Years ago, if WU students said, “We’re headed over to the Commons for some shooting practice,” they’d be, well, right
on target.
That’s because the building, built in 1938 and now known as Wilner, once housed a rifle range.
Dan Close ’81/93, who worked as a WSU student in the 1970s at The Sunflower, which was then housed in Wilner, recalls, “I once saw two guys open a door on the south side of the building where the rifle range had been. I peered inside, but it was too dark to see anything. It must have been a tight, claustrophobic place.”
It was cozy, says James McKimmey ’60, who was a member in the late 1950s of WU’s ROTC-sponsored rifle team, first organized in 1919. Nonetheless, McKimmey adds, there was enough room for five or six marksmen to fire simultaneously. McKimmey went on to a 30-year career in the U.S. Army, and the area that was once the rifle range he practiced at is now used for storage. The theater department employs part of the space to store props, for instance.
But there’s still a vivid reminder of the space’s earlier purpose: a well-worn, wooden door is labeled, in stern capital letters, WEAPONS ROOM.
