1930-1950
Lawrence Welk and his orchestra played for the 1930 spring prom. The basketball team won the conference title, and the following year the football team created a sensation by going not only undefeated but un-scored on in conference play (the only small blemish was a 0-0 tie with Omaha). The basketball and track teams were frequently successful during the 1930s as well, and boxing became a fourth popular sport.
By 1932 problems were getting more serious. Nebraska’s economy was in shambles, with a double whammy of farm prices at the lowest levels in the state’s history and drought conditions reducing statewide corn production to 3 bushels an acre for several years. In 1933 the college budget was cut by 25 percent, which necessitated severe salary reductions.
Katz Club and Homecoming
The number of clubs and organizations continued to expand. The Katz pep club, formed in 1934, was one of the largest groups. Among the campus traditions associated with the 1930s, the most popular was the expansion of Homecoming activities in 1936 to include the election of the first Homecoming queen. This quickly became the most coveted of various popularity contests on campus. Wayne’s first Homecoming queen, Harriet Lampson, started a tradition that has continued to this day.
President Conn retires
President U.S. Conn announced his intent to retire at the end of his 25th year as the college’s president. During his tenure, Wayne State grew from a fledgling normal school with a degree equivalent to that of a community college to a four-year school and the largest of the state’s four teachers colleges.
Dr. J.T. Anderson named President
The person selected by the Board to follow Conn was J.T. Anderson, a Nebraska native who had a doctoral degree from the University of Southern California and was the current dean of men at Kearney State Teachers College. Anderson quickly established his own legacy, building on the achievements of Conn’s administration but also bringing in new perspectives and initiatives of his own.
Student union and the Willow Bowl
Facilities’ expansion and enhancement was another highlight of Anderson’s early years. The college’s third dormitory of the decade, Terrace Hall for men, was completed in 1938 and drew regional and national attention to Wayne State for its excellent depression-era residence hall facilities. Immediately after the completion of Terrace Hall, Anderson used a combination of Public Works Administration and state-approved revenue bond funds to begin an even more ambitious project, the expansion and renovation of Connell Hall into one of Nebraska’s first and finest college student unions.
Completed in early 1940, in addition to a completely renovated kitchen and cafeteria, the union had a popular grill and soda fountain area, a ballroom and student lounge, recreation rooms in the basement (including eight pingpong tables), plus offices for student organizations and the deans of men and women, and the new campus post office.
Willow Bowl graduation
Anderson’s single most important contribution to Wayne State, however, was his decision to convert the southwest corner of the campus into the outdoor theater that soon became known as the Willow Bowl. Designed by a former Wayne State graduate and completed in 1938, the Willow Bowl immediately became, along with the new Student Union, a campus icon.
War’s impact
Even before the U.S. got involved, World War II had an immediate effect on Wayne State. In the fall of 1939, just a few weeks after Germany’s invasion of Poland, Wayne State had the last in a series of record enrollments, with 997 students attending school. The following year that number dropped by more than 100, and in the fall of 1941 it was down by another 200. Two factors appear to be involved in these sharp enrollment declines. First, the job market improved dramatically in teaching and non-teaching areas, which probably led some students to forego college completely and others to leave early. Second, the United States established its first ever peacetime draft in 1940. While most students were under the initial 21-year age minimum for the draft, many male students volunteered rather than waiting to be drafted.
One of the early responses to the war was the creation of a national Civilian Pilot Training Program to increase the number of potential pilots available to the military. This program involved a three-month introduction to ground and small-aircraft flight training, to be followed by more advanced pilot training in the military. Wayne was one of several schools in Nebraska to get a CPT program. The first class of 15 students, including three females, started in the summer of 1940. By the fall of 1941, 69 trainees had graduated and 18 were already serving in the military as pilots. One graduate died in an accident during military flight training.
Dramatic changes ahead
Things changed more dramatically after Dec. 7, 1941. President Anderson announced that students who joined the military immediately would receive full credit for the fall semester, and male students quickly became almost non-existent. By 1943 there were only 27 males enrolled in school, and most of those were freshmen. The graduating class that year was barely half the size of the 1941 class. Even many female students left school to join the military, which actively recruited students of both sexes, or to help fill the severe teacher shortage. A number of male faculty members also joined the military or war-related organizations.
Classes were cancelled for two weeks that fall so that students could help alleviate the labor shortage for the fall corn harvest. Even students not from farm families were encouraged to volunteer for the effort.
Pilot training center
Perhaps because of Wayne State’s initial success with the Civilian Pilot Training Program, it was one of five locations in Nebraska to house a massive wartime expansion of that program – an Army Air Corps Cadet Training Program. It immediately became a central part of the campus for the remainder of the war years.
The first training center group, 300 members of the 349th Detachment, arrived March 31, 1943. All 300 men were housed, four to a room, in Terrace Hall, which had been built for a maximum of 150 students. Almost 1,200 individuals from all over the United States, in four separate groups, graduated from this program before it ended in 1944.
More than 1,000 Wayne students or former students served in the army or navy in World War II, including 106 women. Thirty-six of those, including two women, gave their lives. Memorial Stadium, completed after the war ended, was named in their honor, and Wayne’s Veterans of Foreign Wars post is named for one of them, Llewellyn Whitmore.
The turning point
By 1945, as the war was beginning to wind down, some aspects of regular campus life were beginning to return to the school. Enrollments started inching back up.
Further contributing to the sense of a major turning point, President Anderson announced his retirement in the summer of 1946. His 11 years as president had spanned two of the more difficult periods in the school’s history – the final years of the Great Depression and the equally trying challenges of World War II.
Exceeding expectations
Given the circumstances, Anderson had clearly exceeded expectations. While he did not remain to see two of his most important projects – a new library and football stadium – completed, his advocacy was an important factor in placing both of these items on the school’s agenda.
Dr. Victor Morey named President
World War II brought about enormous changes in American society, setting off massive shifts in the economy, the role of women and minorities, and the huge demographic development known as the “baby boom,” to mention only a few of the most important areas.
Leading Wayne State into a new era was a new president, Victor P. Morey. Morey was a native Kansan who had received his Ph.D. in education from the University of Nebraska. Like his predecessors he had a background in public education and had worked his way up through the school system.
Morey immediately faced challenging issues. Once the war was over, enrollments skyrocketed. In 1949 the number of graduates from the four-year program tied the 1940 record of 99 and rose by an amazing 50 percent the following year. And for the first time in the school’s history women found themselves in the minority; approximately 60 percent of the student body in the postwar years were males. The primary reason for this was a large influx of veterans, many of them taking advantage of the federal government’s generous support for higher education in what was popularly known as the GI Bill.
Campus activities return
At the same time that Wayne Staters were coping with these new developments, they were also busy getting back to normal. The fall of 1946 saw the first real Homecoming in five years, complete with a Friday night pep rally, bonfire, snake dance, and a pep talk by the new president. That winter the music department was able to present its popular Messiah program, also for the first time since 1941.
New stadium, new teams
Athletics quickly returned to a prominent position. The football team had three consecutive outstanding seasons under new coach Jack Link, a star quarterback just a few years earlier at Wisconsin and Michigan. The team also finally got a new stadium, which had originally been planned for completion in 1942. A plaque over the main entry to Memorial Stadium read, “Dedicated to the men and women of this college who gave the last full measure of devotion for the preservation of freedom in World War II.” Poignantly, but also somehow appropriately, the 1949 Wildcats had their first and only undefeated season that year.
Non-education degrees
One of the most important happenings in Wayne State’s history occurred in 1949 when the legislature authorized the college to begin offering non-education baccalaureate degrees. President Anderson had started promoting this idea shortly after he became president in 1935, but it was not until after the war and under the leadership of the state’s new governor, Wayne State graduate Val Petersen, that the legislature, over the opposition of the universities in Lincoln and Omaha, passed the legislation that gave teachers colleges the right to offer non-education degrees.
Beginnings of “youth culture”
An equally important but more subtle area of change was taking place in this era as well. A new generation of students would in gathering numbers begin remaking the face not only of higher education but of American society as a whole: a second generation of the American “youth culture” that had first emerged in the 1920s was revived and redoubled after World War II. Most of this development would be associated with the 1950s and 1960s, but early signs of a new generation of college students at Wayne State were evident in the 1940s.