
University of Tulsa, 1960
University of Tulsa, 1960
As the new semester starts, students in the fall of 1968 rush the cashier with textbooks and other school supplies. Then it’s back to the dorms for a change of clothes because the Methodist Student Center is hosting a back-to-school party tonight.
Later on, it’s going to get groovy, man. Lose your shoes and let your hair down.
Don’t overdo it because you’ll have to be up early in the morning. Isn’t campus lovely this time of year?
Linda is delighted that the University Complex South just got the new typewriters in. They’re super intuitive.
Lily is excited to use the dictaphone in shorthand class, the wave of the future.
Don’t worry; teachers are always willing to help students with vocabulary words.
And students are willing to point out where professors may have spilled potato salad on their ties.
You can catch up with your old friends and talk Aqua Net. No boys will ever run their fingers through your hair again.
Go wild and take a modern dance class.
But before long, those term papers will be due.
So be sure to put on that thinking cap and make it another great year of academics!
While it would seem curious now to make plans to meet up with friends at your local Walgreens or CVS, time was when drug stores had soda fountains and lunch counters.
These University of Texas students enjoyed coffee with friends, exchanging notes and cramming for tests, with a view of pills and potions behind the glass at Home Drug in 1948. Today, these brown bottles might prove too tempting for thieves, and certainly not appetizing for patrons in the booths. Did y’all ever drink a soda or take in a BLT at the local drugstore?
Delta Sigma Theta was founded 99 years ago at Howard University. This chapter of ladies studied as Jayhawks in Kansas. While Greek life itself has never mattered to me, what does matter is pictures. And I love this one. Not just the dresses and the hair and the double strand of something too jagged to be pearls, but I love old people names. Oreta, Betty Lou, Ivor, Cozetta, and even Dymple. Look at them subbing in Y’s 80 years ago, like they do today. (Think Kyndyll instead of Kendall.) And of course, there’s Dorothy Swope. I bet she traded that surname for another in the next five years, but on this day, in that dress, she was a Swope.
Yearbooks offer windows of potential. Young people on the precipice of adulthood, away from home, focusing their career paths, making friends, falling in love. Who knows what these women accomplished, how many people today remember their names? Maybe one reached 100 and still exists. But now they’re on the internet, forever preserved in youth, smiling in a time before Pearl Harbor, not knowing what would come.
No, that’s not a young Bing Crosby; it’s Joe Henjum, Band of the Hour drum major, “resplendent in his plumed bonnet.” I don’t have to tell you how his head retained warmth in that hat. It could also transport wine bottles, a leghorn chicken, or even a pair of Justin Ropers.
Musically inclined, Joe also played clarinet and saxophone. He met and married his college sweetheart, JoAnne there in college, and they enjoyed 56 years together. But I doubt he kept the hat.
Actually, Fred’s socks are pretty keen. But what’s with the guy on the right? Looks like he had a growth spurt on the bus ride to school this morning.