Thank you for sharing your stories of history professor J.B. Clark and other memories after the Centennial issue of Visions.
Alden Evans, ’58 accounting, worked as a lab instructor and student janitor. He still has a Tech pay stub for $3, or 50 cents an hour, dated March 28, 1957. Evans cleaned dorms on weekends when janitors were off and earned a free room. He was paid 90 cents a day to clean the ROTC space. In those days, Evans said, students could eat two good meals a day for $2 in the cafeteria.
Bill Ray, mechanical engineering, and Pete Fleming, ’66 English, ’68 M.S. history, said Sigma Phi Delta may have been Tech’s first fraternity but it was illegal.
Their fraternity, Kappa Phi Delta, was the first legal one. Fleming added, “There is no stronger draw for me to come back to Cookeville than my university experience coupled with my fraternity experience. As I look at Tech’s 50th anniversary button pinned on the bulletin board in my study, I realize again how formative Tech was in my life and how important Kappa Phi Delta was in making me the man I became.”
Frank Edwards, ’67 secondary education, saw J.B. Clark impersonate a lighthouse and called him a “true Renaissance man.” Edwards said, “I doubt there was one before or will be one after who could enliven a classroom as could he.”
John Tucker, ’67 business management, remembers one of Clark’s final exam questions about the number of times Interstate 40 crosses the Caney Fork between Nashville and Cookeville. Tucker got it wrong.
The road crosses the river five times.
Charles Adwell, ’69 pre-med, remembered Clark’s class after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. Adwell was ashamed to remember some students celebrated the news, but Clark took his class to task.
“He first addressed the one African-American student, the daughter of a local minister, and extended his condolences and an apology for the behavior of her fellow students. Then he excused her that he might address those of us remaining,” he said. “He was magnificent! He asked each of us to examine ourselves and our beliefs, then to question the purpose of higher education and how it should free us to reflect on longstanding views and prejudices.
“I’ll never forget that day or that courageous educator.”
Star Lakavage, ’79 wildlife management, lived in Rye Hall when she came to Tech to finish her degree.
During the traditional panty raid, ladies were “upset they had no fancy underwear to fling to the crowd.” A friend who worked at Peebles said after the raid women flocked there to be better prepared.
A few years ago, Lakavage and her husband were vacationing with friends and discovered one of them lived in Jobe Hall for the same raid. V