The university scene

The government’s support of veterans’ education via the G. I. Bill following World War II forever changed the character of university education in the United States.1 It

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enabled thousands of veterans to go to school who would not otherwise have been able to do so. By 1947, veterans made up 49 percent of U. S. college enrollment. By the end of the bill’s coverage in 1956, 7.8 million veterans attended universities, colleges, trade schools, and business and agriculture training programs.

The bill brought to the campuses a whole generation of intensely focused students whose war experiences had given them a much different outlook than that of typical prewar students. Being older than most of the traditional students, many brought along wives and young children.

To accommodate returning married G. I.s and the other student families, many universities built small villages to house them. Eight such villages of three types were built at the University of Iowa. Representative of the first type was Hawkeye Trailer Village on Old Iowa Field on the east bank of the Iowa River (near where the University Library now stands). It contained 128 trailers, whose inhabitants shared communal showers and washhouses. Ernie and Mary Ray occupied one of those units for a while. The trailers, however, did not hold up well, and by the time we arrived in 1953, the university administration had decided to remove a trailer whenever it required repairs of $50 or more.

More substantial Quonset huts and corrugated sheet metal barracks in other villages were tremendously successful. The military surplus round-topped Quonset huts held up well and had more complete facilities, including in-house showers. Les and Marilyn Meredith lived in one of those in Riverside Park, located along North Riverside Drive near the present Art Building.

Rosalie and I considered ourselves fortunate to live in one of the slightly larger half-barracks, located just west of the original University Hospital building in what was known as Finkbine Park. Templin Park, the last of those temporary villages, was razed in 1975 in favor of more permanent brick-and-mortar housing units, as the ancient custom of marriage only after college was largely outmoded by then. The site of Finkbine Park is no longer recognizable, being now a part of the university’s huge medical and sports complex.

The University of Iowa counted a total enrollment of fewer than 10,000 students in 1953 when I started, and passed that mark while I was there. By 2008, the enrollment has surpassed 30,000. When I was there, class sizes were small by today’s standards—I can recall no class larger than 200, and classes that large were rare. Classes for physics and engineering majors ranged from a few to no more than 25. One-on-one sessions with faculty members outside the classroom on short notice were nearly always possible.

Compared with the more traditional single students of the prewar era, the older married students had less time and energy for social and other nonacademic campus activities. Their families, with the need for paying employment to help support them, lent a

CHAPTER 16 • SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS 433

new focus and sense of urgency to the university experience. Although fraternity and sorority life was still present, it was not a part of the university experience for most of the married students.

To highlight the difference, my father, while a bachelor in his senior year in 1921 at Western Union College in LeMars, Iowa, participated actively in the Decameronian Literary Society (vice president, debates, orations, lectures, and plays), Science Sem­inar, band, glee club, Young Men’s Christian Association, and the Cleric organization. He considered those activities to be important elements of his classical liberal arts education.

There were times when I regretted not having had more time for that type of extracurricular activity, but the responsibilities of a growing family, the need to work to supplement my G. I. Bill income, and my different interests at that stage in life took precedence. Still, I never felt cheated. The undergraduate curriculum in physics at Iowa embodied a well-balanced mix of the technical, historical, and philosophical aspects of physics, along with exposure to world history, ancient and modern literature, English language structure and composition, the German language, mathematics, and the creative arts. The only area in which I regretted the lack of more training and experience was in oration, including open debate on nontechnical subjects. Nevertheless, I emerged from my undergraduate years with an excellent classical liberal arts education. [11]

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Study Program. That seemed to offer experience with a company that might help me decide upon a specific direction for my postgraduate work. As an added fac­tor, both Rosalie and I wished to live closer to her family on the West Coast for a while.

That inquiry led to a letter of acceptance by Lockheed, with the understanding that I would work at their installation in Palo Alto—full time during school vacations and about half time during school semesters. The two year appointment would include salaried work in their facilities, and they would pay my tuition and other expenses at any suitably accredited university. My hope was that I would attend Stanford University, but I learned that the deadline had already passed for application to their very limited Industrial Students Program. That meant that I would have had to travel between Palo Alto and the University of California in Berkeley. The thought of commuting a distance of 35 miles each way through heavy San Francisco Bay traffic completely repelled me. It would have made it impossible for me to have the type of strong campus interaction that I enjoyed at Iowa.

In mid-April, I rather reluctantly rejected their offer. The basic idea remained alive, however, until late summer. During a vacation trip to visit Rosalie’s family in the Seattle area in early September, I described the work I was doing to a physics faculty member on the University of Washington campus. At the end of my summary, he asked, “Why would you want to go anywhere else than Iowa?”

That clinched it—I dropped any further thought of leaving the University of Iowa. Needless to say, I have been eternally grateful that I stayed.