Portage County Gazette 6/29/2001
(The following article was written by a man, now deceased, whose wife suggested that he remain anonymous.)
Back in 1925 I was a student at the Stevens Point Normal School. Professor Sims was president and I think there were 700 students. Six hundred of them were girls and one hundred were boys. That was a percentage that was hard to beat, although from the girls’ point of view it surely would be looked on as a handicap.
Nelson Hall was the girls’ dormitory and it was run with an iron hand by the live-in dean of women, Bertha Hussey. You had to pick up your date in the main floor reception room under her eagle eye, and while you didn’t have to sign your girl out, you were expected to bring her back before 10 p.m. At 10 the place was locked up.
I was born too soon, I guess, when I see the free and easy relationships now. Co-ed dorms, 24-hour visitation and so on. Golly gee, what we all missed.
Why, I remember when I lived in Duluth, I went with a girl who was at the Villa of St. Scholastica School. You had to sign out the girl with the nuns and also your name had to be on a list that the girl’s parents had approved.
So back at Nelson Hall, from 10 o’clock on through the night there was considerable traffic on a fire escape on the south side of the building. If the girl stood on your shoulders she could reach the bottom of the steps and, with considerable agility, manage to pull herself up, and then you had it made. The windows opening off the fire escape were always left unlocked by the girls.
The faculty had one Ph.D. at this time and it wasn’t President Sims. It was Joe Collins, the mathematics professor. He was almost blind and older than the hills. Today he would be legally blind. He could write on the blackboard and explain the processes, but I never did find out how he could correct papers or even know what his students were doing.
Norman Knutzen was the English teacher, a very pleasant man who also ran the glee club. There were also Raymond Rightsell, James Delzell and E. T. Smith, who gave me my love for history. I took ancient history from him and he brought Egypt alive for me. To this day I am still studying history.
President Sims was probably the most boring person I ever heard. We only had to hear him at assemblies and on formal occasions. I don’t think he ever taught anything. He could make "good morning" boring. The original sleeping pill.