John Stickney, a troubled youth and ex-boyfriend of WSU student Lisa Clark, detonated a bomb on the fourth floor of Streit-Perham Hall, killing himself and wounding two policemen. Stickney, a high school dropout, was employed by Industrial Rock Products as a powder man. He drove from his home in Mercer Island to attempt a reconciliation with Clark. Stickney twice attempted to talk with Clark at her dorm room and then detonated the bomb after a failed attempt to force entry.
Interior of Streit-Perham 4th floor room after explosion.
The 7,212 ton liberty ship E.A. Bryan, named after the former WSC president and funded by Washington State 4-H Club members, explodes while workers load it with explosives. The ship had been dedicated to former 4-H Club members who were then serving in the War.
On July 17, 1944, the E.A. Bryan and the Quinalt Victory were moored across from each other at the Port Chicago Naval Base, in the San Francisco Bay. They were being loaded with explosives when something exploded; pieces of the Quinalt Victory were recovered but the E.A. Bryan was effectively vaporized. There had been an estimated 4,600 tons of explosives and ammunition on the E.A. Bryan when it detonated.
Paul Allen, philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft, attended WSU and became a member of Phi Kappa Theta fraternity. He dropped out of school to work for Honeywell in Boston a couple years after enrolling. In 1975 Allen co-founds Microsoft with childhood friend Bill Gates in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
In 1972, students Gary Larson, creator of the acclaimed comic strip “The Far Side,” and Patty Murray, future United States Senator, graduated from WSU.
United States Senator Patty Murray speaking with a student at the Vancouver campus in 1996.
KWSC-TV went on the air for the first time under the direction of Cal Watson. Though the university was already WSU, KWSC did not become KWSU until March 1, 1969.
Two WSC students, Richard Thompson and Russell McCormmach, were the only representatives from land-grant colleges among the 64 U.S. students to win Rhodes Scholarships in these two years.
Keith Jackson, president of Crimson Circle, outstanding senior student, and chief announcer at KWSC (now KWSU), graduated from WSU and began a world-class career as a sportscaster.
Post-WWII construction at WSC was marked by the importing of many temporary buildings to handle the boom of returning soldier students. Many of these buildings came from the Farragut Naval Training Station near Coeur d’Alene, ID while others came from Vancouver, WA. These buildings were torn down by the mid 1990s.
Timothy Leary, a troubled psychologist and popular counterculture figure of the 1960s, who coined the phrase “think for yourself and question authority” and was once called “the most dangerous man in America” by Richard Nixon, graduates with a master’s of science in psychology from WSC. Leary only attends WSC for about a year, moving to Pullman in early 1946, gaining admittance in March of that year, and graduating in June of 1947. He and his wife Marianne lived in a house at the corner of C Street and Alpha Road, enjoying what one biographer would later call “the only uneventful period of their life together.”
The men’s boxing team are national champions. WSC sent four boxers to the championship and all four reached the finals. Ed McKinnen and Roy “Pooch” Petragallo won national titles to give the Cougars the national championship. Longtime boxing coach Issac “Ike” Deeter coached the 1937 team.
In the summer of 1936, Randall Johnson, a fine arts student at Washington State College, was hired as a sign painter by Fred Rounds, director of Buildings and Grounds. Johnson’s job was to paint door numbers and names on buildings around campus.
One day, Rounds mentioned to Johnson that the college needed a trademark. After that, Johnson designed the first WSC cougar logo, which appeared on the door of a college truck.
When the college became a university in 1959, President French asked Johnson to revise the logo, changing the “C” to a “U”.
Phillip Abelson graduates in chemistry and two years later earns his master’s degree in physics from WSC. He is later recognized as the “father of the atomic submarine”, the co-discoverer of neptunium (element 93), and later serves as editor of Science magazine and president of the Carnegie Institution. He is also the first recipient of the WSU Regent’s Distinguished Alumni Award. He is the son of Olaf and Elle Abelson, who first attended WSC in 1905 and built a home where Fulmer Hall now stands. The Philip M. Abelson Hall was named in his and his wife’s honor in 2002.
A fondly remembered place on campus, Silver Lake, also known as Lake de Puddle, was drained in summer of 1927. This made way for Hollingbery Fieldhouse and Mooberry Track. The manmade lake became part of the college in 1899, and shortly after the creation of the 1.6-acre lake, Professor Balmer from the School of Forestry directed the transplanting to the site of some 6,000 trees and shrubs to create “The Tanglewood”, a dense thicket offering a private retreat for students.
Zella Melcher writes the lyrics and Phyllis Sayles pens the music to the well-loved song, which receives a ringing endorsement from the Evergreen when it’s sung for the first time February 20 at a school assembly.
Fight, fight, fight for Washington State! Win the victory! Win the day for Crimson and Gray! Best in the West, we know you’ll all do your best, so On, on, on, on! Fight to the end! Honor and Glory you must win! So Fight, fight, fight for Washington State and victory!
W-A-S-H-I-N-G-T-O-N-S-T-A-T-E-C-O-U-G-S! GO COUGS!!
The song appears in the 1985 film Volunteers, sung by John Candy’s character Tommy Tuttle.
The February 26 issue of the Evergreen gives front page coverage to the first performance of the new fight song.
New fight song, first printed in the Evergreen, Feb. 26, 1919, page 8.
In 1969, the program that is today known as the WSU College of Nursing accepted its first class of 37 students. The WSU campus is rife with Vietnam war protests and student unrest.
In September 1953, Dean S. Town Stephenson and a dozen science colleagues began planning to acquire a low-grade nuclear reactor for research. They received a $300,000 grant to construct a building to hold a swimming pool type reactor. In 1957 the Atomic Energy Commission gave $105,000 to purchase the equipment. In 1961, the WSU nuclear research program completes its first chain reaction.
The Honors Program is established under Sidney Hacker, professor of mathematics. In 2001, a grand opening was held for Honors Hall (formerly White Hall), the new home of the nationally-acclaimed WSU Honors College.
In May, 1936 more than 2,500 students protested the “ultra-conservative, dictatorial administrative policies,” including policies put in place by the dean of women, Annie Fertig. After the protest, Fertig was asked to take leave without pay and was later fired by President Holland. Fertig claimed the students were protesting policies that didn’t exist, like rules against wearing red dresses or using blankets during picnics. On May 8th, the Evergreen summed up the results of the protest in an article titled “All Requests Are Granted.”
Student Demands – 1936 StrikeStudents protesting on the lawn below President Holland’s office in the Administration Building (now Thompson Hall).
He earns a degree in degree in speech while immersing himself in the campus culture during his four years in Pullman. Among his activities: president of the student body, actor in school plays, four-year participant in ROTC, debate team leader, member of Kappa Sigma fraternity, and president of the National Student Federation.
After college, Murrow works as a journalist in Europe during WW II, helps pioneer television news, and produces a series of reports that help lead to a censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Murrow was highly respected by journalists of his generation and praised for his honesty and integrity in delivering the news.
Edward R. Murrow (at right) walking from Pullman to Moscow in 1927.
Murrow and his Kappa Sigma brothers at Washington State College.
Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honors organization, grants a charter to WSC. The chapter is one of the first founded at a land-grant university.
Only about 15 percent of the institutions of higher education in the United States have programs sufficiently strong in the sciences and liberal arts to warrant Phi Beta Kappa chapters.
Five-foot-five, 150-pound quarterback Herbert “Butch” Meeker becomes an instant Cougar legend after leading his 1-3-1 team to a stunning 17-12 win over a good USC team in Los Angeles—Washington State’s first-ever win over the Trojans. The team returns to Pullman and is treated to a hero’s welcome, with students let out of class to go to the Union Pacific depot to greet the players’ train.
Meeker repeats his football magic multiple times from 1925 to 1927, earning him the title of “the fightingest little football player ever to don a Cougar uniform.”
After Washington Governor Roland Hartley presents the college with its first live cougar mascot at halftime of a game in 1927, it is quickly named Butch in Meeker’s honor.
The radio station begins broadcasting from the Mechanic Arts Building, thanks to financial support from the Agricultural Extension Service, the Associated Students, and the Pullman Chamber of Commerce.
Known today as KWSU, the station’s founding goals remain in place:
To provide information and cultural service to a wide area of population
To draw on the expertise of the faculty and present their findings
To provide a vehicle for further research in broadcasting
To train young people in the use, operation, and “human service” of radio
The station is one of the oldest and largest university-owned radio stations in the country.
Homer Dana with the first of four microphones that KFAE (later KWSC and KWSU) used. Dana, along with Hubert Carpenter, founded KFAE in 1922.
The Associated Students vote to invest $2,000 in a co-op bookstore on campus which will sell books, supplies, and, as an Evergreen ad from that year notes, “hot chocolate, milk shakes, ice cream, soft drinks, and sandwiches.” The Students’ Book Corporation (SBC) becomes an instant hit for students who save 10 percent on all supplies.
The original Bookie operates in a small wood-frame building on the present site of Wilmer Hall until 1923, when a new brick building is constructed next to the music conservatory. A larger two-level red brick bookstore rises in the same location in 1954. The Bookie remains there until 2008, when it moves into its present location in the remodeled Compton Union Building.
The Abelsons enroll after building a house where Fulmer Hall now stands. Olaf graduates with a degree in civil engineering in 1909. The Abelsons’ son Phillip later attends WSU and becomes an internationally recognized chemical engineer. Among his accomplishments: he devises a method for large-scale enrichment of uranium for use as power source in submarines, leading to construction of the world’s first atomic submarine.
The monthly publication lasts just more than a year, to be succeeded in 1895 by The Daily Evergreen. The Record’s editor, William D. Barkhuff, is an engineering student.
Students pelt Heston with rotten cabbages, plucked from icy fields nearby, as well as eggs and snowballs, marring the day he is introduced as president. The president of the Board of Regents, Andrew Smith, is also pelted as he walks with Heston across campus. The new president spends more time in Olympia and Seattle than tending to campus matters, fueling accusations around the state about unruliness in Pullman.
From the first issue of The College Record, the predecessor to The Daily Evergreen, absolving former-President Liley for any involvement in the attack on Heston
The institution awards a bid for the construction of Ferry Hall on February 19, 1892. The college confirms plans to construct a second classroom building, the original College Hall, on May 15. The buildings are ready when school begins that fall.
The institution welcomes 13 collegiate and 46 preparatory students who study agriculture, mechanic arts and engineering, and sciences and arts. President Lilley teaches mathematics and elementary physics. The Morrill Act specifies that one of the major subjects to be taught is, “veterinary art” and Charles E. Munn, a veterinarian, is among the first six faculty members. Tuition is not charged the first year.
