War Story
By Sabatino Mangini ’01

s our nation struggled with the effects of WWII in the fall of 1947, autumn leaves fell from trees on the Glassboro campus like colorful remnants of a prior existence. Students—many of them veterans—had returned, hoping for a brighter future.

And so the veterans took the initiative: relying on military training to properly execute one more successful raid. Only this time, it was a college prank and their target was the girls’ dormitory.

“I planned it military style,” says David Rosen ’49, ’53, who enlisted in the Marines in 1943 and became a corporal after 21 months overseas in such places as New Caledonia, Solomon Islands and Philippine Islands. “I timed the raid for when the girls were at dinner. I organized an advanced detail where I sent guys to all the girls’ different dorms,” he remembers. “We stole the girls’ toothbrushes, splashed water on their bathroom mirrors, and messed up their beds. We raised their toothbrushes on the flagpole.

”When the women realized that the men weren’t eating dinner in the school cafeteria, they became suspicious. When they arrived at their dorms and saw the mayhem, they planned a payback. But the cagey veterans anticipated the women’s reaction.

“I had guys stationed in the rearguard position of our dorms,” recalls Rosen. “I figured the girls would try to attack us from the back of the buildings, so I had the guys stand ready with buckets of hot water. When the girls came up, the guys doused them.”

Still, the women weren’t entirely defeated. Later that night, the men decided to invade the women’s dormitory area, again. Only this time, the women were waiting with their own buckets of hot water. From the upstairs windows, the women overturned their buckets, drenching the men. Overcome with laughter, both sides of the conflict agreed to a truce.

While the school did react to the incident with discipline—students were restricted to dorms after class—it also illustrated a type of leniency toward the vets. “Back then, the attitude of the college was that they pitied the poor vets, and so let’s give them a chance,” Rosen says. “The College was more liberal toward our misdoings.”

That night did get the students in hot water but it also signified the beginning of a shift in perspective: a return to life’s simple pleasures.

December 7, 1941: A “day that will live in infamy.” The devastating attack on Pearl Harbor sent shockwaves of distress throughout the country and war became an imminent reality for citizens and institutions.

Glassboro’s first adjustment to the somber period of war involved relinquishing the nighttime searchlight that illuminated the golden dome on College Hall and acted as an orientation point for motorists miles away. President Edgar F. Bunce was determined “to make Glassboro less conspicuous from the air.”

It symbolized that life at Glassboro would be different: the mood around campus was a mixture of anxiety and bewilderment. “The men were worried about being drafted, but the country had to go to war,” says Sam Curcio ’41, who served one year in the Army Infantry before a four-year stint in the Air Force. “The country was afraid that if we didn’t go to war, Japan would start coming into the West Coast.”

Glassboro’s students would do their part—rationing, corresponding with servicemen, doing Red Cross work, knitting socks for French soldiers and gathering clothes for embattled Britons.

And on December 8, 1941, most of the the male students skipped classes to board a Philadelphia-bound train and enlist as soldiers. “When Pearl Harbor hit, we had no choice,” says Curcio, who spent 2 1/2 years overseas and was promoted to Air Force major. “We couldn’t turn the other cheek.”

Rudolph Salati ’43 also remembers the male students’ desire to defend the country. “The day after Pearl Harbor, all the fellas were leaving school to enlist,” says Salati, who served 3 1/2 years in the Navy, achieved the rank of chief and returned to Glassboro as a registrar and later as professor from 1959 to 1983. “The male population was reduced,” he recalls—severely, from 92 men in ’40 to only two by ’44.

Salati was one who enlisted. A junior then, he learned that he wouldn’t be immediately called for active service. So Salati and many others in his position became reservists who were able to finish their schooling with two provisions: they were always on call and they couldn’t leave their military district area without informing recruiting officials.

These men also attended school during the wartime acceleration plan. Started in January 1942, all students would complete a school year without spring break, a short Christmas vacation and two mandatory six-week summer sessions. This allowed for reservists to complete school before being called, while education majors could get a jumpstart on filling the teacher-void caused by war. Also, for military preparation, courses such as celestial navigation, physics and trigonometry were added to the curriculum.

But many other aspects of college life were lost: Rations on gasoline and tires limited field trips. Sports programs suffered or stopped. Normal clubs and activities were almost non-existent. No Yearbook or Lantern Night or Annual Dormitory Banquet.

Instead, students found ways to aid the cause. Besides babysitting for mothers at work in war plants, they donated blood and salvaged paper and rubber. They echoed the sentiments of the nation.

Jean Shaw Rover ’41, ’60 considers the willingness of so many people, including students, to enlist a byproduct of a generation raised during trying times. “We grew up through the Great Depression,” she says. “We didn’t have the choices that today’s kids have. We put our feet forward and did what was expected.

“Before the start of the war, our professors talked about its inevitability. But we called it the ‘Good War.’ We were all united,” Rover reflects. “We knew that what we were doing was right.”

Rover still acknowledges the mixed emotions involved with WWII. “The war entered every aspect of our lives,” she says. “We dreaded the idea of war. We wanted it to go away. But it didn’t. And when it came, we accepted the fact that we had to do our share.”

Throughout the nation and on campus, a rash of pre-war marriages was one hopeful response to the dread. In fact, one person suggested that The Whit carry a news column for wedding announcements.

Salati remembers other effects of war on campus. “We in the dormitory experienced the same as people at home,” he says. “Food was rationed. And we had emergency campus-blackouts. I was an air-raid warden. During air-raid drills, I made sure the lights were out. I ran around flipping all the switches because we didn’t have a master switch. And I had to get people in our air-raid shelters. We would take blankets and books and go into the basements of Oak and Laurel.”

Combine the shared feelings of uncertain times with a small student body, and a bond naturally forms. “We were like a family,” says Salati. “Everyone knew everyone else. It was unique. Even in the service, we kept in touch. The faculty and staff paid for a list of the soldiers’ addresses. And during the war, we could meet with students and faculty and staff stationed near us.”

Salati benefited from the list. While he served as a combat trainer in Texas, he met with a schoolmate for Sunday dinner. And later, when stationed in upstate New York, Salati formed a friendship with a professor who had been stationed on the same base. “I would’ve never known about them if it wasn’t for the list,” Salati says. “A lot of other people got together, too. I don’t think that would’ve ever happened at a big college.”

To accommodate returning students at the end of the war, Glassboro formed a Junior College Program for 117 veterans. The United States Government subsidized student-veteran expenses under the GI Bill of Rights. “The GI Bill paid for tuition—and gave us $75 a month for room and board and other supplies,” recalls Rosen.

The program would only exist three years and enroll 267 students, but it had a deep impact with present-day influences. Glassboro showed the capability of expanding past its teacher-based curriculum. To name a few, the program offered courses in accounting, advertising, geometry, qualitative analysis and Spanish. However, most veterans favored the pre-engineering curriculum, while a substantial portion opted for business administration.

The program also created a need for veteran housing and a barracks was set up behind its administration building—Savitz Hall at the time. The barracks, irreverently nicknamed The Shacks, consisted of 17 buildings with six rooms in each. Each building had one student manager, whose responsibilities would resemble those of a RA. “It was like a work scholarship,” says Rosen, who worked as one of the student managers. “I was given free room and board. So, I could spend the $75 from the GI Bill on other things. It worked out well for me.”

Whitney P. Mullen ’51 also lived in veteran housing, but shared the quarters with his wife and two children. Mullen worked a full-time job to support his family—which didn’t leave much time or discretionary income for college. But Glassboro offered assistance. “I was admitted into the college without taking an entrance exam,” he says. “It was a great help to me in getting an education. It would’ve been difficult to go to school without the GI Bill.”

Although all the veterans were spared the worries of paying for an education, they faced the tough obstacle of adhering to student life. Dr. Bunce reported to the Commissioner of Education: “It took several weeks for adjustments and for the veterans to settle down to regular college work. They showed a sincere desire to do their best, and their marks at the end of the first semester were good.”

Bill Kushner, a student at Glassboro State in 1950 and also a communication professor from 1970 to 1999, remembers the returning veterans in the same way. “The veterans were highly motivated,” he says. “They did their homework. They wanted to put everything behind them and get on with their lives.”

Perhaps the veterans’ desire to move forward was the reason why they were hardworking students in class—yet somewhat rebellious outside class. Perhaps they wanted to distance themselves from the restrictions of military life. Perhaps they struggled with altering their lifestyles from a culture of commitment to a culture of change.

Mullen recalls an incident with a teacher: as a freshman, he had missed his first geography class because of a scheduling mistake. When he attended the second class, the teacher didn’t accept his explanation for the absence and requested he go before the College’s honor committee.

Mullen never showed at the committee meeting. “I think the teacher went to Dr. Bunce, but he said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ At that time, the teachers were used to teaching girls fresh out of high school. The vets shook things up.”

While veterans were interested in leaving WWII behind, aspects of their military background aided them in many ways. During class, veterans would contribute real-life, worldly viewpoints to discussions on sociology and history and English. They provided freshmen with true examples of leadership and maturity. They also illustrated the importance of people working together to succeed.

“The war banded people together. People became patriotic,” recalls Byron “Red” Rudderow, a Glassboro native who spent three years in the Pacific. “When I came home in ’48, I was sort of a VIP around town. They treated us with a lot of respect.”

Coming home happened in long military withdrawal procedures. Student-veterans returned to campus from service in Alaska, Trinidad, England, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Romania, Hawaii, India, China and other far-flung stations.

They came home with medals, stars and citations for honorable duty. Many returned having been wounded in action, among them, Edmund Cordery, Vryon Grace, Edwin Jacoby, Connie Lankwich, Harold Mickel, Cliff Moore and Frank Roesler.

Three of Glassboro’s finest lost their lives in the war. Two months before Japan surrendered, Addison Moore’s plane was shot down in the Pacific. A German bullet killed first lieutenant Jacob Moscowitz as he led his men in General Patton’s legendary Third Army. Ben Cummings won a flight officer’s commission in 1944. His son, Ben Jr., was born three months after Ben’s bomber was shot down over Germany.

Again, the campus showed the heart of the nation, mourning their losses and rebuilding their lives. Clubs and activities resumed and wartime restrictions disappeared. In 1946, the veterans prompted the return of intercollegiate basketball and baseball to Glassboro. The following year, a Rosen-led group of veterans raised enough funds to field the college’s first-ever varsity football team, a team that consisted of many veterans.

It was this type of initiative that made the faculty and staff realize that the veterans were adding to the college’s transformation. The institution could become a college not only geared for teachers and mainly inhabited by women, but a college capable of offering many degrees for a substantial, coed student body. A college where coeds could learn and grow without the clouds of a world war. A college where coed pranks could occur and students could laugh together.

Rosen still chuckles when he recalls the Halloween raid. “Hey, the girls hadn’t seen men on campus in a couple of years,” he says. “They appreciated us. And we appreciated them. The raid was all in good fun. If we had pictures, we could’ve sent them to Life magazine.”


Sabatino Mangini ’01 works as an editor for Curious Parents Magazine while pursuing a M.A. in writing at Rowan. He lives in Wenonah.