largely because of inflation, the uncertainties of returns, and general economic instability. Admiral Cluverius was disappointed. So, too, was Andrew Holmstrom, a Civil Engineering graduate, who had been chairman of the fund-raising campaign. Meanwhile the Civil Engineering Department was being squeezed into tighter and tighter corners of Boynton Hall and into an assortment of borrowed spaces in other buildings. Since 1912, when Acting-President Conant first suggested a Civil Engineering building, the department had been patient—proposing plan after plan for quarters of their own. The department had been ready to move into Stratton in 1941, when the Higgins Labs were built, but the Navy V-12 had come along as preemptor. For some forty years, sympathized The Journal, the Civils “have had plans for a better life.” There was “better life” in Civil Engineering and in Tech’s whole school spirit when, after so much waiting, Admiral Cluverius announced a building program. It was to include the erection of a Civil Engineering building, another extension of Salisbury, re modeling of Boynton Hall and the Atwater Kent Laboratories, an additional field house, campus lighting, and general repairs. The Admiral, who thrived on action, bombarded people with his plans. His step seemed to have even more bounce, his voice more excitement, as he planned a tight schedule of alumni visits. On Saturday’s Homecoming Day in the fall of 1952 he greeted trustees and alumni, then on Monday kept an appointment in Philadelphia, with no one, not even the Admiral himself, suspecting that all was not well. Part way home, in New Haven, he became so ill that he was moved from the train to a hospital. There he died as heroically as he had lived—alone. It had been exactly thirteen years and a day since this vigorous president had first assumed office. His predecessor, Admiral Earle, had died four months after a hurricane; his own death occurred a few months before another natural disaster, the tornado of 1953. For Worcester Tech it was the same man, Stephen D. Donahue, who reported all of them—the hurricane, the tornado, and the deaths of the two presidents. In all these events this alumnus was deeply involved—especially in the tornado, which destroyed his home yet spared his family; and the moving account of his mixed reactions became a classic for the ten thousand other persons who were similarly made homeless by the experience. Steve, City Editor of the Worcester Evening Gazette, had managed the part-time assignment of directing W.P.I.’s News Bureau since 1928. After the turmoil of 1952 Worcester Tech had an afterwave of unpleasantness which brought with it the emotional debris of two wars, a reconstruction period, and the loss of a president. When a whole world—or even a small world such as that on Boynton Hill—has such a thorough shaking, there has to come
The most pressing need [for Civil Engineering Department] is that of adequate space to carry on its work. —Arthur W. French, 1925
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