're meeting and rubbing elbows with older guys who have had an entirely different experience," explains Frank J. Lionette '50, who entered Harvard after graduating from public high school.

Raise Every Voice

The veterans, who helped win the war in Europe and the Pacific, continued their worldly ways once matriculating.

The student body was very vocal, sounding off on communism, universal military training and the Marshall Plan which had been announced at Harvard's 1947 Commencement.

Several liberal political groups popped up on campus, and a variety of publications saw a rebirth as veterans became involved.

The administration, too, began to look at the world differently because of the veterans on campus. In 1946, Conant used this annual letter in the register to address the issue of compulsory military service.

This worldliness translated into other forms on the College's campus. The number of social science concentrators soared--from 31 percent of students in 1941 to half the student body in 1947--as science and the humanities dropped significantly.

This fascination with the way the world works was a direct result of the horrible battles the veterans had fought in the years before college.

"Some of us had some very difficult experiences [in the war] and either consciously or unconsciously we were looking for answers," Harriman says. "War was a very unsettling experience."

The maturity brought about by war had the veterans throw themselves into their studies.

"The professors used to call on [the veterans] a lot, and while that annoyed some, it showed that we were still pretty young people," recalls Janet S. Ellis '50, who entered Radcliffe after attending public schools.

Academic honors were at all-time highs as the Class of 1950 progressed, and its freshman year was the best performing class in decades--almost a third of the students were named to the Dean's List. Discipline problems--especially among veterans--hit all-time lows as well.

The "no-nonsense" soldiers pursued their studies vigorously, and were less intimidated by professors, according to Lionette.

"There was an eagerness on their part to learn and think but there was a different framework," he says. "They sure as hell didn't want to waste any time."

And the veterans kept to themselves, not out of isolation, but because they shared common experiences--and because they did not fit into the world of their non-veteran classmates.

"Sometimes they found it hard to understand the guys coming in from high school, who viewed entering college more lightly," Lionette reports.

Kicking Up Your Heels

While there were academic distinctions between the veterans and younger undergraduates, social lives were even more stratified.

One of the most basic divides was based around Massachusetts's drinking age of 21--freshman veterans could drink while their secondary school counterparts often had three years to wait.

The traditional undergraduate social arenas--social clubs and Radcliffe mixers--often remained the domain of the younger students.

While Woolverton joined the Owl and Hasty Pudding Club, he came "in some maturity to question those clubs."

"Most of the people who were in those clubs had not been veterans," he remembers.

Veterans, however, registered their own mark on the Harvard social scene. Many social organizations, like the Veterans Theater Company, sprung up to serve the unique needs of the former soldiers.

The Harvard Chapter of the American Veterans Committee (AVC) quickly became the largest club on campus with 830 members at its peak--35 percent of the undergraduate population.

The AVC moved into the second floor of Phillip Brooks House, sharing it with the student council. The AVC ran seminars for veterans on how to use the G.I. Bill and navigate the ways of the College.

It also provided a social outlet for veterans, bringing in outside speakers and running dances.

"The veterans tended to congregate with each other. But there was no sense of isolation," Harriman says. "There wasn't a real gap, a real separation."

Indeed, the veterans were not entirely disconnected from the other undergraduates.

In 1949, a group of veterans joined together and organized the first ever all-college dance, called the Jubilee. A huge success, the dance attracted hundreds and brought together musicians and Radcliffe students.

For their part, the Radcliffe students looked up to the returning soldiers.

"To be honest, we considered them older men and more on the ball," Ellis says. "I met my future husband, and he wasn't as immature as some of the younger guys."

Not all soldiers dated eagerly, although those who did found it easy to find dates because the older soldiers often had cars.

"They were more impatient, less willing to go through the rituals" like Radcliffe's "Jolly-Ups" or Wellesley's get-to-know-you dances, Lionette recalls.

The Family Man

The epitome of the Harvard Man, obviously altered in the post-war years, also had to accommodate for a new breed--the Harvard Family.

And while undergraduates had been married before, never to an extent where they lived in entirely separate communities divided from the rest of the College.

After the war, the University watched as the number of married students on campus swelled from 12 in an average pre-war year to 660--forcing family housing complexes to be created at Fort Devens and at the Hotel Brunswick in downtown Boston.

This physical separation from the College added another layer of isolation between the veterans and non-veterans. Even the veterans in the Houses barely got to know their compatriots.

"We in the Houses certainly didn't see very much of them," Harriman says. "Maybe they all got together on their own, I don't know."

"I really didn't know the older veterans very well," Woolverton remembers. "I only knew three or four people...who were married."

"We had very little occasion to meet with them at all," Blinken says.

But just as hard as bringing your family to Harvard is leaving it behind. Lt. Colonel Oscar C. Bridgeman '50 married a Trinidadian woman while he was stationed there during the war. She stayed behind while he came back to go to school.

Without having his wife here, he says, he was able to get out into the community more than he would have.

"I tried to get to know everyone," he reminisces. Nonetheless, he longed for the wife, who was half-a-world away.

Bridgeman's predicament was not unique. In December of 1946, military commanders decided to allow marriages between American G.I.'s and German women--a decision that angered many Radcliffe students.

"They haven't got anything we don't have," said Jean DeBeer '48 at the time.

Changing of the Guard

And while Harvard today bares little resemblance to its post-war world, its current status can partially be attributed to the jarring changes of the late 1940s.

"The war was the big leveler," Zurier says.

After the diversity brought in by the veterans, the College--and most other Ivy League universities--never returned to their "old boy" atmosphere.

"There was a beginning of opening up that has resulted in the acceptance of minority groups with a real purpose behind the policy," Woolverton says.

And while Woolverton says he believes the post-war flood of veterans helped to make the diversified Harvard of today, the influx undeniably altered the College and its undergraduates in the post-war period. And even 50 years later, the undergraduate enrollment of the Class of 1950 stands as the high water mark for the College, proving the sheer force of numbers would be the impetus for change.