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The Fiftieth Anniversary:
1920
Excerpts from: “History of the Ohio State University",
VIII, Semi-Centennial Celebration. Nearly five hundred alumni were packed into the dining room of Ohio Union that noon for the Alumni Luncheon, while scores more, for lack of room and food, were turned away. Class spirit and reunion glee ran high. Doctor Edwin Earle Sparks, President Emeritus of Pennsylvania State College and a member of the Class of '84, presided as toastmaster in an uproar of merriment and good humor. Speakers at the luncheon, omitting those who reveled extemporaneously on call of the toastmaster, included Doctor Thompson, Miss Charme Seeds '15, and Professor William Lucius Graves '93. While the luncheon was still under way, the student military review on the campus Oval had begun, with long lines of undergraduate cadets, smart, spick-and-span in new uniforms, swinging by the reviewing stand.
Next came the Alumni Procession, led by the Cadet Band from the steps of the old "Main Building" to Ohio Field. More than 400 graduates were in line, some of the classes in full costume and others with distinctive regalia of one kind or another. Down the Long Walk they paraded, cheering raucously, flaunting high their class banners.
Then it was that the "old-timers" glimpsed anew the present and the future greatness of the Alma Mater when their own marching line, cheered by the thousands packed in the stands on Ohio Field, disbanded to make way for a magnificent pageant of the undergraduates portraying the past and picturing the future destinies of the University. More than a thousand students took part. The pageant theme was the struggle of early education in Ohio, the call to the citizenry of the State to support the movement for higher education, the cataclysm of World War and the brave response of the youth of Ohio, mobilized in the colleges, and the ultimate triumph of Ohio State as the standard-bearer of higher education in the Commonwealth.
Each succeeding event of Alumni Day seemed to draw larger crowds and arouse greater enthusiasm. The climax (though some there are who speak of it, remembering, as the "anti-climax") was the Ox Roast and Barbecue. From then on there was carnival. Student sideshows did a land-office business. The crowds crammed their way into the tents. Near midnight, the plaster model of the proposed "Ohio Stadium" was unveiled under spotlights, with Miss Eloise Fromme, a senior, to officiate as the "Stadium Queen." Saturday, October 16, concluding day of Semicentennial Week, marked a return to dignity of celebration, with alumni still in the major role. The forenoon's program and closing ceremonies were in recognition of the graduates of the older medical colleges, which now have been merged with the University-Starling-Ohio, Ohio Medical University, and the others. Hundreds of these graduates attended in person the exercises in the Armory, which were presided over by President W. O. Thompson of the University... The concluding event of the celebration was the football game on Saturday afternoon between the Ohio State University and Purdue University, resulting in a victory for the wearers of the Scarlet arid Gray by a score of 17 to O. Throughout the week the campus was the scene of many reunions, conferences, and ceremonies. The dedication of the Orton Memorial Library was held on October 16, with Doctor C. White of West Virginia, President of the Geological Society of America; Colonel Edward Orton, Jr., and Professor John A. Bownocker as the principal speakers. Return to: Semi-Centennial |
