The article on the early days of the Women’s College was delightful. I met the mother of my two older boys on a blind date at a St. Paddy’s Day dance in Warner Hall in 1921. My lack of training in social niceties caused me to have a miserable time, and I suspect the feeling was mutual. But the course of true love was not to be denied, and after a couple of months I dated her for a chaperoned hike. A year later at an Old College dance she was feeling a bit under the weather, so I took her back to Topsy an hour early. Horrors! She did not “check in,” and the honor system proctors searched frantically for her and found her asleep in bed. She was hauled before a committee of her peers who heard her confession and put her on probation. Her oldest son, John, and his son, John, both graduated from Stanford with honors. Her second son, Dick, was a Harter scholar at Delaware “51. Many carloads of local fans drove to Peoria in 1950, when Delaware trounced Bradley. Coach Murray let Dick carry the ball three times, but couldn’t risk aggravating a collarbone broken during practice in his freshman year.Although there is nothing heroic or spectacular about by my career at Delaware, I find it crammed full of rich memories. I’ll never forget the Senior Minstrel Show: Norm Wade, dressed as Dean Robinson, in his best falsetto, declaring, “I want WCD to be like Vassar,” and the End Man, who wanted to explain why the population of Delaware City was increasing so rapidly. That joke was censored by the faculty, but was well-known at both ends of the campus. The mere mention of the subject was all that was needed to bring down the house.
John M. Wells’23
Hamilton, IL
August 12, 1982
