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.
