University Times

It was a tough job convincing Robert Hunter, former professor of history at Pitt's Johnstown campus (UPJ), to write "The Evolution of a College: A Chronicle of the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, 1927 – 1993." Former UPJ President Frank Blackington says it took some real arm-twisting to convince Hunter, who died of cancer in 1994, to take on the project.

Even though Hunter was aware that such a work was needed to fill a large gap in UPJ's history, he was reluctant to tackle the project because he saw it as an "incredible balancing act," according to Blackington. He was concerned about fairly portraying all of the forces that had played a role in UPJ's development and was especially worried about offending by omission any groups or individuals.

"I really had to appeal to his sense of history and his sense of institutional need," Blackington recalls. "But I didn't know anyone else who was capable of doing the job in both an institution and a personal way. He had the skills of an historian, he wrote well and had been there. Plus, he had a great love for UPJ. Bob was as much Mr. UPJ as anyone I could possibly think of." Looking at the finished project, Blackington feels more confident than ever that he followed the correct path in convincing Hunter, who was a member of the UPJ faculty from 1962 to 1986, to take on the project.

"I think it is an unusual college history," Blackington says. "Most histories of organizations or institutions are done by chroniclers. They assemble a lot of facts in a more or less uninteresting way. It's useful to some people, I guess." "The Evolution of a College" is different in that along with chronicling UPJ's past, it interweaves the campus's growth with the times. For example, Hunter explains UPJ's desperate struggle to enroll enough students to remain open during World War II in light of the nation's casualty reports and Johnstown's contributions to the war effort.

From Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, until Aug. 1, 1944, Johnstown's Bethlehem Steel Co. plant alone sent 4,600 men off to war. A sampling of the casualty lists in The Johnstown Tribune-Democrat shows the local toll on Sept. 1, 1944: six killed, five missing and 33 wounded; Sept. 7: eight killed, five missing and six wounded, and Sept. 9: nine killed, two missing and 20 wounded. "And this gruesome tale went on and on, day after day, and month after month," Hunter writes.

Such drains on Johnstown's population left UPJ with only 85 full-time students by fall 1943. When Pitt agreed to establish a Johnstown campus in 1927, it stipulated that enrollment never be allowed to fall below 100 full-time students. Johnstown officials and UPJ administrators worried that the campus would be closed, as had Pitt campuses in Erie and Uniontown.

UPJ survived because in that same year a United States Cadet Nursing Corps unit was formed at Conemaugh Valley Hospital. One of the requirements was that cadet nurses take college-level science courses. UPJ quickly worked out an agreement with Pitt's School of Nursing to offer the required courses. The program added about 50 students per year to UPJ's enrollment, keeping it above the 100-student minimum. From the enrollment crisis of the war years, Hunter proceeds to the post war abundance UPJ experienced because of a bill signed by President Franklin Roosevelt on June 22, 1944. Hunter writes that the bill "received almost no public recognition nor any newspaper ballyhoo. It was Public Law 346. Its bulky contents described a variety of rights and opportunities for those servicemen fortunate enough to survive the holocaust of war. People generally called it the 'GI Bill.'" Five honorably discharged veterans became UPJ's first GI Bill students in September 1944. Soon, returning servicemen began setting enrollment records at colleges and universities throughout the nation. By January 1946, UPJ's enrollment had grown to 384 full-time students, with another 95 scheduled to enroll for the summer session. Although Blackington played a large role in getting Hunter to write "The Evolution of a College," he stayed away from the book once the historian agreed

to take it. Hunter himself discovered how difficult it was going to be to write a history of the campus when he learned that UPJ had no archives.

During the campus’s early years it was so small and insignificant to Pitt’s overall operations that its paperwork was handled by a single director of the extension division of the University on the Pittsburgh campus. For information, Hunter was forced to turn to the files of the local newspaper, The Johnstown Tribune-Democrat, the student newspaper (known at various times as The Panther Cub, The Panther and The Advocate) and the personal recollections of faculty, staff and others associated with UPJ.

Despite such difficulties, Blackington feels Hunter was especially successful in capturing the feel of the Theodore Biddle and Jack Freeman administrations. In the 1960s, Biddle led the drive to relocate UPJ from downtown Johnstown to its current location in Richland Township. In the 1970s Freeman led the effort to expand UPJ into a four-year, degree-granting institution.

UPJ had its start just prior to World War I. At the time, a state law required teachers to take annual continuing education courses at local county or city teachers’ institutes. Three colleges — Pitt, Penn State and Indiana University of Pennsylvania — responded to a request by Johnstown officials to conduct extension classes for city teachers.

Early in 1926, the Johnstown School Board sought a more permanent relationship with Pitt. On Sept. 24, 1927, the Johnstown Junior College of the University of Pittsburgh was established in the west wing of Johnstown Senior High School.

UPJ would remain in the high school building until 1946, when the growing number of GI Bill students forced it to take over the Cypress Avenue Elementary School. Known as the “Asphalt Campus,” the Cypress Avenue school would remain the home of UPJ until the current campus opened on Sept. 26, 1967, almost 40 years to the day after UPJ first set up operations in Johnstown Senior High School.

The guest of honor at the dedication ceremony was former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, who traveled from his retirement home near Gettysburg to receive an honorary doctor of law degree. Ike recalled how as a boy he had read about the Johnstown Flood of 1889. He told the audience he was happy to see Johnstown “as a thriving city with a great, new university.”

Eisenhower concluded his remark by saying: “All of us are aware that the salvation of our civilization depends upon a proper education.”

In accepting a UPJ degree, the former president was following in the footsteps of another World War II hero, Lt. Boyd D. Wagner, an engineering major, became on of the first American air aces of the war on Dec, 12, 1941, less than a week after Pearl Harbor, when he shot down two Japanese planes and destroyed five others on the ground in the Philippine Islands.

A well known name on the Pittsburgh campus also had strong links to UPJ. Stanton Crawford, for whom Crawford Hall on the Pittsburgh campus is named, served as UPJ’s first “executive head,” the forerunner of campus president. A zoologist by training who had done tropical research for the British government at Kartabo, Guyana, Crawford to a large extent helped UPJ to survive the stock market crash of 1929 and the early days of the Great Depression.

“The Evolution of a College” is published by UPJ’s Office of Institutional Advancement and is available in the UPJ Book Center. The price is $15.

Blackington feels the book is an important investment for the campus, “People can refer to it and a lot of alumni should get pleasure out of it because they were there and participated in various aspects of it,” he says. “Hopefully, it will bring back mostly good memories.”

-Mike Sajna