Your eye is clear, your heart is strong, your enthusiasm is unabated. —Thomas S. Roy in trustee tribute to Admiral Cluverius on his tenth anniversary as president, 1949
The most important of these problems is the maintenance of student strength W.P.I. does not intend to recoup its losses by lowering standards. —Wat Tyler Cluverius, 1949
There is every indication that war is in the offing. We are committed. —Wat Tyler Cluverius, 1951
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for the first time relax and say to his young companion: “Always leave on the crest of the wave, Swan—always on the crest of the wave.” The Admiral did not lose his bounce even in the post-war ad justment on Boynton Hill. His letters in The Journal were as regular as always, his engagements just as frequent, his presence just as impressive. To be sure, there were 600 students when he thought there should be 900. Costs had increased, there was a decrease in investment returns, the school was operating at a deficit with a reduced staff. “All is well on Boynton Hill,” he nevertheless told the Alumni Association. “Spring is coming— sometime,” he added almost wistfully for the Admiral, before making resentful mention of the Korean War, which threatened so soon to disrupt the normal resumption of schoolwork. The Navy V-12 program had so successfully demonstrated the feasibility of an engineering school’s serving for officer-training that in 1951 a Signal Corps Unit of the Reserve Officers Training Corps was established at Worcester Tech. Involvement in its program was basic requirement for two years, a voluntary option for two more. Colonel J. E. Foster became the Institute’s first professor of Military Science and Tactics. By virtue of ROTC, students were recommended for draft deferment until after graduation. The ROTC unit was provided a headquarters in the old Dean ery—née Jennings, née Thompson house—which had been discarded as a home when fuel rationing could not keep up with its drafty interior and open staircase winding up its three-storied height. Even with its new military status and with its lower windows barricaded for security purposes, the old house could never stand at attention. Upstairs the Commander’s desk sat uncomfortably in a feminine bedroom papered with a profusion of red roses as a final ludicrous touch. When later the Deanery was torn down to make room for Tech tennis courts, the ROTC unit moved to the Riley House. This house was actually the Higgins home first occupied by Milton Higgins when he became Superintendent of the Washburn Shops. After his death the house had been occupied by the family of his daughter, Katharine Higgins Riley, and the house had adopted the Riley name. Mrs. Riley had bequeathed her home and property to Tech, hoping that it would become a student center, which it did for several years before being superseded by the facilities of new dormitories. Many student activities had moved to Alden Memorial. The Masque or Tech shows were revived; dances became frequent; and the Musical Association extremely active, especially after the three-manual Aeolian Skinner pipe organ was installed in 1942. In a later year a carillon was added. Twice a day its tunes chimed over the City in one of the most pleasant gestures ever made by the Institute toward the community in which it lives.