Link 1995 10 (Vol. 45, No. 3).pdf - DRC Home - Wilmington College

Marble Hall
A Story for the Ages
by
Randy Sarvis
X he cornerstone reads "Built by Students"
— and indeed it was!
In contemplating a century and a quarter
of Wilmington College heritage, legacy
and tradition during this commemorative
year, the construction of Marble Hall shines
as the watershed event in the institution's
125-year history.
Led by WC's young, new president,
Samuel D. Marble, in 1948, the construction
of a major building depending largely
on volunteer student labor was both a bold
and risky endeavor for the financially struggling
College. But Marble saw this project
as something much greater than building a
dormitory to house the large influx of G.I.s
on campus following World War II; rather,
he viewed the venture as something that
affected the very heart and soul of
Wilmington College.
"We're getting a lot more out of this
work project than a new building," Marble
said in a Reader's Digest article. "We're
making a better bridge between education
and life."
And he told Newsweek the project had
implications that went far beyond
Wilmington College's 27 acres.
"We are not primarily interested in saving
money, although that, of course, is pleasant,"
Marble said. "We are trying rather to
teach our students that seemingly insoluble
problems — like the construction, without
sufficient funds, of desperately needed campus
buildings — can be solved.
"In later life, they will perhaps then be
encouraged to tackle other seemingly insoluble
problems — like world peace, for
example," he added.
4 Fall 1995
The Marble years of 1947
through 1959 reflected the surge
of great expectations and unbridled
optimism running rampant
in the country as the United
States was asserting its role in
what would become known as
the American Century.
As with many of the nation' s
institutions, World War II and its
aftermath had a great impact on
higher education and
Wilmington College was no exception.
WC had a predominantly female
enrollment of 133 students
(13 men and 120 women) in 1944
when Roy Joe Stuckey '48 arrived
as a freshman. Tht College
was especially strapped for
money during the war years and
Arthur Watson's presidency
(1940-47), as WC did not accept
military training units and the
money that would have accompanied them.
"It was war time and the College was
struggling so hard; bul there was a spirit
here, one that started wiih President Watson
and people with the names of Pyle, Boyd
and Hazard," Stuckey said. "We had great
education..., and those were pretty good
odds for men with all the women here — I
ended up marrying one of them!"
With the end of the war came a great
euphoria that this tragic ordeal was finally
over, and the G.I. Bill, which provided for
former soldiers to attend college free of
charge, revolutionized higher education.
The G.I.s began to "trickle in" during
early 1946, and, by the start of the 1946-47
academic year, that trickle became a raging
flood, recalled Ira G. "I.G." Hawk '46, who
served as WC's director of public relations,
admission and alumni trom 1944-52.
Sam Marble rallies the troops.
Photos Courtesy of Wilmington College Archives
"The College of 100-plus students drawing
from a 12-county area suddenly became
a College of 550 students from a very wide
area, including, for the first time, the East,"
said Hawk. "Everybody wanted to go to
college.
, "It was a totally new Wilmington College,"
he added. "All of a sudden, it was a
cosmopolitan college and it attracted a bright,
charming, energetic new president in Dr.
Marble."
A major challenge for the 32-year-old
president when he arrived in the fall of 1947
centered around where to house all those
men. They had been living in Quonset huts,
attics and a partitioned section of Whittier
Place, the College's gymnasium, which had
been outfitted with 200 Navy surplus bunks.
As spring began to set in during
Marble's inaugural year, a handful of stu-