NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 26 number 2 - Winter 2006

Alumni Stories Augment NC State University's History

By Anna Dahlstein, External Relations

The NCSU Libraries’ fall 2004 exhibition, Transforming Society: The GI Bill Experience at NC State, garnered a high level of interest among students, alumni, and other visitors from the Raleigh area. Because a large number of alumni live farther away and may not have had the opportunity to visit the exhibit in person, the Libraries mailed each NC State graduate of the late 1940s and early 1950s an exhibit catalog as well as an invitation to visit the Web-based version of the exhibit.

The Libraries digitized most of the extensive exhibit content and made it available on the Web at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/exhibits/gibill/. Completed in April 2005 by NCSU Libraries Fellow Jaime Margalotti, in consultation with Web Development Librarian May Chang, the online exhibit provides long-distance and long-term access to unique primary materials held by the Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center. The Web site includes digital images of University Archives photographs, Technician and alumni magazine articles, excerpts from autobiographical essays and letters, and some materials lent by NC State student veterans.

A number of former GI Bill beneficiaries, family members, and friends wrote back, sharing their own recollections of returning to civilian and college life after World War II or Korea. Because their accounts contribute to the historical record and supplement the oral history interviews conducted for this project, the Libraries requested the correspondents’ permission to add the letters to the NC State Alumni Collection in the University Archives and to post excerpts from them on the GI Bill Web site. A few excerpts are reprinted here, offering testimony to the GI Bill’s impact on individual lives and NC State. After World War II, living conditions on campus were cramped, as the GI Bill more than doubled student enrollment before additional dorms could be built. These four alumni describe the variety of makeshift housing that they endured—with a dose of humor rather than any complaints.

"Thanks for sending the Transforming Society catalog! It sure brings back memories of my days at State College. I first “roomed” across the street from Tompkins Hall in the Stimpsons’ basement with about eight other freshmen. We had one makeshift shower and toilet. Then I went to 326 Syme Hall for the remainder, when they placed four students in #326—[but only] two desks. The GI Bill was my ticket to a civil engineering education. . . . Thanks for thinking of the returning veterans."

--Marion R. Cochran (Class of 1950), Greensboro, N.C.

"I was one of those GI Joes, 1948–1950. . . . We lived across from the Raleigh-Durham Airport in one of the three family apartments located in what had been the Army dispensary. Four or five more [NC State] students’ families also lived around there, as well as a forestry professor, using the other military buildings. We carpooled to the campus. Our building was heated by hot water from a large furnace that gobbled up about five cords of wood each winter to keep the building warm enough for the babies. Weekends were devoted to logging the surrounding forest for that fuel supply. . . . We also maintained a large community garden and the women used the Depression-era cannery in Morrisville to preserve the surplus.

At graduation our wives also were awarded the Degree of Goodwife, a kind gesture made for their cooperation in contending with postwar shortages and housing difficulties with good humor. A copy of my wife’s certificate is enclosed if you care to add it to the GI Bill memorabilia."

--Joseph H. Marion (Class of 1950), Yuma, Arizona

"I was in the Army Air Corps from 1943 to 1946. By the time I received my discharge in April of 1946, most of the universities were already full with veterans. However, State responded to my inquiry and said I was welcome there, but they had no place for me to live. After a frantic summer, I enrolled at Presbyterian Junior College, mostly because the school had a room for me in a private home. Surprisingly, the education I received there was quite good and I had no problem in transferring to State for the fall semester of 1947. And it had to be an act of God that I found a comfortable room on Hillsboro Street for my wife and me.”

--James S. Parker (Class of 1950), Lubbock, Texas

"Thank you so much for sending me a copy of [the catalog]. I was a nonveteran student at NC State from 1949-1953 and witnessed first-hand the groundswell of veterans in college. I later returned in 1955 as a veteran and lived in Vetville [a pre-fab housing complex for veterans located on the west side of campus.] This was a God-send for my new wife and me."