secretary to serve the University of Wichita.
Researchers are delving into the beginnings of the WSU Alumni Association — and you may have just the piece of information they need to flesh out the story.
Esther Wenzel '34 resides at Larksfield Place, a Wichita retirement community that supports the "I, Witness to History" program in an effort to preserve the irreplaceable memories of its residents.
In a 1998 interview with Rita Pearce '96/98, then a graduate student at Wichita State's Elliott School of Communication, Wenzel shared tales of the elaborate playhouse of her girlhood, her travels to the historic 1936 Munich Olympics — and her job as the first-ever alumni secretary at the University of Wichita.
Hired during World War II and the tenure of WU President William Jardine, Wenzel was first sent by Jardine to KU and K-State to talk with alumni association staff there and then told to make contacts "with the boys when they come off R&R." She sent out a survey to former WU students in the service, asking if they planned to come back to college after the war ended. Their answers were overwhelmingly yes: "(I)t was just endearing to see how many said their hope was to come back and finish their college, or to get more college," Wenzel says.
Her first office — half a room on the first floor of Administration Hall (today's Jardine Hall) — contained a desk, a telephone and a typewriter. At the time, she says, "they didn't even know how many alumni we had or anything."
With the help of a couple of students, she began typing up index cards. But due to wartime rationing of metal, they couldn't purchase a file cabinet new. The massive one they eventually bought from the Federal Land Bank was used until, as Wenzel puts it, "they moved into their fancy quarters (the Woodman Alumni Center, which was built in 1989)."
Wenzel's alumni project lasted two years, when Mildred "Mickey" Armstrong '45 (then McCoy) took over. She describes the monumental task yet remaining: "We worked by guess and by golly. The records from the registrar were sent over to Lois Carpenter Foreman '40, the president's secretary. We'd have a name and we'd try the phone book. Did someone know them? Did they work at WU? Did they go to war?"
Somehow, alumni records were made. A monthly newsletter was sent out. And both Wenzel and Armstrong remember one of their other "alumni" duties: selling and tracking football, baseball and theater tickets.
Jim Rhatigan, WSU dean emeritus of students, says that although Wenzel was the first paid secretary, volunteers have kept records and the alumni association alive from the university's earliest years. In fact, Rhatigan says, the first unofficial collector of alumni records may have been Minnie Morrison, the wife of Fairmount's first president, Nathan.
This summer, Rhatigan will begin plowing through archives in the alumni center's basement, where he'll start researching a book on the history of the alumni association. He urges anyone with information on alumni association beginnings to contact today's alumni association.
Who knows what Shocker history lurks in your basement?
