Voices from the IU Bicentennial

Hidden in Plain Sight: Uncovering IU Bloomington’s Time Capsules and Cornerstones

Posted on August 1, 2017 by sajacobi

By: Spencer Bowman, Bicentennial Intern, Class of 2020, English and Media, Bloomington

Indiana University has a long tradition of commemorating its past, present, and future with time capsules. Capsules inserted into the cornerstones of Wylie Hall, Student Building, Memorial Hall, Indiana Memorial Union, and Bryan Hall demonstrate this commitment to preserve the past for future generations to study.

At the cornerstone laying ceremony of Wylie Hall in 1884, future IU President William Lowe Bryan—who completed his undergraduate degree that year—spoke the following words:

“Today we find our sermon in a stone. A multitude of people are gathered here…and all are gathered about a senseless block of granite. What is there in this polished cube to justify such an assemblage? What motive or inspiration can there be in a mass of limestone? How was this rock transformed into a swift and subtle magnet which could draw about it the mind of the State, and evoke from it this stately ceremony…The stone before us is more than worthy of this presence and this ceremonial. It stands between all the past and all the future–full of eloquent significance, holding in itself the most complete summation of the past and the largest promise of the future.

I might say it grew beneath this sod, and that today it rests here, patient and strong—strong as the centuries through which it grew, and patient for the burden it is to bear—proclaiming with stony lips that all excellence and strength are the product of patience and time.[1]”

Bryan’s message of a “senseless block of granite” which holds the meaning of both the past and future, and due to the presence of a time capsule inside the stone, echoes to the present year of 2017 as the Office of the Bicentennial continues planning new university time capsules to be buried in 2020.

This idea of a physical item—or rather, a collection of items in the form of a time capsule—serving as a “swift and subtle magnet” of a greater meaning is something being carried today when considering the form our generation’s time capsule will ultimately take, and has served as an inspiration to search for the troves of hidden treasures around our campus.

Wylie Hall

Following the University’s move from Seminary Square to what is now known as the Old Crescent, the location of today’s campus west of Indiana Ave., a cornerstone was placed by IU President Lemuel Moss in Wylie Hall, the first building on the new property along with neighboring Owen Hall.

Only six days before the cornerstone was to be laid, the Board of Trustees appointed President Moss, along with James D. Maxwell and Isaac Jenkinson, to arrange the contents of the cornerstone’s time capsule.[2]

The ceremony was on June 10, 1884, and items placed into the cornerstone’s time capsule included the names of officers of the state, a historic sketch of Indiana University, the program of the 44^th commencement, class day exercises, local newspapers, a list of offices in Bloomington and a sketch of Bloomington churches.[3]

The Student Building

On June 21, 1904, a cornerstone was laid at the new Student Building, still under construction, following an alumni reception as part of that year’s commencement ceremonies. Among the speakers at the ceremony, despite her original hesitation to give much of a speech[4], was Frances Morgan Swain, the ninth first lady of the university who lobbied and fundraised for the building to be created as a space for female students on campus.

Items placed in the cornerstone, which can be found on the southeast corner of the building, included copies of letters from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (who donated to Swain’s fundraising campaign), programs and pamphlets, “copy of history of movement, by Mrs. Swain,” copies of local papers, a list of graduates, the University Bulletin, class schedules, copies of diplomas, a photograph of campus, and a set of Louisiana Purchase Exposition stamps.[5]

Just last year, it was renamed the Frances Morgan Swain Student Building as part of a bicentennial initiative to increase public recognition of important women, such as Swain, and other underrepresented individuals throughout IU history. Today, the cornerstone can be found on the southeast corner of the building.

Memorial Hall

Along with the IMU and the original Memorial Stadium located on 10^th St., the Memorial Fund Drive allowed for the construction of a new women’s dormitory, Memorial Hall. The building was dedicated on October 20, 1924 and the time capsule in its cornerstone contains several documents related to the Memorial Fund and women’s organizations on campus at the time.

These documents included the handbook and governing documents of the Woman’s Self-Government Association, details of the Women’s All-Campus Committee, and a list of the 5,356 women who contributed to the Memorial Fund, raising a total of $501,399.23, the average donation being $93.50.[6]

Today, the Memorial Hall cornerstone can be found on the southwest corner of the building’s archway. In a great example of today’s campus reacquainting itself with its past, Memorial Hall will return to its original use as women’s housing when it is rededicated in September 2017 as part of the new Wells Quad Residence Hall and houses the Women in STEM Living Learning Community.

Indiana Memorial Union

Soon after the laying of the Memorial Hall cornerstone, on October 31, 1924, a cornerstone was laid by architects Granger and Bollenbach during construction of the IMU.

The building was funded by the same Memorial Fund Drive as Memorial Hall and the original Memorial Stadium on 10^th Street.[7] Items placed inside included various university, Bloomington, and state publications, photos of the campus, students, staff, and faculty, an autographed copy of “The Spirit of Indiana” written by President Bryan, and a list of all IU men and women who served in the military in all wars. Today the cornerstone can be found to the right of the main south entrance to the IMU.

The IU Memorial Fund Campaign’s “Flying Squadron” with President Harding, May 1, 1922. This photo was placed in both the IMU and Memorial Hall cornerstones. Photo courtesy IU Archives, P0031186

Bryan Hall

Bryan Hall, (originally named the Administration Building) was originally constructed as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the mid-1930s, contains a time capsule in its own cornerstone, placed there on June 15, 1936 by IU president William Lowe Bryan.

According to a letter sent to architects Granger and Bollenbach, Bryan arranged for “sundry articles” to be placed in a 12”x6”x8” copper box which went into the cornerstone on the northwest corner of the building.[8] Indiana Governor Paul V. McNutt was in attendance to help lay the cornerstone during that year’s commencement ceremony.[9] That day’s issue of The Daily Student reported the following items to be placed in the cornerstone:

“In the stone was placed photographs of the University administrative officers and members of the Board of Trustees. A copy of the University catalogue for 1935-36 and a copy of the current issue of the Alumni Quarterly also are to be sealed in the stone…As representative of the student publications, copies of the Red Book, the Arbutus, and the two Commencement issues of the Daily Student will be placed in the stone. University history to go in the stone will include the Centennial volume of the University, published in 1920, and the History of Indiana University, written by the late Dr. Theophilus A. Wylie, professor emeritus of physics.

A drawing of the March 8, 1922 bonfire, which celebrated the Memorial Campaign Fund surpassing $413,000, was placed into the IMU time capsule. Photo courtesy IU Archives, P0034284

Copies of two books by President Bryan, “Spirit of Indiana” and “The President’s Column,” also are to be included in the list of articles placed in the stone. Autographed photographs of Dr. Bryan and Governor McNutt will complete the list.[10]”

The cornerstone can be found on the northwest corner of the building’s main tower, directly across from Franklin Hall.

Administration Building East entrance, circa 1937. Photo courtesy: IU Archives, P0051694

Due to the efforts of numerous people, particularly women in the cases of The Student Building and Memorial Hall, a vibrant historical record now awaits researchers all around our campus. Most of all, these cornerstones serve as a reminder of the rich history of IU Bloomington’s campus that may not always be apparent until you begin to look.

Read more about Spencer’s time capsule research here: https://blogs.iu.edu/bicentennialblogs/2017/04/14/my-semester-as-a-treasure-hunting-time-traveler-part-1/

https://blogs.iu.edu/bicentennialblogs/2017/04/14/my-semester-as-a-treasure-hunting-time-traveler-part-2/

Notes

[1] “Oration delivered at the laying of the cornerstone of a new university building,” speech by William Lowe Bryan. IU Archives: C69, Box 6

[2] Indiana University Board of Trustees Minutes, June 4, 1884.

[3] “Owen/Wylie Hall Rededication,” speech by Kenneth R.R. Gros Louis. IU Archives: C220, Box 2

[4] Letter from Frances Morgan Swain. IU Archives: C270, Box 121

[5] “A Successful Year,” The Daily Student, July 23, 1904.

[6] Indiana University News-Letter, vol. XIII, no. 2.

[7] Construction report. IU Archives: C286, Box 110

[8] Letter from President Bryan to Granger and Bollenbacher. IU Archives: C286, Box 110

[9] “McNutt to Give Talk at Laying of Cornerstone,” The Daily Student, June 15, 1936

[10] Ibid.

University Lake: IU’s Silent Partner Since 1911

Posted on July 31, 2017 by sajacobi

By: Logan Dudley, Bicentennial Intern, Class of 2019, Communication and Culture, Bloomington

At its inception in 1820, Indiana University (then the Indiana State Seminary) was located at the modern intersection of Second Street and College Avenue. The site was home to a small spring, and since the arrival of the university’s first handful of students in 1825, the spring supplied the humble establishment with fresh water.

But like all good things, the spring eventually dried up and the university’s ease of access to fresh water came to an end, forcing the school to rely on wells and cisterns to furnish its supply.

As IU continued to grow and expand, eventually moving to its present site in 1885, it became increasingly dependent on Bloomington’s city water supply to meet its needs. To the university’s dismay, around the turn of the 20^th century, the city was repeatedly struck by water famines. In a meeting held by the Marion County alumni chapter in 1914, George M. Cook, then president of the alumni association, summed up the series of crises, reporting:

“There have been water famines in Bloomington (i.e. a shortage of water necessitating a temporary shutdown of the plant) in the years 1899, 1901, 1904, 1908, and 1913. There were serious shortages, with prohibition of lawn and street sprinkling, notably, in 1911 and 1912.”

Early on during the period, drinking water was available to students and faculty from one of the campus cisterns, but supplies “for toilets, lavatories, and for boilers of the heating plant” were urgently needed. The water was both cold and unhygienic, causing parents and students to express their concerns to the administration, and the school was nearly shut down.

The University did its best to stay afloat by laying emergency pipes to carry water shipped in to the Illinois Central Railroad until, finally, in 1909 the administration determined that the university needed its own supply.

The Indiana state legislature of 1909 devoted $20,700 to the cause and granted the administration the freedom to devise whatever solution they saw fit. Originally, engineers thought that wells in Griffy Creek valley might provide an adequate supply, but when testing proved them wrong, they took their search further up the valley into a narrow gorge, one that could be dammed to hold a significant amount of water. Over the next few years, the land was purchased and the gorge was dammed.

But once completed, the new University Lake was almost immediately expanded by increasing the height of the dam. In the end, the lake saved IU from imminent closure.

Though problems supplying the university and the wider city of Bloomington with adequate water persisted for more than a decade after the construction of the dam, the water held at University Lake was enough to keep the boilers running, allowing the university to remain open, rather than sending students home to avoid freezing during the cold Indiana winters.

IU president William Lowe Bryan standing at University Dam in the summer of 1915, Indiana University Archives Photograph Collection P0029069.

Flash forward to the present, and University Lake is still serving the IU community, though its role has shifted significantly over time. Today, the lake serves predominately as a restricted site for university students and faculty to conduct research locally.

Two such researchers are IU’s professors of biology Dr. Spencer R. Hall and Dr. Jay T. Lennon, who have both cited the lake’s size, convenient location, and especially its level of seclusion and protection as factors that make it appealing from a research standpoint.

Dr. Hall made certain to emphasize how unique a resource the lake really is, one that should not be taken for granted: “I feel extremely grateful that the university had the wisdom to restrict access to University Lake, setting it aside for research and education/outreach efforts for our environmental science communities. It is a wonderful asset for our research program in my laboratory.”

Unfortunately, in addition to serving as a site for research, University Lake also functions as a drainage impoundment for the IU Golf Course and surrounding areas, which can lead to problems for researchers.

In addition to gratitude, Dr. Hall expressed some frustration over the hindrances his lab has faced as a result of the lake’s location, saying, “I really wish that the golf course was not in its watershed. They apply too many nutrients to their land, causing nasty algal blooms at times in the lake. Those algal blooms limit the lake’s ability to serve as a facsimile for the forested lakes we use in neighboring counties.”

Despite such problems, the dam and lake have already exceeded their expected life span. According to Michael Chitwood, Property Manager of the Research and Teaching Preserve located next to the lake, such a dam is typically only supposed to last about fifty years. The century-old dam at University Lake, however, only shows signs of minor decay and will hopefully continue to serve the IU community for years to come, though how exactly it will serve remains unclear.

With construction of the new hospital set to begin near the lake, the features of the land in that area of campus are bound to undergo significant changes in the years to come, and the university will be facing a decision about the lake’s future role.

Though the future remains unknown, the IU community can say for certain that University Lake has been an essential partner in facilitating student life and learning throughout the school’s history. A hidden gem still unknown to most, the lake has made possible feats as large as heating the university and as small as housing plankton for a lab experiment.

In both cases, it has given everything it has in service of the university, a true Hoosier through and through.

Works Cited

Chitwood, Michael. Personal Interview. 24 Feb. 2017.

Hall, Spencer R. Personal Interview. 17 Mar. 2017.

Lennon, Jay T. Personal Interview. 12 Mar. 2017

Myers, Burton D. History of Indiana University vol. 2, edited by Ivy L. Chamness and Burton D. Myers, Indiana University, 1952, 3 vols, pp. 270-76.

Kathryn A. Fields Blackwell: Education Pioneer

Posted on July 17, 2017 by sajacobi

By: Alexis Morales, Bicentennial Intern, Class of 2019, Business, Northwest

When we think about Indiana University, we think of an institution that fosters limitless opportunities. We think of a system of campuses, spread across the state of Indiana, each offering a world-class education to students from all backgrounds and walks of life. We think of an institution that sends imaginations soaring with the promises of knowledge, experiences, and open doors.

Some alumni even refer to Indiana University [IU] as a second home because of the support and tools it has provided to them as they pursued new chapters in their lives. This is the IU we have all come to respect, cherish, and love. However, IU did not always extend its promise of a better life to all students equally; even beloved institutions can harbor tarnished histories.

On the morning of Tuesday, May 16, 2017, I was fortunate enough to meet Ms. Kathryn A. Fields Blackwell. She shared her story with me of her time as a student at Indiana University Bloomington for Indiana University’s Bicentennial Oral History Project. Through interviews with alumni, like Ms. Blackwell, we can showcase the successes and opportunities that an Indiana University degree can provide. The following account is Ms. Blackwell’s story.

Kathryn Blackwell, one of eleven children, was born in East Chicago after her family moved up from the South to seek a better life. From a young age, her parents infused in her the importance of an education. Upon graduating from high school, she decided to first save up for college, and after working for a year and a half, she fully committed herself to Indiana University Bloomington [IUB]. She chose IUB because it was an in-state school, so the tuition was cheaper for her as a resident of Indiana.

Ms. Blackwell supported herself through her education by working various jobs, such as cleaning homes for white families in the Bloomington area. In 1947, she graduated with her bachelor’s degree in education from IUB as a first-generation college student. However, as a black female student in the 1940s, her student experience was very different than that of her white peers.

Click below to hear about where Ms. Blackwell resided while attending IUB.

“I felt isolated,” admitted Ms. Blackwell. “We [black students] had a special relationship because we were all going through the same thing and we were so close together…we did have fun, even though we were excluded from most things.” Ms. Blackwell explained that most of their fun was “self-contained,” as blacks were not allowed to visit many places in town.

A notable exception was the theater, where they were allowed if they sat in the balcony. However, the open discrimination she and her fellow black students faced did not prevent her from finding ways to enjoy her student experience. She would often invite friends over to Elms House to dance and play bridge. Ms. Blackwell found community in a local church, and she even has fond memories of walking all the way across town in heels to attend services.

Kathryn Blackwell, standing on far right, with friends near her residence at Elms House.

Ms. Blackwell does not believe the discrimination she faced as a student was solely the result of the fundamentals exhibited by IUB.

To fight discrimination, Ms. Blackwell became a member of the YWCA club, a nonprofit organization with the motto “Eliminating Racism, Empowering Women.” She was also a member of the newly established NAACP chapter on campus.

The very next morning after the chapter’s creation, KKK signs were hung on almost every tree in the central part of campus, a symbol of the dissent many students expressed toward this movement.

Ms. Blackwell could not recall ever seeing any black faculty or staff on the campus. She explained that black students knew which of the faculty members discriminated against blacks. As a result, black students would warn each other to be cautious around certain instructors who did everything in their power to fail black students.

During the 1940s, certain professors on campus did not believe that black students, like Ms. Blackwell, were capable of being intellectual students. Ms. Blackwell even recalled a time when one professor went so far as to stand behind her while she completed an assignment to ensure she was not cheating. Despite being angered by her professor’s lack of confidence in her abilities, Ms. Blackwell used the incident as further motivation to excel.

In terms of professors, Dr. Ruth Strickland was quite an exception. Deeply admired by Ms. Blackwell, Dr. Ruth Strickland was a professor who seemingly defended black students who were mistreated. Ms. Blackwell’s parents were also a source of hope. “You can make it,” encouraged her mother and father. “You’re going to have to go through some things. You’re going to have to take some things, but you can make it.”

Kathryn Blackwell, second from far left in front row, at a dance sponsored by her sorority at the Union building.

Listen to Ms. Blackwell’s response below when asked why she would attend IUB even though she knew she would be subjected to racism.

After World War II, Ms. Blackwell noticed an increase in the enrollment of veterans at IUB. The size of the student population had tripled due to the GI Bill. As a result, housing became scarce on campus. Single men were housed in the university’s fieldhouse, and men who had families began living in trailers provided by the university.

Although these living conditions may not have been ideal, the GI Bill indirectly created the first integrated housing on campus because the increase in the student population forced IUB to house black and white men together.

Ms. Blackwell also expressed that after World War II, certain items were in short supply, but black students particularly had a difficult time shopping. Even if the grocery stores had items in stock, they often times would claim they were sold out if a black shopper inquired. “You learned how to survive,” said Ms. Blackwell. As a result, she and her friends would have their black friend, who passed for white, do some of their grocery shopping.

Awards for Phi Lamba Theta membership and Mortar Board, respectively.

Despite the racism, Ms. Blackwell excelled and received multiple awards. She was granted membership into Alpha Lambda Delta, an honor society for freshmen; Phi Lambda Theta, an honor society recognizing women in education; and Mortar Board National College Senior Honor Society.

After graduation, Ms. Blackwell began her job search, but only whites were receiving job offers. Before she even submitted her application to a school system in Northwest Indiana, the white superintendent was already trying to find reasons not to hire her because she was black.

Albeit this constant belittlement of her qualifications, even in her pursuance of a professional career, she got the job under the pretense that she would be able to work in a racially mixed classroom. Ms. Blackwell became a first grade teacher and the first black faculty member at the school.

When she arrived there to set up her room for the coming school year, fellow teachers came to her room to introduce themselves, and although some of their eyes widened when they saw the color on her skin, Ms. Blackwell held that they were all very kind people who treated her fairly.

Later, Ms. Blackwell went on to teach second and third grade. In total, she taught for 16 years and was in administration for 25 years, becoming the first black principal in the city.

While Ms. Blackwell was teaching, she decided she wanted to further her education. She attended night classes at Indiana University Northwest during the academic year, and in the summer, she attended classes at IUB. After six or seven years of courses, in 1960, Ms. Blackwell graduated with her master’s in education.

Even though Ms. Blackwell experienced racial discrimination and face many unfair obstacles while earning her degrees, she holds no contempt towards Indiana University. Ms. Blackwell is thankful for her education and the opportunities that followed her graduation. In fact, she even revisited IUB’s campus to celebrate homecoming years later. “I had a good education,” said Ms. Blackwell.

Click below to hear what Indiana University Bloomington meant to her.

“Pioneering is rewarding, but it is also very difficult,” said Ms. Blackwell. Even now in her nineties, Ms. Blackwell is able to recall many fond memories of her time at IUB and is happy for all it provided to her. She is even planning on attending the opening and dedication of Indiana University Northwest’s new Arts & Sciences building in August 2017.

I am very thankful I had the opportunity to meet such a courageous woman and share her story of determination, passion, and heart.

Maintaining the Woodland Campus: An Interview with IU’s Landscape Services Manager Mike Girvin

Posted on July 14, 2017 by sajacobi

By: Logan Dudley, Bicentennial Intern, Class of 2019, Communication and Culture, Bloomington

Hemmed in by walls of limestone and glass, the smooth gray trunk of the American Beech tree meanders upward, seeking life-giving light. Its base, enclosed by short railing and dotted with the names and initials of generations of college couples, serves as a living monument to the timelessness of young love.

But the higher its trunk extends among the walls of the courtyard, the more isolated the character of the tree becomes. It twists and shrinks, stripped of any sprigs or branches, to avoid invading the foreign space of the structure surrounding it. But yet the tree climbs, finally reaching the summit of its enclosure, beyond which it can stretch its long limbs out wide, canopying the courtyard in a kaleidoscope of light and shadow.

It’s well known that Indiana University has enjoyed a long, romantic relationship with trees. Anyone who has ever walked the 2,000 acre campus can attest that there’s hardly a barren spot. Beyond their sheer quantity, the trees at IU are memorable for the stories and meanings that the community has ascribed to them.

In the case of the American Beech tree described above, its popular reputation as the “Sweetheart Tree” and subsequent preservation in the 1986 remodel of the Chemistry Building were the result of its role in university legend.

According to the tale, the eldest daughter of the Dunn family (from whom the university purchased Dunn’s Woods to serve as its new site in 1883) set a precedent by carving her initials and those of her sweetheart into the tree, leading the Dunn family to mandate that the tree never be cut down if the university wanted the land.

Dunn’s Woods, 1956, Courtesy of IU Archives P0029491.

Just as in the case of the “Sweetheart Tree,” much of the university’s relationship to its trees has been popularly understood through myth and legend, and this sort of veiled perception only further imbues Bloomington’s woodland campus with elements of mystery and magic that are markedly absent from most modern institutional spaces.

It is important to note, however, that the fanciful atmosphere of Indiana University is achieved, rather than found, and unbeknownst to most IU patrons, the university’s longtime romance with its trees has required just as much work, if not more, than most romantic commitments.

Chief facilitator in this commitment is IU’s Landscape Services Manager, Mike Girvin, who oversees the grounds maintenance for the entire Bloomington campus.

Not surprisingly, managing 2,000 acres of land is no small task: “We’re just here, there, and everywhere,” Girvin reports. “I have three full-time certified arborists that do work. I typically have two to three hundred trees in front of them, be it a pruning, removal, dead wooding, things like that.”

And on top of the team’s standard workload, they recently partnered with IU’s Office of Sustainability to compile an overall inventory of all the trees on campus and “came up with a little over 14,000, and that does not include the wood lots, like Dunn’s Woods.”

Given his mediating role, Girvin understands better than anyone that their relationship is not exactly an equal partnership. The people who make up the university always have power and precedence over their arboreal counterparts: “Our primary purpose is to ensure the safety of patrons of the IU campus,” Girvin says, “so that’s what we base all our decisions on first and foremost. The next is being preservationists of trees.”

At IU, cutting down a tree is considered sacrilege, going against the fundamental tenets of the institution’s loving philosophy toward its landscape. But as Girvin points out, he and his team are charged with protecting people first and the trees second:

“The number one reason we take down a tree is that that tree would be a primary hazard. And we actually use a whole protocol for taking down those trees. They do an inspection report; they bore inside the tree. We do a lot of different things. We’ll certainly try to save a tree…. we try to do everything we can to preserve.”

As trees age or fall victim to disease, their structural integrity often becomes more and more compromised, making them a potential danger to anyone and anything around them. To avoid potential disaster, Girvin and his team must stay vigilant in identifying, monitoring, and, yes, even removing those trees which could pose a threat. For Girvin and his crew, maintaining the idyllic woodland setting of the campus requires cutting down trees just as surely as it requires planting them.

Even though IU’s trees may technically take a backseat to its human occupants, Girvin is not exaggerating when he claims that he and his team do everything they can to save a tree. Landscape Services manages the health of IU’s trees using a variety of methods and treatments akin to those used on humans, including X-ray scans and nutritional treatments.

They will even go so far as to bring in an outside arborist who specializes in medicinal treatments for trees, an undertaking which, according to Girvin, costs them “between five and ten thousand dollars annually.”

Certainly, molding nature to conform to the expectations of the social institution is never simple or easy, and the ongoing process of crafting and maintaining IU’s woodland aesthetic is no exception. Girvin says that he and his team have had to be increasingly proactive in their maintenance methods in order to contend with a warmer climate.

As Girvin puts it, “Regardless of how you feel about climate change [as a theory], things are changing. This is warmer than it used to be, day-to-day, so already our climatic zone is changing here.” To prevent warmer temperatures from depleting IU’s community of trees, Landscape Services is focusing its efforts on increasing species diversity and tracking the success of their selections over time. Girvin notes,

“You need a mixed diversity, and you need a lot of natives. Your native tree species are very hardy. It’s Oak, Beech, and Maple in this part of the country…But then we plant things like Elephant Magnolias, and Pink Flowering Dogwoods, and London Plain Trees, so what you need to do is see which ones are really surviving the best.”

Clearly, it is the hope of Landscape Services that the woodland aesthetic can be preserved over time through the careful selection of tree species that are able to endure the changing climate.

The possibility alone, however, that the woodland aesthetic may not be sustainable into the future calls immediate attention to the necessity of Landscape Services as an institutional force working to shape the campus environment, first, for the safety of patrons, but also for their aesthetic pleasure.

Without continuous grounds work, not only would the campus be far less safe, but its characteristic woodland allure would certainly be compromised as well.

Despite all of the manpower, resources, and careful thought devoted to them, “Trees do die. You can only do so much,” Girvin confesses. Even the “Sweetheart Tree,” a native American Beech infused with the magic and romance of the university’s cultural history and set aside for preservation, requires careful maintenance to remain within the space allotted for it and to avoid decay.

When asked about how he and his team go about caring for such a massive tree enclosed in four walls, Girvin replied, “Difficultly. We have a problem right now, because about the top 30% is dead…We’re probably going to have to set a steel cable from one side of the roof to the other that my arborists can hook into [to] work on it.”

This image of the arborist, suspended from a cable amidst the foliage of the “Sweetheart Tree” as he carefully prunes the deadwood, serves as a stark reminder that, despite both our mythical musings and our common ability to take spaces for granted, IU Bloomington’s woodland campus is not the result of magic or even simple happenstance.

Instead, it has emerged and continues to emerge out of ongoing negotiations between institutional forces like Landscape Services and natural forces like the trees themselves.

As Girvin says, “Nature’s going to figure out a way to persevere one way or another, with or without us.” It behooves all members of the IU community to work cooperatively with nature, respecting its regular tendencies and limits, to shape an environment that suits us both.

Works Cited

Girvin, Mike. Personal Interview. 13 Feb. 2017.

Deckard, Courtney. Sweetheart Tree. Multimedia Blog. 2010, Indiana Daily Student. Accessed 8 Feb. 2017.

Mary Brown Craig: IU’s First Archivist

Posted on July 14, 2017 by sajacobi

By: Cassie Heeke, Bicentennial Intern, Class of 2017, Journalism, Bloomington

My first thought when beginning my research on Mary Brown Craig: oh, the irony.

Here was the University’s first archivist — a woman who spent nearly 35 years of her life collecting, recording, filing, and preserving the history of Indiana University — and yet she is practically nonexistent online. A Google search for “Mary Brown Craig” yields only a few short obituaries with scraps of biographical information.

For someone who made a living documenting the lives of others, her own story is elusive.

In May, I began my Bicentennial Internship working on the IU Women’s History project, for which I research notable students, faculty, and staff contributors to academic life and campus culture. In June, the Women’s Philanthropy Leadership Council endowed the internship and named it after Mary Brown Craig.

The Council generously allotted $13,750 to the Office of the Bicentennial for the position. However, very little is known about Mary, so I spent about a week poring through web results and the library archives to get a sense of who she was.

So, who was she?

Mary Brown was born in 1907 in Pendleton, Indiana, northeast of Indianapolis. Sometime during my long search for a photo of her, I had a light bulb moment: her high school yearbook. Most high schools post their yearbooks online and have issues dating back into the ‘20s and Pendleton High School is no different. Mary’s senior photo is there in the 1925 issue, along with the rest of her graduating class. She has short, dark hair that ends just below her cheekbones and deeply set eyes. She is smiling, but just barely. The inscription next to her photo reads:

MARY BROWN

“To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Mary was born April 1, 1907. She is not what the date of her birth might indicate, but a very bright and industrious student.

Editor-in-Chief of “Papyrus.”

Associate Editor of Annual.

Mary’s photo in her yearbook from Pendleton High School.

A page from the 1925 Pendleton High School yearbook, the Papyrus, which shows Mary with the rest of the yearbook staff.

The Papyrus is the name of the yearbook and Mary is present throughout the 1925 edition. Other mentions give hints of what she might have been like as a teenager; for instance, the “Panorama of the Senior Class” recounts an inter-class basketball tournament that the seniors won “largely due to the backing of the Senior girls, who we feel sure are the best sports in school.”

The senior girls hosted a party for the players at Mary’s house to celebrate the victory.

Mary must also have been made fun of often for her April Fool’s birthday, judging by her short yearbook biography and this sentence is included in the panorama: “April first was a great day at school because of the many jokes sprung and because it was Mary Brown’s birthday.”

A page titled “The Line-Up” is another gem in the yearbook — it shows a chart with each senior, followed by the categories “Wants To Be,” “Chief Characteristic,” “Pastime,” and “As He Sees Himself.” It is evident that Mary valued intelligence in herself more than any other qualities; she listed her chief characteristic as “knowledge” and saw herself as “industrious.” She wanted to be a newspaper reporter, and her pastime was chewing gum.

Knowing Mary wanted to be a reporter, I found it interesting that she studied math in college. She attended Swarthmore College for two years, transferred to IU, and finished her bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1929. Rather than pursuing a career in math, however, she became a cataloger in the IU library. She must have found something she enjoyed in this job, because soon after she earned a library science degree from Columbia University in 1932.

A fun fact about this degree: When I was going through Mary’s folders in this IU Archives, I found a letter from the Associate Dean of Columbia’s School of Library Science, dated Sept. 15, 1949, that assured alumni their library science degree was, in fact, a master’s degree, and they should be treated—and paid—as such. The school even issued a small card for the purpose of presenting to an employer as proof of this.

In 1934, Mary married E. Lingle Craig, for whom the IU Libraries Preservation Laboratory is named. Mr. Craig, as he was known, graduated from IU and spent his entire career working for the University. One can only guess he and Mary met at IU and bonded over their common interests—Mr. Craig began working in the IU Library as a student in 1926 and, like his wife, eventually attained a degree in library science (though his was from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor).

I was unsuccessful in discovering anything about his and Mary’s life together, but based on their obituaries, they did not have children. When Mr. Craig died—20 years after Mary—everything they owned was given to IU.

E. Lingle Craig, Librarian and Head of Reference.

Mary stepped into her most well-known role as the University’s first archivist in 1943, when she was given reign over a central depository for the records of IU in the President’s File Room. She stayed put in this position for the next 34 years. In the Archives, many folders from this time span have Mary’s name on them, but I was still hard pressed to get an idea of Mary’s personal experiences from their contents.

Instead, I found requests from professors and other universities’ deans for historical documents or information, invitations to Columbia alumni events, and what seemed like hundreds of blue slips of paper with scribbled, illegible notes to and from Mary.

Many of the letters praised Mary’s work, such as one from L. E. Laubert in the political science department: “The reproductions of the material on the Benton murals arrived in fine shape. I am most grateful to you for sending them over. More importantly, your assistance, based upon your skill and your deep and detailed knowledge of the University, will put me forever in your debt.”

A few of the blue notes had typed requests from Herman B Wells, who often asked Mary for information about very specific topics, such as how students were disciplined in the 1920s or where Alexander the Great “found his gold.” Correspondence between Mary and Theophilus Adam Wylie also suggests Mary played a role in helping to preserve the home and family belongings of IU’s first president, Andrew Wylie.

Letters between Mary Brown Craig and T. A. Wylie.

Despite her many responsibilities to Wells and other important administrators, Mary found time to do smaller jobs when needed. One day, she received a letter from a young man who was concerned that his transcripts wouldn’t be sent in full to the two medical schools where he was applying for admission.

He enclosed $1 and asked that Mary forward the transcripts to Saint Louis University and Vanderbilt University, to which she replied that she was happy to take care of it for him and it was “no trouble at all.” On occasion, she gave advice to librarians and new archivists at other universities about how to begin archiving and what catalogue system to use.

On a side note, I also found in the archives a newspaper article that reported the City of Bloomington was moving to place an injunction against her for owning too many dogs. It said Bloomington residents were bothered by the dogs as they walked or bicycled past Mary’s house, and they had spotted up to 34 canines on her property. I was suspicious whether this Mary Craig was the same woman who worked in the archives, but a document in another folder verified that it was.

On March 7, 1963, Mary wrote a letter to the editor of the Daily Herald-Telephone: “Dear Sir: I should like to protest a recent action taken by the City Council, which is detrimental to a very worthy minority group not able to voice its protest, or to make its influence felt at the polls. It is to be regretted that our Democratic Councilmen can’t seem to follow a logical course. Just because they think all Republicans are dogs, it does not follow that all dogs are Republicans.” She signed the letter, “A Canine Taxpayer.”

I could find nothing that denoted any kind of ceremony to celebrate Mary’s retirement in 1977. This seemed odd — most of the University’s important characters had some sort of retirement party, well documented with pamphlets and speech transcriptions—until I found a letter to Mary from a Bryan Hall co-worker, Betty Hall. The letter began, “I know you want no fanfare or special parties as you wind up your work there in the Archives, but I do want to write a few words to you.” So, it would seem Mary had very little desire to draw attention to herself, even after over three decades of hard work dedicated to the university.

After her death in 1981, however, Herman B Wells spoke about her decades of work: “She was a modest and shy person normally, yet she was fierce in her loyalty to the University and in her protection of the beauty of the campus. She was involved in the mission of preserving what is best of the University and in that task she spent unbelievably long hours, often seven days of the week.”

Mary’s humility made her an admirable employee but ultimately made my job of researching her life a bit more difficult. From what I can gather, Mary was a diligent worker with no desire for praise or recognition. Her dedication to history and her archivist role shine through everything that has been written to or about her.

Works Cited

Correspondence – S. B. Wylie Family; Wylie Family Collection, 1822-1990, bulk 1840-1900; Indiana University Archives, Bloomington.

Craig, Mary Brown; Administrative records, 1963-1990, undated; Indiana University President’s Office records, 1963-1990, (bulk 1971-1987); Indiana University Archives, Bloomington.

Craig, Mary Brown; Subject files, 1937-1962; Indiana University President’s Office records, 1937-1962; Indiana University Archives, Bloomington.

Lingle Craig, Librarian and Head of Reference,” History of the Indiana University Libraries, accessed June 26, 2017, http://www.iub.edu/~iulibhis/items/show/1037.

Mary Brown Craig reference folder, Indiana University Archives, Bloomington.

“PHHS Yearbooks.” Pendleton Community Library, http://www.pendleton.lib.in.us/phhs-yearbooks. Accessed 26 June 2017.

Campus History Beyond the Bypass

Posted on July 5, 2017 by sajacobi

By: Logan Dudley, Bicentennial Intern, Class of 2019, Communication and Culture, Bloomington

As a member of the “History Beyond the Bypass” team, I have spent the semester researching the history of the University’s buildings and grounds. Prior to this, I had never used historical archives to conduct research. Locating the proper resources that actually offer usable information has probably been the biggest challenge I have faced as an intern.

Because of the nature of our project, many of the documents and resources we rely on are not immediately accessible.

I set up an appointment with Kristen Leaman early on in my research to ask for her help in finding information on spaces like University Lake, the coal ash pile, the sweetheart tree, and the old shooting range. Of these, only the sweetheart tree was included in a reference file in the archives.

It is the nature of these spaces that they are typically neglected, as we emphasize in our project, both in terms of their physical presence, but also in terms of their documentation.

That said, our team was fortunate enough to have Michael Chitwood, Building Manager of the Research and Teaching Preserve, as our external mentor. He and others before him had gathered and saved a plethora of documents on these spaces that highlight the tensions between the university as an institution and the natural environment it has made its home.

(Excitingly, many of these documents will eventually be given to the archives to aid future students like my fellow interns and me!) For instance, there are newspaper clippings and environmental reports on these spaces that clearly indicate that IU took part (and in some cases, still takes part) in practices that are not environmentally friendly.

The coal ash pile, for example, even prior to it use as a dumping ground for the coal ash that was produced by burning coal to fuel the university, was supposedly used by the university for dumping waste of all kinds. According to members of the Old Sycamore Valley Gun Club who frequented the old rifle range located in the same area, they would find chemical vials from IU labs dumped there and would set them up to use as targets.

Clearly, IU has come a long way in its methods of waste disposal, because, currently, waste is not being dumped on the land and the flora and fauna in the area are healthy and thriving.

In addition to resource documents, I have also needed to interview people directly to gather information. Collecting their contributions has been the most rewarding aspect of my research journey, but it has also been the slowest. One of the most practical things I have learned during my time as an intern is that working with people necessarily takes longer than expected and that anyone who works for the university automatically has a busy schedule. It took me two full weeks to find a time to meet with Mike Girvin, IU Manager of Landscape Services.

Finally, I am now in the process of grappling with the technology. Since I am not very tech savvy, understanding and using StoryMap to create the kind of complex final product that we are aiming for will be challenging. Fortunately, since we work in teams under mentors, I will have access to all the help I need.

Despite these challenges, working on the “History Beyond the Bypass” as part of the bicentennial team has been a hugely rewarding experience. In fact, developing an awareness of the less flattering aspects of how the University has maintained itself and its landscape throughout its history has only deepened my appreciation of it.

Prior to my work for the bicentennial, I was only familiar with the romanticized notion that IU cherishes its woodland spaces, and through my work, I have discovered that this mythologizing about the Woodland Campus’s identity stems from a lot of truth—but it does not do justice to the long history of negotiation between IU’s people and organizations and the land that they have adopted and shaped for their own use.

October 23, 1915: President William Lowe Bryan and wife Charlotte display their axes, as they join over 200 students, faculty, and staff in cutting down an apple orchard to prepare for the construction of the Men’s Gymnasium. Completed in 1917, the gymnasium now makes up the southwest of the HPER complex of buildings on IU’s campus. Photo courtesy of IU Archives P0020482.

And though the university is doing all it can currently to expand and strengthen the community of trees on campus, at one point, students and faculty gathered together to clear an entire orchard in preparation for the construction of the men’s gymnasium, now part of the HPER complex now known as the School of Public Health. President William Lowe Bryan and even his wife, Charlotte, yielded axes to take part in the event!

So, even though IU’s Culture of Care extends to its natural spaces, there have inevitably been periods when these same spaces have been neglected or sacrificed, either for lack of knowledge or even for the greater good of the university.

But as time has gone on, Indiana University has learned of the ill effects of disregarding the environment for any reason, and as we continue to learn and share through projects like this one, hopefully, the quality of our care for these spaces will continue to improve.

P.S. Fun Fact: According to Mike Girvin, our beloved IU squirrels do more damage by burrowing into the trees on campus than anything we humans do!

Source: “Attention,” Indiana University Official Twitter Account (@IUBloomington), 1 Apr. 2014.

Vincent Price’s Visit to IU Southeast

Posted on June 1, 2017 by sajacobi

By: Dr. Elizabeth Gritter, Assistant Professor of History, IU Southeast

One of the most interesting tidbits of information that I uncovered when doing oral histories last year for the Bicentennial Oral History Project was that Vincent Price, the actor most known for his portrayal of villains in horror films, had spoken at IU Southeast. David Rainbolt, the longtime technology coordinator of IUS’s Institute for Learning and Teaching Excellence informed me of his visit during my oral history of him although he did not know details.

Being a lover of classic films since I was a child, I naturally was interested in finding out more about his visit. I was delighted to discover later in the IU Southeast archives a folder on Price’s visit when doing research into what the first buildings were on the New Albany campus. I also uncovered a little bit of information on his visit from the IU Bloomington archives.

Price spoke for seventy-five minutes on the history of villainy to a record crowd in the Hoosier Room of IU Southeast on Sunday, September 27, 1981, at 7:30 p.m. as part of events celebrating IU Southeast’s fortieth anniversary. His speech was free and open to the public, and he was the featured guest of the celebrations.

Earlier in the day, he had made an appearance at the ninth annual IUS Student Foundation Regatta, a series of paddleboat races with all proceeds going to the Student Foundation Scholarship Fund. Price received a gift from the foundation and watched several paddleboat races; the event raised $1,000.

At the time of his two-day visit to IU Southeast, Price was seventy-years old and had appeared in more than one hundred films beginning in 1938. With degrees from Yale, the University of London, and the California College of Arts and Crafts, he also was a noted art collector, gourmet, author, and college and university lecturer, and had done significant work in television and theater including early in his career for Orson Welles’s famed Mercury Theatre and performances on Broadway.

By the time he appeared at IU Southeast, he had made about twenty college appearances that year; in fact, for the past twenty-five years he had spoken at colleges nationwide.

The movie poster for the 1944 movie Laura.

Of his 105 films by the time of his visit, Price had played villains in only thirty of them. In fact, a performance I personally like of Price is his portrayal of a non-villain in the film noir classic Laura (1944), starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews. Yet, Price was most known for being a villain in horror films and he capitalized on that in his speech.

Nearly 800 people crowded into the 600-plus seat Hoosier Room to hear Price while about 400 others watched on television monitors scattered throughout the University Center. Never before had so many people heard a speaker at IU Southeast. His talk was titled “The Villains Still Pursue Me: The History of Villainy.”

“I am a famous man,” Price told the standing-room-only crowd. “It doesn’t matter what for. All of us in acting have an image. It is this image that gives an actor his fame. It’s the fame that gets you your next job.” He said he had had fun playing villains and had to balance comedy and horror. “It’s good if we can make you scream then giggle. But, God help us if we make you giggle than scream,” he said. In his animated talk, he spoke about his nearly fifty-year long career and he was frequently interrupted with applause.

By interspersing readings from various plays and poems throughout his talk, Price illustrated villains in the theater in many forms, and he told anecdotes about his movie career. The Louisville Times reported, “He quoted Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe, and several times he delighted the audience with the diabolical laugh that added terror to many of the horror movies he starred in.” He also gave insight into villains. He said that they were usually motivated by one thing, revenge: “Vengeance is the word—getting even. Villains are fascinating people.” Before his speech, he told a reporter that most of the villains he played were not really villains: “He was somebody who was put upon.”

During his speech, he said he especially enjoyed playing vengeful villains with one of his favorite parts being the murderous husband in a play called “Angel Street,” which later was made into the famed and very good movie Gaslight (1944) starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman. Another favorite part of his was in the movie Theatre of Blood (1973), where he played an actor who murdered critics who wrote bad reviews about him. “It was a part very close to an actor’s heart,” Price said.

In addition, Price gave insight into acting in saying, “Acting is kind of a two-way make-believe. The actor has to know about his character to believe in him. If I can believe in him, I can make you believe in him.” Price also revealed: “I’m not really a villain. I’m sort of a pussycat.” He said the favorite leading lady that he had worked with was Ava Gardner, commenting, “She’s the sexiest.” After the speech, Price shook hands with anybody who wanted to, and the Louisville Times reported that the audience comments were all good.

Vincent Price as another villain–Egghead on the 1966 Batman TV show.

The day after his speech, Price spoke to art and drama classes at IUS, where he entertained questions from students and spoke to about 400 faculty members and students. He also spoke to speech majors. He discussed art, recent movies, cooking, media, and communication, and he urged his listeners to visit museums of the Midwest because these instituations bring together some of the greatest art in the country; Louisville’s J. B. Speed Museum was on his list.

He especially liked the current box office hit Raiders of the Lost Ark. When pressed for his own “recipe for life,” he summed it up “with one word, curiosity. I’m infinitely curious about what my fellow man has achieved and is achieving.” He praised the late Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite as masters of communication and said that President Ronald Reagan excels before the television camera: “He really marries it, he knows it and he uses it.”

Price in his last role in Edward Scissorhands.

After his visit to IU Southeast, Price continued to appear in films and on television, and he provided his voice for animation and narration of films as well. He also provided the spoken word narration for Michael Jackson’s famous song and album Thriller (1983). His last appearance on film was in Edward Scissorhands (1990). A lifelong smoker, he died of lung cancer in 1993 at age 82.

Price at approximately the age he would have been when he spoke at IUS.

IU Southeast was clearly graced by the visit of Vincent Price to campus. A fascinating man, he revealed that he was more than just an actor playing villains. He had a long and prolific career in show business and was well versed in a number of topics including art and cooking.

He clearly lived life to the fullest and was willing to impart his wisdom to others. His visit must have been unforgettable for those students and faculty members who crossed paths with him.

IU’s Most Notable Alumni & The New York Times

Posted on May 26, 2017 by sajacobi

By: Allison Larmann, Bicentennial Intern, Class of 2017, International Studies Major, Bloomington

The NYT Criteria

Since 1851, The New York Times has been considered a premier national news source. The New York Times does not take its responsibility to report news to the nation lightly and therefore its criteria to decide who makes it into the obituary section is just as rigorous.

According to The New York Times obituary editor Bill McDonald, “Many people think of a Times obit as the last word. So it’s a double weight.”[1]

Men reading newspaper, 1959. Courtesy of IU Archives, P0051955.

The New York Times has a database of 1,600-1,700 prewritten obituaries so that they are as timely and accurate as possible when they are needed. The publication has to be ready at a moment’s notice to cover the leaders in music, film, academic, culture, and business plus other notable individuals.[2]

The top criteria The New York Times obituary editor Bill McDonald considers for an individual to merit an NYT obituary is: “Is this death national news? Did this person have such an impact on this world that his or her death is something our readers should be told about?”

Bill McDonald goes on to state that “You had better have done something special at the paper [The New York Times staff], or elsewhere, if you want to be buried beside kings, captains of industry and Nobel Laureates.” They do not always base their decision on popularity of the individual but also their lasting impact on the “fabric of time.”

The New York Times has provided a catalog for the most notable people of our age. Over 150 people associated with Indiana University have been featured in the obituaries section. At first the idea of putting together this list sounded simple, but the research tested my knowledge of how the university was portrayed at a national level and my universal belief that everything could be found online.

Additionally, The New York Times focuses their effort on what is most important for the public to know about a person so some obituaries left out the name of Indiana University. This project relied on multiple different sources including https://www.nytimes.com/, ProQuest New York Times database, and the Indiana University Archives. This project allowed me to see the lasting impact that Indiana University has had on the world.

Notable IU Alumni Through the Decades

Cyrus Nutt was the 5th president of Indiana University. Courtesy of IU Archives, P0034209

Cyrus Nutt (1814-1875)

Nutt was president of Fort Wayne Female College (1849-1850) and president of Whitewater College (1850-1855). In 1860, Nutt was appointed president of Indiana University and under his presidency women were admitted to IU for the first time. The school began to grow and expand in academics but also new organized sports, such as baseball. Nutt was president of IU until 1875, one month before his death.

Addison C. Harris, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing right. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Addison C. Harris (1843-1916)

Harris had a prominent career as a lawyer and law professor at Indiana University. Harris was then appointed by President McKinley to be Ambassador to Austria-Hungary and then President of the Indiana Law School, which later became the Indiana University McKinney Law School.

John Merle Coulter 1892. Courtesy of IU Archives, P0040101.

John Merle Coulter (1852-1928)

Coulter’s most prominent role was serving as Indiana University president from 1891-1893. Coulter was also the president of Lake Forest University (1893-1896) and chaired the botany department at the University of Chicago.

David Starr Jordan 1880. Courtesy of IU Archives, P0033881.

David Starr Jordan (1851-1931)

Jordan had two prominent positions: seventh president of Indiana University and the founding president of Stanford University. Jordan also was an ichthyologist, professor, and peace activist.

Ernest Hiram Lindley (standing) and Henry Saunders Bates. Courtesy of IU Archives, P0031299.

Ernest Hiram Lindley (1869-1940)

Lindley was a professor of philosophy at Indiana University before becoming the Chancellor of Kansas University.

Howard V. Hornung (1888-1950)

Hornung had a long career in the Detroit Michigan school system as a teacher and later principal. He also served as president of the Detroit Teachers Association and created a scholarship for students from the city to come to Indiana University. Hornung also was the president of the IU Alumni Club in Detroit.

Roscoe Carlyle Buley. Courtesy of IU Archives, P0020745.

Roscoe Carlyle Buley (1893-1968)

Buley was a history professor at Indiana University from 1925-1964 and then an emeritus professor until his death. In 1951, Buley won the Pulitzer Prize for history for his work The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period 1815-1840.

Dedication of Showalter Fountain. Courtesy of IU Archives, P0029549.

Grace M. Showalter (1923-1972)

Showalter was the Vice President of the Indiana University Foundation for 25 years. She then became the first female director of the IU Foundation at which time she donated funds for the installation of Showalter Fountain on the Bloomington, IN campus. Showalter and her husband were long time donors to IU.

Elizabeth Duncan Koontz. United States Department of Labor Web Gallery.

Elizabeth Koontz (1919-1989)

Koontz was the first black president of the National Education Association and created a Civil Rights Division for the NEA. Koontz was also the Director of the Women’s Bureau under President Nixon and fought for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

Hoyt C. Hottel. National Academies Press.

Hoyt Clark Hottel (1903-1998)

Hottel was a chemical and combustion engineer and was considered a leader in the field of improving and developing new alternative fuels.

Wells with visitors from Rotarian Magazine. Courtesy of IU Archives, P0053788.

Herman B Wells (1902-2000)

Wells was president of Indiana University from 1937 to 1962 and then assumed the role of chancellor. He is widely considered to have transformed Indiana University from a small Midwest university into a large international institution. From economics professor to IU Chancellor, Wells dedicated 70 years to improving Indiana University.

Elinor Ostrom 1985. Courtesy of IU Archives, P0021587.

Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012)

Ostrom was a political science professor, founder of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, and a political economist at Indiana University. In 2009 Dr. Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences for her analysis of economic governance. To date, she has been the only woman awarded this prize.

Read more about this project here: https://blogs.iu.edu/bicentennialblogs/2017/05/26/the-tale-of-two-projects/

Works Cited

[1] “Talk to the Newsroom: Obituaries Editor Bill McDonald” The New York Times. Sept. 25, 2006.

[2] Dunlap, David W. “When Death Comes, and the Obituary Quickly Follows”. The New York Times. Oct. 8, 2015.

The Tale of Two Projects

Posted on May 26, 2017 by sajacobi

By: Allison Larmann, Bicentennial Intern, Class of 2017, International Studies Major, Bloomington

I am a senior studying International Studies with a certificate in the Liberal Arts and Management Program and a minor in Marketing. The bicentennial internship interested me because it was a perfect way to expand upon the research skills I have learned through my classes while supporting Indiana University as it prepares for its bicentennial celebration!

I am really grateful that I was able to be a bicentennial intern before I graduated so that I could learn more about Indiana University’s history as well as reflect upon my past four years at IU and think about all of the skills I have learned to prepare for my future.

Students from Thailand participate in the Voice of America radio broadcast in 1957. Photo courtesy of IU Archives P0032997.

The Two Projects

As an International Studies major, I was interested in completing a project regarding Indiana University’s impact on international institutions. As I looked into exactly how to formulate my project I realized that IU’s impact on the state and national level was also equally impressive and that should be recognized. Additionally, my bicentennial supervisor James Capshew, University Historian, was really interested to see who from IU has had an obituary in The New York Times.

This seemed like a really great opportunity to learn more about IU’s most notable students and faculty, so I added this as a side project. I decided the best way to keep track of all of the data I was compiling would be through excel sheets.

Civil Service: Who Is In and Who Is Out?

The first task with compiling the list of alumni that have been in civil service positions is what actually constitutes a member of the civil service? After meeting with my bicentennial supervisor we decided that the best idea would be to create our list around the premise that civil service could include anyone at the local, state, national and supranational level that held a position in the government who has not held a position in the armed forces.

This was my first challenge to overcome in the project. The next challenge was how to efficiently create this database; the answer: use a four pronged approach through books on IU history, the Indiana University Archives, online databases, and websites.

A database of this style has not yet been completed by IU so I was really looking forward to delving into uncharted territory. I really appreciated the access to the Indiana University Archives because of the massive amount of materials that were able to be accessed on a variety of subjects, including alumni in the civil service.

The research itself was very fascinating and discovering the wide variety of positions and accomplishments in the civil service by our alumni made me proud to be a Hoosier. Some of the most notable people on the list include Ambassador Feisal Istrabadi, the former Ambassador from Iraq to the United Nations and currently a professor at IU, Frederick Landis, the former Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, and Cheryl Lau, first woman to serve as general counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Former Indiana Governor Paul McNutt (right) was a well respected politician and statesman. Photo courtesy of IU Archives P0033044.

The Challenge of The New York Times Obituaries

The New York Times began in 1851 and initially covered mostly local news but quickly gained fame as a highly regarded national newspaper. At first this side project sounded simple, search for “Indiana University” in The New York Times and create a list with the pertinent information. This works until the search does not exactly find the type of articles you want and mix basketball scores with obituaries of anyone who passed away in the state of Indiana.

This tested my belief that everything could be found on the internet if you just searched for it, that is not true. First, there was the challenge of the name of the university. There were articles that wrote the University of Indiana, Indiana U, or other variations of our actual school name. Also, there are some obituaries that left out the name of Indiana University in general instead choosing to focus on later career achievements.

This project relied on multiple different sources being brought together primarily The New York Times website, ProQuest New York Times database, and the Indiana University Archives. The impressive expanse of Indiana University’s name in The New York Times obituary section has spanned almost the entire length of The New York Times publication from the late 19th century up to today. It was really interesting to see the amazing lives that Indiana University has helped shape throughout its history.

These two projects have had their challenges, but I have loved the experience and the knowledge I have gained. My favorite take away has been while researching how much I have learned about IU’s amazing alumni and the impressive amount they have accomplished throughout the almost 200 years of this institution.

I am really proud that Indiana University now have these two lists that can be utilized by future interns and for the bicentennial celebrations.

The Music Scene: Thriving On Any Given Night in Bloomington

Posted on May 26, 2017 by sajacobi

By: Noah Sandweiss, Bicentennial Intern, Class of 2018, History, Bloomington

Bars, basements, and other venues are packed and steamy with students huddling, dancing, or jostling around. In the midst of the crowd, a band carves out a little breathing space. It might be a one-night arrangement, thrown together for the heck of it, or a group playing demos for a new album. Every once in a while, the musicians will play something that the world doesn’t have a name for yet—call it folk punk, post punk, cool jazz.

For over a century, students at Indiana University have been breaking molds both on and off campus, creating new genres, experimenting with older styles, or just goofing around. Bloomington’s diverse student population catalyzed musical innovation in ballrooms, bars, and basements.

I became intrigued about the history of Bloomington’s music scene because of the insistent flux of influences and shared experiences between local musicians over the course of decades. The stimulus of the music school, particularly the jazz program, is evident in lineages of jazz and jazz-fusion groups, while the folklore program inspires the exploration of vernacular southern Indiana music, and the student body’s anti-establishment bent has sparked innovations in punk music since the genre’s inception.

With such an eclectic spread of musicians and bands constantly forming and splitting up, and evolving through graduation, maturation, or chance, it has been difficult narrowing down the information that I plan on using for my interactive timeline.

Numerous projects have been conducted in mapping of musical groups during key periods of creative growth and in sketching the biographies of IU’s most influential musicians. In putting together a new, all-inclusive narrative, I have to give credit to the organization Musical Family Tree, which promotes the recognition of Indiana musicians, Eric “Indiana” Spears for his videos and blog posts on the local music scene in the 1980s and 1990s, and Richard Sudhalter, author of Stardust Melody: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael [1].

I’d also like to thank everybody who met with me for interviews and shared their own personal experience creating or promoting music in Bloomington.

What never fails to amaze me as a history student is how easy it can be to find information if you simply know where to look. In Bloomington alone, Indiana University has over 30 libraries and the Monroe County Public Library and the Monroe County History Center have plenty of primary resources and local histories. People who have been playing music in town for decades are usually willing to share their stories.

Of course, the internet is a wonderful thing, and there are many credible blogs, databases, and articles on most any subject. Of course, I don’t have to tell you that, but I don’t want to give off the impression that I’m entirely analogue. The videos and images that I use come in part from the IU Archives, as well as elsewhere on the internet, falling under the fair use clause as educational content.

As far as my timeline is concerned, the history of an innovative IU inspired music tradition begins with the introduction of ragtime music, which in the 1910s inspired a young Hoagy Carmichael, a Bloomington boy, to take up piano.

He found his way to Indiana University, and, along with fellow Hoosier jazz pioneer Bix Beiderbecke and art musician Ernest Moenkhaus, Carmichael adopted the sounds of New York, New Orleans, St. Louis, and Chicago, and invited African American bands from Indianapolis to play in Bloomington.

Not only is Carmichael one of the most famous musicians to come out of IU, but many people involved with the Bloomington music scene give him credit for attracting the out-of-town bands that allowed music venues to grow, and for helping launch the tradition of off-campus innovation.

Carmichael’s Collegians 1924. Photo courtesy IU Archives, P0020770.

The period between the 1930s and late 1960s seems oddly quiet however, as the depression and war dominated the two decades following Carmichael’s graduation. The most likely reason for this gap is that there simply weren’t many local musicians being written about.

Much of the music performed around IU consisted of popular swing and dance tunes. It is during this period however that IU’s jazz program took off. Jazz students and faculty blurred the line between academic and popular music, with jazz greats such as Al Cobine and David Baker attending and later teaching at IU. In 1968, Baker founded the Jazz Studies department.

The boom of local bands from 1968 onward was spurred by a number of factors, including the new jazz program, a strong counter-culture scene, the emergence of do-it-yourself record labels, and new FM radio stations like WIUS and WQAX.

Though the early 1960s were dominated by jazz bands and folk clubs, the late 1960s began to see the rise of experimental bands such as Mrs. Seamon’s Sound Band, which would morph into the Screaming Gypsy Bandits, and later into the influential acid rock band MX-80.

In particular, the Screaming Gypsy Bandits helped launch a new wave of bands, which performed at houses, bars, and street dances put on by WQAX. A theatric experience, Screaming Gypsy Bandit shows could feature improv sketches such as impromptu sales pitches for canned camel meat.

David Baker 1975. Photo courtesy IU Archives, P0053012

Folk music continued to be performed, in folk gatherings and in public with singer-songwriter (and eventual voice actress) Caroline Peyton, among others. The Spectator, a radical leftist newspaper, hosted public shows, reviewed local musicians, and served as a community hub and news channel. Paul Buhle, editor of Radical America declared The Spectator “the most intellectually serious underground newspaper I’ve ever seen.”[2]

The paper gained such notoriety, that J. Edgar Hoover coordinated a failed FBI attempt to undermine its influence with the publication of an anti-leftist campus newsletter disguised as an alternative paper.

During this period, the FBI was also responsible for placing hidden cameras in radical businesses, and allegedly planting heroin under the car of the owner of a black power store called The Black Market. In 1968, Dean of Faculty Joseph Sutton barged into The Spectator’s office—a WWII-era Quonset hut—accompanied by campus police and armed with a fire axe, throwing out files and equipment. The paper went literally underground then, operating out of a basement apartment.

The Dancing Cigarettes, photo by d. self. Indiana University campus 1980.

In 1979, the Dancing Cigarettes made inroads into Bloomington’s emerging punk scene. Known for their danceable tunes and Dadaist lyrics, the Dancing Cigarettes helped popularize early punk in the area. Up through the present day, a punk lineage has left its legacy in Bloomington through house shows, street dances, and anarchist collectives.

Between the 1970s and 1990s, the emergence of simple and inexpensive recording techniques transformed Bloomington into the hub for the anarchic DIY genre of folk-punk, with formative bands such as Ghost Mice and AJJ recording at Plan-it-X Records.

Today, the music scene in Bloomington seems more diverse than ever. Co-ops host punk, hip hop, and DJ’s from Bloomington and beyond. Local venues such as Rhinos, Players Pub, Bears, and The Bishop, just to name a few, draw musicians from far and wide, and record stores feature locally produced music.

Bloomington is host to numerous record labels such as Plan-it-X, Secretly Canadian, Jagjaguwar, as well as the former site of numerous discontinued labels. In shared spaces, influences, and experiences, Bloomington’s innovating musicians share a unique heritage that continues to push the envelope of popular (or unpopular) music.

Works Cited

[1] Sudhalter, Richard M. Stardust Melody: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

[2] Wynkoop, Mary Ann. Dissent in the Heartland: The Student Protest Movement at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, 1965 – 1970. Indiana University Press. 2002.