We get in our time machines and travel back 70 years, to a world strange, yet familiar. But perhaps mostly strange? Here are a few more photos from my alma mater’s yearbook, the Glomerata, which I collect. If my grandparents had gone to school there, they’d be somewhere in this book. They’re not, their peers are. I wonder if they knew any of the people inside.

This is the fourth installment of our glance through 1954. Part one is here, and you can find part two here. We saw part three last week. All of them will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. I wouldn’t blame you. They’re quite handsome. The university hosts their collection here.

This is 1954.

We left off last week with the Army ROTC. All able-bodied male students served a compulsory two-year stint. Some of them, of course, would stay on. Even in ’54, as we’ve been seeing, quite a few of these young men were changing from their civilian clothes to a cap and gown to a uniform, at least for a while. And it wasn’t just the Army ROTC. This is Col. James W. Townsend, professor of air science and tactics.

He graduated from Purdue in 1937. He joined up in 41, and during the war, Townsend was a captain in the 416th Bombardment Group, at least while they were stateside in Oklahoma. The 416th flew medium bombers for the Ninth Air Force in Western Europe. They were awarded a Distinguished Unit Citation in France, bombing out infrastructure that hampered the German retreat. In 1951 Townsend was high up the command chart at Continental Air Command at Mitchel Air Base in New York. After a brief stint in Germany, he was at Auburn from 1952 through 1956, and he and his family were a popular part of town. They packed up their two kids and shipped out to the Philippines. He finally retired from the service in 1961 and went to work in his native Indiana as the assistant chief for the division of land acquisition for the Indiana Highway Department, a job he held until he died in 1971, aged 63. He and his wife had a son and daughter.

The Air ROTC unit had a good pitch. Why sign up with the Army, when you can go over to the air base and pose up a storm with some of the bombers?

And spare a thought for that staff sergeant, who is probably three or four years into his Air Force career, and now he’s having to walk around these college kids.

Sometimes, you got to pose in the bomber.

Do we know anything about that plane? Yes, we do. That’s the serial number there and the world wide web still has plenty of wonders.

The B-25J-25-NC (serial number 44-30748) rolled off the line in Kansas City in February of 1945. It was listed as surplus right away and was finally put into service in 1948 as a trainer, bouncing around a few stops in those roles in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Illinois, later, Texas. Those cadets met the plane in Mobile, where it was getting some upgrades. In 1958 it went into storage and was later sold into civilian life. At least one owner used it as a crop sprayer. Then, in 1969 this plane was sold to a Hollywood company and the plane would appear in the classic, “Catch 22.”

Sometime in the next two decades it was restored and deemed airworthy again. On April 21, 1992, this plane was the first of two B-25s that launched off the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Ranger to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Doolittle Raid. (In 2011 I wrote about one of the Doolittle pilots.)

You can see some beautiful archival shots of this bomber. Or see it today! It’s still flying, out of Oregon. And yes, there’s video.

But we don’t know the name of the cadet in the bird, so I can’t look him up.

This is Col. George E. Bell, of Artesia, California, a professor of naval science and tactics, and a Marine.

He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1936, and earned a silver star with the 6th Marine Division on Okinawa as a lieutenant colonel, commanding the First Battalion, Fourth Marines, 6th Marine Division. It was June of 1945, and Bell realized his entire battalion was suddenly at risk when the left side of his assault stalled. So, he moved up, found the location of the enemy fire, got wounded and coordinated the attack until the Japanese threat was reduced, allowing his Marines to seize the ridge.

The First Battalion had fought at both Guam and Okinawa, some of the most bitter fighting in the Pacific. So that’s who the Midshipmen were learning from, before settling into their three-year hitches. It says here that 16 percent of the Middies were going into the Corps.

Bell married twice, but it looks like he was single here. And this was his last year on campus. What comes next for him is an open mystery, but it appears he might have also been assigned to the Philippines sometime soon after. If I have the right guy, he made it to the 21st century, and died at 90.

I wonder if that was an invasion of the beach at Lake Martin.

This is Arthur Moore Jr., from Pell City, and president of the student body.

He was an Eagle Scout, he served as an Air Force navigator for three years after graduation. He married his college sweetheart, Elizabeth, and went to work with Alcoa Aluminum for 41 years. He became a masterful horticulturist, and president of the American Orchid Society. He worked closely with his church’s missions and was a big supporter of the arts. All the local kids got to see The Nutcracker, and whether they understood it or not, or knew it or not, Moore was the man behind it. When he died in 2017 at 84, he and his wife of 61 years had two daughters, five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

This is Suzanne Morgan, president of the women’s student government association, because there was one of those back then. She was a popular classmate in high school in Wetumpka, Alabama. And she was popular in college, too. She was voted a campus favorite, which is a yearbook photo honor, worked with the WSGA, and was also on the homecoming court. Somewhere along the way her parents moved to Texas, while she was studying education.

Right after graduation she married Ensign Albert Dilthey, who was working on his MBA degree at AU. He sailed on submarines for the U.S. Navy, became an exec at the Miami Herald worked with his local chamber of commerce, and various other civic groups. He died in 2011. She’s still with us, in North Carolina.

George Uthlaut was a senior from Orlando in this photograph, taking time from his studies as a chemical engineering major and being one of those people who are somehow involved in nine different busy body things on campus. But his life has been full of activity. So much so that in 2011 the Ginn School of Engineering inducted him into their Hall of Fame.

Uthlaut went into the gas game, and he got good at oil and gas exploration and production over three decades with Exxon, working from Florida to Alaska. When he left there, as managing director, he went over to Enron Oil and Gas and basically had a second career. Along the way, he and his wife, Dot, have been heavily involved in many philanthropic adventures.

Maybe my favorite is this, Prayers Of the People, from which Dot retired in 2016. These people volunteered for so long and so hard they had to retire from it. They visited patients in hospitals, weekly, for 35 years. And somehow baked into that they set up a parking program for families visiting various hospitals.

They’ve also given donated generously to the engineering school and have a computer lab there named after them. They still live happily in Texas.

This is Royce Jones, and Royce Jones’ reflection. He’s from the small south Georgia town of Tifton, which counted fewer than 7,000 people when this photo was artfully taken. Jones left to go to college, and then did a brief stint in the military, but after that, he went right back home, and right back to the family business. Over his career, he took over Jones Construction, and also owned concrete and paint companies.

The best part of the 2007 news copy I’m reading here is that it was written by someone who understood him. An old friend got in a great quote, and the reporter at the local paper knew that was the one, “He worked hard behind the scenes to make this a better community and asked for no credit. He was a man of character and integrity …”

Jones Construction did, and does, a lot of big business, he built stuff for the University of Georgia, prominent local farms, banks, and the local hospital. He not only added on to that hospital, but he made some significant donations to it. too. The man was the proverbial pillar.

Two of his sons are running the construction firm today, so it’s at least a three-generation company. And those two guys also followed their dad to Auburn. They were there just a few years before I was, in fact.

All of these photos will wind up in the Glomerata section, of course. You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all of the covers. The university hosts their collection here.

Seventy years ago was just around the corner, and almost a different world. You can see it in the old photos. It’s obvious, too, in the photos from my alma mater’s yearbook, the Glomerata, which I collect. My grandparents aren’t in this book, but their peers are. Maybe some people they knew, or would know later, are in here, though we’ll never know.

This is the third installment of our glance through 1954. Part one is here, and you can find part two here. I’ll put them all in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all of the covers. I wouldn’t blame you. They’re quite handsome. The university hosts their collection here.

This is Walter Everidge, a senior from Columbus, Georgia, (or Decatur, the old pubs disagree) studying industrial management, which is a sufficiently vague sounding major. He was also the editor of The Plainsman, and the next several people we’ll see worked for the campus paper. I spend a lot of time on them because, a few decades later, I was writing under their masthead.

The problem right now is, I can’t find anything else, at all, about Everidge. But he’s got that posed candid shot down pat, doesn’t he?

Josephine Newsom had a grand life. She got a masters in history at UGA and became a teacher. She got married, they had three kids, was at the vanguard of Head Start in her hometown, and would teach art, literature, science and history until she retired in 1993. She became a preservationist, working to revitalize historic buildings, and the president of her county’s historical society. When she died, in 2015, she was survived by her husband of 57 years, two sons, six grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

Carmer Robinson is the guy in the multicolored shirt. He was a junior from Georgia, studying textile engineering. He was in the Army Corps of Engineers during the Korean War. He traveled the world, lived in Hong Kong for a few years and eventually went back home, working his way into a job as the international sales director for a textile concern. He helped develop pre-washed and stretched denim. He was heavily involved in his community, and did a lot of local theater, too. He was 89 when he passed away in 2019, having raised three children, 10 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Judy Long grew up in Birmingham. She married another student, Jim, and they had three daughters and nine grandchildren. If I’m reading this correctly, one of her daughters had three sets of twins. Judy became a high school guidance counselor. Jim died in their 52nd year of marriage. A dozen years later, she would remarry a lifelong friend. She volunteered at hospitals and attended her church for 60 years. She died in 2021 and her family wrote her a lovely obituary.

Bea Dominick was a freshman from Prattville, Alabama. She graduated in 1957 and married an Emory grad in 1958. They lived in Georgia, where he had a private practice until he retired in 1999, and then joined the faculty at Emory. Bea and her husband traveled the world. She has three daughters, a son, and several grandchildren.

Helen Hackett’s life took her from Jasper, Alabama, to Auburn — the Glom said she studied journalism. She ventured on to Connecticut, and then Fort Lauderdale and Indian River Shores, Florida. It was there that she published the diary of her grandfather, who’d been a country doctor. She died in 2011, age 75. She’d been married for 42 years.

Frances Walthall was a sophomore education major from tiny Newbern, Alabama — population 350 or so back then and about half that size today. She married an Auburn man who became a manager at Alabama Power. They had four children and 14 grandchildren. Her husband died in 2007, but she’s still living in the state.

Les Ford was the managing editor of The Plainsman. The enormous headline tells us he’s reading a paper from the week of October 12th. You can read it here.

Ford was from Greenville, Mississippi, born just a few years after the flood. I hope he was the sort of fellow who held on to those socks until they became fashionable again.

JoAnne Lucci was a senior from Montgomery, Alabama. She was studying journalism, and after receiving two degrees from Auburn she went into the business.

But she realized that she wanted her summers off, so she could be in the outdoors. She loved the outdoors. She was always on her boat, fishing or skiing. And if she wasn’t on the water her hands were in the soil. She wound up teaching English and journalism at her high school alma mater for a quarter of a century. She had a lake house on Lake Martin. She had season tickets to Auburn games for almost five decades. So the odds are good that, at least once, I was on the water, or in the stadium, at the same time she was. She died last December, at 91.

To the right of her is Charles, “Red” Provost. A decade or so after this photo was taken, that clean cut young man would become a hippie. And then he discovered flamenco music. And he lived a fascinating life. He taught English in Italy, studied music in Spain, worked as a paralegal back home in the States. He’d also been a secretary, bill collector and a milkman. He died in 2000, but had been a musical fixture in Atlanta for more than 30 years.

That’s Ronald Owen, on the right, holding the piece of paper that was going to be a headline or a newsroom punchline. Owen went into the U.S. Army after school, and later went to work for General Dynamics, IBM, and the department store, Rich’s in Atlanta. He moved to Jacksonville, Florida, working as the IT Director for National Merchandise Company for more than 20 years. Well into his retirement he freelanced for newspapers around Florida.

And the answer to the question was, yes, the Tigers would go a-bowling. They headed to the Gator Bowl at the end of the 1953 season, and losing to Texas Tech.

Bill Neville, of Eufaula, Alabama, is seated in this photo. The basketball arena is currently named after the Nevilles, who have donated millions over the years.

Col. Walter J. Klepinger was a professor of military science and tactics, and headed the ROTC program. This was to be Klepinger’s last year on the Plains. And, for some reason, the yearbook had this photograph flipped, so I’ve taken the liberty of correcting that error here.

The university’s library records say he was there for 20 years. His family genealogy says he served in the Pacific, apparently on New Guinea from soon after Pearl Harbor until 1944 or thereabouts. He also had some NATO based duty stations after the war. The colonel was awarded the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star medal. He is buried at Arlington.

In 1954, service in the ROTC was a compulsory two-year program for all male students (who weren’t already veterans). It might not have been all bad, you got to wear all the smelly old green uniforms you wanted, and played with a bunch of hand-me-down gear.

Also, the ROTC cadets got to ride around in tanks. Can you imagine? This was probably at Fort Benning — which is now named Fort Moore — in Columbus.

That’s enough for now. In our next installment, we’ll take a quick look at the rest of the ROTC, and some of the always-fun space filler photographs.

All of these photos will wind up in the Glomerata section, of course. You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all of the covers. The university hosts their collection here.

Seventy years ago, things were different, but almost everything looks familiar. You can see it in the photos of campus life from the beautiful old yearbooks. And this is a look at my alma mater’s yearbook, the Glomerata, which I collect. My grandparents aren’t in this book, but their peers are. Maybe some people they knew, or would know later, are in here, though we’ll never know.

This is the second installment of our glance through 1954. Part one is here, but I’ll put them all in the Glomerata section, of course. You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all of the covers. I wouldn’t blame you. They’re quite handsome. The university hosts their collection here.

In 1954 the university was in the middle of the G.I. Bill enrollment explosion. The campus had their second largest ever enrollment, and the campus was still in a growth phase. I put a fair amount of context in the part one post, so let’s just jump in.

Since this is a highlight feature, rather than a complete look, I’ve been using a few rules — minimal buildings and minimal head shots– and I’m breaking both of my rules here. Just because this line art is well done.

This is a drawing of Comer Hall, which houses the College of Agriculture, where I spent half of my time. There was a computer lab on the third floor in my day, a small auditorium classroom on the second floor, and my advisor, the dean, had his office on the first floor. There was a fallout shelter in the basement, and that might be one of the few parts of the building I didn’t know anything about. It was built in 1920, burned and rebuilt in 1922. It is named after B.B. Comer, an early 20th century Alabama governor. And a progressive one, at that. (Progressive among his contemporary peers, to be sure.)

That’s the dean, E.V. Smith (no relation) who was director of Extension from 1951 to 1972 and a real power player of his era. The research center in nearby Shorter is named for Smith. There, researchers conduct experiments on plant breeding, animal husbandry, horticultural innovation, biosystems engineering and more. It’s comprehensive.

The younger man is the student president of the college of agriculture. I’m not sure when those positions disappeared, but we’ll figure it out in other books. Buck Compton was from a place called Nanafalia, which sits on a ridge above the Tombigbee. One of the 75 people there would have to drive some distance to find a town you’d ever heard of or read about. It’s the sort of middle of nowhere that’s surrounded by a lot of nowhere, is what we’re saying. It’s a small place now, it was small when Compton grew up there. Anyway, he met his wife, Barbara, in college when they were sophomores. They graduated and got married in the summer of ’54.

He joined the Air Force, and when he left the service, he returned to the family farm. He and his dad ran cattle, a timber company and a country store, and the cattle and store were still in operation until just a few years ago. She was a high school history teacher. They were married for 62 years until he died, in 2016. She passed away in 2020. Together, they raised two daughters, and they had five grandchildren.

On the same page are two smaller photos meant to be evocative of the CoAg experience. (I wonder if anyone called it that in the 1950s …) They’re a bit fuzzy because I resized them, but we’re obviously examining and weighing produce.

And it looks like we’re working on a small disc harrow here.

I wonder how long all of that equipment remained in use on campus, and where it went when they upgraded.

Here’s a drawing of Tichenor Hall, which is where I spent much of the rest of my time. By the time I showed up it was filled with journalism students. (Don’t laugh, there were a lot of us then.) The basement had some geography folks, but it was mostly just us. Tichenor was built in 1940, and is named after Isaac Taylor Tichenor, the university’s third president, serving in that role from 1872 to 1881. He was also a pastor, having served as a chaplain during the Civil War, a farmer, a mining executive and in the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Tichenor is one of those complicated 19th century people in modern eyes. He was a proponent of slavery. He felt the Confederacy lost their war because of the Union’s industrial strength. And that’s how he framed his work at the university, pushing for big changes in higher education and diversity in the local economies, sort of a preview of the New South that was to come.

Roger Allen went to college at Auburn, played baseball and graduated with a chemistry degree in 1918, and a master’s the next year. After lab work during World War I and some time in New York and at Howard College, he came back to the Plains to teach in 1928. They pulled him out of the classroom for a quarter-century run as an administrator, and he was at the helm when the College of Science and Mathematics saw a great deal of growth. He retired in 1967.

Bill Fickling was from Georgia, where he was a three-sport star, including two state championships in the hurdles. In college, he played varsity basketball and ran an incredibly respectful 110-meter hurdles, where he was a conference champion in his sophomore year. His dad was a real estate powerbroker, and Bill Jr. took on the family business. Junior did well for himself. He married Miss America, Neva Jane Langley, in 1955. They were together for 58 years, until she died in 2012. They raised four children. Her obituary is clear: her pageant life did not define her. But it followed her anyway. Bill was still active in his community through the twenty-teens.

A few scenes from Tichenor Hall. That looks like an adding machine of some sort.

And those typewriters, they even look clunky for their day. I hope at least some of them landed in the hands of collectors.

When I was in school we were working on Macs. They were almost as clunky, but incredibly modern. You never think about those things when you’re young and working on a deadline. I wonder what they are typing, and if it stuck with any of those students long after the assignment was complete.

This is Samford Hall, the modern administration building. The graduate school was housed there in the 1950s. Today it is the icon building for photos and branding, and it should be. It’s still a lovely place in the Georgia colonial style.

I include this one in appreciation for the dodging and burning that someone undertook to get this in the book. In darkrooms, you did this with paper and light. I had two courses in undergrad that were darkroom intensive, and I never mastered the analog skill. Whoever did this, though, had some talent. And whoever is in silhouette here is working on pages we might see later.

Did you notice the Coke bottle? That was a nice touch.

These next few are staffers of the Glomerata, and I include them because they gave us this wonderful book. That’s Fred Nichols on the left, he was the editor of the yearbook. He was from Columbiana, Alabama, and was involved in all sorts of stuff on campus. President of his fraternity, in two different leadership groups, edited the Greeks’ rag, was an associate editor of the newspaper (which we’ll see in our next installment) and in the student senate. I’ve no idea how he managed to study industrial management. He went into the Air Force for a time, got married and they raised two children and two grandchildren. He died in 2001. You’re going to meet her in just a few moments.

The guy on the right is Tommy Tate, who was the business manager. He ran track, was recognized in one the mysterious leadership groups and studied business. I’m not sure what became of him. Tate is a surprisingly common name.

Look at the middle photo. The guy on the right is Batey Smith. He studied architecture, served as a captain in the U.S. Army and then went home to create ahugely important Tennessee firm, helping to build modern Nashville. In 1999 he and his wife established an endowed scholarship at AU. His was a hugely successful career, the lifetime achievement sort of career. Founding member of this. board member of that. He and his wife retired to Auburn in 2013 and he lived there until he died, in 2022 at 88.

The woman on the right side of the right photo is Jean Cross. She studied home economics. If I’ve got the right one, she married a football player. He would become a high school coach and athletic director in Georgia, where they lived until they retired to Florida.

I’m not sure why these two got their own photo. Maybe they were late to the picture sesh. But they’re worth talking about.

David Irvine’s dad was on the faculty, and he’s a senior in this photograph. He studied art at Auburn, became a tank commander in Europe during the Korean War, came home and earned his master’s and doctorate degrees in educational psychology and counseling from UNC. He became a school counselor and a teacher. After retirement he became a writer. As of this writing, he, at 92 (!!!) is still writing for his local paper, The Daily Dispatch (Henderson, North Carolina).

The office space gets a little more crowded for the last series of Glomerata staff photos. Let’s see what we can find.

Kathryn Keith studied psychology and became a teacher, a vice principal and homemaker in Georgia. She and her husband of 50 years raised one child, a grandchild and a great grandchild. She passed away in 2006. Frances Walthall married an Auburn man who became a manager at Alabama Power. They had four children and 14 grandchildren. Her husband died in 2007, but she’s still living in the state.

Irene Donovan finished at Auburn, and then went to graduate school at Tulane. She became a social worker, helping families in Louisiana and Georgia throughout her career.

June Sellers married Fred Nichols, the editor of this yearbook we mentioned above. She survived her husband. They had two children and two grandchildren. She started the kindergarten program at her church, volunteered at Children’s Hospital in Birmingham, was in DAR and volunteered and was a member of a sackful of other organizations. In her later years she moved into an assisted living facility. Her 2007 obituary said “she participated in every activity and was, not surprisingly, a member of the Social Committee” there. Hers was a life of service and doing.

Mary Ann Willman, from Columbus, Georgia, was a sophomore studying home economics. She married Haskell Sumrall, an Auburn man, a BMOC who became a captain in the Marine Corps. They lived in Florida until retirement. They had three kids. She died in 2014, and he passed away in 2020. They are buried at Miramar National Cemetery, in California.

Bill Whitaker died just this year, at 91. He met his wife in college, while he was studying electrical engineering. Whitaker joined the Air Force and stayed in until 1968. By then he had a master’s degree and a lifelong infatuation with computers. He worked at IBM, then went into sales with another big firm, and put in machines at places like Oak Ridge, Red Stone and Cape Canaveral. He returned to Alabama to head up the data processing department of Trust National Bank. He started his own company, eventually sold it, went to Memorex and another place or two before retiring.

The woman standing next to him the photo? That’s his future wife, Margaret, a sophomore from Mobile. They had two kids and two grandchildren and what sounds like a full and hopefully wonderful life. They were married for 68 years.

All of these photos will wind up in the Glomerata section, of course. You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all of the covers. The university hosts their collection here.