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.
