On November 11th we take a moment to thank our veterans for their dedicated service to our country. This photo shows members of the Army Specialized Training Program chatting with some of the women students in the fall, 1943. The military program used The Brick for its barracks in both World War I and World War II. In the second war, there were 711 enlisted men on campus from July 1943 – April 1944.
Found in the archives is a copy of a V-Mail letter sent to the University president on June 5, 1944 by Chester Flaum, Class of 1933. It’s an interesting reflection on his AU education and helps put learning in a useful perspective:
“My dear Dr. Norwood,It is thousands of miles and a long cry from Alfred to New Guinea, but as I read your recent letter, and your less recent Alumni News, my mind wandered back thirteen years, and I found myself under the pines by the banks of the Kanakadea, instead of under the palms by the shores of the Pacific.
Little did I think, as I sat in Kenyon Hall [site of Powell Campus Center], boning away at seemingly unsolvable mathematics problems, or mixing unmeaning fluids in a test tube at the Chem lab, that what I was studying then would some day be applied, to good advantage, to the conduct of jungle warfare. However the learning that I received at Alfred, and in later life has been most helpful in aiding me to perform a job for our country in an efficient way which might help, to a small extent, to get this war over with, with a quick victory, so much sooner.
My best wishes to yourself and old A.U.,
Lt. Chester J. Flaum”