Are reports of the marching band’s last hurrah greatly exaggerated?

STANDING OVATION: Tracing its origins to the early 20th century, by the mid-1980s, the University’s marching band moved from on-field performances at football games to a pep band that performed from the stands of Fauver Stadium, a tradition that continues today.

I was both surprised and very pleased to see the photo of Yellowjacket marching band members in the Fall 2022 issue of Rochester Review and both interested and sad to learn of the probable year of the band’s demise. I had been wondering for decades about when the band stopped functioning. Can you tell me why the band was discontinued?

—Harrington (Kit) Crissey Jr. ’66

Letters from alumni of the 1970s to Review also dispute the end date of the marching band proposed in the Fall 2022 issue, echoing a 1974 Campus Times letter from Michael Horowitz ’77: “Perhaps few people realize it, but the UR Marching Band is alive and well.” And so it would be—for about another decade.

The end of the band can probably be attributed to several factors, including competition from other activities and funding. Considered a student group providing a service to the University, the band could not receive Students’ Association funding and relied on an academic department—or in this case, two departments: music and athletics. In the September 20, 1982, Campus-Times, Sharmila Mathur ’85 reported that athletics became the band’s sole sponsor in spring 1981 but lacked a budget line to support it. With practice time in Fauver Stadium scarce, there was less stepping on the field and more pepping in the stands, and the baton was passed to the Varsity Pep Band, which continued to “create spirit in the fans by displaying spirit” as noted in the 1985 Interpres.

The origins of the University’s marching band—or perhaps the marching University Band—are no clearer than its coda.

In the Winter 1984 issue of Review, Frederick Fennell ’37E ’39E (MM), ’88 (Honorary) recounted his role in starting the band. “It was on a September afternoon just fifty years ago last fall when I, a pea-green Eastman School freshman . . . hiked over to the new River Campus to found the Ģ����ý Marching Band.”

While hesitating to suggest Fennell was beating his own drum, there is considerable evidence that an organization known as the University Band, which performed and marched at football games, predated his Rochester arrival by some 25 years.

“Our University band should be the rallying point for our improved cheering and for the rendering of our really good college songs,” announced the November 18, 1908, Campus newspaper. In the years that follow, information about the band appears sporadically; each successive article announces a new band almost as though there had been no previous group.

Thus the October 1926 issue of Rochester Review trumpeted the news to alumni: “A praiseworthy addition to student life is a new University band, which made its initial appearance of the season at the Clarkson game, strikingly garbed in yellow jersies (sic), blue sailor trousers, and blue toques with yellow tassels . . . The band was organized by [Eastman School of Music professor] Sherman A. Clute . . . with the co-operation of Matthew D. Lawless, ’09 . . . and Eugene Loewenthal, ’28, student manager.”

The next Review issue pointed out that “quite aside from the rendition of music . . . [the band] is providing a definite tie-up between the college and the Eastman School of Music. Only about one-third of the band members are students of the college; the remaining two-thirds are from the School of Music.”

Home games were played at University Field, in the area where East High School is currently located—bounded by Culver Road, East Main Street, Ohio Street, and Atlantic Avenue. When the River Campus opened in the fall of 1930, the band, directed by Theodore Fitch, Class of 1922, joined the football team in the new Varsity Stadium. (The stadium was named for Edwin Fauver in 1951 and is now part of the Brian F. Prince Athletic Complex.)

Fennell took over the marching band in early 1934, and by all accounts (not just his own), the ensemble was a rousing success even after he passed on the baton about a decade later. In the off-season, he converted the group into a true University Band. Fennell directed its first concert in Strong Auditorium, won Eastman director Howard Hanson’s approval, and embarked on one of the University’s most illustrious careers.

Fennell’s reminiscence may resonate with that of other marching band alumni: “Whatever has happened to me in the fifty years since then, no matter where, when, or with whom, all dates from that beautiful early-autumn afternoon with my own first group. And I don’t intend, ever, to forget it.”

Ask the Archivist features a question for Melissa Mead, the John M. and Barbara Keil University Archivist and Rochester Collections Librarian.

Has anyone photographed ‘The History of . . .’?

When I was a student, and each time I return to Rochester, I find Professor [John] Slater’s inscriptions on the front of the library (“HERE IS THE HISTORY OF HUMAN IGNORANCE,” “HERE IS THE HISTORY OF MAN’S HUNGER FOR TRUTH”) particularly moving.

I am searching for matching photographs—taken at the same time, from the same angle, with the same lighting, etc. When I was an undergraduate, I spent an afternoon in the library looking at historical photos and other documents from when the River Campus was first constructed. At that time, I was able to browse a set of black-and-white prints taken by Ansel Adams. But it’s been 40-plus years (!) since then, so I don’t remember whether the photos I am looking for were among those prints.

��—John Womer ’82

In 1998, then University photographer Joe Gawlowicz took the pair of photos shown here: these seem to be the only deliberately created pair in the Archives.

Ansel Adams visited campus in 1952 and created a portfolio of photographs to use in a capital campaign to fund the merging of the Colleges for Women and Men. Adams’s photographs only include one of the inscriptions (“human ignorance”). The 1977 cover of Professor Arthur May’s A History of the URochester, 1850–1962 features a dramatic photograph of the other (“hunger for truth”).

As you note, the texts were composed by Professor John Rothwell Slater. Hired in 1905 as assistant professor of English, he chaired that department from 1908 until his retirement in 1942. The October 1930 River Campus dedication issue of Rochester Review noted: “Professor John R. Slater . . . has virtually carved his personality on the front of the Rush Rhees Library for the inspiration of future generations, as well as the present.” His original compositions, or choice of quotations, also grace the library’s doors and Messinger Periodical Reading Room and the Meridian marker in the center of the Eastman Quadrangle.

Correspondence in the Archives between Slater and the University’s president Rush Rhees shows that formulating the inscriptions began in 1929. “There are plenty of familiar quotations about books, but they are all hackneyed by frequent repetition. Certainly, I would not quote Bacon’s recipes for readings. . . .” A deeply religious man, Slater also looked to the Bible: “The pessimistic dicta of [Ecclesiastes] come as near the goal as anything, but not for the young.”

One draft shows three pairs of suggested texts—glimmers of the final version alongside Milton and Emerson—to which Slater has added a note: “There is first the literature of knowledge and secondly the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach; the function of the second is to move.”

John Lorenz, deputy librarian of Congress, spoke at the 1970 dedication of the addition to Rush Rhees Library. As a teenager, he accompanied his parents on a 1930s road trip across New York state:

“I don’t recall how we happened to stop at the URochester campus. I was already an inveterate reader so one of the buildings we visited was the [Library]. . . . What really made a great and lasting impact on me were the two inscriptions on either side of the entrance, an impact which led me to take paper and pencil right then and there and copy [them]. I have seen many inscriptions since that day, but I have never again been impressed to the point of copying another one down . . . and this yellowing piece of paper has been in my files ever since. Looking back, I’m inclined to believe that if there was any single influence whichstarted me toward thinking of being a librarian, it was the impact and the meaning of these inscriptions.”

In submitting the final texts to Rhees, Slater reported on a meeting at which he and other faculty considered every element of the inscriptions: weighing the meaning, effect, and word count. “One member of the faculty doubted whether ‘ages yet to come’ are likely to be ‘wiser.’ Dean [Arthur] Gale said of this criticism, ‘If they are not wiser, God help them!’ And to this I add, Amen.”

Ask the Archivist features a question for Melissa Mead, the John M. and Barbara Keil University Archivist and Rochester Collections Librarian.

Olivia Hooker ’62 (PhD) recently honored with building dedication

HISTORY MAKER: The late Olivia Hooker ’62 (PhD) made history as the first Black woman to join the United States Coast Guard. Shown here in uniform in 1945, Hooker had survived the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre as a youngster before her family moved to Ohio. She made her career as a psychologist and educator as well as an advocate for Tulsa survivors, helping to form what became the Tulsa Race Massacre Commission.

The first African American woman to serve in the US Coast Guard was honored this summer with a building dedication in Ohio, where her family moved after surviving the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

The Dr. Olivia Hooker Building, part of the Coast Guard’s Cleveland Marine Safety Unit, was officially renamed for Olivia Hooker ’62 (PhD) during a ceremony in August. The facility is the third in the service to bear Hooker’s name, joining a dining hall at the Coast Guard’s station on Staten Island and a training facility in guard’s headquarters in Washington, DC.

Hooker grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where her father owned a clothing store in a prosperous African American neighborhood that was sometimes called “Black Wall Street.”

In 1921, when Hooker was six years old, an accusation that a Black man had assaulted a white woman led to an attack by a mob of white men on the neighborhood. The 24-hour assault led to the deaths of an estimated 300, mostly Black, Tulsans and leveled more than 1,000 homes and Black businesses—including the Hookers’ store.

Following the massacre, Hooker’s family moved to Columbus, Ohio. As a college student at Ohio State University, Hooker became an activist in a campaign to secure for Black women the same opportunities in the military that World War II was opening up for white women.

She wanted to join the Navy, but her application was denied multiple times. A friendly Coast Guard recruiter convinced her to join that branch under its women’s reserve program, SPAR (“Semper Paratus, Always Ready”).

At Rochester, she was one of the first Black women to receive a PhD, earning the degree in psychology and embarking on a career as a psychologist and educator.

In the late 1990s, she helped form the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, which made a case for reparations. While that goal has eluded the group, Hooker achieved one of her lifelong goals posthumously: a week after her death in 2018, the group, gearing up for the centennial anniversary of the tragedy, renamed itself the Tulsa Race Massacre Commission.

The first ‘skip’ of a national mixed curling champion leads a team to this fall’s world curling championships.

NUANCED VIEW: “Balance and touch” are the keys to being a curler, says Pulli, who has played the sport most of her life, including as a student at Rochester. “A great curler develops patiently over time by learning all the nuances of the game.”
Featured image photo credit: J. Adam Fenster

After finishing second in a national curling competition in 2019, Caitlin Costello Pulli ’97 couldn’t wait for another shot at gold. Turns out, she had to wait three years, as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down competition.

This past April, Pulli and three teammates made up for lost time by capturing the 2022 US mixed fours curling championship, hosted by the Rochester Curling Club. The national title earned them a spot in the world championships, scheduled for October in Aberdeen, Scotland, and featuring about 40 teams from across the globe.

“Winning nationals was a dream come true, especially in front of a hometown crowd and friends and family,” Pulli says. “It was worth the wait.”

Team Pulli is headed by Caitlin—the first female captain (known as a “skip”) to win a national mixed fours championship. The quartet includes her husband, Jeff Pulli, and friends Rebecca Andrew and Jason Scott.

Invented in Scotland and extremely popular in Canada, the game wins new aficionados with each Winter Olympics, as TV viewers are introduced to curling’s strategic gamesmanship and learn its colorful terminology. Two teams of players compete by sliding 44-pound stones (known as “rocks”) across a sheet of ice toward a concentric target area (the “house”). Each team tries to get their stones as close to the center of the circle (the “button”) as they can, with points awarded for the number of stones that a team places closer to the button than their opponent’s nearest rocks.

Team members influence the path of each rock by using brooms to “sweep” the ice ahead of the rocks as the stones travel toward the house.

The skip is the strategist, dictating the placement of every shot to maximize scoring or prevent an opponent from scoring. Skips direct throwers where to aim each stone and how hard to throw it, and they tell sweepers when and where to sweep.

The skip also throws the last two shots of every “end” (similar to an “inning” in baseball) in a contest—often the most pressure-packed shots of the match.

“The most important skill a new curler needs to master is balance and touch,” Pulli says. “A great curler develops patiently over time by learning all the nuances of the game.”

Pulli grew up in Utica, New York, and was introduced to curling by her grandparents, who were members of a curling club. “I loved it right away,” she says.

A biology major at Rochester, she competed in junior nationals for three years while an undergraduate, finishing second in 1996. She met Jeff 10 years ago through curling. They were married five years ago and live in Rochester with their two daughters. Caitlin is a chemical and materials engineer for Xerox Corporation.

Mixed fours curling is not an Olympic sport, so there’s no ranking system. When Pulli was fully competing in women’s fours, her team was ranked second in the country. She was a silver medalist at the 2006 world championships and finished second in the 2010 Olympic Trials, just missing a chance to compete in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. “That was a heartbreaker,” she says.

She has competed in the US women’s championship 14 times and earned a gold medal in 2011. She also has four silver medals and one bronze.

She’s excited to train with her team for the world championships, where Canada, Sweden, Scotland, and Switzerland will be the favorites.

“Our goal will be to make the 16-team playoffs,” she says. “We won’t be a favorite, but there’s always a shot if you have a couple of great games in the playoffs.”

This article originally appeared in the spring 2022 issue of the Rochester Review magazine.

Historian Ellen Singer More ’79 (PhD) explores the complex legacy of pioneering sex educator Mary Calderone ’39M (MD)

UNIVERSALIST: “We are all sexual, all of our lives, each in our own unique way at any given moment,” said Calderone, a Quaker, who believed sexuality was a divinely bestowed gift to be celebrated. While she shocked some, she alienated others, particularly the young, beginning in the late 1960s, with her espousal of what she called “responsible sexuality.”

From the 1960s until well into the 1980s, Mary Calderone ’39M (MD) was a high-profile and a divisive figure in American culture.

That may have been inevitable, given the subject of her work and the social context in which she operated.

Calderone was the first medical director of the Planned Parenthood Federation, holding that position during the approval and roll-out of the first oral contraceptive in the United States. In 1964, she left the federation to cofound the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States, or SIECUS (since 2019 known as SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change). She was the author or coauthor of multiple books, including The Manual of Contraceptive Practices (1964), The Family Book about Sexuality (1980), and Talking with Your Child about Sex (1984).

The mission of SIECUS under Calderone’s leadership was not only to convey accurate information about sex, but also to change attitudes. At a time when parents, educators, and religious and civic leaders expressed great anxiety over the implications of “the pill” for the sexual lives of young people, Calderone and her colleagues advanced a positive view of sexuality as a natural and healthy part of life that emerges during childhood and can remain vibrant throughout life.

At the start of her career, in the 1940s, many of her contemporaries found her views shocking. By the late 1960s, however, she began to lose her radical edge. In The Transformation of American Sex Education: Mary Calderone and the Fight for Sexual Health (New York University Press, 2022), Ellen More ’79 (PhD) traces Calderone’s career and explores her profound and complicated legacy in the context of the larger history of sex education in the United States.

More was a postdoc at the Medical Center in 1984 when she first met Calderone. A historian by training—of Tudor-Stuart England, to be exact—More, much like Calderone, shaped her career in the context of her family circumstances. Now a medical historian and professor emeritus in psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, More had a husband with a job at Kodak and a young daughter when she was starting her career. She was nearing the completion of her dissertation, taking stock of the opportunities available to her locally, when she was offered the chance to develop and teach Rochester’s first undergraduate course on the history of the American medical profession. Questions raised by her students—many of them young women preparing for careers in medicine—and a tip from then professor of medicine Edward Atwater ’50 about a rich collection of materials related to early women physicians he had amassed and donated to the Miner Library (now part of the Edward C. Atwater Collection of American Popular Medicine and Health Reform) led her to research women physicians, and eventually, Calderone.

“Calderone herself was not someone you would get close and personal with,” More says, recalling that first meeting and several more with Calderone later in the 1980s. But she was deeply charismatic. The daughter of one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, Edward Steichen, Calderone, who was born in 1904, spent her childhood jet-setting between Paris and New York and finished off her secondary education at New York’s elite Brearley School.

One of the challenges of telling Calderone’s story is contending with how much public discourse on sexuality has changed in the years since she was active, and since her death in 1998. It’s tempting to ask, what would Calderone have said?

We’ll never know. But Calderone was motivated throughout her life by “a deeply held belief in universalism,” More says. A Quaker throughout her life, “she was interested in universalizing. That was her orientation. She wanted to express that sexuality was a universal human need and a universal, underlying biological system.

“However it expressed itself, it was part of every human.”

Who Was Mary Calderone ’39M (MD)? A Brief Introduction in Five Scenes

The New York Times anointed Mary Calderone ’39M (MD) “the grand dame of sex education” when she died in 1998.

But she, like all great social pioneers, was a complicated, nuanced figure who devoted her considerable energy on projects that were not met with wholehearted enthusiasm by the society she was hoping to help. Here are five important ideas about her life and work, drawn from The Transformation of American Sex Education: Mary Calderone and the Fight for Sexual Health (New York University Press, 2022), by Ellen More ’79 (PhD).

1. As a child, Calderone received mixed messages at home about sexuality.

Calderone was born as Mary Steichen in 1904 to parents steeped in the transatlantic artistic avant-garde. Her father was the renowned photographer Edward Steichen, credited along with Alfred Stieglitz as a major figure in the transformation of photography into an art form. During Mary’s childhood and adolescence, Steichen became a pioneer in fashion photography, producing, More writes, “wide-ranging studies of the human form,” imbued with “the modernist view of the body as a subject of straightforwardly sensuous representation.”

Mary’s mother, Clara, by contrast, was “a perfect exemplar of Victorian sexual attitudes,” More says, and “clearly very uncomfortable with her husband’s sexual openness.”

Following a common Victorian practice, Clara put Mary to bed in aluminum mittens designed to prevent masturbation. But despite Steichen’s seemingly libertine attitudes, according to More there is no evidence that Steichen ever objected to Clara’s treatment of Mary—treatment that Calderone later characterized as sexual shaming that left a deep impact on her. More relates another incident from Calderone’s childhood that made a lasting impression: a teenaged gardener exposed himself to Calderone while the two were in a shed. “I think any parent would be horrified,” More says. But what remained with Calderone years later were Steichen’s words to her, after he fired the gardener: “Now you have lost your innocence.”

“Those words were burned into her memory and were in some ways, some of the most important ones ever said to her,” More says. “I really believe that her campaign to destigmatize sexuality—and particularly children’s sexuality, their sense of pleasure in their own sexual beings—is rooted in these experiences of her childhood.”

What’s for lunch?

An alumni letter in the recent Campus Times tribute to the late Miguel Rodriguez ’96 mentioned a Rochester dish from the ’90s called a “Squealy Gobbler.” Have you ever heard of that? Was it the Mel Burger of the Clinton era?

—Daniel Gorman Jr. ’14, ’23 (PhD)

Rare is the generation of college students that recalls, and admits to, a beloved dining services offering. Rarer still is the favorite with staying power beyond the waistline. The Mel Burger, with its ever-better secret sauce, has been on the menu since 2005. By contrast, the Squealy Gobbler was available in the Wilson Commons Pit only for a few years in the mid-to-late-1990s. Its ingredients and preparation were a University Archives mystery that only alumni from that era could solve. A Facebook query posted by Alumni Relations sparked a sizzling online conversation, with the sandwich described by Peter Schenck ’96 as “Turkey, ham, cheddar on the grill, then onto a sub roll with BBQ sauce . . . Squealy (ham) Gobbler (turkey) . . .”

The University Archives has a jar of Mel Sauce preserved for the ages, but always welcomes memories of favorite dishes, staff, and dining companions.

My great-great-great grandfather started Verdin Bell in 1842, but there was only one early American bell foundry that ever learned how to cast a true carillon bell, Meneely & Company of Watervliet, New York, founded in 1826. Meneely cast their first chime of bells in 1854, and in 1930, cast 17 bells for the Ģ����ý in Rush Rhees Library. Can you tell me what happened to the original bells, which were replaced by a carillon in 1973? The original chime was unique because it was so large.

—Tim Verdin, president, Verdin Bell Company, Cincinnati, Ohio

A.W. Hopeman and Sons were the general contractors for many of the University’s buildings, including the Eastman School of Music and Eastman Theatre, and the original River Campus buildings. The Hopeman Family gave the chime of 17 Meneely bells as the literal crowning touch on the library tower. The bells were heard weekly for many years, played by Professor John Rothwell Slater and Robert Metzdorf ’33, ’39 (PhD), among others.

To expand the musical range of the instrument, two additional bells were purchased from Petit and Fritsen in 1956. In 1973, plans were made to replace the chime with a full carillon, and a contract was signed with the bell foundry Eijsbouts of Asten, the Netherlands.

The weight of the new carillon of 50 bells was 6,668 pounds, much less than the original set. What to do with almost 18.5 tons of old bell-metal? According to correspondence between the University’s assistant treasurer, Bruce Wolfanger, and the Eijsbouts staff, the component metal of the bells had greater value in Europe than in the United States even after shipping. Eijsbouts kept the 11 largest bells, and gave the University a discount on the cost of the carillon. The very largest bells, including a low B-flat weighing 7,800 pounds and 72 inches in diameter, were too big to remove from the tower without cracking them into pieces.

But the smaller bells still had life in them—and sentimental value. Also in 1973, Christ Church in Rochester was looking to replace its bells, and it appears that arrangements were made for the church to receive six smaller bells at the cheaper, United States cost of the metal.

Albert A. Hopeman Jr., grandson of Arendt W. Hopeman, in whose honor the original chime was donated, requested and received the smallest of the original bells, which at 24 inches in diameter weighed 300 pounds. Retained for the Archives was the small keyboard used to play the chime, which was joined in 2017 by a selection of smaller clappers from the carillon that were replaced during a 2016 renovation.

Ask the Archivist features a question for Melissa Mead, the John M. and Barbara Keil University Archivist and Rochester Collections Librarian.

BETTER BELLS: Since the Hopeman Memorial Carillon was installed in the tower of Rush Rhees Library, the iconic musical instrument has been renovated and expanded, including a 1973 project that replaced the original 17-bell chime with a 50-bell carillon.

Photo credit: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation

When Did We Start Connecting with Community Organizations?

Every November, for longer than anyone can remember, the River Campus Libraries has celebrated its very best tradition: providing donations for a Thanksgiving basket for families selected by the Baden Street Settlement. Just before Thanksgiving, a caravan of library volunteers heads to Baden Street and gets to hand the donations directly to each family. It’s a time of much hugging (pre-COVID) and smiling. It’s sad that this is needed in Rochester, but RCL is honored to help, and it is an important part of who we are in Rochester’s community. What can you tell us about the origins of this tradition?—Lois Metcalf, Eileen Daly-Boas, Ashlee Huff, Jeffery Jones, Katie Papas, Diana Golemb, and Jenny Arbelo

Founded in 1901 by Therese Katz and Fannie Adler Garson of Temple B’rith Kodesh, the Social Settlement of Rochester taught the young women of the area “kitchen gardening, sewing, and primary education.” Renamed the Baden Street Settlement in 1922, it has grown to support a wide variety of needs from emergency services to day care to counseling and educational resources.

The libraries’ annual gift was well established by 1988 when it received a plaque for “distinguished volunteer service” from Baden Street. The earliest call-to-action may be this request in the December 1968 University Librarian newsletter:

Christmas is a time of giving—or so we are told. . . Would you like that good feeling that comes when you give—even to a stranger? Then, between Thanksgiving and December 20th, bring . . . clothing for Baden Street Settlement children to the Library office. Let’s make this a significant and meaningful project for the entire Staff Association.

A 1965 issue of the newsletter notes that Interlibrary Loan Office staffer Juanita Paige was president of the Achievement Club, a community group whose mission was to encourage Black teenagers to continue their education after high school. The club met at the settlement house and arranged lectures, including one by then Kodak executive Walter Cooper ’57 (PhD).

In 1889, Unitarian minister William Channing Gannett and his wife, Mary Thorn Lewis Gannett, arrived in Rochester, and established the Boys’ Evening Home. Its focus was on the physical well-being and education of immigrant children, many of them newsboys and bootblacks. Professor Kendrick Shedd, Class of 1889, an ardent supporter of the progressive movement, served as the home’s superintendent beginning in 1900. Articles in the Campus newspaper encouraged students to volunteer as tutors and record their efforts.

More settlement houses followed—the Lewis Street Center (initially named the Association for Practical Housekeeping) in 1907 and the Genesee Settlement House in 1918. And the University’s connections, particularly among students, grew as well. In 1928, the College for Women’s YWCA group requested donations of food or money to provide Thanksgiving baskets for families recommended by the settlement houses. By 1931, 30 women students were volunteering as tutors. Fraternities and sororities also became involved, including Theta Eta, Gamma Phi, Alpha Delta Phi, and Tau Kappa Epsilon.

One of the most vital services of the settlement houses is health care. Among the many Medical Center staff involved were Paul Beaven, Class of 1913, clinical assistant professor of pediatrics emeritus, and Kenneth Woodward ’53M (MD), ’72S (MBA), who was integral to the introduction of health clinics to the houses and, in particular, in efforts to expand Baden Street’s health clinic into the current Jordan Health Center.

The words incised on the pediment of the Eastman Theatre—“for the enrichment of community life”—reflect the close association of the faculty and students of the Eastman School with Rochester’s residents. While a member of George Eastman’s Kilbourn Quartet, future Eastman School Professor Samuel Belov tutored students of the David Hochstein Music School Settlement, founded in 1920.

The University’s involvement with community service organizations continues to this day and occurs year-round with examples too numerous to mention in this space. In a 1958 Campus Times article, Kay Hartman ’59 gives a detailed description of her experience as a volunteer. Although she questions her abilities and effectiveness, she concludes: “Life is beautiful when the group decides to spend the day doing things for others.”

Ask the Archivist features a question for Melissa Mead, the John M. and Barbara Keil University Archivist and Rochester Collections Librarian.

A look back in time for John Manhold from the Class of 1941

John Manhold now and then.

A lot happened in 1941.

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the United Kingdom broke the Enigma Code, and the GI Bill was signed into law. In popular culture, Citizen Kane was released, Dumbo became a hit, and people were singing Glenn Miller’s “.” Gas was 12 cents a gallon, the average house was $4,000, and people earned about $1,750 per year.

But, that’s not all. It’s also the same year that John Manhold graduated from the URochester.

Since then, Manhold has led a full life as an accomplished dental researcher recognized for wound healing studies, a consultant, and a faculty member. He also spent many years as an attending pathologist at the New Jersey Medical Center.

Manhold is also a Navy veteran of World War II and Korea and a gifted sculptor, golfer, and competitive shooter. He also enjoys playing the guitar, which he picked up as a hobby when he was in his 60s. Manhold is a prolific reader, too, and, today at 101 years old, he writes book reviews for Amazon and is about to publish a memoir of his life. Manhold and his wife of 50 years, Kit, are also adventurers and have sailed thousands of miles around the world, often in their 42-foot yacht, Ketita II.

At Rochester, Manhold was an English major and a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. He was also a fencer, football player, and boxer, a pastime that also helped him pay his way through Harvard School of Dental Medicine. To mark 80 years since Manhold graduated, here’s a look at his college admissions application from 1937.

“There is much to learn by looking at the past,” says Manhold. “My undergraduate education at Rochester prepared me well for a very full career and life. It helped me hone the skills needed to adapt to changing times, including changes in technology, society, and scholarship.”

An excerpt from Manhold’s 1937 college admissions application, in which he notes his goal of entering the medical profession—an objective he achieved.

During high school, Manhold’s favorite books were about Germany, Napoleon, and Lincoln and he regularly read Life magazine.

In Manhold’s college essay—aptly titled “The Story of My Life”—he says, “I arrived on the hot summer afternoon of August 20, 1919 in Rochester, New York at five-fifteen to the accompaniment of the doctors vocal solo, ‘arriving on the Five-Fifteen,’ which was the current song hit.”

Manhold also notes this in his essay, “When I was a small child, I decided that I should like to follow the medical profession. There is no apparent reason why I should decide in favor of this profession. However, as I have grown older, the desire has grown strongly and for this reason I hope to obtain from college all possible knowledge to help me gain my ambitions.”

Irene Colle Kaplan’58 was an English major who spent more than 50 years teaching English in St Louis, Missouri; Seattle, Washington; Robbinsdale, Minnesota; Basel, Switzerland; and Guangzhou, China.

Although they are from different generations, Irene Colle Kaplan ’58 and Johanna Matulonis ’23 have both been part of University history during periods of great change. Colle Kaplan was a sophomore when the men’s and women’s campuses merged and Matulonis is a student now who has been living on campus during the pandemic.

Colle Kaplan and Matulonis share even more in common. They were drawn to the Ģ����ý for its rigorous academic program. They were student athletes, too (Matulonis still is). Matulonis is also the recipient of the Edward L. and Irene Colle Kaplan Scholarship Fund, which Colle Kaplan and her husband, Ed, also from the Class of 1958, established in 2013.

Here the two women, from generations apart, discuss what campus life was like then, what it is like now, and how their time at Rochester has helped them build community and foster some of their most important relationships. As Colle Kaplan says, “Johanna’s experience living on the River Campus today is one for the history books.”

Why did you choose the Ģ����ý?

Colle Kaplan: I originally thought I wanted to go to a women’s college—remember, back then, there were men’s schools and women’s schools. When it came time to fill out my applications, I was thinking about Smith or Mt. Holyoke. My father thought that Rochester would be the right size for me though and noted that the men’s and women’s campuses were slated to merge when I’d be a sophomore. He thought that could be good for me, and it was.

As wonderful as my first-year experience was on Prince Street, the next three as a coed on the River Campus were even more wonderful. I’m a retired English teacher and, looking back, I loved having young men and women in my classes—such a richness of ideas unfolded from both. It was the same at the University. And, as Johanna said, I wanted to go to school with smart people. Rochester had, and still has, so many of them.

Johanna Matulonis ’23 is a Kaplan Scholar and biology major from Massachusetts. The Kaplans established the scholarship in 2013 as a way to support promising students from the School of Arts & Sciences.

Matulonis: The University stood out from other schools and not just on paper, but in person, too. It’s such a beautiful campus and it offered everything I wanted. Beyond that, I was drawn to the flexibility of the Rochester Curriculum. I came here not knowing what I wanted to pursue, so the variety of options appealed to me. I knew I could take a bunch of very different classes and explore my interests in areas like psychology, German, and biology, which is now my major. What I really love about the University though is that there are a lot of people with a similar academic mindset. We want to have fun, but we are driven, motivated, and know why we are here.

What was it like when the campuses merged?

Colle Kaplan: What Johanna and others know now as Susan B. Anthony Hall was our women’s center. All the women lived there. As first-year students on Prince Street, we weren’t sure we wanted to merge. We learned later that the men felt the same way. But we all faced that uncertainty with hope that it was for the best. It turned out that it was.

After the merge, the environment was so much more stimulating, and it was really easy for the men and women to be with each other. We became this self-contained community and we did everything together. That’s how we all became so close. My husband, Ed, and I met on campus as classmates. To this day, we talk about how the people we met back then are still our oldest and dearest friends.

What’s life been like on campus during the pandemic?

Life on campus now with Matulonis and friend.

Matulonis: I was on campus for a full semester and part of the spring semester when COVID-19 brought everything to a halt. This past fall I lived on campus, too, and I’ll be going back for the spring semester.

Things have changed quite a lot. Occupancy in buildings like the library is very limited. Activities and clubs that would normally bring people together aren’t meeting the way they used to. And we are all using Zoom for many of our classes, which is so different from being in a classroom—you can’t just turn to a friend in Zoom like you could in a lecture hall.

College life is definitely different, but it isn’t worse. For instance, I’m on the women’s rugby club team and although we can’t practice in person, we’ve found ways to make the best of the situation. We Zoom together and we workout together. The pandemic has definitely strengthened my campus relationships.

What are some of your standout memories from being on campus?

Colle Kaplan and her husband, Ed, a retired physician and professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota, have lived in Minnesota for 50 years.

Colle Kaplan: I have two. One is about the classes themselves. Johanna talked about the benefits of the open curriculum now. Back when I was a student, all the classes in the first two years were assigned. It was called “core curriculum.” We went to English, Government, Western Civilization, and other classes together. It was just an old fashioned, healthy atmosphere that we all loved. Mind you, we only had about 400 students in our class, so things were much smaller back then.

And, here’s a funny memory. Our synchronized swim team was doing our last show in our senior year. The lights went down, and we got into position. When the lights came back on, we saw that we had an extra swimmer with us. A duck. One of the guys had put it there. It was probably my husband-to-be and friends, although he and the others never fessed up. That would not have happened at an all-girls school.

Matulonis: Here’s something I don’t think I’ll ever forget that happened during the pandemic. It was a warm Saturday in early in October, around 75 degrees. I was involved in organizing bonding events for my sorority, Sigma Delta Tau, so we all grabbed food and blankets—and masks—and went to Highland Park where we had a picnic together. That was so much fun, and it felt so normal, which is a hard feeling to find right now. I also remember a pre-COVID time when a friend and I bought an ice cream cake to celebrate her birthday and we ate the whole thing together in one sitting. I love that it’s a close-knit community here.

Colle Kaplan (third row up, left side, plaid shirt) and friends at the Bragdon House on Prince Street

What was your biggest challenge as student?

Matulonis: All the COVID restrictions can be isolating. For instance, we can’t hang out or go to the library. Being a college student on campus right now requires a certain level of maturity. We have to constantly think about what’s safe for ourselves and for those around us. I’ve chosen to be on campus because I know I can still share experiences with my campus friends. We’ve created this very solid support system for each other. We are all going through this together and there’s comfort in that.