By Emily Jeffres
With the war impacting enrollment, how the university responded would be crucial to its survival.
1940–1946
Cadets perform maneuvers on Whitnall Field, May 20, 1944
Colgate at War, 1943
Colgate became directly involved in U.S. preparations for action in World War II (which was already well underway in Europe) by September 1940, when the Civilian Pilot Training (CPT) program was established under the auspices of the federal government. The Colgate Airport, emblazoned with the slogan, “Home of the Flying Red Raiders,” opened a new hangar and an expanded landing strip 5 miles north of campus, on Route 20 in Bouckville.
(In hindsight, portents of World War II had materialized on campus as early as the 1930s, when the university hosted lectures by both visitors and members of the faculty, who spoke candidly — and often controversially — about Hitler’s reign in Europe.)
The initial class of 30 students in the CPT program received ground instruction and flight training using three Piper Cubs. Although university officials initially seemed hesitant to link the program with any conditional military service, a letter from President Cutten to the Board of Trustees noted it was to be “assumed that this training might eventually be of assistance in national defense.”1 Indeed, flight training and aeronautics would be central to the university’s military training programs once the war began.
The university’s wartime activities began to increase by September of 1942 (just under a year after the United States officially entered the war), when Colgate installed its new president, Everett Needham Case. In his inaugural address, Case noted the direct and vital impact of the war on the Colgate community: three-quarters of men who had graduated the previous spring were now training and fighting in the armed forces. Soberly, he told the crowd that eight of these Colgate men had already died.
Has Socrates, like yesterday’s motor car, been rendered obsolete by high octane gas?”
Inaugural address, September 24, 1942
Further reading from the archives
As expected, traditional student enrollment declined from 873 students in 1942, to just over 100 by fall of 1943.4 In order to keep the university afloat, President Case set about negotiating contracts with the military to transform the existing Civilian Pilot Training program into a comprehensive Navy Flight Preparatory School (NFPS). The success of the CPT program, along with the physical education and military training curriculum initiated by the students, likely served to bolster the case to the federal government that Colgate was a ready and willing host for the Navy’s programs.
The NFPS opened in January 1943 with the first 200 cadets arriving on a troop train that had plowed its way from New York City through a heavy (though not unusual) central New York snowstorm. By March 1943, there were 600 NFPS cadets on campus ready to begin a three-month course in the study of aeronautics, as well as an intensive program of physical training. The federal government paid $50 per month for each student’s room and board and $168 in tuition, helping the college to meet its basic operating costs during wartime.
The opening of the NFPS marked a significant moment of change on campus, where for the next few years “a large proportion of the college instruction and facilities were devoted to men in navy uniform.”5 Typical coursework included classes in navigation, code, and engines. Significantly, a shortage of teaching staff, combined with bloated student numbers, caused the university to employ a handful of local Hamilton women as instructors.
In May 1943, additional programs were announced, and each newly arrived unit of trainees was distinguished by an evolving series of letters and numbers. The Navy Reserve’s V-1, V-7, and V-12 programs, for example, enabled students to begin or continue their college studies and simultaneously receive the first phases of military training. By the summer of 1943, the student body had swelled to 1,300 students — with only 117 civilians. University facilities were stretched to their limits. With the campus bursting with cadets in training, the university struggled not only to house and feed them, but also to entertain them. Cadets played billiards in James C. Colgate Hall, then the Student Union and de facto student military headquarters. They sipped Coca-Cola at the soda fountain in the campus store, or Co-op, located in East Hall. Music and theater gained in popularity, and young men formed 10-piece bands and singing groups such as the Colgate Thirteen (created in 1942); broadcast variety shows on local radio; and arranged all-college formal dances, where women and men became acquainted via conga lines and punch bowls. Students also journeyed into Hamilton proper for movies at Schine’s State theater and for general conviviality at the local USO, located at the corner of Broad and Payne Streets.6
With President Truman’s announcement of Victory in Japan, on VJ Day in August 1945, students, professors, and townspeople gathered in Memorial Chapel for a service of “jubilation and thanksgiving,” followed by a campus holiday.7 The university began planning its move back to a peacetime college, with the final group of Marine and Navy trainees leaving Hamilton in June 1946. The 1947 Salmagundi (the first published since going on hiatus at the start of the war) was contemplative in an editorial: “Colgate had done its job… For more than three years, Colgate had seen uniformed men in its classes and on its campus. Now, relieved of its war duties, the University looked ahead to even greater tasks in a time of peace.”
Colgate had done its job… For more than three years, Colgate had seen uniformed men in its classes and on its campus. Now, relieved of its war duties, the University looked ahead to even greater tasks in a time of peace.”
