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The V-12 college experience, for all its business-like approach, was not without some recreation.
“I can remember we used to put on a dance down in Worcester periodically—and, in order to get decorations, we went to the department stores to borrow manikins and material,” Thomas says. Each semester a Navy Ball was held at the Worcester Memorial Auditorium.
After the war, Thomas took advantage of the GI Bill to go to law school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He eventually opened his own firm, Thomas, Collison, Meagher and Seiden in Endicott, N.Y. At the age of 81, he is still working and enjoys good health.
Thomas M. Stark ’46 recalls the conversion of Kimball Hall into a Navy mess hall, with meals delivered onto the sectioned aluminum trays of apprentice seamen in the “chow line.” Everyone rose to the 6 a.m. bugle call and rushed to the field behind Carlin Hall (known as “The Grinder”), where Chief Petty Officer Ben Plotnicki would make life difficult for those who didn’t keep up with the physical training.
Stark and his classmates got down to Worcester as often as possible—to watch movies, attend the USO club (which featured the irresistible attraction of young female hostesses) and frequent those bars that would wink patriotically at the state’s drinking age of 21 and serve a glass of beer to young men in uniform.
John O’Rourke ’46 was only six when his father died, and his mother could never have afforded a college education for her son without the V-12 program.
“We went to the St. Catherine of Siena grade school, which charged $1 per month per family, and my mother thought it was a rip-off,” he says. After passing the V-12 entrance exam, O’Rourke was able to leave his job as a ticket seller on the New Haven Railroad to begin his education.
The war ended just before O’Rourke was commissioned, but he enjoyed the life so much he signed on for another year. Attending law school and then earning his master’s degree in law at New YorkUniversity through the GI Bill, he is still active with his firm, O’Rourke, O’Rourke, Seaman and O’Rourke, in Jericho, N.Y.
O’Rourke, himself a Catholic, remembers many non-Catholic recruits being nervous about entering this bastion of Jesuitism.
“One of my friends was a Baptist,” he says. “When he told his mother he was going to Holy Cross to study, she cried because she thought they’d try to convert him.”
“But it was a happy time,” he adds.
Robert F. Delaney ’46 came to Holy Cross the hard way. A native of the famous seagoing town of Fall River, Mass., he joined the Navy at 17, having no money for college. After going through boot camp in Newport, R.I., he was assigned to signalman-quartermaster school. However, most of his duties involved breaking up riots between Marines and sailors.
“In those days Newport had thousands of Marines and sailors, and they would generally have a citywide riot every weekend,” Delaney recalls.
“We did weekend shore patrol,” he says, “and one night the riot call came in when we were at the police station and we went off to the bar. As the last one on the paddy wagon and the first off, I went through the door—and that’s the last thing I knew for three days. Some guy creamed me with a chair.
“While I was in the NavalHospital at Newport recuperating,” Delaney continues, “someone comes through and says, ‘How many of you dumb bastards can read or write?’ Those that could took the test and, just as I was being discharged, they said, ‘You passed.’”
Delaney fondly recalls his welcome to Holy Cross in those less than politically correct times.
“We were lined up in the quadrangle below the library,” he explains, “and out comes a Navy captain—back then a Navy captain was the most fearsome person you could run into—and a Jesuit. The captain said because the Jesuits had been in existence before the U.S. Navy, they knew a great deal about discipline and punishment.
“At that point,” Delaney continues, “the Jesuit—his name was Sullivan—called out, ‘OK, all Catholics stand at ease—make sure you go to Mass every morning because we take a muster.’ Then he said, ‘All you Protestants, take two steps forward. On Sundays, you will march down to the Episcopal church at the bottom of this hill.’ And, looking at all of us, he added, ‘You’ll get religion whether you like it or not.’ That set the tone.”
Delaney, who eventually earned a master’s degree in English and his Ph.D. in political sociology, served during his career, as an intelligence officer and later as a foreign service officer; he is now retired and living in Venice, Fla.
“Holy Cross was one of the great providers of commissioned officers,” he explains. Indeed, there is a memorial to the thousands of Holy Cross men who served in the Navy and the Marines at the NavalWarCollege in Newport, R.I.
When the Navy docked on the Hill continued >>>
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