Viewing page 141 of 207

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

96

would mean more to me in getting a job later on than belonging to a social fraternity. But all this was obscured to me at the time and I continued to be periodically disturbed over the fraternity situation. Fortunately, however, I was so busy with my studies that I didn't have time to let this matter disturb me very much of the time. The professors were a good bunch too almost without exception. The dean was Dr. Graham who was shortly to become vice—chancellor and be succeeded by Dr. Louis Mitchell, the civil engineering head; the dean's office was presided over by Miss Lewis, an elderly spinster I haven't thought of for almost 50 years but her name comes back easily and I can see her, small, skinny and birdlike, f1itting around and very concerned about us boys getting along as we should. Prof. Atcheson taught thermodynamics and moonlighted as a consulting engineer and was quite noticeably more prosperous than most of the other profs as a result. Keenan, an aging, ta11, goateed, moustached ex—Navy officer and Annapolis graduate, was one of the math profs and a riot; the other math prof was named Northcutt, who looked more like a business man and had a sly sense of humor and a biting tongue when he became a bit exasperated with his students. On one occasion, a student was at the board working out a problem and came to a spot where he had to do a simple addition, like say two plus two, and he suddenly became paralyzed and couldn't make his mind function, and as he continued to hesitate, Prof. Northcutt said, "Just go ahead and make a rough approximation." Prof. Street ran the mechanical lab and boiler tests; he was built like a pro—wrestler but he had a dainty little blond moustache and was a very mild man and well liked. Prof. Carnahan was a little, middle-aged, low slung guy with perpetually dirty fingernails who taught kinematics, which I loved, particularly making the drawings involved, which were a cross between mechanical drawings and perspective drawings and I could do to a tee. The chemistry instructor in the lab was named Craig, a young guy, whom I one day handed a hot vessel to using some forceps and Craig grasped with his bare hand and almost jumped through the roof, blasting me with, "If you had twice as many brains as you've got now, you'd be half-witted!" Thanks to this incident, I can see Craig yet and will retain an image of him to my dying day.  In spite of this affair, I did pass chemistry but with a C, one of the very few C's I got in my whole four years at college. Prof. Hart, a tall, homely, Lincolnesque figure and well—liked, taught strength of materials, as I recall, or machine design, or both. When we finally got into our electrical courses, we had a Prof. Parker, who was a dude and wore very stylish clothes and especially loud, striped ties and tweeds, and had married money since it was obvious he couldn't have afforded his wardrobe on a prof's salary; he was a trifle stilted and the only one of the engineering faculty who didn't quite qualify as a really great guy -- but he was okay. I recall one of his stories, which proved later to be quite apt for me, was of a Chicago railroad executive who was considering electrifying his Chicago suburban operation