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03. The University in Wartime
- Texas A&M University Press
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41 T HeRe WaS neveR any discussion in my family about where i would go to college. One day, my father said, “you are going to the University of Texas, because it’s going to be a great school someday.” So, in the fall of 1941, when i went to austin as a freshman, everybody in Fort Stockton declared , “That poor little girl is going to that great big school.” i decided to study art. Back then, we all called UT “The University.” That was how many Texans felt about it and how they still do today. although the campus had more than 10,000 students, a vast number in those days, it did not seem too big to me. i liked it immediately, and i was never homesick, not for one minute. Coming from a little town where people knew and respected my parents , i had grown up with everyone in town knowing and accepting me. When i got to the University, nobody knew me, so i had to make it on my own. That was the best thing that could have happened to me because it forced me to grow up. 3 a The University in Wartime Jane as a student at the University of Texas 42 C H A p T e R 3 When i first got to austin, its population was only about 90,000. it was our state capital with but two industries: government and higher education. We students had no idea at all that in a few months our world would change, austin’s along with it. My freshman class spent only ninety days of pre-war innocence before December 7 changed everything for us as it had already for people living in asia and in europe. While life in a dormitory would have been fine with me, instead, i had the good fortune to live in a delightful boarding house just off campus. My father had known the housemother’s husband many years earlier. That became my connection as well. Today, i realize “boarding house” is an unfamiliar term to most people, which is their loss. a good boarding house, like the one where i lived, combined the best features of a dormitory, a sorority, a hotel, and an extended family. We residents ate our meals together, and i remember those rum pound cakes very fondly. They became quite a luxury after sugar was rationed during the war. For more than sixty years, my college friends and i have laughed about the cultural divide between our extremely dignified housemother and her lively young charges. She valued propriety, good pearls, and above all else refinement. Sadly for our wonderful housemother, we were a group of fun-loving free spirits. She expected us to be ladylike at all times, never easy for those of us who had a wide streak of mischief and a craving for independence. i am not at all sure how we managed to coexist without being bounced out on our ears, but somehow we did. My friend Mignon from Fort Stockton was sent to a girl’s school in Mississippi for her first two years of college, but for her junior year was reunited with the rest of us at our austin boarding house. Life there for us was a lot like living in the antebellum South. Our african american butler, cook, and maids were dignified, reserved, and wonderfully helpful, and we loved them all. Our house rules were typical of that era. We had to be in the house by ten o’clock on weeknights and by twelve on Fridays and Saturdays, standard hours for university girls back then, whether they lived in a university dormitory or a boarding house. at our parents’ request, we were closely supervised. They wanted us to return home with our values intact, by which they almost surely [44.200.82.195] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:48 GMT) 43 T H e U N I v e R S I T y I N WA R T I M e meant “our virginity.” even the concept of coed dorms in our day was as unthinkable then as landing a man on the moon was much later. Three months into my freshman year, war came to america on a lazy Sunday afternoon. i heard the news on the radio at our boarding house when normal programming was interrupted by a news bulletin. Of course, we were all shocked and horrified by the brazen...