Alumni Memories

Lyle Spencer

Technical Agriculture, CRT, 1972

Lyle Spencer

My memories of Iowa State date back to the fall of 1949. One week before classes started my father decided that since I had just graduated from high school the previous May that I should go to college. Iowa State College was only forty-five miles away from our family farm near Churdan and the tuition was affordable, $46 per quarter.

Iowa State was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. Beardshear and Curtiss Halls were like palaces. Those were the days when many World War II veterans were using their GI Bills to attend college and there were lots of them. Student housing was scare, but my father found me a room in southeast Ames on 312 South Washington. There, I and three other students shared the upstairs while a family of four occupied the downstairs area. A long walk to the State Highway Commission building allowed me to catch a bus to the College everyday.

On the way to school on U.S. Highway 30, I always enjoyed passing by the long row of large cottonwood trees and open meadow where the Iowa State Center is located today. Once on campus I would have breakfast at the Union for about fifty cents and then it was off to class. My first schedule listed my courses as: English 101, (taught by Spike Krativille), Dairy Industry 114, Economics 130, Animal Husbandry 111, and Library 106A. My student activity card allowed me to attend all athletic events free of charge.

For social involvement and as one living off campus, I joined the “Ward System” where we had meetings once a month. ROTC was required, but I was excused because of my poor eyesight. In those days the HUB was really the hub of many social activities. It contained a complete Post Office, food service and sort of a relaxed atmosphere. Entrance to the library was from the east and just inside to the left was where the daily Ames Tribune was posted.

Probably the biggest obstacle at college was just being scared everyday especially during Freshman Week. My education had started in the dry/hot year of 1936 in a one-room country school located in northern Greene County, Iowa. The school, one half mile east of the family farm, was called Highland Number 2 and was attended by five to eight students until 1942 when it was closed. My teacher had successfully completed a “Normal Training” teachers’ course of six weeks from Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls, Iowa. It is not difficult to understand why I was so scared in College coming from an enrollment of five students to one of over 10,000.

For the winter quarter I was privileged to find a third floor room in Hughes Hall and was given a Friley Hall cafeteria meal ticket. As I recall, tuition, room, board and books cost my Dad less than $300.