We are, today, wrapping up our look at selected photos from within an 80-year-old yearbook. In the last several I’ve posted about here I think I’m averaging about four installments per year, so this is a slight expansion. This is nowhere near complete, of course, and hardly efficient or scientific, but rather just a few of the things that caught my eye, or photos I wanted to giggle at, or interesting people I wanted to look up. And with record enrollment in 1944, I suppose this was a good year to see a little boost, even as the war was still underway. But because of that, as I realized in this final installment, it looks like the good times and the golden days might have been a little bit leaner. That could have been economics, too, or just the mood of the yearbook staff, who knows? Doesn’t matter. It’s a nice look back, at my alma mater, 80 years ago.

Why are all of these people running?

That looks like Cary Hall in the background, which is where I spent a few quarters taking biology classes. Here’s the map view.

The building closer to us, then, is Petrie Hall, named after the famed historian and bringer of football. At the time of this photograph it was the athletic field house, hence it’s off-scheme orientation on campus. The photographer was standing here, and it looks like this. Later, Petrie became a geology building. Today, it houses people that work in athletic finance.

I spent a bit of time in high school in Petrie because, back then, it was, I believe, the place they shifted people too during renovations, or the place they rented out for state-level work as people passed through.

So they are running. But why? They’re chasing this guy.

Fred Carley, of Mobile, Alabama, was a freshman, studying aeronautical engineering. And this young man has a story to tell.

In high school, Carley was on the track team, an outfielder on the baseball team, and a lightweight boxing champion. He also played in the band. And he’d do some of those things in college, too. He would become the lead trumpet in the orchestral band, the Auburn Knights. He was captain of the track team for two years, and the first track scholarship recipient in the history of the school. Sophomore year, he placed sixth at the NCAA championships, the only mile he lost in three years of college. He won four SEC championships, three in the mile and another in the 880. Only travel troubles kept him from the Olympic trials in 1948. He earned three degrees from Auburn. He did three active duty tours with the Air Force, eventually retiring as a lieutenant colonel. He was an engineer and a track coach, and led his high school alma mater to 11 state championships. He started the track program at the University of South Alabama. He coached a bunch of other track stars in varying capacities while he was stationed at Eglin AFB, tallying 16 individual national championships and 17 national age group record. His athletes set six world records. And we haven’t even touched on his lifelong contributions to engineering, which led to his 1997 induction into something called the Military Packaging Hall of Fame. His wife was a prominent ballerina. They had two children. Their daughter held a U.S. record in race walking, and was a semifinalist in the Miss USA Pageant. Their son was a six-time World Record holder and twice a national champion in Track and Cross Country. He died in 2019, age 92.

Seems like a charmed life, no? This run was no exception. As a freshman, he was the winner of the ODK Cake Race. Back then it was a 2.7 mile run. The winner received a cake and a kiss from Miss Auburn. (I hope that part of the tradition has changed.) The Glom notes he got “exactly fourteen kisses.” That wasn’t the plan. Apparently there were camera problems. (No photos of the smooches were published here.)

Today, the ODK Cake Race lives on as a 5K. The top five men and women will each receive a cake. You see all of those long and heavy clothes the crowd is wearing, above? That won’t be the case when they have the 95th Cake Race this September.

This is where we remember there weren’t a lot of sports that year. The war, and all. There was no football in 1943, no basketball in 43-44, and no baseball in the spring of 44. So this yearbook moves dutifully on, and quickly. There’s no solid lead one the names here, but it’s an action shot of sorts, so …

If you’ll notice, in that first link above about Petrie Hall, you can see the building’s orientation to the modern football stadium. In 1939 it opened with 7,290 seats on the west side. The town was small, and there was a concern about bringing in that many people. There were apparently only two stores with public restrooms back then! Only a year later 4,800 wooden bleachers were added to the east side, and I think that’s what we’re seeing in the background of this shot.

While the stadium was dormant in 1943, the football Tigers returned in 1944. The first game in Auburn after the war was against the Fourth Infantry Raiders. Wikipedia tells me that 5,000 people gathered to see the Tigers win, 7-0, ending a 23-month layoff between varsity play.

There’s some other photos of guys tossing around football. One of women playing basketball, I think, some calisthenics and, for some reason, a three photo tennis spread. One of them introduces us to the powerful forehand game of Louis Shepard, a senior civil engineering major from Mobile, Alabama.

Shepard graduated in 1944 and went into the Navy, serving on the USS Sanborn in the Pacific. He was there for the assault on Iwo Jima, the invasion of Ryukyus and a feint on Okinawa. At the end of the war, the Sanborn transported occupation forces to Japan. Later, Shepard returned to the Naval Reserve during Korea.

When he wasn’t in uniform, he was an engineer, working for Texaco in El Paso, Texas, before settling in his beloved Gautier, Mississippi for Standard Oil. (The modern Chevron.) He fished, caught crab and shrimp, and he did it until Hurricane Katrina destroyed his home. The family rebuilt, and he stayed there until he died in 2012, survived by his wife, three children and two grandchildren.

This two-page spread was titled “C’est le guerre” and it features three photos and it’s all tongue in cheek.

Later we come to a page in the organizations section that is for students called into service before they could finish their education, curtailing the various roles they played on campus. These shots all look like campus photos, but they could be a bit more expansive. One of the names really pops out.

The last guy, Frank Wyatt, fought in Europe. He was a captain, attended the Nuremberg Trials, stayed on for part of the German reconstruction. Came home to law school, which he finished in two years. He worked in the Office of Chief Counsel of the IRS, and then went into the private sector as a corporate VP of finance and treasurer.

We don’t have a caption here, it’s a photo meant to point out the fraternities and sororities are coming up. It’s a strange, collegiate artistic layout. I don’t know who they are, but if any of these beautiful young people are still with us, I’d pay good money to ask them if this was staged.

And, finally, just one advertisement from the slim ad section in the back. Just the one because the rest were text only. But the theater went all out. I’m sure this cost extra. I do wonder who wrote that cutline though … and if the theater liked that.

They had one screen. It was the first theater in town, opening in September of 1926. It stuck around until April of 1984. Two other small theaters closed the next year. And though theaters come and age and go quickly, that marquee, would have kept a lot of cool character downtown if they’d maintained it. But they didn’t think like that in the 1980s. College towns seldom do these days, either.

As of this writing, there’s a nail salon, a beignet joint, and a dumpy pita restaurant in that spot today. There are also two other little spaces there that they can’t keep businesses in, and this in the heart of town. But, maybe, if that marquee had somehow stayed in place …

And that’s it. Thanks for following along with this casual glance of the 1944 Glomerata. All of these photos from 1944 photos live in the Glomerata section, of course. You can see others, here. Or, to just see the beautiful book covers, go here. The university stores their complete collection here.

Coming soon, we’ll check out the 1954 Glom. A few things will have changed in between!

Fridays mean we return to the past, we go home and we pore over old books. Right now, we’re falling back 80 years on the Plains, there were classes, college life, and the war. Here’s the next batch of photos that I found interesting in the 1944 Glomerata. Let’s learn a little about the time, and maybe something interesting about what became of some of them.

This installment takes us into a new section of the yearbook. It’s called …

… and really it’s just a section of almost 20 pages of glamour shots. Up first is Miss Auburn. A tradition since 1934, Miss Auburn, is the official hostess of the university, a goodwill ambassador and so on. And in 1944, Miss Auburn was Margaret Rew.

Rew was a sophomore, an education major, and also a cheerleader. She met an Army officer stationed at Fort Benning (now named Fort Moore). Lewis Sponsler was from Missouri. He was at West Point, but enlisted for the war. The Sponslers ran a pharmacy in neighboring Opelika for 34 years and were together for six decades until she died in 2006. They had three daughters, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren when she passed away.

Marian Boyle was a freshman from Georgia, studying commercial art. Or maybe it’s Marion. Both names are used in different places.

She’s one of those people that drifts into the digital mists. I will assume she did so deliberately after she realized her faux fur faux pas.

Claire Marshall, was a sophomore education major from a small town in southwest Georgia. There were about 365 people living there when she was growing up.

Claire Marshall married a Dr. Clarence Sapp. Her obituary says she was a basketball player in high school, which would have been something to see in small town 1940s. She was a homemaker. When she passed away in 2009 she had one daughter, two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

I like this one. It looks like picture day just happened to be taking place as she walked by.

And she is Jeanne Townsend, a local girl, a sophomore, studying pre-law. She and her family had moved up from Florida a few years before, but she became popular quite quickly. In the fall of 1944, her junior year, she married Lt. Lawson Robertson who had also been an Auburn student before he joined the Army. He became a B-17 co-pilot in the 350th Bombardment Squadron in Europe. He died in 1972 and is buried at Arlington. It seems they got divorced in the 1960s. (But I wouldn’t swear out an affidavit on it.) She died in 1979 at 55, and is buried in Florida, with her parents.

Sarah Burrows was a sophomore from Jacksonville, Florida. She studied science and literature, and she was an actress in campus productions.

After that, she becomes a mystery to us.

This is Sarah Evans Glenn, a junior education major from neighboring Opelika. She taught in Texas and met a man who had served in the Pacific during the war. She came back home for a time and was teaching at the university when they announced their engagement.

She had a son in 1948, but she’d already lost her husband, a lieutenant in the Navy. They’d only gotten married in January of 1947. The son, named after his father, is still with us. I’m not sure, from a handful of web searches, what became of his mother.

Marie Strong was a freshman from Anniston. She was studying secretarial training. And lipstick application. She was a socialite of east Alabama, a beauty queen in high school, an honors student in college and would become a class leader the next year.

She shows up in the society pages a lot as a young adult, vacationing here, visiting there, hosting teas for this and that. Then, 1947 was her year, the parties and the buffets were for her. She got married and they moved to Michigan, but quickly returned to Anniston. They had a daughter, in 1952. Marie died in 1953. Her mother died the next year. Her husband was also from Anniston. He went to Georgia Tech and served in the Navy. He got married again in 1957.

Her name is Ann Black, or Anne Black. This yearbook isn’t always consistent. She was a freshman from Auburn, studying science and literature. (Some catchall program, to be sure.)

Anne — it’s Anne — married a man named Leonard Pace, who attended Auburn a few years after she did. He earned a degree in agriculture after serving as a corporal in the Army. Her great-grandfather moved into the area from Georgia just before the Civil War. Leonard’s family had lived in the area for several generations, and they stayed close by, as well. Anne died in 1982, age 57. Leonard passed away at 76, in 2000.

Betty Ware was a freshman from Auburn, studying home economics. A few years later, she was studying education. Her father was a professor of horticulture and forestry. (It’s weird to me to see them grouped together as a discipline.) She got married in October of 1946 to a veterinarian, Edwin Goode. He died at 55, in 1979. They were living in Auburn, but he’s buried in Birmingham, which was his hometown. They had three children.

Sometime after she married another Auburn man, Murphy Armor, who served in the ETO during the war and studied agriculture education after. He taught for a while in nearby Smiths Station and then ran an oil company for three decades. It’s possible I met them in passing. He died in 2010, a man I know officiated his funeral. Betty survived her second husband as well.

This is Rebecca Fincher, a freshman from the tiny town of Wedowee, Alabama, population 505 or so back then.

She was named Miss Homecoming the following fall. She was getting married in December of 1946 to a man with a terribly common name, and then they both elude me.

This smiling face belongs to Lilibel Carlovitz, who is our first proof that the hairstyles of the 1980s really came from the 40s, they just had more hair spray the second time around. She was a sophomore studying secretarial training. She was in the dance club and on the yearbook staff. She was from Auburn.

In the fall of her junior year, which is to say the fall of 1944, she got married to Morris Spearman, of Birmingham. He graduated from Auburn in 1943 with an aeronautical engineering degree. She worked as a stenographer for a few years after school, in Virginia. He worked at NASA. In an amazing six-decade career there he became an authority in aerodynamics, stability and control, aircraft, spacecraft, and missile performance, publishing over 300 technical papers and presentations in the field of aeronautics. She sang in the church choir all her life and helped found a bunch of different community organizations.

She died in 2011, 86; he passed away in 2015 at 93. They had three children, five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Julia LeSueur was a freshman from Roanoke, Alabama, studying aeronautical engineering.

Roanoke is a border town in east Alabama. At the time, just over 4,000 people lived there. I’ve no idea if she went home, or went elsewhere. Rather fits that mischievous expression on her face, though, doesn’t it?

We’ve already met Margaret Rew. I’m not sure why she’s included here, but I assume it has something to do with the lipstick, or the excellent fill light in this photograph.

Maxine Tatum was a sophomore from Opelika. She became a high school history teacher and librarian in Union Springs, about 40 miles to the south, where she also coached students in speech contests.

She got married in 1946 to a man from south Alabama who attended The Citadel before being commissioned as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps. The union didn’t last. She got remarried in 1953 to Joe Gholston, a man who flew with the 8th Air Force, before spending a year in a POW camp in Poland. They had 14 years together. She died in 1967, just 41 years old.

And, finally, meet Betty Peeples, a sophomore interior decoration major all the way from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. She really looks like she’s going places, doesn’t she?

I’ve just no idea where that was. The web, for once, is silent. Which is probably a big hint to me.

So that’s enough for now. Next week we’ll take a glance at the campus life section of the 1944 Glomerata. All of these photos from 1944 photos live in the Glomerata section, of course. You can see others, here. Or, to just see the beautiful book covers, go here. The university stores their complete collection here.