April 14, 2005

Northwest 'family' invited to Centennial lawn party

MARYVILLE, Mo. – Northwest employees and emeriti might want to bone up on their ragtime music and the lost art of making ice cream the old-fashioned way – with a hand crank.

Both activities will be featured at a lawn party 3-5 p.m. Thursday, May 12, for all faculty, staff and emeriti.

The celebration, a Northwest Centennial “pre-event,” will be held on the lawn in front of the Administration Building. The afternoon will feature music, exhibits and games popular in 1905 – the year the University was established as the Fifth District Normal School.

“This is strictly a party for ‘the family,’” said Mary Ann Lowary, vice president for university relations and chair of the on-campus centennial committee. “We hope every employee will attend. There will be entertainment, door prizes, contests and, we hope, a lot of story telling about University history.”

Birthday cake and lemonade will be served throughout the afternoon.

Lowary said Northwest alumnus Marty Mincer will entertain with ragtime piano music. Chris Shobe, an admissions representative, will lead the audience in “The Northwest Normal Song,” which was composed by Perry Oliver Landon, the school’s first music teacher.

Shobe is also organizing a men’s quartet to sing “Missouri, A Song of the State,” which was written for the opening of Northwest’s first term in June 1906. Landon wrote the music, and the words were penned by Homer Martien Cook, the normal’s first physical culture and elocution teacher who later became its second president.

A women’s barbershop quartet, Opus IV, which includes two Northwest employees, Leslie Spalding and Mary Ann Penniston, is on the bill as well.

The lawn party will begin with the ringing of the Bell Tower chimes at 3 p.m. and welcoming remarks by President Dean L. Hubbard. The Normal School song will follow. At about 3:20, all employees will be asked to line up on bleachers in front of the Administration Building for an official “Centennial Year Faculty and Staff” picture.

“This will become a historic photograph of the University’s centennial faculty, staff and administrators,” Lowary said. “A copy will be placed in a time capsule and another hung in the Administration Building. I encourage everyone to attend and be a part of this photo.”

A second photographer will be on hand to take individual and small-group pictures. Period costumes will be available for those who wish to pose, and the prints will be available that day.

Other attractions will include historical displays, prize drawings and turn-of-the-20th-century games like croquet, badminton and boule ball.

There will be an ice cream-making contest following the photo session. Departments and offices are invited to organize teams, locate a hand-cranked ice cream maker and be ready to compete near the Class of ’48 Bell.

Prizes will be awarded to the team that finishes first and to the team that makes the best ice cream as determined by a panel of judges. The winning teams will each receive a box of letterhead stationary and envelopes sporting the University’s new logo.

Those who wish to attend wearing period dress may do so, and there will be prizes awarded for best man’s and best woman’s costume. Winners will receive a copy of Janice Brandon-Falcone’s upcoming pictorial history of the University, “Transitions: 100 Years of Northwest.” The book will be available for sale in the Bearcat Bookstore later this summer.

Period costumes at the lawn party are encouraged but not required, Lowary said. Regular work and office attire is appropriate.

Door prizes will be offered in two categories: current employees and emeriti. Staff door prizes include two copies of the pictorial history, a historical photo collage and a set of Encore Performances season tickets.

Two door prize winners will receive a set of books about University history written in years past: Mattie Dykes’ “Behind the Birches” and Virgil and Dorothy Albertini’s “Towers in the Northwest.”

Emeriti prizes include two copies of the new book, a historical collage and two sets of the Dykes and Albertini books. Winners must be present when the prizes are announced at 4:45 p.m. Only one prize will be awarded per individual.

In case of rain, the event will move inside the Administration Building, which opened in 1910 and is the oldest academic building on campus.

Sources for costumes circa 1905-06

Commercial patterns:
Butterick
B3417 women’s shirtwaist (blouse)
B3418 women’s skirt
B3721 men’s cutaway coat, vests
B4094 men’s smoking jacket, shirt, bow tie
B4210 women’s hats
B4212 women’s dress
B4254 corset

Simplicity
9723 women’s dress

Reproduction/ready made
http://www.premierclothing.com


Rules for the ice cream-making contest

Round up the strong-arm people in your office or department and enter the ice cream-making contest at the centennial lawn party celebration.

Teams must make ice cream with a hand-cranked ice cream maker and use only ingredients that were available in 1905 (no M&Ms or commercial ice cream mixes).

Ice and rock salt will be provided. The competition will begin following the all-employee centennial photo shoot.

We are looking for ...

A tandem bike – or two – to share at the lawn party.

Brief facts about our early history

•The Fifth District Normal School was created on March 25, 1905, when Gov. Joseph Folk signed legislation creating it. Northwest was the last of five such schools established across the state.

•Area towns competed for the school. A state commission selected Maryville, and the governor accepted its recommendation on Aug. 4, 1905.

•The first board of regents met on Sept. 12, 1905. The first president, Mr. Frank Deerwester, was named on Jan. 4, 1906.

•Classes opened in buildings downtown and in the old Seminary building on June 13, 1906. The first commencement was held two months later, on Aug. 6. The Administration Building, which also served as the main classroom building, was completed in October 1910. The first classes were held there on Oct. 3.

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