Celebrating 150 Years  |  Alumni Memories

Norma Sohn Lineberger '47
Stentor Editor 1946-47

Are you on your computer?  Click All Programs, the choose Accessories, next System Tools, and finally System Restore.  Now you can select “Restore to an earlier time.”  Poof!!!  Just like that you are back in the autumn of 1946.  The war ended in 1945 but it was another year before the wave of returning veterans came back in huge numbers to start or finish their long-postponed education at institutions of higher learning.  Enrollment at Lake Forest hit a peak of 644 which included 293 veterans.

This was the first time the junior and senior-level gals had attended classes and enjoyed social events with guys in the vicinity.  We were excited, even euphoric at the prospect, but we were still in charge of most campus activities and that’s where I came in as editor of the Stentor.

In our very first issue, October 2, as a sign of the times, there was a letter from a young man in Germany, Rainer Brombach.  He said he had found a badly damaged copy of the Stentor in some ruins and had saved it because it revealed to him “a world of youth whose existence we never even guessed.  We were prevented from looking into the world, from establishing relations with the academic youth of other countries.”  He went on, “Now that the way into the world has been opened to us, we are seeking communications and understanding with the studying youth of the world.  By means of my pen, my comrades seek to establish relation with the students of Lake Forest College and in that way gain knowledge of the life in American universities.  We beg you to help us.”

As a result of this letter Lake Forest became active in the campaign to raise funds for the World Student Service Fund which was formed to help universities all over the world restore their buildings and campuses and being to pick up the pieces of culture and education they knew before WWII.  Yes, we provided a considerable amount of money for the WWSF but even more, we began the foundations for the emphasis nowadays on using education to create global citizens.

On the lighter side, you can probably guess that one of our main sources of advertising revenue was Liggett & Myers Chesterfield cigarettes.  Smoking was popular and just about ubiquitous.  After all, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin all smoked and we managed to win the war.

There were letters to the editor protesting mandatory chapel attendance, we had curfew times in our dormitories (the gals did—it probably could not have been enforced on the veterans) and I wrote an editorial entitled “Discontent is the Want of Self-Reliance,” probably a quote from Emerson.  I still like it as an admonition to stop complaining and start solving the problem.

Out on Farwell Field construction was nearing completion on what came to be known as Quonset huts.  This was going to be housing for married veterans who would be finishing up their education at Lake Forest.  The huts came complete with oil space heaters, kerosene stoves and ice boxes.  Little did I know that I would be occupying one of them the following year while my veteran husband completed his senior year.  It was quite an adventure.

Harold Stassen, ex-Governor of Minnesota, announced his intention of running for President—and running and running and running—for the next 60 years.  I think he has now passed from our political scene.

And some of us began our own little civil rights movement by writing letters to the Stentor about the discriminatory practices of the Alumni Board.  Although there had been several Lake Forest graduates of color, the Board had the ugly habit of holding Alumni dinners at hotels in Chicago which specifically excluded Negroes.  I’m sure this is no longer true of the Board or the hotels.

Finally a quote from a Stentor article about the process of actually getting the paper printed and out to the students: “and then the whole gang, planning and pasting the week’s edition through a haze of blue air and stacks of dirty dishes—those last minute cuts and fills—split-second change-overs as the presses start tot roll—and at last the glorious moment when the Stentor finally hits the campus as hundreds of students batter down the door for the first copy.” (March 26, 1947 issue)

You are now free to return your computer to the present time.