Unforgettable Moments | Page 1, 2, 3
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10. Spring Fever On April 15, 1946, Barclay's 110-foot tower -- what Christopher Morley '10 called Haverford's one "pretension to grandeur" -- went up in flames. Legend has it that the four-alarm blaze was started by Christmas lights strung up by tower residents to create a more intimate setting for their (at the time forbidden) female visitors. After its proverbial cold shower at the hands of the local fire department, the ruined tower was replaced with a new -- and notably less romantic -- fourth floor. In the spring of 1972 -- almost 26 years to the day of the first blaze -- Chico Ray '74 awoke in his first-floor room in Barclay South (room 101) to the sound of "popping" and a "loud explosion." The resulting conflagration tore its way through most of the first floor and a good share of the second, leaving six rooms completely destroyed and almost all of the first-floor residents dislocated and possessionless. |
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9. The Times They Are A-Changin' In 1966, Haverford ended its 136-year old tradition of compulsory attendance at Fifth-Day Quaker Meeting. While President Hugh Borton noted that voluntary attendance at meditative meeting would add "depth and significance," the change -- along with grade reform, the end of class rankings, the abolition of parietal hours in the dorms, and others -- was both a concession to growing student liberation and an admission of Haverford's altered makeup: fewer than 10 percent of students at the time were actually Quaker.
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8. The Ghost of Ma Ginder With the student body home for Christmas break in December of 1935, the College's dietician and housekeeper, Mary Ginder, entertained family and friends in the waiters dining room near her Founders apartment. Ginder, known affectionately as "Ma" to her young charges, answered the door to discover an employee, Roy Crittenden, holding a Christmas present. Problem was that Crittenden, a dishwasher, had been fired several days earlier for drunkenness, and the shiny wrapping concealed not a gift but a shotgun -- the gun whose fatal blast ended the 70-year-old housekeeper's life. Crittenden was quickly captured and sentenced to execution -- he claimed his only regret was that he didn't kill the College's chef as well -- although his death sentence was ultimately commuted. Callow tour guides still claim that Ma Ginder's ghost haunts her former Founders digs.... |
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7. And the Winner Is... |
Take the Haverford Nobel Laureate quiz -- just match the winners with their prize and picture: |
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The Winners: A. Theodore Richards
1888 B. Joe Taylor '62 C. Philip Noel-Baker ex-'10 |
The Prize for: 1. Physics, for the discovery of binary pulsars, allowing "new possibilities for the study of gravitation and the General Theory." 2. Chemistry, for the "accurate determinations of atomic weights." 3. Peace, for the formation of the Quaker ambulance Corps in W.W.I and for participating in the formation of the League of Nations and United Nations. |
 X. |
 Y. |
 Z. |
*answers at bottom of page
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6. An Orgy of Hate On the eve of the 1918 Armistice, the Philadelphia Public Ledger published a letter admonishing the United States for its "heathen and bloodthirsty sentiments" and "insatiable lust for vengeance" against our enemies. The author, Associate Professor of Philosophy Henry J. Cadbury, presciently warned readers that immoderate treatment of the vanquished Germans would be the "curse of the future." While an inflamed and chauvinistic public called for Cadbury's job and the disapproving Board hedged on a definitive reaction, Cadbury resigned and moved on to Harvard &endash; where he later accepted the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee. The partisan brouhaha and loss of one of the century's great Quaker leaders was only the most public episode on a campus which witnessed the 1917 founding of the AFSC and a mere 65 students enrolled in the fall of 1918. |
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*answers:
A (Richards) - 2 (Chemistry, 1914) - Z
B (Taylor) - 1(Physics 1993) - Y
C (Noel-Baker) - 3 (Peace, 1959) - X
