National Library Workers Day is a fitting time to acknowledge the recent passing of Eleanor Wallace (March 2, 1928 – March 18, 2019). Eleanor Wallace began working in the Cataloging Department in 1977 in what was then the Walter Hines Page Library. In 1987, a major library renovation and expansion resulted in today’s McGraw-Page Library. As part of the library’s make-over, the library staff oversaw the removal of the entire collection to the Copley Science building, converted the call numbers from Dewey Decimal to Library of Congress classification, and returned the collection to the renovated building. Eleanor was later part of the team which transferred information from printed catalog cards into the library’s first online catalog, MaconCat.
Eleanor was a Library Assistant in the Library from 1977-1994. Below is the McGraw-Page library staff pictured in the 1985 Yellow Jacket Annual.
According to James’ Scanlon’s history of Randolph-Macon College, 207 Randolph-Macon College alumni served in World War I. Eight of these RMC veterans lost their lives in the conflict.
Evan A. Edwards, R-MC Class of 1894, served as the Regimental Chaplain in the U. S. Army’s 140th Infantry (Sixth Missouri).
The regiment trained at Fort Doniphan in Oklahoma, shipping out to France in June 1918. The unit fought along the Western front as part of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive until the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.
The Library’s copy of Edwards’ book is inscribed: “Presented to R.M. College by the author, Jan. 1921” and is housed in the Randolph-Macon College Archives.
Chaplain Edwards at battlefield interment in Argonne, France.
Randolph-Macon College students and faculty were commissioned as officers in the U.S. Army in 1918 in Plattsburgh, New York and returned to campus to start the Students’ Army Training Corps.
The Students’ Army Training Corps (SATC) was created in 1918 by the US War Department to expedite the training of soldiers during World War I. A SATC division was established at Randolph-Macon College in August 1918, providing students an opportunity to continue their studies while fulfilling their draft obligations. In addition to their RMC course work, the young men participated in military training exercises.
The SATC had a short and interrupted life at Randolph-Macon College. In October 1918, many RMC students were afflicted by the world-wide flu pandemic. When the armistice brought the war to end on November 11, 1918, the SATC soon demobilized until a similar training corps was established in World War II.
While the SATC helped the college maintain its enrollment during the war, President Robert E. Blackwell gave an unenthusiastic report of the Students’ Army Training Corps in a letter to a government official in December 1918.
“The influenza struck us the first of October before we had inducted a single man. For several weeks we were struggling with that without a single trained nurse and with nearly one third of the students in the hospital. During these weeks the classes met, but we could not expect to make any progress. After inductions took place and most of the students were out of the hospital, the attendance on the classes was not much better owing to various military duties. Every student, for instance, was on guard duty for twenty-four hours every sixth day and was in no condition to study or receive instruction the day after… The military work was done well and enthusiastically till November 11. Then all enthusiasm died out of that. Then everybody was too far behind in studies to take any interest in them. These are the short and simple annals of the S.A.T.C. Very respectfully, R.E.B.”
While browsing in the history section recently, we found an interesting book about Poznań, Poland. A photograph of the Methodist church in Poznań is mounted on the inside fly-leaf, with a detailed inscription containing several signatures on the facing page:
The book was given to The Reverend Paul Neff Garber in 1961 when Garber served as the United Methodist Church’s Bishop in Europe.
The book, entitled simply Poznań, is part of the Paul Neff Garber Papers located in the Methodist History Collection of the library’s Special Collections. Check out the Methodist History Collection as well as other specialized and unique collections in the Flavia Reed Owen Special Collections and Archives.
