Balfour, Don: Oral History, April 7, 1995
From GWUEncyc
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Don Balfour earned a B.A. degree from The George Washington University in 1945. While attending the university, Mr. Balfour worked as a reporter and later editor of the student newspaper the Hatchet. He was also active with the University Glee Club and Cue and Curtin (drama).
ANDERSON: This is an interview with Don Balfour, April 7, 1995. The topic is his activities at George Washington University, specifically dealing with the GI Bill. First of all, if you would, what were some of the influences that first brought you to George Washington University?
BALFOUR: I graduated high school in 1939, and attended Wilson Teacher’s College for one year until June of 1940. At that time it was necessary for me to go to work and so I had to drop out of Wilson after the freshman year. GW offered me the opportunity to go to school at night and further my education, while working during the day, so I took advantage of that opportunity. GW’s student body was primarily a night school student body, and it was devoted as much to the education of government employees who were trying to get ahead in their careers as it was to young people going to college. Georgetown and Maryland at the time were pretty much the kind of schools that one associated with Ivy League or with social life, and GW was a businessman’s school, a place where you could further your education and get ahead in the world. So, that’s what brought me to GW. I enrolled in the September class in 1940 and I really can’t remember the academic program at this time now, but probably was taking two, possibly as many as three courses at night.
ANDERSON: It was primarily at night?
BALFOUR: It was all at night, and the only day school I ever had was the first freshman year at Wilson Teacher’s College, and in the end of my education at GW when I went to school under the GI Bill of Rights.
ANDERSON: What was your major there?
BALFOUR: I started out as a statistics major and had a great interest at that time in business and in statistics, primarily because I had an uncle who was a role model for me, who was the Director of Public Health Statistics for the government, and later became Dean of the College of Public Health Statistics at University of California in Berkeley. This was the first such school founded in the United States. He served as a role model, and I was trying as best I could to follow in his footsteps. So statistics was my major. I stayed at GW and continued to work during the day until 1942. At that time, I was drafted and I went into service from the fall of ’42 until the fall of ’43, serving out on the west coast in the Army. My outfit was alerted to go overseas for the invasion of Salerno in Italy, and we were brought back to the east coast. Just prior to getting orders to be brought back to the east coast, everyone was required to take a physical, and I flunked the physical, and was discharged. And I came back to my employment in the government and my education at GW continued that way from ’43 on until the GI Bill.
ANDERSON: Before you go into the GI Bill, if you just think back, what was the feeling on campus, let’s say, when Pearl Harbor was bombed in ’41 . . . that next week? I mean, it had to be . . . .
BALFOUR: I think I have the Pearl Harbor edition of the Hatchet[GW student newspaper] right here. I could have, I’m not sure I brought it with me. I may have left it at home
ANDERSON: Do you remember what kind of change, was there any change, or . . . .
BALFOUR: Well, there was, at the beginning, there was very little change. Students had deferments and no one knew who was going to be called up or how quickly you would be called up, and those who worked in the government also had deferments. So it wasn’t until about the second or third year of the war that people were being called up in greater numbers. And there were fewer deferments, and more and more college people were being inducted. The feeling at the time was don’t send our best and brightest until the end. We want to defer the factory worker who’s making the production, we want to defer the college student, who will be our future leader, we want to defer the medical student, the law student, and people like that. So that the, and of course there were no women in the service in those days, except a few volunteers, so the campus continued on and there was slow depletion, so that by ’42, when I went in, it was just beginning to change the ratio of men to women and to deplete the numbers of young men.
ANDERSON: Do you have friends that went into the service before they were called up?
BALFOUR: Oh yes, there were a lot of volunteers, and a lot of, all of us, none of us could resist the desire to be a part of it, to put on a uniform, to be in the service. And, well the thing that got me into the service was what got me discharged. I took the physical to go into the service and I knew that my eyes were bad and that I could never pass the physical, but the doctor who was giving the eye examinations had the door opened to that room, and was using an eye chart on the wall. So I stood in the doorway and I memorized the top three or four letters on the chart. Therefore, I had no problem passing the physical. But when they gave me the physical to go overseas, they used a device that shot a letter up by light up on the screen and I had no idea what was coming up next, and hadn’t had an opportunity to cheat or memorize, so they caught me, and they discharged me on the spot, because I had always had very poor vision, and couldn’t have qualified for anything under the existing physical standards. So that’s what did me in. But at GW, the student body, the people in uniform, we had a lot of people in uniform in school during the war. Either they were working in the war department or other parts of the government or the Pentagon, or they were in some special programs. And if they were in a special program, they wore the uniform of that program. So it was not uncommon to see a lot of uniformed people on the campus at all times.
ANDERSON: And I imagine there were many more women on campus than would be normal at that time.
BALFOUR: Yes, there was a sixty-forty split in favor of the women, which made it very nice for the fellows, except that every girl had some fella in the service who was writing to them or was being true to them, so it wasn’t all that easy. But it was a different thing.
ANDERSON: What was the general feeling on campus when you went back in, was it ’44, came back in ’44?
BALFOUR: ’43.
ANDERSON: You said it was beginning to change then. A lot of the students were beginning to go into the service that had not gone into the service.
BALFOUR: Yes, by ’43, the uh, we were preparing for the invasion and calling up larger numbers of people so that the deferments were fewer, the excuses were fewer, and the numbers being called up and being trained were greater and especially because we had taken such a beating in the Pacific, we had to have replacements. And then we got into North Africa and the lower part of Europe through Italy, there were replacements needed for injured and dead soldiers. And so, call-up became even greater.
ANDERSON: When you returned to GW, how did you become the, what was the process when becoming editor of the Hatchet at the time?
BALFOUR: Well, there was a general hierarchy. You started as a freshman, as a cub reporter, and worked your way up. By the time I went into service, I was, I think, sports editor. And I can recall, for instance, GW was a big power in the Southern Conference, and I remember a game we played in New York at Madison Square Garden that I covered for the Hatchet. And I went up with the team and with the coach then, Bill Reinhart. We had some interesting conversations going up, but nothing I could lay my hands on or define. And the team manager that time was Aaron Layne, who later went to law school, became pretty famous. His immediate claim to fame probably was that he married Kitty Hershey, whose father, General Hershey, was in charge of the draft. Aaron and I, I clearly recall, were walking down Broadway on the way to the game. That was the night that the French liner, I don’t think it was the Ile de France, but it might have been. I can’t remember the name of the French liner that burned right at the docks in New York, and we were right there when it happened. I do remember that GW lost the game to St. John’s at Madison Square Garden. And on the way back, Bill Reinhart got into a private conversation with me in which he told me he was planning to take a leave of absence from the university, that he’d been offered a job as Director of Physical Activities for the Merchant Marine, if I remember right, or the Coast Guard. I can’t remember which service, and that he was about to take it. And for some reason I considered that to be a privileged communication and didn’t print it in the school paper or tell anyone about it until he made his public announcement. I probably had a scoop and didn’t recognize it.
ANDERSON: Well, I have seen a number of articles for Coach Reinhart, you know when he went into service. That’s covered. We have a, not only the Hatchet file, but we have a fairly extensive clipping file from newspapers, from the Evening Star, from the Time Ledger, from the Post, and from other newspapers, and so we’ll be using those as well, as far as exhibit. Well, when you returned, you became editor of the Hatchet.
BALFOUR: Yes, when I returned I served as various jobs . . . copy editor, sports editor again, ‘til time for my senior year, or approximately senior year. It was the end, it was the spring of 1943 that I was promoted to or awarded or given the job as editor of the school paper. Along with that came the job of editor of the summer school paper. And if you haven’t seen it or don’t remember, this is what it was.
ANDERSON: Well, I’d love to take a few minutes afterwards and look through some of these.
BALFOUR: At any rate, at that time the veterans at the university had formed a club, had been given a place to use as a club house, on 22nd Street, and the GI Bill was in the process of being argued in Congress and being signed. So that’s what led me to seek an appointment with the Veteran’s Administration with the man who was going to head that division, in order to get a story for the Hatchet. And I took along with me my discharge so that I could, I’m hesitating because I’m looking at something here at the same time I thought I had with me. I took along with me my discharge papers, so that I could go to his secretary after the interview with him and get the application and start the process. That was on June the 23rd of 1944, and after interviewing him and getting all the information I wanted, I asked him how I would go about enrolling in the GI Bill, or for GI Bill benefits. And he had just received while I was there a call from the White House telling him to go ahead and start processing. This was I think the day after the President had signed the bill. So I whipped out my discharge and handed it to him, and he dictated this letter which was my application for benefits, and then he took my discharge and this letter and gave it to his secretary, and shortly thereafter he sent a letter to Miss Sedgwick, who was then the secretary of the university, the secretary to the president of the university, and that was in July, telling her that I had been approved, and shortly thereafter another letter also went to her, went to me making it legal. In September of ’44, that allowed me to go to school during the summer program under the GI bill, and the a, I wish I could remember the dean’s name, but I can’t, but the dean who had responsibility for the division I was in.
ANDERSON: Was it Dean Linton?
BALFOUR: It could have been. I just can’t remember who it was. It could have been West. It could have been anybody. It would have been the junior college dean or the associate in arts dean at that time, agreed to allow me to double up on my courses. And so I took the equivalent over the summer of a full semester’s work. And in September of ’44, I got my Associate in Arts degree, and completed the requirements for that degree, and pretty much had completed the requirements for a major in statistics at that time. So I had my following year, all I had left was about a little over a year’s training under the GI bill coming to me. So that fall, they again allowed me to take an accelerated course, to take additional classes, and carry an extra heavy load, but I was now going to day school, and I didn’t have the burden of working. So it was fairly easy to do the extra work. Unfortunately, for my academic career, I was much more interested in social activities and extracurricular activities than I was in my class work. I was comptroller of the student council, editor of the Hatchet, sang in the Glee Club, acted in Cue and Curtain, and was business manager of Cue and Curtain. And, member of a fraternity, and I can’t even remember now all of the other things I was doing, but I was having a hell of a good time, and I was very very active in all these things. So that I managed to graduate, and I managed to pass, but just barely.
ANDERSON: So, when did you, you got your degree in 1940?
BALFOUR: In ’45, in May of ’45.
ANDERSON: Did you ever know Jack Sweeney, who was in Cue and Curtain?
BALFOUR: I can’t remember Jack Sweeney.
ANDERSON: Because he worked in the Cue and Curtain. He’s coming to the alumni reunion in May, in fact. I’ve been speaking with him.
BALFOUR: The name doesn’t ring a bell. It may be that when I see him I’ll remember who he is, but the name just doesn’t ring a bell.
ANDERSON: I think he graduated in, he didn’t graduate in ’45, I think it was ’46 or ’47 he got his degree. But he was here during that period of time. I was just curious, because he mentioned he was active in the Cue and Curtain as well, in several shows.
BALFOUR: He probably was, but I just can’t remember.
ANDERSON: Oh no, I understand, because there were a lot of people in that. This is very fascinating. What did you do right after graduation?
BALFOUR: Well I went, immediately after graduation, I went back . . . oh here’s a story in the Washington News about an award that the Hatchet won.
ANDERSON: This is great. I wonder if we have this. I’ll have to look for this.
BALFOUR: And this was, they picked up one of our editorials and reprinted it, including the cartoon we used. This was another . . . they picked up one of our editorials and reprinted that. Here we are. I did bring it. This is the Pearl Harbor edition of the Hatchet.
ANDERSON: I’ve got to go look for that, because we . . . .
BALFOUR: December 9.
ANDERSON: Because we’re pulling together, I’m pulling together . . . .
BALFOUR: Now, I remember clearly that I was the student on duty at the Hatchet office on December 7th, which was a Sunday, and I was listening to a Redskin’s game and hearing all the calls for General this and Admiral that over the loud speaker. They were being called out of the game, and once we got the announcement that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, we immediately started calling to get interviews. You can see here where we interviewed the president of the university, the deans, and other dignitaries and people who had either something to say or by the nature of their job deserved to be interviewed, and got the paper out two days later, which for us was doing something.
ANDERSON: I will be looking for this in our copy, because this would obviously be, definitely . . . I haven’t gone through the Hatchets yet. I’ve been going through a lot of other materials for this, and we have them all pulled at the moment, but we just need to pull out the specific ones that I want. But some of these other letters, would it be possible to get a copy of these, because I’d like to use some of these, with your permission in the. . . .?
BALFOUR: What is it that you’re referring to?
ANDERSON: Well, principally the letters, that was a, the application for the GI bill, because I’m going to have information on you as editor, because we have the Hatchets in the collection. And you know, I haven’t seen, we don’t have a tremendous amount of the summer records, the school records. I’m not sure we have all of them in our collection.
BALFOUR: Well, this is a better, nicer copy you might prefer to have.
ANDERSON: Oh, that’s wonderful. If I could. I really . . . . This would be great. Especially because I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the Veteran’s club and the, because the exhibit as I said goes through ’47, so it picks up the two great influxes of veterans, during the war, right after the war, and about a year later.
BALFOUR: Well, let’s see what else I have here that you might . . . . Oh, here’s the story that was in the paper about going to the GI bill.
ANDERSON: Because I can return these to you. We can make copies of them and I will return them to you. BALFOUR: In 1945, Mr. And Mrs. Roosevelt invited the veterans to attend the White House . . . There you are. I knew I didn’t do very well in school . . . My grades.
ANDERSON: Well, the degree’s the thing.
BALFOUR: Yeh, nobody asks what you did.
ANDERSON: Unless, someone had great ambitions to go on to . . . .
BALFOUR: Well, I had, but, no money. But I couldn’t afford to go. This might be something interesting. I’m not sure that it is, but in uh . . . .
ANDERSON: Everything you have here is interesting.
BALFOUR: In January of ’45 we had this, we had a campaign on to try to get sports back, and we couldn’t get it back. The University wouldn’t allow it back. And that was the decision that was made. But at that time, I wrote an editorial about the fact that, in support of the University’s position, I got this letter from the president of the university a few days later.
ANDERSON: That’s interesting. Everything here is fascinating. I haven’t seen anything yet that’s not. This is really an interesting collection of materials.
BALFOUR: We also had, we subscribed to, I’m not sure this still exists, but we subscribed to something called the Associated Collegiate Press in those days, which was a review organization. It reviewed all of the college newspapers all over the country and gave them a grade. If you were top for the year, you got what was called a Pacemaker Award. And the year before I was editor, Eileen Shannihan was editor and she got a Pacemaker Award. All during the year I kept getting these very very nice letters from these people telling me what a great paper we were putting out. But the following year when the awards were made, we got an All-American Award, which was the next category down. We didn’t get the Pacemaker Award.
ANDERSON: I was reading somewhere in 1941 they were getting some awards as well.
BALFOUR: Yes, we had an outstanding paper. For years, the Hatchet was considered one of the best papers in the United States.
ANDERSON: I can believe it, with going through it and reading it. Okay, well let me, I’ll go ahead and cut this off at this point. I certainly appreciate you doing this.
BALFOUR: That’s all right.
(End of interview)
See also: Balfour, Don
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Author or Source: MS0371/Oral History Collection
Document Location: University Archives
Date Added to Encyclopedia: April 1, 2007
Prepared by: Lyle Slovick, Assistant University Archivist
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