PresRelease

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Brooke, of course, wrote about England but the sentiments apply equally to our own Memorial Day.

4/23/09: After posting this item on Tuesday – and feeling pretty proud of myself, I might add – Liz Ackell, a grad student in Animal Science emailed me to correct my errors about UConn’s Morgan Breeding Program:

Hello Pres. Hogan,

I just wanted to let you know that in addition to raising colts, we are also raising fillies.  As the colt is a young male horse, we also need the fillies, young female horses, to continue our breeding program.  In addition, I wanted to let you know that while the Morgans are very versatile, sadly we cannot use them for Polo, as they are not quite fast enough over all 7 chukkas.

So I’ve made some corrections to the text below.  Thanks, Alex.  Good thing I didn’t major in Animal Science.

Prof Henry Lucien Garrigus
Our students living in Garrigus Suites may wonder what a garrigus is. Harry Garrigus came to Storrs Agricultural College in 1895 to study animal science, just fourteen years after the school opened. He was appointed a full faculty member in 1912 and taught in the school of agriculture for more than 30 years before retiring in 1942. He remained active in school affairs until his death in 1968. Today, his contributions to school pride, genetic engineering and land development are still felt throughout our campuses.

Garrigus Suites
In the 1930s Professor Garrigus, a keen Yankee trader, and two other faculty members launched the UConn Morgan horse breeding program. They purchased three Morgan horse mares and the federal government contributed a stallion to launch the effort. By carefully breeding and rearing select Morgans, UConn established one of the premier Morgan horse registries in the country. Today, UConn students continue the Morgan Breeding program, raising Morgan colts and fillies on our campus in Storrs. Professor Garrigus’ intuitive knowledge of best breeding practices was the predecessor of the cutting-edge genetic science the University practices today.

Dragon Jr.
For many years the University of Connecticut (then Connecticut Agricultural College) had Dragon Jr., a Percheron horse raised by Professor Garrigus, as its unofficial mascot. The large stocky draft horse won dozens of contests at numerous livestock shows throughout the state. Dragon Jr. was widely recognized at regional agricultural fairs and became an ambassador for the University, which at the time had less than 800 students. Dragon Jr. was even buried on the brow of Horsebarn Hill and a carved stone marked his grave. By then, the idea of having a mascot had become so popular that in 1938 students were asked to select an official mascot for the University. They picked the Husky dog and named him for Jonathan Trumbull, Connecticut’s Revolutionary War-era governor.

Jonathan XIII
Perhaps Garrigus’ most tangible legacy to the University was the acquisition of properties. When the school was founded in 1881, Charles and Augustus Storrs offered 170 acres to create the core campus. In 1912 Professor Garrigus recognized that the school could only grow if the campus also expanded. Garrigus personally negotiated with neighboring farmers to have the state obtain first option on their land when it sold. When Garrigus began this practice, the University’s land consisted of 300 acres. By the time he retired in 1942, UConn had more than 1,500 acres. Today, the University’s land holdings encompass more than 4,000 acres at the Storrs campus, UConn Health Center, School of Law and five regional campuses.

Storrs campus ca. 1920
Thanks to Meg Malmborg at the Lodewick Visitors Center for providing this information.

Jim Anderson, Captain Shippee Congratulations to Jim Anderson on being crowned UConn’s 2009 Captain Shippee at the annual Captain Shippee Contest on March 5.  Jim showed how talent, good looks, brains, and great moves all combine to produce Star Quality here at UConn.  It’s all in the Daily Campus. Now that the Red Carpet excitement has started to die down and Joan Rivers and her entourage have checked out of the Nathan Hale Inn, I thought I’d assist our new Captain Shippee with a little history lesson:

Shippee Hall
Our Shippee residence hall on the east side of the Storrs campus is named for Lester E. Shippee, a Connecticut native born in 1894 who followed a career in banking, beginning in 1916 when he became the assistant cashier of the Windham County National Bank in Danielson.  He was appointed Connecticut’s deputy bank commissioner in 1922 and then bank commissioner in 1927.  Shippee’s tenure as bank commissioner extended to 1931 – it was his destiny to oversee the stock market crash of 1929  and the ensuing Great Depression.  Very reminiscent of today.  Resilient as all Connecticutters, he joined the Hartford-Connecticut Trust Company in 1931 as a vice-president and rose to become president, then chairman and CEO of Connecticut Bank and Trust Company from 1954-1964 (not the current CB&T doing business in Connecticut).  Lester Shippee was a member of the University’s Board of Trustees from 1946 to 1959, serving as chair from 1953 to 1959, one of the five founders of the University of Connecticut Foundation, and its first president beginning in 1964.  He was recruited to lead the new Foundation by President Homer Babbidge.  He died in 1988.
(Sources: UConn Advance; Vance, Carmen & Mullgardt, Brian, “What’s in a Name?: A Fact Book about Resident Halls at UConn” (University of Connecticut, 1998); B. Stave, Red Brick in the Land of Steady Habits 113 (Univ. Press of New England, 2006).)
Our Daily Campus at one time reported that Shippee Hall, built in 1962, was built backwards: the foundation was poured from plans looked at upside-down on the hood of car, and once that was done, there was no recourse but to continue the construction backwards.  This certainly-apocryphal story was the explanation for why the sun-bathing porch faces Highway 195. In 2002 DC columnist Dave Pendrys wrote that “Shippee is a wondrous place filled with bathrooms — lots of bathrooms.”

Shippee reamined an all-women’s dorm until 2005, when it became the Honors residence hall and admitted men and women together.  This was big news: “Shippee has been all-female for such a long time,” said Dan Doerr, Department of Residential Life (ResLife) housing assignments specialist. Doerr said the all-female dorm had lost popularity over the years.

And contrary to current belief, Lester E. Shippee was not the infamous “Colonel Lester E. Shippee” who now resides on Facebook:
“Colonel Shippee”
I never met a colonel in the Navy.  It’s my considered opinion that ‘Colonel Shippee’ is really the Gorton’s Fish Stick Man, in his dress uniform:
® Gorton’s Seafood
So who says History isn’t relevant in today’s world?

On Wednesday the Daily Campus’s “InstantDaily” contained this post:  “They have those ‘Save the Lakes’ T-shirts with Hogan on them, but what they really need is ‘Save Arjona’ shirts. But not Monteith. Nobody likes Monteith.”
Henry Ruthven “Monty” Monteith, the “Grand Old Man of Connecticut,” was hired by President George Washington Flint in 1900 to teach English, history, civics, and algebra (B Stave, Red Brick in the Land of Steady Habits 8 (2006)). He was a campus mainstay until he retired in 1919.  He also taught Latin and French. See Mark Roy’s online article about him and his portrait.

Since he was UConn’s first Professor of History Emeritus, I must admit to feeling some kinship with Monty, who of course can’t be held responsible for the conditions in the building named after him.

Perhaps we need a T-shirt for him as well. I’d like to suggest this design:

Monty lives!  And don’t forget to Save Our Lakes!

On February 12, these two gentlemen will be 200 years old. Both born on the same day in 1809, Abraham Lincoln in a one-room log cabin at Sinking Spring Farm, near what is now Hodgenville, Kentucky, and Charles Darwin in the family manor, The Mount, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England.

Both men would reshape their generations – Lincoln in the world of politics and statesmanship, Darwin in the world of the natural sciences. As a diplomatic historian, I’ve always had great interest in and drawn great inspiration from Abraham Lincoln. I have a portrait of him hanging in my office. Darwin’s life and work are less well-known to me personally, although I admire his independence of character and of thought, much like Lincoln’s.
An event on our Storrs campus on Tuesday, February 10 will explore these two giants of the nineteenth century: author and historian David Contosta will lead a discussion of his book “Rebel Giants: The Revolutionary Lives of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin” at the Jorgensen Gallery at 4:00 pm.
And our celebration of the Year of Science 2009 continues, recognizing the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, the 150th anniversary of his publication of On the Origin of Species, and the 400th anniversary of the publication of Kepler’s first two laws of planetary motion. Also on Tuesday, February 10, at 6:30 pm at Branford House on our Avery Point campus, the second of this year’s “Coastal Perspectives Lecture Series” will focus on Darwin’s many contributions to science and society. The speakers are Constance Clark of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Michael Robinson of the University of Hartford, Eric Schultz of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UConn, and Jennifer Tucker from Wesleyan Boston.
And from now until March 6, the Dodd Center Gallery at the Storrs campus is displaying “Charles Darwin (1809-1882), The Legacy of a Naturalist,” an exhibit of rare books, prints, natural history specimens and other artifacts highlighting the life and career of Darwin.

There are other events coming up as well and I urge you to check through our News Release and attend some of these unique opportunities.