Collective Memory
Dreams Deferred
Aug. 22, 2010—Feb. 19, 1932, was the worst day in Vanderbilt history. Wesley Hall, the largest and most versatile building on campus, burned. It had housed the divinity school, the divinity library, a cafeteria, and rooms and apartments for graduate students and faculty. The fire occurred just as the economy moved into the depths of the Great...
The School of Country Life
Apr. 7, 2010—George Peabody College for Teachers, which opened on its present-day campus in 1914 after a series of previous incarnations dating from 1785, had two related missions. One was to provide a graduate-level education for Southern teachers, the other to improve country life in the South. This second mission, now all but forgotten, explains why the...
Best All-Around Girl
Nov. 23, 2009—It’s 1952. Across America, families crowd around their boxy TV sets, staring at the snowy black-and-white screen as Dinah Shore strolls onstage in a shimmering Hollywood gown, while a harp trills through a few introductory arpeggios. At the age of 36, the beautiful and talented brunette-turned-blonde is already a household name. She floats past a giant photo of a 1953 Chevy Bel Air and launches into song.
Jewish Rush in the Bible Belt
Aug. 5, 2009—It was early December in Tucson, Ariz.—45 years and 1,600 miles from our undergraduate days at Vanderbilt. We came together, this graying group of sexagenarians, to recharge our connections to each other and to celebrate four decades of friendship. Not everyone was present in Tucson that weekend; regrettably, some had passed away. Their absence underscored...
A Few Good Women
Mar. 16, 2009—As Vanderbilt University School of Nursing celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding this year, the nursing profession is struggling to meet the demands of a prolonged and severe nursing and faculty shortage. Alumni from the 1940s can attest that the current shortage is not the nursing profession’s first. In 1941, with the United States facing...
Boys Gone Wild
Oct. 30, 2008—Images from Vanderbilt University Special Collections and University Archives. On May 20, 1952, during my first year of graduate work at Vanderbilt, I phoned a nursing student who lived in Mary Henderson Hall, the nursing dormitory. I had casually dated her a few times, and attended the same church with her and one of her...
Chancellor Checkmates Bishops
Jul. 13, 2008—Methodist Bishop Holland McTyeire, left, envisioned a Vanderbilt inspired by church values. Chancellor James Kirkland wanted a nonsectarian university. “Who controls Vanderbilt University?” “Who founded Vanderbilt–northern money or southern Methodists?” A century ago fierce questions about the status of Vanderbilt inflamed debate across the South. And the way they were answered–decisively, painfully in 1914–has shaped...
Silent Partner
Mar. 11, 2008—John D. Rockefeller Sr. (1839-1937) and Jr. (1874-1960) At the end of the 19th century, vast personal fortunes were created in the United States. Industrial advances made from 1870 to 1900 opened opportunities in railways, oil, banking and manufacturing. Savvy businessmen with names like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Morgan and Rockefeller accrued enough wealth to ensure a...
Showdown at Kirkland Hall
Nov. 1, 2007—On the surface, the group of freshmen who showed up at Vanderbilt in the fall of 1973 didn’t seem that different from any other.They were bright, to be sure. Eager and excited about starting this new adventure called college.And as they unpacked, settled in, and started finding their way around, they also started finding each...