DIAL 4-5444
STUDENT TRI-WEEKLY
NEWSPAPER OF
TEXAS A. & M. COLLEGE
The Battalion
DIAL 4-5444
OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER
OF THE CITY OF
COLLEGE STATION
VOL. 40 122 ADMINISTRATION BLDG. COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS, SATURDAY MORNING, MAY 10, 1941
84
Colorful Weekend Program Here Honors Aggie Parents
Eligible*
Announced
By Math Dept
30 Freshmen,
20 Sophomores
Selected for Finals
Freshmen and sophomores eli
gible to take the final examination
of the mathematics contests were
announced recently by the Mathe
matics department. The final ex
amination will be held May 19 at
7:30 p. m.
The math contest, an annual ev
ent, consists of two examinations
in both the freshman and sopho
more divisions. Preliminary tests
are open to all students taking
first and second year mathematics.
The freshman exams cover college
algebra, trigonometry and analyti
cal geometry. The sophomore ques
tions are on calculus. The contest
ants eligible to take the final ex
aminations are chosen from those
making the highest grades on the
priliminary examinations. 30 fresh
men and 20 sophomores are thus
selected.
Prizes for the winners are gold
watches for first and second place
winners and ten dollars for third
place winners in both divisions.
These winners will be announced
at a banquet attended by all those
eligible to take the final tests.
Sophomores eligible to take the
final examination are: W. M. Ad-
kisson, J. A. Baird, D. S. Lansdon,
R. L. Jolley, D. R. Sutherland, Guy
Johnson, A. H. Lynch, S. R. Baen,
Wm. Bever, A. J. Specia, J. H.
Stone, O. A. Nance, L. H. Todd, C.
G. Welling, J. T. Cox, J. C. Denney,
S. J. Marwill, W. E. Huffhines, J.
G. Goppert and W. J. Galloway.
Eligible freshmen are: L. L.
Burns, L. E. Hiltpold, Jack Keith,
E. H. Canfield, C. D. Hubert, J.
M. Lozano, E. J. Pratt, W. M.
Moseley, R. E. Alston, G. D. Boes-
che, W. F. Tate, R. B. Williams,
Curtis Zahn, C. Brennecke, A. H.
Foyvler and J. H. Goatley.
D. M. Griffiths, R. R. Haw
thorn, F. D. Hess, H. S. Jacobson,
R. O. Thompson, A. S. McSwain,
A. S. Morrison, B. F. Parker, C.
W. Reagan, J. G. Richardson, D.
L. Stillinger, L. W. Roddy, C. A.
Riggs and R. J. Ridgway.
Corsages for the Ring Dance
Sidelight of last night’s Senior Ring dance was the pre-dance rush given the student floral conces
sion. The last-minute demand for corsages is evidenced in this picture which shows cadet employees
making the corsages from flowers shipped here from Chicago, Denver, New Orleans and Houston.
Above, left to right, are J. J. Johnson, F. L. Barnes, Murray Evans, Louis R. Craigo, Robert J.
Moors, A. D. Lasell, W. F. Dickerson, Ken Bresnen and Clarence Sparkman. Lasell and Barnes are co
holders of the concession.
750 Seniors Top Off Four Years
Of Social Events at Senior Ring Dance
Couples Perform Traditional Ceremony
As A1 Donahue^ Band Plays Sweet Music
Approximately seven hundred and fifty military-uniformed
A. & M. seniors observed the crowning social event of their college
years with the sixth annual Senior Ring Banquet and Dance Friday
night in Sbisa Hall.
Tom Richey, president of the class, welcomed the seniors and their
dates, and Mayo Thompson, a member of the class, acted as toastmas
ter for the occasion. The class historian, Aubrey Hamilton, traced the
history and accomplishments of the very active men of ’41.
Beginning at 7 p. m. and lasting until 9, the banquet and ring
ceremony is an occasion never to be forgotten. Following the ban
quet, the Ring Dance began at 10 with A1 Donahue and his orchestra
presenting their “low down top hat rhythm” until 2 a. m.
After the speech-making part
of the banquet program, while
Donahue’s sweet music was filling
the room, each cadet and his es-
cortee ascended the steps behind
the huge “ring” and paused in its
center. The young lady then re
moved the senior’s class ring from
his finger and replaced it in the
opposite position, with the ’41 tow
ard the end of his finger.
This act signifies that the se
nior has transformed from student
to graduate, and he is supposed to
wear his ring as it is placed for
ever after. The couple then kissed
and descended the steps to the
front, returning to their seats.
R0TC Grads
To Be Called
For Active Duty
An announcement was made by
the War Department Tuesday
that more than 8,000 young of
ficers would be called to active
duty as second lieutenants this
summer on their graduation from
college and on completion of train
ing in the reserve officers train
ing corps.
The announcement was made in
connection with the fixing of dates
for R. O. T. C. summer training
camp courses at 31 Army posts,
beginning in June.
The R. O. T. C. summons was
said to be an unprecedented step.
Engineers’ Day Features Many Exhibits;
Review to Highlight Sunday Festivities
Mothers, Dads
Will Take Over
Campus Sunday
After weeks of preparation and
work, all is in order to greet the
12,000 visitors who will be on the
campus this weekend for the an
nual festivities and program of the
Mother’s and Dad’s Day at A. & M.
This morning at 10, the State
Association of A. & M. Mother’s
Clubs will hold its annual meeting
in the parlor of Sbisa Hall. A tea
honoring all visiting parents will
be held in the lobby of the local
Y. M. C. A. from 2 until 5 this
afternoon. It will be sponsored by
the Brazos County A. & M. Moth
er’s Club.
This evening at eight o’clock,
Dr. and Mr. T. O. Walton will be
at home to visiting parents when
they honor them with an informal
reception.
The program for Sunday will
begin with the traditional pinning
of red and white flowers upon ca
dets in rank formation in front of
their respective dormitories. Each
organization commander will desig
nate a girl to pin the flowers on
the men in his outfit. This cere
mony will begin at 8 a. m. and
last for approximately one hour.
At 9 the cadets of each regi
ment will march from their re
spective dormitory areas to the
old parade grounds where they
will stand in ranks for nearly
thirty minutes. During this time,
honors and presentations will be
made to the highest military and
scholastic students in school.
At 9:45 the cadet corps will pass
in review. A special program hon
oring all parents will be presented
at Kyle Field at 11:15. Following
this affair, a picnic lunch will be
held on the gridiron.
Parents will inspect the various
dormitories from 1:30 until 3:30.
The Texas A. & M. band will pre
sent a concert in Guion Hall dur
ing the next hour. This terminates
the activities for Sunday.
Chairman of the Mother’s Day
committee is Preston M. Bolton, a
senior student at A. & M. and son
of Dr. F. C. Bolton, dean of the
college. Other members of the
committee are: Thomas B. Richey,
president of the senior class; Theo
dore E. Duce, a senior cadet; and
L. L. Appelt, another senior cadet.
Weekend Maestro
A1 Donahue is handling the mu
sical end of this week’s festivities.
He and his orchestra played Fri
day night for the Senior Ring
Dance and Banquet, and will hold
forth tonight at the corps dance.
C
Outstanding
Students Will
Receive Awards
Nine students who have display
ed outstanding work and ability
during the current school year will
receive honor awards during the
Mother’s day review to be held
here Sunday.
The Caldwell trophy watch giv
en each year by the Caldwell Jew
elry store, Bryan, will be presented
to Cadet Technical Sergeant Hughs
Seewald, Troop A Cavalry. This
is a competitive award open to all
A. & M. students except seniors.
The trophy is rotated each year,
not being given to a cadet of any
one organization two years in suc
cession nor to the same cadet
twice. The trophy will be present
ed by James O. Chance of Bryan.
A saber will be presented to Ca
det Lt. Col. Aubrey V. Hamilton,
of the Composite Regiment, by the
United Daughters of the Confed
eracy for being the outstanding
student in advanced military sci
ence. This, too, is a competitive
award but is not rotated. Mrs. J.
B. McFarland, state president of
the U. D. C. will make the pre
sentation.
Tom Gillis, editor-elect of The
Battalion and vice-president of the
(Continued on Page 12)
“The Old Order Changeth"
Hamilton Tells of Trials and Tribulations of Class of ’41
By Aubrey Hamilton
It began four years ago on a
hot, September day when twenty-
two hundred men became Texas
Aggies, the largest freshman class
in the institution’s history.
And today, as an international
crisis rocks the world, we are pre
paring to complete our college ca
reers as Texas Aggies.
Four years ago we entered A.
& M. as near-dazed, befuddled
freshmen. In four more weeks we
will leave the school as potential
defenders of our nation—537 of
us as reserve second lieutenants.
So let’s go behind the scenes for
a little while and see just what
has made this thing tick—the class
of ’41. What is its history?
As ‘Fish’ we entered upon the
normal routine which first-year
cadets had been following for 64
years before us, and with us came
a new commandant, now General
George F. Moore, and Engineering
Dean Gibb Gilchrist.
Our first glimpse of Aggie life
came with College Night, and
shortly thereafter the words “de
tail,” “ram,” “cuffs,” and “Mister”
were standard parts of our vo
cabulary.
Our first class election introduc
ed us to the usual medium of A.
& M. cadet politics—hat cords—
■fand saw Jimmy Giles elected pres
ident.
That year we learned the mean
ing of “Lizzie” and, too, we learned
what “Taps” meant at football
games. Texas U. bowed out on Kyle
Field that year and, as far as we
were concerned, that made the grid
iron season a successful one.
The then-ti'aditional April first
celebration was given an all-Amer
ican send-off by our class that
year as we became the last fish
class to celebrate the event.
Then came “Fish Day” and Final
Review wasn’t far off, and that
was a red-letter day for us be
cause then we were sophomores.
Jack Bailey headed our sopho
more class as a comparatively un
eventful year reeled off.
Then came our great junior
year with Ele Baggett as prexy—
and with it cuffs, a two million dol
lar building program and the col
lege’s first national championship
football team.
The New Orleans corps trip and
the Sugar Bowl game—which saw
Tulane go down 14 to 13—was an
event engraved deep in the minds
of the corps and our class.
The dramatic move to secure
day-and-date motion pictures for
the corps and College Station was
next. Led by last year’s Cadet
•Colonel Woody Varner, the result
ing “non-patronization agreement”
attracted nation-wide publicity and
was the first step of the corps’
move in that direction.
And then, near the end of our
junior year, we laid the first foun
dation as seniors—the election of
class officers.
Tom Richey became our pres
ident, Howard Shelton vice pres
ident and Jeff Montgomery secre
tary-treasurer.
Along with these men Jack Nel
son was chosen social secretary of
the class; Bob Nisbet, editor of
The Battalion; George Fuermann,
Battalion associate editor; Paul
Haines, Town Hall manager; Mor
ton Robinson, Longhorn editor;
Tom Power, agriculturist editor;
Ben Elliott, president of the Stu
dent Engineering Council; and Bus
ter Keeton and Foots Bland, head
yell leaders. These men were to
lead our class throughout its senior
year.
September, 1940, ushered in a
new commandant, Lieut. Col. James
A. Watson. The enrollment hit an
all-time high of 6500; Bill Becker
became corps commander, and the
largest senior class in history
pointed toward June degrees.
The Burke-Wadsworth Bill came
in November but draft-eligible Ag
gies were exempt until at
July 1 as 537 advanced ROTC se
niors heard rumors of possible im
mediate active duty upon gradua
tion.
The football season saw the Ag
gies bid strong for bowl honors
and, after tying with SMU for
the conference championship, the
team defeated Fordham in the Cot
ton Bowl 13 to 12.
With the end of that game also
ended the collegiate gridiron ca
reers of the greatest aggregation
of A. & M. senior football players
in history. Jim Thomason, John
Kimbrough, Tommie Vaughn, Bill
Conatser, Marion Pugh, Marland
Jeffrey, Charley Henke, Ernie
Pannell, Marshall Robnett, Chip
Routt, Odell Herman and others
bowed out that day.
A strike of the cadet corps was
near at hand over the Christmas
holiday argument. The then-cur
rent influenza epidemic was the
corps’ reason for requesting an
early dismissal and, after consid
erable debate back and forth be
tween the student body and the
faculty, the Xmas leave was ex
tended five days.
Another headline event took
place during the Christmas hol
iday period as a persistent senior
committee won from the board of
least-fdirectors
a withdrawal of the-
corps-hated 30 cent charge for
mess hall guests.
Destined to be a unique mile
stone in the American collegiate
world, a Student Aid Fund was or
ganized and received faculty ap
proval in March. Chairman George
Fuermann and Hymie Focke were
the senior class members who led
the drive to organize the fund.
Four more new dormitories be
gan to reach skyward and, with
them, a new federal building went
into construction to house local
agencies of the national govern
ment.
In March, also, a senior class
committee was appointed to furth
er push the motion picture situa
tion. Following a trip to Dallas to
confer with theater executives, the
committee returned with the first
positive results thus far obtained
on the situation. Before the end of
the current semester a working
agreement acceptable to the corps
is predicted by the committee’s
members.
The 1941 social season saw such
‘name’ bands as Duke Ellington,
Bemie Cummins, Russ Morgan and
others play for the regimental
balls. Jimmy Galagher became king
of the Ross Volunteer festivities
and Jim Tom Anderson was named
King Cotton.
Thus, though too briefly, is a
history of our class.
In the past four years we have
seen many traditions die; we have
seen the rise of a world conflict
which will affect all of us; we
have seen the ups and downs of
our own collegiate politics and af
fairs; we have traveled over the
state and even the nation on corps
trips, and inspection trips; we have
been Aggies for four years—and
we’ll always be Aggies.
Our reign as seniors is fast draw
ing to an end and what was for
merly known as ‘senior authority’
is now little more than something
people talk about. “The old order
changeth,” someone once said.
Surely that goes for A. & M. to
day.
But regardless of our opinions
concerning things of that nature,
there’s not one of us who isn’t
proud from the ground up to say
that he is a Texas Aggie. It’s a
brotherhood that will stay with us
as lon£ as we live. Most of us have
a sort of love for this place.
So there it is—the history of
our class ... A class that we think
has faced more trials, tribulations
and unprecedented experiences
than any other in A. & M.’s his
tory.
Engineers
Will Demonstrate
Progress to Visitors
Today belongs to the student
engineers of the college as they
show the results of their prog
ress and knowledge to the 12,000
visitors expected here to witness
the festivities of the Twelfth An
nual Engineers’ day. Visitors and
parents from all parts of the state
will swarm over the campus not
ing exhibits, examining strange
scientific instruments, and find
ing the latest developments in
the various fields of engineering.
Under the joint sponsorship of
the Student Engineering council,
of which Ben Elliott of Dallas is
president, and the school of en
gineering under Dean Gibb Gil
christ, the events of the day will
attract commercial men and busi
ness representatives from through
out the nation as well as Aggie
parents to examine scientific
equipment. Joe F. Brown, Dallas,
is the chairman of the day.
National Defense Theme
The theme of the twelfth an
nual engineers day will be nation
al defense, a subject with which
the college is intimately connect
ed by reason of its military train
ing, engineering graduates in de
fense industries, and the supple
mentary engineering courses for
defense industries which is being
taught at the college now.
Although the engineers’ exhibits
will be the main features of the
day, the additional event of an
Engineers Musical Revue to be
held at 7:00 in Guion Hall will
add a light note of comedy to the
scientific atmosphere. The show
is sponsored by the Student En
gineering council. Each of the
seven engineering departments of
the college will present a skit con
cerning its work.
For the first time this year,
the newly formed department of
aeronautical engineering will par
ticipate in the activities. Howard
W. Barlow, head of the depart
ment, will have exhibits showing
airplane construction, control, and
steps in designing. A motion pic
ture, “The History of Aviation”,
will be shown to visitors.
The mechanical engineering de
partment will have a vast dis
play of equipment in the mechani
cal engineering shops which will
feature metal casting, welding, air
conditioning, and fluid experi
ments. The mechanical and steam
laboratories will display machines
for testing engines and show cut
away engines to explain their op
eration.
In cooperation with the Signal
Corps regiment of the college R.
O. T. C., the electric engineering
department will demonstrate elec
trical equipment and show some
of the strange activities and pow
er of electricity.
Highway construction, structure
models, strength testing appara
tus and a surveying display will
be shown by the civil engineering
department.
Architects
In the field of architectural en
gineering, the department will
show modern home designs, illus
trated by models of latest type
homes. A layout on the rehousing
project in the city of Bryan will
be displayed in miniature.
(Continued on Page 12)
McIntyre Promoted
To Lieutenant Colonel
Lieut. Col. O. E. McIntyre, senior
instructor of the Field Artillery
regiment here, received his silver
leaf, signifying his rank of a Lieut.
Colonel in the United States Army,
after he made a trip to San Antonio
to take his physical examination
May 5.
Col. McIntyre’s promotion was
effective last April 18, but he did
not report to San Antonio until
the first of this week to take the
physical examination that all of
ficers must pass to be eligible for
promotion.