We go back once more some 90 years into the past for a few more glimpses at the people haunting the steps of my alma mater. It was the Great Depression. It was 1936. (Part one is here. Part two is here. Part three is right here.) This is hardly a complete look, but there’s a lot to find in 1936. Let’s see what is inside.

What is today the War Eagle Battalion traces its origins back to 1916, when President Wilson signed into law the Natioanl Defense Act. That gives us the modern ROTC, but the university’s military training program goes back to some of the earliest days of the institution and draws a line from Morrill Land-Grant Act. Back then, all males attending Auburn had to participate in the program for at least two years.

It hasn’t been compulsory for decades, but today it is a four-year program with cadets graduating as junior grade officer going into active duty, the national guard, or reserves.

Auburn University has produced more than 8,000 Army commissioned officers. Among the graduates include Ralph “Shug” Jordan ’32, who would invade Europe in between stints becoming a legendary coach, Rep. William Nichols ’39, Astronaut Jim Voss ’72, NFL Hall of Famer Kevin Greene ’84, Olympic Gold Medalist Ruthie Bolton ’89, and, even in this book, a few important future generals.

But, first, here’s the cover.

It’s a short little section, so we’ll try to concentrate on finding out who a lot of these people are. But, first, here’s a parade shot.

They’re standing in front of Ross Hall, which is still at the center of things. I can’t get in that exact spot on Google Maps, but here’s the view. You can scroll around through here a great deal, if you like.

Here’s the cadet brigade staff, commanded by Cadet Colonel W.T. Wingo, Jr. He’s second from the left in this formation. We met him recently: William Taylor Wingo was a chemical engineering student from Birmingham. After school he became a Marine. By 1942 he was one of the Corps’ youngest majors. He fell ill in Samoa that year. They flew him to California, but he died there, apparently of pneumonia, just before Christmas, leaving behind a wife and young daughter.

On the left is William C. Piatt, an aeronautical engineering major from Birmingham. He would stay in the army for a while, and was a major in the artillery by the time World War 2 was over. He married a Mississippi girl, and they built themselves a life there. She worked in real estate and owned a dance studio. They were prominent members of their community. He was remembered, when he died at 64 in 1974, as a pioneer in air conditioning — and that’s saying something in the Deep South. His wife survived him. When she passed away at 79 in 1998, they had a son, two daughters, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Carl K. Warren, Jr., in the back, was a science and literature major from nearby Opelika. He fought in the war, received the Silver Star while in the 4th Infantry Division. Sometime soon after he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and took a post at the U.S. Military Academy. His wife died while they were stationed in Hawaii in 1959. She’s buried at Arlington. It looks like he remarried. What became of him after that I can’t say.

Eugene Lee was a civil engineering major. He married a Birmingham Southern grad in 1940. He served in World War 2 and in Korea. He worked at Tennessee Coal and Iron, which was, at that time, busy building a certain reputation, shall we say. He died in 1988, at 76. His wife made it to 89, and passed away in 2002. They’re buried Fort Logan National Cemetery, in Colorado.

Herman Harris was a business student from Clanton. While he was a captain of the ROTC, he was also the business manager of The Plainsman. We met him a few weeks back. He became a brigadier general in the Air Force, finally returned from the uniform in 1971. While in the reserves he was an auditor and inspector for General Motors, ran small businesses in south Alabama and a good-sized farm. He also ran a hospital, from 1963 until he died there in 1974. People remembered his role with the local Little League, as president of the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary, the Red Cross and Community Chest. He was survived by his wife and three adult children.

This is listed as “The Auburn Band.” It’s included in the military section, which probably makes sense for the time, even if we associate them with sports today.

There are 83 members listed. There in the center is the band’s director, Paul “Bedie” Bidez. A generation before he’d been a captain and 175 pound fullback on some of the great early teams. By this point he was coaching and running the band, which marched under his direction for 32 years. The modern band has 380 members. Almost as many members of today’s band are music majors as those in the picture, above. Bidez deserves a bit of credit for that. He founded the music department.

And here’s the rifle team. They’d won the conference championship the year before. The team was looking forward to hosting the championship this season. The program was expanding, too. They were coached by Lt. William Ehrgott, who came from the Military Academy, MIT, and the French Tactical School. He was an engineer before becoming a professor of military science and tactics at Auburn. He was there for four years. He was in North Africa in 1942, later becoming a staff engineer in the Ninth Air Force, rising to chief of staff as they fought in Europe and North Africa. His billets would grow more impressive as his career marched on. He was promoted to brigadier general in 1952. Probably it was all the lessons he learned from this rifle team.

The SEC doesn’t keep records of ancient rifle championships online, unfortunately. I’ve been pouring over the campus paper for a few minutes and other state publications, but can’t find anything elsewhere that tells us how they did particular season. I do know that later in 1936 it was announced that the university would create a co-ed rifle team. That had to be pretty exciting for the 1930s.

Also, I found this, in a March issue of The Plainsman.

They were mistaken here about “no athletic relations.” The two schools met in basketball for the first time in 1924, for example. There may be other sports where the schools tangled, but history is a challenge for the athletic department and I don’t want to spend all night on that. We do know they’d not played in football since 1907. We know why they weren’t playing. They did, too. It’d be a dozen more years before the football teams faced off again, in 1948. The state legislature would have to strongly motivate the two schools to make that happen.

But, as you’ll soon see, even without their greatest rival, the Tigers would have plenty of competition. Next week, we’ll talk athletics.

All of this 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. The university hosts their collection here.

I have fired up the wayback machine and we are going way back, or a reasonably moderate distance back, depending on your perception of these things, to see the people at my alma mater in 1936. We are once again jumping in the time machine, heading back 90 years, to see what the ol’ alma mater was like in 1936. (Part one is here. Part two is here.) The Great Depression was full of depressing things, but the students were determined to make their memories and live their young lives. In many respects, theirs is a different place than the one I knew, but it is awfully familiar.

This is hardly a complete look, but there’s a lot to find in 1936. Let’s see what is inside.

The senior class section includes 336 students and, alongside their headshots we learn their names, their hometowns, what they’re studying and some of their extracurriculars. There are also some vertical photos of some of the high profile students to fill up the margins. We’ll wrap up our look at those today. These are vertical photos, and include a little too much negative space. If I ever meet the young man who designed this — he’d be a very old man by now — I will express my dismay that something he did a century ago hurts the layout to my website. He’d probably wonder why I was hassling him. The photos are fine, he’d say. He’d be right.

But, first, here’s the cover.

Allow me to introduce you to Gilbert McMillan, a chemical engineering student. In addition to being a baseball captain he was in one of the secret societies, and also a ranking officer in the ROTC. He was born in Malvern, and grew up in Alabama, just down the road, in Tuskegee. He married a Jersey girl. And you can not predict his future from this one photo.

He went to work for DuPont, where he worked for 33 years, helping to start nuclear reactors at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. That seems reasonable for a man that had worked on the Manhattan Project. He was a tree farmer, a city councilman, and then a state senator in South Carolina for decade, leaving that body in 1979. He was the sort of state lawmaker that did not want to spend any money on anything. He’d been a vocal ultra-conservative, in a legislature that doesn’t like loud members. He was apparently instrumental in getting the state to vote for the 19th Amendment. (This was in 1969, and was purely a formality. The amendment had been in the constitution for almost 50 years by then.) The South Carolina Senate honored him with a resolution upon his death, in 1998, aged 83. His wife survived him by a decade. They’d had two daughters. And when his wife passed she could count four grand children and five great-grandchildren.

The head cheerleader was a mechanical engineering major from Birmingham. In his four years on campus he’d been a part of almost everything. Class officer three years in a row, executive cabinet, Spades, Greek this and Greek that, an ROTC captain. One wonders how he had time to study.

After school he caught on with Goodyear Tire and Rubber, then went into the war as a captain in the Pacific. He spent much of his career after the war at at the Birmingham Ornamental Iron Company, where he established Meadowcraft, a furniture division that would, one-day, be one of the successful casual furniture makers in the country. (We have some Meadowcraft furniture in our home.) He was incredibly successful in his business ventures, which led to time as a general chairman of the United Way, and participation in many of the prominent civic and social organizations in his hometown. (I’d list them, but it is excessive.) He was also on the board of some of the largest business concerns in the state. I just found a newspaper clipping from 1998 that talks about how he was teaching fans cheers from 60 years prior. He died, at 90, in 2003. He was survived by his wife of 61 years. They had five children and eight grand-children.

Millard Morris was captain of the football team, but he was also a dynamite baseball player. He threw the first recorded no hitter in school history in 1936 and was named team MVP. He spent a year in the minors, going 2-6 with Columbus and Cordele. He threw four complete games, but that seems to be the end of his athletic career. He shows up in the society pages like a lot of the young people did for a while. He grew bananas in Panama for a spell. He was the father of five sons. He died in 1987 at 75.

John Haygood Paterson was well known for his football prowess. A 1960 Sports Illustrated feature named him a Silver Anniversary All American. He was an all-conference lineman in his day.

He went into the family business, where he was part of the third generation to run a huge floral business. He’d served as a county official in central Alabama, as a member of the state’s Agricultural Center Board, the Rotary and more. He died in 1988, aged 74. He had two daughters and four grandchildren. Extra fact, his grandfather, William Burns Paterson, made the boat ride from Scotland in 1869 or so, and a few years later moved to Montgomery, built up the flower business and started what is now Alabama State University. William died when John was young, I wonder if he had any memories of him.

It’d be a shame to draw conclusions about a person from just one photograph, but George Quinney looks like he was ready to be the archetype of a certain sepia-toned way of live, doesn’t it?

He was from Columbus, Georgia, but would later spend 40 years in Jacksonville, Florida. He worked for Blue Cross-Blue Shield. He was a big part of the alumni organization down later well into his later years. He died in 1989, at 77, the father of two sons and four grandchildren.

We met John Rush a few weeks ago in the first installment. His is a sad story, but that sweater … I need one of those.

He was from Mobile, the class president, majoring in aeronautical engineering. He became a naval aviator. He died just before his 27th birthday, in June of 1941. He’d been conducting a test flight of the Curtiss SNC-1 Falcon when he got caught in a squall off Pensacola. He and his co-pilot were killed. Rush was buried at Arlington. His father, John Sr., was also an Auburn man. He died when Junior was a freshman in school.

Jane Slack was Miss Auburn, a little pageant vote contest that doesn’t mean much off campus, but is one of those things that sits prominently on the school calendar. It got a few mentions for her in newspapers late that winter, all using the same contributed headshot, which is a tightly cropped shot of her senior portrait.

In 1937 she married her college sweetheart, Bobbie Black. I can find more about him than her. They met their first year in school. He was a local boy, and a serious athlete, playing basketball, throwing the javelin, football. He was, in fact, a part of the school’s first bowl team.

When his playing days were over, he coached for a bit, but soon moved into banking. He’d served in the Mule Pack Corps and artillery during the war. When he retired in 1981 they moved to Florida. They’d been married 60 years and had five children, seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren when she passed away, in 1997. She’s buried in her hometown, Birmingham. He moved back home after that. Her husband lived for four more years. He’s buried in Auburn.

I wonder if they were friends with James Vance. He was from Gadsden, studying business. He’d been the president of the sophomore class. He played in the marching band and the jazz band.

After school, he went to Birmingham and worked at First National Bank. He’d become vice chair of the local medical clinic board and was a president of Alabama Goodwill, and the treasurer of his church. He worked with the local Junior Achievement program, serviced on some city commissions and the local lung association, among several other civic groups. He died at 69 in 1984, survived by his wife and a son and daughter.

Here’s an ink-stained wretch, Doug Wallace of Minneapolis, who was studying science and literature. In addition to running the paper, he was in Spades, ROTC, and a member of the Auburn Players, which was a band, as I recall. He was destined to become a legend.

He served for five years in artillery with the Second Armored. They fought in North Africa, Sicily, and landed in Normandy, crossing into Germany late in 1944. He earned the silver and bronze stars. When peace came, but before he could return home, he ran a division newspaper, the editor of the first ever English language newspaper published in Berlin. When he finally made it back to the States he worked at the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, and prior to their manager he was a big part of both papers. He wrote comlumns. And, in 1953, WRBL took to the air in Columbus. He was their weatherman. (He was not a meteorologist.) There are quite a few photos of him giving forecasts off a chalkboard, which would have been peak technology in those days, I guess. He stayed in that role until 1985, retiring at 70. By then, of course, he was a local legend. He wrote a three-volume history of his church and was a big time gardener. When he died, at 90, in 2005, he was survived by his wife of 63 years, two children, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Charles Whitten Walter was a business major from Birmingham. When he died in 1986, at 72, the second sentence of his obituary gave readers the details of his college life, half-a-century prior. Isn’t it interesting how that’s the priority? He’d been in Sigma Nu, Spades, and an honor society.

Like so many of his classmates, he also served in the war. He was also in the Second Armored. Back home, he became a board member of the Birmingham Botanical Society and helped renovate the Botanical Gardens (Which is a great visit.) He ran the parks and rec board for Mountain Brook, the richest Birmingham suburb. I don’t know that he was one of the Big Mules, but the rest of his obit lines up with it. If he wasn’t, he was buddies with all of them. He and his wife had a daughter and son.

Billy Wingo was a chemical engineering student from Birmingham. He was high up in the ROTC, in all the secret societies, and somehow a part of three different organizations that use Greek letters. I assume two of those are academic and honorary.

His given name was William Taylor Wingo, and after school he went into the Marines. By 1942 he was one of the Corps’ youngest majors. He fell ill in Samoa. They flew him to California, but he died there, apparently of pneumonia. All over the Christmas newspapers there were stories about his death. He had a wife and a young daughter. Just horrible.

Merwin York was a south Alabama boy, a business major from Monroeville. He played in all three bands on campus.

Later in life, he was the chairman of his local hospital board for 16 years. He’d also been the fire chief and a town councilman. He was in the American Legion, the Chamber of Commerce, and was a lay leader of his church. (It’s a very small town, but still.) He was a manager for a construction supply company. He did all that and still had time to raise a family. He and his wife had two daughters. He died in 2000, at 85.

Yes, that’s a lot of men. I’m just sharing the people the Glomerata staff (also a lot of men) highlighted. Take it up with the 1930s patriarchy. But here are two of the women who were graduating seniors. This is Lois Bailey, who was an education major from neighboring Opelika.

She moved down to the Gu’f in 1946. She was in all sorts of clubs and organizations down there. She also worked with the Red Cross, taught Sunday School and played piano at her church for more than 30 years. She taught special education. Lois died at 89, survived by two daughters, her second husband (having lost her first after 56 years of marriage), six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

It’s amazing, but none of these things are in these kids minds when these photos were taken. How could they be?

Like Luella Botsford. She was also from Opelika. Also studying education. Perhaps these two were close friends. Luella wrote for the campus paper, the Plainsman.

She moved south in 1946, and settling in for a nice life in Enterprise. She founded the first Girl Scout troop in that city, and served on the Scouts’ state executive board for a long while. She was active in the arts, and received an award from the governor for that part of her civic life. She was a Sunday school teacher. She’d been a member of the university’s College of Liberal Arts advisory council. She and her husband had one child that died as an infant. Her husband died in 2000. She lived to see 86, passing away in 2002, survived by four daughters, a son, and nine grandchildren.

Next week, we’ll start our glimpse into some of the classic student life photos, so do come check it out.

All of this will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. The university hosts their collection here.