Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - Banks of the Boneyard (Charles Kiler) [PAGE 19]

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both '91 and '92, and were on our way to bigger and better things, not alone for athletics, but for everything else as well. In this school year of '91 -'92 another organization of importance came into existence. Michigan had a daily newspaper—we had a weekly. The fact that we were far behind the pace set at Ann Arbor was not pleasant, and as editor of the Mini I corresponded with Ralph Stone, editor of the Michigan Daily, about organizing a Western College Press Association, feeling sure we could pick up a lot of useful information about the conduct and management of a college newspaper. Ralph Stone got behind this idea in a big way; we had a meeting at the Grand Pacific Hotel in Chicago attended by editors and business managers of practically all the western college papers, and the organization created then is still in existence. The organization of the Western Intercollegiate Athletic Association as well as the Western College Press Association came at a period when we were striving for better things; we were turning toward closer relations with the larger western universities. We commenced to feel that we could hold our own in competition with any of them. As a matter of fact no one in authority had urged us to be ambitious and to strive for bigger things. Up to the years '91-'92 we lacked a leadership to get us into competition with institutions of our own calibre. Most of us were boys and girls from the farms and small towns of Illinois; we looked like we had been born between two rows of corn, and I fear we acted like it also. One of our college humorists writing for a Bogus publication said: "When we dress for a party we put bear's grease on our hair, peppermint on our handkerchiefs, and 'taller' on our boots." The first man I ever saw wearing an evening dress suit was Henry L. McCune '83 when he attended the '92 Senior Ball; the rest of us put on our "other" suit—I mean the one we wore on Sundays. I had the idea that it was smart to wear shoes a size too small for my feet; instead of buying shoes to fit, we "broke 'em in." Even some of our professors wore box-toed boots too small for their ample feet and walked like they had corns; such a thing as a chiropodist was unheard of and feet were ruined because of the Cinderella myth! It is true that as seniors some of us stepped out and agreed to wear stove-pipe hats, gates-ajar collars, Ascot ties, Prince Albert coats with grey, striped trousers, and long, pointed-toed shoes too