Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

The 1936 Glomerata, part two

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.) By that, of course, I mean the people as much as anything. It was an exciting young time for a bunch of young people in the middle of the Great Depression. There’s was a different world — but some of this does look familiar.

I’m flipping through, avoiding most of the posed photographs in favor of the more interesting images and names that jump out me. This is hardly a complete look, but there’s a lot to find in 1936. Let’s see what is inside.

In the senior class we have 336 students featured. Standard headshots. The text includes their name, their hometowns, their majors and some of their extracurricular activities. In the margins, we get some vertical photos of some of the student leaders. Those are the photos we’ll look at today. The pictures include a little too much negative space, because the people who designed this 90-year-old yearbook didn’t consider the format I’d be using on this site generations later. We’ll meet the editor in a bit, below. I’m sure his photo will be chagrined about the lack of foresight overlooking my eventual needs. We’ll muddle through it, though, because the format matters little, the photos a bit more, and their stories matter most of all.

But, first, here’s the cover.

First let’s meet Woodrow Barnes. He was from just up the road in Alexander City, but today’s 40-minute commute wouldn’t have been as easy for the business major in his days. They called him “Country.” We should call him the honorable Woodrow Barnes. He was with an artillery unit in North Africa and Europe during the war, and returned to civilian life as a a major. He served three terms as sheriff before becoming a probate judge in his childhood home county. He got the job for a second six-year term. Then, one day in 1972, he developed chest pains while working. A few days later, he died at just 58. He was survived by his wife (who finished his term on the bench), two sons and a grandson.

His wife, Melba Peters Barnes, was also an Auburn grad, and a teacher and court reporter. (She’s a few years younger than Country, but she’s not in this Glom. She took those six months of on-the-bench experience and a Democratic party nod and won her own election for the position, by a 3-1 margin to fill the final four years of her husband’s second term. She was the first female judge in the county, and the papers started using her name, not her husband’s name. She won a second term of her own in 1976. And then she had a heart attack in 1979. She died at 62.

Claes Albert George Blomquist, Jr. was from Savannah, Georgia. He was studying mechanical engineering, and continued his studies in the graduate program at the University of Georgia. Al, as he would be known in later years, was in the Army Corps of Engineers, becoming a colonel before spending a long civilian career with Monsanto in Alabama and then Chemstrand, in Florida and South Carolina.

Blomquist lost his first wife pretty young, and his second wife much later in life. Then, when he turned 89, he married his college sweetheart, Doris. They had about eight years together before she passed. Al Blomquist made it to 102, dying in 2016. He was survived by three children, eight-grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. I hope he talked about his old college days a lot, but I hope those later years were full of great memories, too.

Blake Campbell looks straight out of central casting for one of those “When will my wife finally learn to buy the right coffee?” ads that typified the middle of the century. He got married in 1941. Served during the war. They had their first kid in 1945. That first daughter would follow him to Auburn a generation later. She got married in the mid-60s, the younger daughter soon after. There’s nothing in the newspapers beyond the engagement and the wedding mentions until he passes away at 65 in 1976.

Hardie Deer was from south Alabama and studying chemical engineering. His first name was John, but Hardie is better. If I rattled off all of the things he did in college you’d think he was a young man going places. He’d become a successful Chicago industrialist. He retired young to Louisiana. The governor of that state tabbed him to run the Louisiana Sovereignty Commission, which was empowered to combat desegregation in that state. (I was going to run across one of these guys, eventually. Probably I’ve seen several, but none that had it listed in their obituaries like this one.) When he left that job he bought a motel in Louisiana. He died there, at 54, in 1965. He was survived by his wife and two children.

Helen Franke was a local girl. But not really. She was born at Corregidor, Philippines. If you’ve been paying attention, her name will seem familiar. Her father had previously commanded the ROTC unit on campus. He was an artilleryman and had the honor of commanding the first American unit to fire on German forces in World War I. She was studying business. A few years after this Helen was living with her parents in Panama.

Her headshot is a better photo. She got married at some point. She shows up in one society page mention in the 1950s with both her married and maiden names. At some point she moved to Maryland. She volunteered with the Red Cross. When she died in 1992, aged 77, she was survived by four children, 11 grandkids and one great-grandchild.

This man’s name was apparently Philip Philips Gilchrist. He’s from a small town you’ve never heard of. A place so small, some 400 people lived there back then and just a few more today, that I used to drive through it all the time and I had to look it up just now to be sure. If you took away the airport the town would lose half its landmass. He was studying chemistry. He was from a long line of Philip Philips, it seems, and a lot of them are buried right there in that same town. Our man, however, broke the mold.

He attended Tulane Medical, became a doctor and stayed down on the Gulf, in Mobile. He was an ENT doctor, president of the local medical society, a leader in his church. He was on the state board that oversaw the docks, and also served on the board of Home Savings and Loan. He died in 2004, at 90, survived by this wife, three children and two grandchildren.

B.D. is Bryghte Davis Godbold. He was from Selma, and studying electrical engineering. If he looks like the most squared away college student you’ve ever seen, well, you might not be far off.

Godbold graduated with honors and then headed into the Marines. He was in command an antiaircraft battalion at Wake Island in December, 1941. He was captured and held by the Japanese as a POW until 1945. His men mined coal, their officers gardened, with the crops feeding them all. He later received the Legion of Merit for his service at Wake. He was tasked with modernizing the Marine Corps personnel system, and he turned to computers, their first such use in the military. He was trying to figure out their best use when Korea broke out.

He served in Korea in the 1st Marine Division and helped planned the landings at Inchon and fought at the Chosin Reservoir, earning another Legion of Merit award. He retired while in command of the 4th Marine Regiment in Hawaii, putting his uniform away as a brigadier general to start 1958. He went back to school, became the assistant chancellor of NYU, got a doctorate in higher ed. He went to Purdue in 1960 and developed something called the airborne distance education program, which used TV transmitters in aircraft to send signals, because we didn’t have satellites yet. He served as a vice president at what is now the University of Texas at Dallas. After Kennedy was assassinated, Dallas turned to Godbold to run a “Goals for Dallas” rehab program to shape the future. There, he helped start the Dallas International Airport, a new city hall, the city-wide library, and venues for the symphony and art. He was still active locally, and nationally, into the 1980s. Also, everyone was very proud of his berry garden in the backyard. He died at 99, in Dallas, in 2013. The fourth word in his obituary was “service.” Never was the word better placed.

Then we meet Alton Graves, who ran this book. He was from a small town that sat in a valley in the northeast corner of the state, and was studying landscape architecture. He’s another one that died shockingly young.

He was just a week shy of 30 when he passed away in Asheville, N.C., where he’d lived for a few years. The newspaper there said he’d had a long illness. He was married and his parents survived him. He had lived for a time in Birmingham, and that’s where they buried him.

Herman Harris was a business student, and another BMOC. He, too, would become a brigadier general, but of the Air Force. He served in the reserves until retiring in 1971. He was an auditor and inspector for General Motors, ran small businesses in south Alabama and a good-sized farm.

Starting in 1963, he ran a hospital, which is where he died, age 59, in 1974. He’d also run the local Little League, been president of the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary, the Red Cross and Community Chest. He was survived by his wife and three adult children.

Listen here, see, now and again you see a guy what comes straight out of central casting. No jake, smoe people are just so cosmopolitan-like, that they oughta be in pictures. And Harry Hooper here, he’s da man wit’ da hat, he could be a minor league henchman in a Dick Tracy picture, see. Oh, he thinks he’s a tough, but he’s the guy that gets it in the first act to establish our heroes bona fides. Tough enough for Dick, sure, but not too tough for da bullet.

Only that’s not Harry Hooper at all. He was born in Selma, became another big shot on campus, and a few years later went to war. He landed on Utah Beach with the Fourth Infantry Division. He stayed in the ETO, continual combat it says here, until Germany surrendered. If he was with the Fourth the whole time that might mean he was at Sainte-Mère-Église and Cherbourg, before fighting their way to Paris. They fought into Belgium, throwing themselves at the Siegfried Line and worked their way into Germany that October. They took part in the Battle of Hurtgen Forest, then moved over to Luxembourg where they got caught up in the Battle of the Bulge. They got across the Sauer River in January, then the Prüm River in February. They saw the Rhine, at Worms, in March. They stayed in the fight until May, almost a full solid year. His obituary says he received the Bronze Star, but it doesn’t tell us any other details of his service. When he got back home he ran the family car dealership, which was in operation for 63 years when he finally stepped away from that. He retired at 73, having also served on the City Council for two terms, and in a handful of other local community roles. He and his wife had three children and two grandchildren when he died, at 75, in 1990. The photo that ran with his obituary is a happy shot, he looks like the kind old man you’d look forward to seeing at church every Sunday morning.

You could find Floyd Hurt down at the Baptist Church. He’d studied science and literature in school and would go on to work for Avondale Mills — a large regional textile concern — for a long time, eventually retiring as a regional sales manager in North Carolina. He was a Rotarian, a country club man, and a Navy veteran. He had a wife and they had a son and daughter. He died at 81 in 1995.

Ed McKenzie was an education major, and a two-year track man. He was a steady hand looking down the runway at the pole vault. I can’t find anything readily available that tells us about what he did in the years that followed, unfortunately.

And that should make this a good place to stop for now.

Next week, we’ll take a look at the last handful of these senior standouts. Do make sure to come check it out. There are a few more impressive stories to tell!

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.

photo / Rowan — No comments
17
Sep 26

The statue, ‘Contact’

I’ve mentioned this and, if you’ve been reading along, you’ve seen some or all of these photos. But it seemed important to put them all in one place.

To teach one of my classes I must leave my building, turn right, walk to the end of the block, turn left and do another block. There, you run into this statue. And now I know it is coming, but it still catches me off guard somehow. So I’ve been taking these photographs, because it seems interesting enough. Next week we’ll start looking more closely at some of the details, but here we have the same work from four different sides.

This installation is called “Contact.” The artist is Seward Johnson. He was born in 1930, lived all over by the time he was old enough to go to school. He knew Georgia O’Keeffe. Served in the Navy during Korea. Did some sailing of his own, of a sort, taking a 2,000 mile canoe trip from western Alberta to the upper edge of the Northwest Territories on the Arctic Ocean.

He worked for Johnson & Johnson, which was the family business. He was also fired from the family business.

There’s a great anecdote about the man that makes him perfect for a college campus. In search of a career to support his young family he took a sculpture class. He left the class because the instructor talked theory.

He would learn his craft in other ways, and eventually he found metal work, which was what really clicked. Now he’s this world renowned artist with a huge body of work of large and life-sized sculptures.

Somewhere along the way he decided to find a way to help other sculptors, and in 1974 he opened the Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture. This place works with artists on retaining control over their artwork and opening doors to learning previously mysterious production techniques, becoming a place where the art and technology advanced because of it. Artists from all over the world have been a part of the Johnson Atelier.

This is a trompe-l’œil painted bronze statue. That’s French for “deceive the eye,” Wikipedia tells me. The paint used here is a heavy-duty coating that is also used by the aeronautic and automotive industries. Seems to be holding up pretty well, compared to earlier photos. The blues aren’t quite as dark, perhaps, but that only adds heft to whatever story you’re about to imagine here.

Johnson died in 2020. There are several of his other statues around town and I’ll have to explore them all, but, first, we’ll take closer looks at this one, starting next week.

adventures / food / photo / Rowan / Thursday — No comments
17
Sep 26

Onions, anyone?

I woke up, I read the news. I did some work. I had an early lunch. I got ready to go to work. I sighed at all of the things I need to do. This, I thought to myself today, is where I wrestle this week into control. And also tomorrow. Also, let’s not think about all of the things I should do around the house. It’s that time of the semester already.

And so we hopped in the car.

On campus I had a chat with a colleague around the copy machine. The water cooler is just around the corner, but that seemed a little too on-the-nose. I sent a thank you note to another colleague. I replied to roughly half a dozen student emails. I took care of a small task upon which I was overdue by an egregious 13 hours. I finished my notes for class. Right on time, too. As I scribbled out the outline of the last things I wanted to say today — I use a very small notebook and 75 minutes usually works out to about three pages of outline-stye notes. Today, comparing thoughts to my prepared slide deck, I turned it into four pages and offered a little silent prayer that the class would have a conversation with me.

They did! We sat in that super hot room, which is now baking at about 82 degrees, a remarkable improvement from a few sessions ago when I sweated completely through a sport coat while sitting still.

Today we talked about the social part of our techno-social lives. How the technology influences the culture and vice versa. I successfully resisted the urge to make any Star Trek references. We talked about how technology changes our expectations of things. I stumbled upon a great question … who have you talked to already today that is out-of-state, and how did you communicate with them. People dropped all sorts of states, one student talked to a relative in Jamaica. I had deliberately sent notes to people in a variety of places already this morning, just so I could make my point if they did not. But they did!

They’re becoming a class of talkers and that’s going to make all the difference.

Anyway, the first half hour flew by and then the second half hour did a slow crawl and then accelerated unexpectedly. It’s a 75 minute class and I think we wrapped up at 74 today. Just as I hoped and hoped as I planned.

They have to read a great paper for class next week and I hope a few of them like it. It can inspire great conversations, and in our techno-social lives that’s going to be key. Three students stood around and talked about that with me after class for a few minutes.

Also one student whipped out an iPod on cue, as if she knew where the class was going. She later told me she had a cassette tape Walkman that she’d discovered in her mom’s old things. And that she and her roommate go buy records. People are full of wonderful surprises.

After class I picked up my lovely bride and we drove home. We took part in the relative new ritual of sitting outside to read on Thursday evenings, because we know how to party. At about 6 p.m. she had to go inside for a meeting, and I stayed out for a bit longer to catch up on all of the ink that has been spilled today. This plane flew over head.

I didn’t look it up on the flight tracker app, because sometimes the mystery is better. This plane is on the usual route for airlines going to Europe, though, and I wonder where all of those people will wake up in the morning. I wonder if it is somewhere fun. I wonder if anyone looked out the windows and glanced down at the little places they are flying over and leaving behind to go somewhere fun. Let’s say Venice. Why not?

I went inside. Got cleaned up. Sat down at my computer to check the work email one last time, and do a few quick work related things that were on my mind. Set a fantasy team, checked the address of a meeting I have tomorrow. Attempted, once more, to wrestle this week into control. Succeeded, for half a second, in not thinking about the things I should be doing around here. Utterly failed at ignoring the work required of me next week or the week after. Then I recited the usual ritual: after that, there will be less today, and it will be easier.

Dear reader, this is a lie we tell ourselves every week. And already, my calendar is piling up into mid-October.

I was called down to dinner. We had barbecue chicken baked potatoes. We had barbecue chicken baked potatoes because my lovely bride had picked up some scallions. She doesn’t care about them, but I think scallions are a wonderful addition to most any plate.

Also, I do not have a good grasp of scallion-to-plate ratios. There’s a whole bag in the crisper. I retrieved it, found the good knife, pulled some onions out of the bag, considered what was in my hand, put some back, and started cutting. This was what I wound up with.

Note to self: four scallions is a lot of scallions.

They’re presented here for maximum comedic effect, but no matter how I pile and photograph them, that’s a lot of scallions. I was able to move things while cutting and eating so it didn’t seem like I was having a potato with my scallion plate. But there was a bite or two, right at the end, where it seemed no better than just pulling a handful right of the ground and eating it in your garden.

If you grow scallions I may come by and do just that. Not tonight. I’m good for tonight. But in the future.

music / photo / Rowan / video / Wednesday — No comments
16
Sep 26

We got the shirts

Spent the day working on today’s class, and tomorrow’s class, and also beginning to grade things that were turned in at midnight, Tuesday. And also all of the things that come with the job that are sorta related to the job. The biggest part of it is logging in to some system, service or platform over and over and over. The rest of it moves pretty quickly, happily enough, and I can get back to class things. This, I thought to myself today, is where I wrestle this week into control. And also tomorrow. Possibly Friday.

If I don’t have it by then, well, it’s the weekend and that’ll be great.

It’ll be Friday before we know it.

Before I knew it, today, it was time to head to campus for Org Comm.

The door knob fell off the door. I broke a pen. These two things happened within about four minutes of one another. (At least the elevator, electricity, and plumbing worked!) I kept everyone a safe distance from me after that, just in case I was developing super strength or telekinesis. I did not develop super strength or telekinesis. Well, I don’t know that I didn’t. I might have a superpower now, and just haven’t realized it yet. Super power origin stories are all just a tiny bit different, aren’t they? I do know I’m not invisible, but I don’t know if I can fly. Hang on, let me just open this window …

We talked about what makes sports organizations unique. We talked about the politics involved with sports. We talked about whether this competition or that competition is a sport. That one is silly, but students are always invested in this debate. Now I just have to keep that up. Next week we start talking about branding.

After class we hopped in the car and drove across town, well a few towns I guess.

We went to a public garden which, until this experience I am embarrassed to say I didn’t even know existed. They have more than 1,100 acres of gardens, woodlands, and meadows and over the years have created one of the premier horticultural display gardens in the country. It was dusk when we arrived, and we were there for a little concert, which happens there a lot. They also have seasonal attractions, educational lectures, courses, and workshops, and it is too bad, really, that it is an hour from our house.

The show was outdoors. A little square of land had been cut out of the trees. A path ran through it. The crew had hauled out several hundred old bamboo-style bar chairs. There was a stage that looked like it emerged straight from the trees. Behind it, we learned, was a fountain, which was synched up to a few songs. And soon after we arrived Guster came on stage.

This was their first show back after a six-week break. And everything about the place created a very chill environment for a band that normally sees a little more hype and energy from the crowd. Try as they might, only this one section worked themselves up. Of course they were right in front of us.

I think this is the song where The Yankee, way back when, really figured out she liked the band. Also, I’ve created a monster. This is only the second time we’ve seen them this year, she’s keeping count and saying we must step up our game.

Anyway, we got the shirts. I think they wound up giving them away.

We were on row E. My lovely bride and I met her god-sisters (just go with it) at the concert. We all had a nice time. Much rock was had, also some roll.

I was trying to count … I’ve seen Guster maybe 12 or 14 times over the years now, also in six states, but never in the same venue twice.

It was a nice set, with 23 or 24 songs. It was quite chill, I think that unnerved the band a bit. But we had fun, and I guess everyone else was thinking about tomorrow. I hope tomorrow is like today.

Nah nah nah. Nah nah nah nah. Like today.

I try to put one more song up, maybe next week, and then figure out when we can see them live again.

bespoke / books / photo / Rowan / Tuesday — Comments Off
15
Sep 26

Yeah, but look at that jacket

It’ll be fine, but this is one of those weeks that feels like it is self-contained for good reason. It feels like one of those weeks where the design of the rollercoaster tricks your conscious mind that there is peril ahead. It feels like the sort of week that will feature that scene in every dramatic naval movie: we had to close this section off, and sacrifice some true blue sailors and friends, to save the rest of the vessel and, now, until the end of this scene at least, we will anguish over it for award season.

Yeah, I have no idea what that means. What it means is that if I can keep this week on the rails, keep it moving forward, and keep the events of the week within this week, then it won’t spill over into other weeks and we will, thus, see this week as a success.

There’s absolutely nothing going on as dramatic as all of that, but it just feels like one of those weeks. Next week won’t. The week after that definitely will.

I had a meeting with a student today to discuss social media. The student wound up doing two brief interviews with two of my colleagues. One faculty member discussed the nonverbal communication class she is teaching. She deftly shooed me out of the room with the coolest nonverbal signal ever. I stepped out an interview was had. I retreated to my office and tried to remember everything I learned in my own nonverbal class way back when. Another professor stopped by to talk about his research, and that was the subject of our second brief interview. It was great. This professor is a get-him-started-watch-him-go sort. He does it with such enthusiasm that it is hard not to want to lean into the conversation. Then the three of us sat around for a moment and talked about our favorite ways to end interviews.

I have three key questions I asked at the end of most interviews. You’ll have to pay me tuition to learn what they are.

I walked over to the other building, where my class is held in the fourth floor sauna. I prepared accordingly today, even though the heat outside has loosened its grip, the room is still a little overly warm. So I went with a seersucker jacket.

I bought that as a gag last year. I’ve worn it twice. Last night I thought, Why not? All day, no one said anything about it. I could take this to mean I did that right, or I could infer that no one was willing to confront me about the choices I’d made. What do you think?

The pocket square makes it all work. That was a last second add this morning. Brought the whole thing to life, I’d say.

Maybe the students are all too dazzled by today’s conversation and repartee to discuss my sartorial choices. We talked about Tarleton Gillespie’s 2010 paper on platforms. The first question someone asked was “Why 15 pages on what the word means?” That’s a fair question, and precisely why we read this paper. I have read Gillespie, I guess, half dozen times in the last two years. It holds up, it sets the tone, and the only problem is that it doesn’t think about how AI or LLMs figure into this at all. I’m sure he’s working on that at Cornell right now. (If you somehow find this and aren’t working on that, I tap danced around an answer for a few minutes and we should collaborate.)

When I teach this class online all of the students have to pose a question about the readings. And since I require to ask a question it seems only fitting to try to answer them. This is great fun, and some of the questions are thoughtful and challenging. Another way I challenge myself is trying to find new ways to answer the same questions. Also, I try to edit myself into something that looks like concision. (You might notice I wrote exactly 1,200 words here for goodness sake.)

Do they pay me by the word? No. Can I renegotiate that part of my contract? Also, no.

Since I’m teaching the class in person this time I am having them ask those questions and I am trying to answer as many of them in a class as possible, or at least what I think are the best ones. Today I got about a third of those in on the Gillespie paper. Also, I tried to play it cool about the reading they’ll do for next Tuesday. It is my favorite one of the semester. And I just have to dazzle them with something else on Thursday.

On the way back to the office I snapped the last photo of the public art installation. We’ve now capture it from all four sides. Here, from this angle, it looks like something bad has happened. Its her eyes. I’m not sure if that’s the intention, my interpretation, or perhaps something about the medium. She looks like she’s in a far away place, though. And only the way her feet work suggest a different story.

On Thursday I’ll make a separate post showing all four of them.

Next week I’ll start taking closer photos. I think there’s a lot to be learned from a closer look.

I wrote that cartoonishly overly dramatic bit at the top of the post, and this is what I’m doing about it. I returned to my office after class and did up some lecture prep for tomorrow and Thursday. I’ll finish each just before the classes. Then I went to the library. So pressing are events I spent time at the library.

Which is to say, not pressing at all.

I got a call on Saturday from the local public library that a book I’d requested via ILL (which is one of the best innovations that we have in a polite and civil society) had arrived, and would I please come and check it out, because the clock is already ticking on its due date.

So I picked that up. Our local library is opened like six hours a day, and it is entirely volunteer-driven; you have to time things right. Tonight I received a casual little invitation to take part and volunteer. A little over-the-shoulder “come work with us” sort of thing.

Maybe it was the jacket.

Anyway, the drive home.

The last few times I’ve been out at sunset I’ve seen that sun scrape happening where the orange light and dark of night meet. I think, I think, it is coming from the same area, but I don’t know what over there could be causing this. It’s a flat region, not a lot of big buildings, and surely that’s not a tree-line thing. One day I’ll get over there to figure it out. Just as soon as I find that pot of gold at the end of the next rainbow, which I’ll pursue just as soon as I finish this book I checked out (because the return clock is already ticking) which I’ll start just as soon as this week is fully under control.