By Greg Russell - University of Memphis

Call that a bargain. Tuition was — get this — free for in-state
students and $12 for those from out-of-state the first few years
the school was in existence. The only cost was a $2 registration
fee. Students also had to be white males or females not under the
age of 16 who had finished at least the elementary school course
prescribed by the public school system. It was mandatory for
enrollees to submit a letter deeming them of “good moral character”
from a responsible person and they had to possess sufficient
scholastic requirements from high school
or a previous college.
They came by train, horseback …
Students began arriving to campus prior to
the start of the school year by horseback,
buggy, train and streetcar. The Southern
Railway built the Normal Depot adjacent
to campus, which served both trains and
the trolley system. (It cost 5 cents for the
45-minute streetcar ride from downtown.)
Male students proved that collegians
even back then were enterprising by
lugging female students’ bags from the
depot to rooms in the Mynders Hall
dormitory, under, of course, the watchful
eye of a chaperone. Males, except for athletes who lived in the
Administration Building, had residences off campus in what was
becoming a booming community — citizens considered it trendy
to have homes near the new school. A drugstore, barbershop and
post office soon sprang up on the corner of Patterson and Walker,
near where the present-day English building stands.
1913
An early graduation. It didn’t take “Ole Normal” long to
produce its first alumni. The school rolled out its version of pomp
and circumstance for the first time ever as 19 students graduated
on May 16, 1913. Twenty-five high school pupils also received
16
degrees during the ceremony. Eleanor
McCormack, who was president of the
Nineteenth Century Club, gave the commencement
address. During that first
year of study, there were nine departments
from which to chose courses:
education, English, history, math,
science, languages (Latin, French and
German), manual training, agriculture
and the Training School, which later
became Messick High School.
No they didn’t, did they? Female
students living on campus were required to
sign out of the dorm and had to explain to the “house mother”
where they were going and exactly what time they would return.
They couldn’t travel to town alone and weren’t allowed in
automobiles on campus. But they did have their wild side. “The
most risqué thing the female students would do on campus was
to climb the water tower,” says historian Jane Hooker (MEd ’78).
“That was considered daring and unladylike in those days.” And,
as Hooker noted, cumbersome considering that females had to
wear dresses that reached their ankles and covered most of
their skin during that era.
A ghost of a host. The Mynders family certainly
had a major impact on the University
in its early days. Professor Seymour Allen
Mynders was largely responsible for passage
of the state bill that created the school
and he later became its first president. But
grave misfortune soon followed. His daughter
Elizabeth passed away shortly after she was
married in early 1912. And just two days into
the second school year in 1913, Mynders died
from a heart attack. The school president,
though, before his death had managed to have
the women’s dorm built in the shape of an
“E” to honor his daughter. Not to be outdone,
Elizabeth to this day works to ensure her own legacy: throughout
the history of the 100-year-old dorm, residents have reported
close encounters with “E.” (For more information on Elizabeth,
see page 4.)
1916
School spirit dampened by war. The editors of the first edition
of the school yearbook, The DeSoto, wanted to make a spirited
debut, so they ordered blue dye for a school-themed blue and
gray cover. But, because of World War I, or the European War
as the editors called it, “blue dye, an article manufactured in
THE UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS