Perhaps it was tough to get them to sit still. Perhaps the 1966 UW Board of Regents were all too eager to get back to their business at hand. Perhaps Regent (let’s call him Mr. Front Row Second from Right) was simply mischievous and squirmy. Whatever the cause, on this fine day in 1966, the UW BOR failed to achieve one single “good” group photo.
Thus, we can only imagine an exasperated campus photographer cutting and pasting (literally) Mr. FRSFR’s front-facing head on to the best of the best photos.
Our eagle-eye University Archivist, David N., found BOTH copies in our collection. Proof that even back then, with rudimentary tools, it wasn’t so hard to “fix” a photo.
Our post this week is dedicated to the UW campus photographers who, over the past many years, have worked tirelessly to capture and preserve campus history. We salute you!
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Vicki Tobias for University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives.
For more information about this photo or UW-Madison campus history, contact uwarchiv@library.wisc.edu or visit http://archives.library.wisc.edu. On Wisconsin!
With a distinctive bottle and taste, Sriracha has gone from an unpronounceable challenge to a staple sauce for many Americans. In the U.S. alone, $60 million worth of the sauce was sold last year alone.
But it wasn’t always such a prevalent item on store shelves. David Tran, the man responsible for popularizing the hot sauce, had a long journey beforehand:
When North Vietnam’s communists took power in South Vietnam, Tran, a major in the South Vietnamese army, fled with his family to the U.S. After settling in Los Angeles, Tran couldn’t find a job — or a hot sauce to his liking.
So he made his own by hand in a bucket, bottled it and drove it to customers in a van. He named his company Huy Fong Foods after the Taiwanese freighter that carried him out of Vietnam.
The University of Wisconsin has a rich history of protests and social action. The above flyer was printed in 1914, after more than half the student workers in the Lathrop, Barnard and Chadbourne dining rooms were fired for budgetary reasons. The students formed the Wisconsin Student Workers Union and threatened to strike.
The University closed the dining rooms entirely in response, prompting involvement from state government officials. According to the Milwaukee Journal, “members of the executive board, Wisconsin State Federation of Labor” were in Madison on February 4, 1914, to “formally organize the Wisconsin Student Workers union”.
The governor himself had “promised to take up the issue with Manager H.C. Bumpus at the University.” The dining rooms were re-opened later that month.
Liberated prisoners in the Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz, Austria, give rousing welcome to Cavalrymen of the 11th Armored Division. The banner across the wall was made by Spanish Loyalist prisoners., 05/06/1945
In her 1982 oral history interview with Donna Hartshorne, Ruth Bachhuber Doyle detailed her tenure on the Dane County Board of Supervisors from 1953-1960. In this excerpt, Doyle describes how her male colleagues neglected to notice her 1954 pregnancy, during which time she attended all board and committee meetings without exception.
Doyle made her debut on the political scene in 1948, campaigning for President Harry Truman. On the heels of these efforts, she succeeded in becoming Madison’s representative to the state Assembly. Doyle was a staunch defender of gender equity in politics, stating in 1950,
Women need to realize that, just because they were women and mothers, they are not automatically excluded from political life.
In the late 40s and early 50s, she and husband James Doyle Sr. actively sought to energize the Democratic party in an effort to oust conservatives of the likes of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
As one of few women holding elected office, Doyle faced significant obstacles. In her 1982 interview, she recalled an anonymous comment scrawled on the back of an election leaflet: “if you are a housewife and a mother of three children, why in hell don’t you stay home and take care of them?” Her response? Doyle surmised that she might have “gone balmy” had she been unable to pursue her own personal accomplishments.
Later, these accomplishments grew to include her position in the Dean of Women’s office at UW (Madison), stewardship of the Five-Year Program for recruitment of minority students, and various roles at the Law School. By the end of her long career in Madison’s civic and educational life, Doyle hardly “fit into the woodwork” as she had on the County Board in 1954.
As a new season of Major League Baseball begins, one photographer focuses on baseballs past — that is, baseballs that have lain dormant well after their last pitch.
For years, photographer Don Hamerman walked his dog near an old baseball diamond in Stamford, Conn. And in all different seasons, in all kinds of weather, Hamerman picked up old baseballs.
He brought them back to his studio, where they sat around for years until he finally decided to start photographing them in 2005.
Hamerman, who hasn’t been to a ballgame in 10 years, admits that he cares more about aesthetics than history. He says he doesn’t even know what baseballs are made of — he just loves the way they look.
Harry Steenbock overcomes E.A. Birge for the win but will he prevail over Karl Paul Link? This isn’t the first time these two have faced off. Gerda Lerner v. George Mosse? History-lovers will have a tough time deciding this pairing. Stay tuned!
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March Madness, Archives Style!
Here’s how we archivists at UW-Madison enjoy March Madness. Yup…that’s right. We’ve got our very own campus history bracket in which some of the most beloved UW faculty and staff face off in a winner-takes-all showdown for the ages. Archives staff vote for their favorite in each match up.
Who will reign supreme? Time will tell but Gerda Lerner, Karl Paul Link and Porter Butts look to be early favorites. Let the campus history “madness” begin!
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For more information about UW (Madison) campus history, contact uwarchiv@library.wisc.edu or visit http://archives.library.wisc.edu.
