There used to be a joke at Wabash College about the groundskeeper who mowed the huge campus lawns twice a year whether they needed it or not. The best part of the joke was that it was true. For a college located in the center of the "Athens of Indiana," Wabash was quite Spartan in attitude.
When a group of men from the Wabash Class of 1950 gathered on campus during the summer with their wives and friends, the primary topic of their dinner conversation was life in Mud Hollow, the group of Quonset huts that served as housing for the returning young World War II veterans, their wives, and inevitably, their babies. A few young professors and their families swelled the ranks of Mud Hollow, which sat along Jennison Street on the south end campus.
Through their laughter, the Mud Hollow alumni described the paper-thin walls that kept in both extremes of heat and cold, yet let pass through almost every syllable of an argument or dispute. All the young married couples were always strapped for money, but they shared everything they did have, including, on occasion, furniture to make an apartment look more attractive when a friend’s parents were coming to campus for a visit.
On many school nights, they told me, the studying stopped about 10:15 so a student and his wife could go next door for a short study break consisting of good conversation, a cup of hot coffee, and a slice of home-made pie. Then it was right back to the books. These young men were veterans, many of them attending college on the G.I. Bill, which afforded them a chance unavailable to them before the War. It was the least their grateful country could do for them, and they made the most of the opportunity. As one alumni told me several years ago, "I was a dumb high school kid just come to college, but these guys, these guys were men. They had been in a war and seen suffering and they weren’t about to put up with any nonsense."
A the good people at the Class of ’50 reunion described the wide boards that passed for their sidewalks in the muddy gullies between the huts of Mud Hollow, I couldn’t help remembering the story of the bi-annual mowings. The members of the reunion class would not have changed a thing about their experience at Wabash, but I’m glad to be on campus now when the grounds are in the most beautiful shape they have ever been in.
In the last several years there has been a concerted effort to put the exterior of Wabash College on a par with the high quality of the interior, which is the excellent liberal arts education offered students. President Andy Ford has seen to it that architecture of all the new buildings erected in the last ten years compliments buildings that have stood on campus for a century or more. The visual effect is beautiful.
The center of campus, buildings and grounds alike, has a cohesive appearance that is graceful and welcoming. It is especially inviting in the twilight of a warm summer’s evening when you can park your car and stroll around the grounds.
Almost all the Class of 1950 reunion party talked about how terrific the campus looks now. They walked all over the place, curious about the changes, eager to see all the improvements. Their Mud Hollow is long gone, but in their memories those shabby quarters and sidewalks made of boards remain the castles where their dreams were made; dwellings that held hard work, young love, and friendships that are still strong almost sixty years after they began.
Cantrell, a senior writer for Wabash College Public Affairs Department, write this twice-a-month column for the Paper of Montgomery County.