Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Laissez les bons temps rouler

See our digitized newspapers at
http://archive.org/collection/mountstmaryscollege.
FAT TUESDAY HAS A LONG HISTORY at the College, and back in the day even had a Mardi Gras Queen, who was crowned at a costume gala the Saturday before Lent began.

The Queen in 1950 was none other than Beverly Halpin Carrigan '52, whose social and academic lives at the Mount are well documented in the scrapbooks she donated to the Archives a couple years ago. (She also put herself through school working in food service.)

Queen Bev and her court in 1950.
Incidentally, notice the reference to "Mount Ball Room" in the headline above. As constructed in 1947, the first floor of the Charles Willard Coe Memorial Library was devoted to dances and parties, complete with a small kitchen, dumbwaiter and glossy maplewood floors. As far as we can figure out from the old blueprints, the orchestra pit was directly underneath where the Archives sit now. Let the good times roll!