Spring table of contents / UMass Magazine home page
Spring table of contents / UMass Magazine home page
Heroes of '47 celebrate their/our 50th: reunion chairs Frederic and Delight Rothery, upper right and lower left; memory book editor Doris Newman, lower right; and upper left, name-change locomotive Mike Donohue.
The Old Chapel bells chimed all day on May 6, 1947. The mood on campus was jubilant. After nine months of lobbying, letter-writing, rallies, speeches, trips to Boston, and Massachusetts Collegian editorials, the University of Massachusetts had been born, and everyone was as proud as new parents.
On that day, the state Senate voted to pass S533, which changed the name of Massachusetts State College to the University of Massachusetts. This was not the first name change; before 1931, the campus had been Massachusetts Agricultural College ("Mass Aggie"). And it was the feeling of many that, as an article in the May 18, 1947 edition of the Boston Sunday Post put it, MSC "had been a university in fact, if not in name, for nearly fifty years, what with its seven schools and three divisions." (The article continued, "While it has not the swank of its blue-stockinged neighbor up the road, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the buildings, campus, faculty and student body of the public-supported institution have always ranked among the best in the world.")
The name change was so important because it signified official recognition that the school was growing. As most people on campus realized at the time, that recognition would lead to bigger and better things: greater enrollment, an expanded campus, a broader mission. The name change was the first step in the transformation of a campus of almost cozy proportions into the sprawling, diverse institution UMass is today.
Earlier attempts to make the college a university hadn't got off the ground. (There had even been a campaign to return to the earlier name: "Back to MAC.") This time, though, the right people were in the right place at the right time.
Starting in 1945, hundreds of World War II veterans returned to the Bay State. Some had had their college careers interrupted by war; now they wanted back in. Others were enabled and inspired by the GI Bill to apply to college. In 1946, there were 4,000 applications for 1,000 slots at MSC, and vets made up a large proportion of the applicants.The sense of obligation that society felt to the vets would translate into a pressure on the legislature to grow the Amherst campus.
In the fall of 1946, there was a sense of exhilaration, excitement at MSC. The battles abroad had been fought and won, and it was time to do great things at home. Frederic Rothery, who had fought in North Africa and Italy, remembers the school year 1946-47 as a "time of great renewal and growth."
Impromptu bunker-like dorms were hastily erected to house the veterans; ninety-four of them came with spouses and children. Rothery: "There were pretty dedicated students on campus at that time. There was a feeling of sadness for the fellows who didn't make it--we felt fortunate to have our health and our sanity--but most men, I think, echoed my feelings: I was ready to put it behind me, to be deeply involved."
The purposefulness that distinguished the vets was contagious, energizing the student body as a whole, and it found a perfect outlet in the university initiative. As an AP story reported, "it wasn't until the students themselves took up the battle this year that the bill finally went through" the state legislature. Not surprisingly, among the student leaders were vets. The Boston Sunday Post again: "Perhaps the one single man who was instrumental in effecting the changing of the name of the school is a solidly-built, husky blond youth from nearby Holyoke, Mike Donohue, a former combat soldier in the Pacific."
He's still solidly built and still hails from Holyoke. In the fifty years since that story ran, Donohue '47 has been a lawyer and a district court judge, "met kings and queens, landed on the North Pole," and with his late wife, Adeline, raised six children. Yet he remembers as if they were yesterday the heady days of the U of M campaign. According to Donohue, it was a no-show professor that got it going.
"Brad Morton and I were in a political science class our senior year. One day we showed up for class and the teacher didn't show up, so we left, came back, but still no teacher. So Brad and I got talking about how we'd like to do something for the college." Morton and Donohue approached the student government, and got "Gordie" Smith, senior class president, involved.
Gordon Smith '47 was a veteran, too. Now living in Carmel, California, Smith is a consultant who counts among his accomplishments membership in Governor Reagan's cabinet, planning the expansion of the American Baseball League into the west, and facilitating Hawaii's transition from territory status to statehood. An orphan by age fifteen, Smith fended for himself until he found a welcome at Northfield Mt. Hermon School, where he was given room and board as well as an education. Then, he says, he was "given a chance by the university...the opportunity to have a college degree."
His chance was interrupted during his junior year, when he was called up for military duty. Back on campus four years later, he and other vets tried to "resurrect their individual lives, and get back into the college structure," he remembers. "In war and combat, there was a larger feeling of contributing to society. We had a greater motivation when we came back."
Smith remembers "a long conversation with Mike early in fall, 1946." From that conversation emerged the idea for the University of Massachusetts Committee, which would become the key group behind the organizing and lobbying efforts to change the name. Among its members were Smith, Donohue, Morton, Rothery (who served as treasurer), and Georgia Perkins, who had approached a state senator the previous summer on how to make the college a university.
With the committee's backing, Donohue went to town, literally, hitchhiking to Boston every Tuesday night to spend Wednesdays buttonholing legislators. In his first days as a lobbyist, he relied on Statehouse pages to tell him who was whom. Gradually, however, he was getting tips on who to "romance" from a variety of political figures, including potential opponent Norm McDonald, director of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Association.
Donohue was told he might find McDonald at the Hotel Bellevue bar. Perched on a stool next to him, Donohue proceeded to make friends with McDonald. He succeeded to the point where eventually not only did McDonald "not really fight against us," but he regularly gave Donohue the "run-down on who was for and who was against us." Mike tailored his lobbying efforts accordingly. Some Western Mass reps helped him out, too, even letting him camp out on the couch in the hotel rooms they used during the week. Other times, he spent Tuesday nights at the Boston chapter of his fraternity, Phi Sigma Kappa.
Among the legislators, Donohue remembers, many of them "knew nothing about Amherst," and Republicans not noted for liberal spending policies controlled the two houses and the governorship. Says Doris (Chaves) Newman '47, Index editor that year, many legislators were happy with the status quo, with institutions of higher learning clustered in and around Boston.
All in all, support did not come easily. Donohue's weekly forays were imperative; "You had to keep your face in front of them," he believes.
Equally critical was building support across the Commonwealth; that was Gordon Smith's job. Smith went on the road, addressing Chambers of Commerce, Kiwanis, alumni groups, and similar organizations all over the state.
"December to April was the heaviest time," he recalls, "I had to work hard to keep up with my studies." That year, Smith, a public administration major, was a member of the Roister Doisters and the Men's Glee Club as well as the senior class president; he was also married and the father of a son, Randall, born in August, 1946. In an oral history collected by Robert McCartney in 1974, Smith recounted that his roadshow "just about drained all the financial resources I had, which were virtually nothing anyway at that time."
Donohue recalls similar pressures. Not only did he hitch rides to Boston with "Dr. Baker," as the MSC President was known, he even took some exams in the back seat of the car. There were fringe benefits: "Baker was an arborist, he knew every tree on Route 9, and I came to know them too."
In Amherst, others rallied the college community to back the campaign. Students were urged to write to their reps, and to get their parents to write, too, which apparently they did in numbers. Newman describes her fellow seniors as the original "Refuse to Lose class." As yearbook editor, she pressed the cause: "We dreamed a dream, a new UMass--no other attempt had ever been so forceful, we made a great big push." Rosemary Speer, editor-in-chief of the then-weekly Collegian, made sure the campaign was headline news. Among the faculty, Frederick S. "Barney" Troy, Richard Colwell, and Doric Alviani, were key boosters, as was President Baker and Dean of Women Students Helen Curtis (now Helen Curtis Cole).
As the year continued, several bills regarding the name change were submitted; according to Newman, there were "constant rallies" on campus in support. At a December rally in front of Stockbridge Hall, a student who had been a WWII pilot dropped leaflets over campus from a plane. On Tag Day, the committee sold $271 worth of red tags urging "Get Out in Front and Back the University of Massachusetts"--for a quarter each. Even the snow sculptures for Winter Carnival were improvisations on the university theme.
On March 10, five members of the U of M committee traveled to the Statehouse for a hearing on the UMass bills. Peg Parsons Carpenter '47 was among those who addressed the Joint Committee on Education at the General Court of the State Legislature.
She was a senior, president of the Women Student Governors Association, and involved in various extracurricular activities. (At the end of the school year, she helped to lay the cornerstone for the home economics building, Skinner Hall, which celebrated its anniversary this spring,too.) Carpenter was a freshman during the war, and remembers it was "not a normal experience." After her first semester at MSC, "there were seventy-five men left on campus. There was a unit of the army on campus, who marched to class in formation. There were bloodmobiles--it was a serious time."
Her memories of the March 10 hearing are vivid. The layout for the hearing was "psychologically bad for us." The legislators formed "a long row, on a high platform, so they looked down at us. I took an instant dislike to one of the legislators, so when it was time for me to make my presentation, 'A Short History of the College,' I focused on him."
Young Peg Parsons held her own during questioning. The Collegian report on the proceedings noted that "She answered the arguments of Representative Rudsten, who claimed that students would like to commute to college, by pointing out that students prefer to go away from home."
Donohue recalled that one legislator fell asleep during the hearing, but the others must have been listening with some sympathy, because according to the May 1 Collegian, "a pre-arranged signal, the ringing of the chapel chimes at 4:20 P.M. Monday afternoon, April 20, announced the passage of Senate 533 in the House of Representatives."
The story continued, "announcement of the news from the Collegian office stemmed from the car full of reporters and U of M committee representatives who covered the State House for the event. A call from Peg Parsons '47 not only precipitated the wild ringing of the Old Chapel chimes, but touched off the spontaneous student rally on the steps of Stockbridge Hall at 7:00 P.M. Approximately 500 students gathered on a few minutes notice to heart the details of the passage... Fred Rothery '47 introduced the speakers informally."
In the debate preceding the passage, reported the Collegian,. Representative Rudsten protested that the "change of name measure was a 'coup d'etat' aimed to trick the Legislature into a five million dollar expansion program." He said that MSC was "not a university; and could not be made one without great expense, and that S533 added not one student or facility."
Donohue remembers that, for his part, he tried to soft-pedal the repercussions of the name change to some, who like Rudsten, "weren't going to spend money" on the school. Smith says that a "delicate balance" had to be maintained; no one behind the name change wanted "to put a monkey wrench in it," but he also felt the need to "make the point that it was not just a cosmetic change...it required a great deal of commitment on the part of the state."
On May 6, the state signaled its willingness to make a commitment: the senate passed S533. Two days later, Governor Bradford signed the bill amidst a semicircle of spectators who included Donohue, Rothery, Parsons, and Morton, as well as U of M committee members Barbara Robinson, Mary O'Reilly, and Polly Piper.
On Commencement Day, 1947, the first University of Massachusetts graduates received their diplomas. They were blank pieces of paper; there hadn't been time to print up degrees with the new name. In a recent memoir about the University of Massachusetts campaign, Gordon Smith wrote, "when shortly thereafter each of us received the official diploma in the mail, it was beautiful. Still is."
-Faye S. Wolfe
