Monday, April 23, 2012

Oops!

CHEMISTRY STUDENTS, wearing protective aprons and bearing lab equipment, study a large hole in the ground at their feet. Oops! There goes Brady Hall! Another experiment gone awry!

In fact, the hole in the ground is the foundation being dug for the new Charles Willard Coe Memorial Library. A note on the back of the photo says the students were "pretending to have caused it by their chemicals."

The student chemists all graduated around the time the library was dedicated, in the spring of 1947. The picture is unusual -- not because of the subject matter, but because on the back someone has taken the time to describe what's going on and named each of the students (right). For every one of these with information, there are probably 25 more that have no identification whatsoever. (And with a picture like this, how would you ever guess what's going on?)

These members of the Class of '47 continued to support the Mount as alumnae, and two made their careers at the College. Left to right are Muriel Rocheford [Gustin], Patricia Borchard [Watson], Hallie Bundy (later physical sciences faculty), Dorothy Mary O'Callaghan (later Sister Leo Francis, CSJ, physical science faculty and academic dean), Frances Shannon [Joy], and Jean Colberg [Hanna].