Читать книгу Missing Millie Benson - Julie K. Rubini - Страница 11

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THE THIRD CLUE

COLLEGE DAYS

The Case of the Hawkeye

So now your room is silent.

The whole house seems silent too;

Every object which confronts me

Seems incomplete without you.

Yes, your silent room, it haunts me

Every garment left behind

Have memories from which bring a tear

For the loved one I cannot find.

—Lillian Augustine, “Mildred’s Room” ¹

LILLIAN MISSED her daughter when she left Ladora for the campus of the University of Iowa² in Iowa City. As you are about to learn, Millie dove right in to her college experiences. Literally.

Millie’s choice of college might have been determined by several factors. Perhaps her father wanted her to attend his alma mater. Maybe Lillian wanted her daughter close to home. Or maybe Millie was impressed that the University of Iowa was the first public university to admit men and women on an equal basis.

STUDENTS LEAVING THE HALL OF LIBERAL ARTS ON THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA CAMPUS, 1920

Maybe the college’s journalism class offerings that began in 1915 appealed to this blossoming writer.³ Most of all, the campus newspaper may have had a role in her choice. The Daily Iowan, the first campus newspaper west of the Mississippi, had ties to the United Press and offered students practical experience. The newspaper was written, edited, and managed by students.

Millie became a University of Iowa Hawkeye.

Students can still be seen today reading the Daily Iowan, now one of the largest student newspapers in the country. For an avid reader like Millie, the paper served as a great resource as well.

Millie likely picked up a copy of the September 21, 1922, edition on the first day of registration on campus. The paper announced that the enrollment was expected to exceed the 5,980 students from the year prior. Millie may have been quite excited by the number of students. The student population was over ten times that of Ladora!

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA CAMPUS MAP, 1922–23

After completing registration, Millie walked to Currier Hall and settled into room 1573, her home for her freshman year.⁴ She may have kicked off her shoes and sat on her new bed, reading the rest of the Daily Iowan.

Page fifteen of the paper featured a story on the progress of several buildings on campus. Work on the focal point of the university, the Iowa Old Capitol Building, with its golden dome, was to be completed that fall. The building had been the original seat of Iowa state government until the capital moved to Des Moines in 1857.⁵

OLD CAPITOL BUILDING ON THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA CAMPUS

Perhaps of greater interest to Millie in the article was the notice that a new library building was to be built on campus. Millie would simply have to walk across campus to have access to as many books as her heart desired. No more borrowing books from neighbors!

Stores in Iowa City welcomed students back through their advertisements in the paper. The Lorenz Brothers Boot Shop promoted new strap-style shoes for college girls. Millie could hop on a streetcar that ran along Washington Street to visit the new Ritestyle Shop, which featured the frock, a long dress that covered young ladies from neck to ankle.⁶

Millie likely attended the Women’s Athletic Association meeting for freshmen women announced in the paper. Membership in the organization resulted from participating in, or making, various sports teams. Points were given based on activity level. Only twelve women had ever earned an “I” sweater based on the accumulation of a thousand points. Millie, being competitive in nature, probably had her eyes set on one of those sweaters.

Millie was an active participant in women’s sports. She was one of twelve members of the freshman soccer team and a right guard on the freshman basketball team. She was a substitute on the women’s swim team, known as the Seals Club.

As the Seals Club was a highly competitive team, young women interested in being a Seal had to meet a number of requirements. These included being able to swim the length of the pool in eighteen seconds, plunge twenty-five feet, and have good form for three swim strokes and three dives. Millie became a full-fledged member of the team her sophomore year. Both a strong swimmer and a high diver, Millie swam nearly every day for most of her life.

An exhibition at the “Big Dipper,” the Iowa City municipal pool, pitted members of the Eels Club, the university men’s swim team, against female swimmers. Millie’s personal scrapbook included a newspaper clipping about one such event, a mixed relay event. Millie beat the captain of the men’s 1923–24 swim team in the contest!⁷

The headline of the October 15, 1922, edition of the Daily Iowan read, “Parkin Stars as Hawkeyes Beat Yale 6–0.” Yale had never before lost to a western team in the Yale Bowl.⁸

What Millie might have found just as exciting was a sidebar in much smaller print. It stated that the Iowan had created a new speed record in getting the news of the victory from Yale to the paper’s readers. The announcement came “from the press two minutes after the final flash from the United Press was received at the Iowan office.”

Extracurricular activities were also covered in the paper. One of Millie’s favorites during her time at the university (she completed her undergraduate degree in just three years!) was the Cosmopolitan Club. The club sought to encourage friendship and respect among men and women of all nationalities. During Millie’s freshman year, eleven nations were represented in the university’s chapter, including Hawaii. In 1922, Hawaii was still an independent country; it became a state in 1959.

MILDRED AUGUSTINE IN THE SEALS CLUB (upper photo: second row, far right; lower photo: first row, far left)

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