A CLASS DIVIDED: Split by war, classmates unite for first time at 50th reunion

Fifty years after graduating from the University, Lillian Brunner is preparing to meet many of her classmates for the first time this weekend. The reason for this delayed meeting is not that Brunner was shy when she attended the University or that she was a commuter student. Rather, in 1945, campus life, like all other aspects of society, had become encompassed by the magnitude of World War II. As Brunner and the Class of 1945 gather on campus to celebrate their 50th reunion, they will at last try to bring a sense of normalcy to a class that was anything but normal. "Our class was limited in many regards," Brunner said earlier this week. "There wasn't built into it the sense of unity that I'm sure classes today have." Class President Leon King said this feeling of cohesion was not important to students who wanted to complete college before heading out to war. Students attended classes year-round so they could graduate within three years. And the University held three graduation ceremonies in 1945 for students who had to leave campus to help with the war effort. For many in the Class of 1945, though, the somber realities of war did not wait until graduation. Three credits shy of graduation, Joseph Etris Jr. departed for the battleship North Carolina in the Pacific in July 1945. After serving as a junior turret officer on the main battery of the ship, he returned to campus to finish his requirements for graduation. Despite his actual graduation date -- September 1946 -- he considers himself a member of the Class of 1945. Unlike Etris, Selma Bernstein did not fight on the front lines in the war. But she, too, participated in the war effort. While on campus, Bernstein spent hours raising money to be donated to the government's "war chest." And in the evenings, she and her sorority sisters headed to Fort Dix to dance with soldiers preparing to leave for combat overseas. The war was more than a struggle against fascism and oppression for Bernstein. Hardly a day went by that she did not think about her two younger brothers who were stationed on the front lines -- in Africa and in the the Admiralty Islands in the Pacific. "I remember getting letters from them with all these black lines," she said. "We didn't know very much about what was going on -- they were all censored." Like Bernstein, Elaine Rothschild's involvement with the war was also intensely personal. As a volunteer with the Red Cross, Rothschild's job was to translate messages from French into English about the fate of servicemen in the war. Nineteen years old at the time, she had the unenviable task of telling family members that their loved ones died in battle. Even on campus, Rothschild could not escape the ugly reminders of the atrocities of war. "The campus was filled with servicemen coming and going, and it was very depressing," she said. "We would say goodbye to someone and find out six months later that the person was killed. "It was not any kind of campus life that you guys know about," she added. "We were really cheated out of college life in those days." To Etris, classmates who died were unfortunate, but expected, casualties of war. "War is war, and it's hell," he said. "It's real bullets and real lives. "You knew that somebody wasn't going to make it," he added. "You felt really terrible, but you accepted it." Not only did war cause changes to students' routines, but the University as a whole adapted as well. Since the size of the student body shrunk considerably during the war, many courses were consolidated and condensed as a result. And because junior faculty members were drafted, full professors were conscripted for classroom duty. The courses these professors taught were often geared toward topics of war. For instance, postwar planning, flight mapping and assault strategy were popular at the time. According to Howard Golden, another member of the class, the University was also forced to accommodate the onslaught of servicemen being sent to campus. "They took over the dormitories and they took over most of the fraternity houses," Golden said. "There were more of them than there were civilians." When World War II ended, members of the Class of 1945 were left planning for their futures and coping with their losses. During this painful process, classmates never really got to know each other. "I felt that we lost something," Bernstein said. "I don't think I have the long-lasting memories that someone who went to college 10 years later would have." And this lack of class cohesion has been a problem for the reunion planning committee, King admits. "I met more people planning for the 50th anniversary than I knew on campus," he said. "There was only one person on the committee that I knew in college and only a handful that I attended class with." But Golden does not hold any grudges against the University because of his experience. "It wasn't the fault of the University -- it was the war."

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