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THE WAY
THEY ATE
by Mindy Limback (limbackm@mst.edu)
It was a recipe for disaster.
Walter Lounsbery, AE’78, MS AE’85, lived in his
landlord’s basement apartment, a small space that had been
carved into four little rooms with a common kitchen and
bathroom. Despite his lack of cooking skills and a gas oven
that had no pilot light, he survived most
of his freshman year. He didn’t gain the
dreaded “freshman 15,” but he wasn’t
starving either.
Then it happened.
“I let the gas run too long before
lighting the burner,” Lounsbery recalls.
“The resulting ÿ reball rolling out of the
open oven singed off my eyebrows
and woke the other residents in the
basement. At that point, joining the
Tech-Engine Eating Club was not so
much a matter of convenience as
saving my residence from certain ÿ re
and destruction.”
Beginning with the Grubstakers
in 1902, eating clubs „ ourished on
campus. Some lasted for only a few
years, like Beanery, Corsairs and Placers.
Five would reorganize themselves as
fraternities: Muckers’ Club became
Lambda Chi Alpha; Prospectors became
Sigma Pi; Grubstakers Club became Triangle; and Mercier Club
became Theta Kappa Phi, which eventually became Phi Kappa
Theta.
Eating clubs provided students with nutritious meals at
reasonable rates. Harold Bennett, ChE’60, says he joined the
Engineers Club as a sophomore after its business manager,
Ronald Gillham, ME’56, invited him to join. Dues were
about $1 a day.
10 MISSOURI S&T MAGAZINE | SPRING 2011
“It allowed me to get through college without starving to
death,” Bennett says. “I had to make all my dimes go a long way,
and I certainly enjoyed being in the club.”
Fellow club member Lawrence Gidley, MetE’55,
MS MetE’56, says the dues were cheaper than eating in the
university’s cafeteria. With more than 100
members, the club could afford to hire two
cooks who prepared “typical meals that you
would have at home.”
Unlike the Ivy-League eateries that
served fanciful delicacies at Harvard or Yale,
eating clubs like the Grubstakers, Lucky
Strike or Bonanza were founded to provide
healthy, home-cooked meals at a minimal
cost to Rolla students.
James Berthold, ME’60, says he picked
the Prospectors Club in 1956 because “it
was the ÿ rst one to accept” him. With
many Korean War veterans on campus,
the clubs had more applicants than they
could take and conducted interviews for
membership.
“We elected our own ofÿ cers, one of
whom was business manager,” says Berthold,
who eventually served as club president.
“He bought all the food from vendors,
and hired and supervised the cooks and
dishwashers. When beans showed up on the menu too often,
because the business manager got a great bargain, the members
would revolt and elect someone else.”
Carl Armstrong, ChE’60, remembers the ‘49ers serving
hearty food like chili mac (one of his favorites at the time).
He joined as a senior and enjoyed not having to cook. “I liked
the food there,” Armstrong says. “In those days, it probably