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Jean S. Hayes, Diane Sawyer, and Virgina Van Zant visit LWC Graduate Jean S. Hayes (1938), her daughter, Diane Sawyer, and Virginia Huddleston Van Zant (1939) take nostalgic tour of Lindsey Wilson Campus. Alumni revist room in Phillips Hall they shared with Metcalfe Countians Neva Sawyer and Hazel Nunn Blevins With photographs By Duane Bonifer, LWC Director of Public Affairs COLUMBIA, KY. As Lindsey Wilson College prepares to embark on its largest expansion in college history, two alumnae from the 1930s were on campus Monday morning to reminisce about campus life in the late 1930s. Jean S. Hayes, a 1938 graduate, and Virginia Huddleston Van Zant, a 1939 graduate, toured the campus and recalled the days from their time as Lindsey Wilson students. They were accompanied by Hayes' daughter Diane Sawyer. The two were roommates during the 1937-38 school year. They shared a room on the first floor in Phillips Hall with classmates Neva Sawyer (Hayes' sister-in-law) and Hazel Nunn Blevins, both of Metcalfe County. Hayes, who was from Monticello, spent her first year of college at nearby Cumberland College in Williamsburg, Ky. She transferred to Lindsey Wilson because as an education major she wanted the opportunity to teach in the college's well-known training school. "I knew from the beginning that I was going to be a teacher," Hayes said. "From day one my mother said that you were going to be a teacher." Although Hayes' parents--Foxie and Nora Belle Dunnagan--did not attend college, they made sure that she and her three sisters went to college. All four became teachers. During conversations in their old dorm room and while visiting in the President's Office in the L.R. McDonald Administration Building, Hayes and Van Zant recalled what Lindsey Wilson was like more than 70 years ago. The biggest difference was the size of the college and campus. In 1937-38, the campus had but four main buildings-- the Administration Building (later renamed the L.R. McDonald Administration Building), Phillips Hall, the Gymnasium/Hundley Dining Hall and Chandler Hall. (Chandler Hall, a men's residence hall, was demolished in the early 1980s.) All of their classes were held in the Administration Building, which also contained the college's modest library. "It's hard to believe that we had all of our classes in this one building," Van Zant, who is an Adair County native, said as they walked up the McDonald Administration Building's front steps. "But somehow we had them all in here." The student body was also considerably smaller. Fewer than 200 students were enrolled at Lindsey Wilson in the late 1930s. In comparison, Lindsey Wilson will enroll more than twice as many new students this fall. "It was a very nice campus where everyone knew everyone," Van Zant recalled while she and Hayes stood in their former dorm room on Monday morning. As the two alumnae toured the campus, they also recalled some of their favorite professors. They enjoyed science classes under the legendary Elva Goodhue, they checked out books from librarian Katie Murrell, and they had mathematics and physics under a young Asa Shelton. "I really enjoyed Asa Shelton's classes," Van Zant said. Under the leadership of Lindsey Wilson's second president, A.P. White, campus rules were also much more restrictive. Coeds were permitted to leave campus only on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings # but only on Wednesday evening if they intended to attend a church service. Coeds were expected to be in their rooms by 9:00pm local time. Still, that didn't prevent the students from testing the rules. One weeknight, Hayes and Van Zant asked the Phillips Hall housemother, Miss Franks, if they could go to a movie in town. Their request was denied "because she had just told some other students that they could not go to the movie so she had to do the same with us," Van Zant said. But that didn't deter them. Hayes, Van Zant and their two roommates decided to stuff their beds with dummy bodies, and then slipped out the residence hall's back door to see the movie. (More than 70 years later, they thought the movie was "The Woman in Red," a 1935 film starring Barbara Stanwyck.) "I don't know why we wanted to see the movie except everyone wanted to see it," Hayes said. Complete with slippers and robes and covered by bed sheets, the makeshift dummy bodies appeared authentic. The stunt would have worked if a fellow resident had not asked the house mother to unlock the door so she could retrieve a bottle of vinegar she had loaned one of the coeds. "She got the vinegar and left, but the house mother got to thinking about it," Van Zant said. "She thought, 'The poor things # they went to bed with their slippers on.' So she went over to remove them and that's when she found out what we had done. ... When we came back from the movie, they had locked our door." And the punishment meted out was severe # "campused," or grounded to campus, for a month. "We were allowed to go home, but we couldn't leave the campus for a month while were here," Van Zant said. "And I don't even remember much about the movie. I guess we liked it." Following the 1937-38 school year, Hayes went on to Western Kentucky State Teachers College (now Western Kentucky University) where she graduated with honors and then had a distinguished teaching career. Van Zant graduated from Lindsey Wilson the following year, then taught for a little more than a year before becoming a homemaker. "We had such a wonderful time here, and we are so pleased that we were able to get back to see it again," Van Zant said. This story was posted on 2008-06-25 06:02:07
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