Alumni of the ’50s talk about old times

The elevators in the Cathedral of Learning will always hold a place in Jean Blough Simpson’s… The elevators in the Cathedral of Learning will always hold a place in Jean Blough Simpson’s heart.

“I was in the Heinz Chapel Choir,” the 1957 alum said. “We would have practice on the 31st floor of the Cathedral for the choir. After practice the whole group would ride two elevators down. Both groups in the elevators would start to sing one song on the 31st floor. When we got off the elevators at the bottom, we’d see if we were still on the same part in the song.”

Simpson is one of many Pitt alumni celebrating the Fifties Reunions for those who graduated between 1950 and 1959. The reunion was held on Wednesday night, kicking off the start of this week’s homecoming activities. It was held at the Twentieth Century Club on Bigelow Boulevard.

Simpson’s decision to go to Pitt was an easy one.

“I wanted to go to a university,” she said. “And Pitt and the Cathedral of Learning were top-notch.”

Samuel J. Reich, another 1957 alum, transferred from the University of Michigan because Pitt was closer to home. “It was more of a commuter school than it is now,” said Reich, who was originally from Pittsburgh.

According to Ann Gordon from the class of 1956, Pitt did not have any dorms. “Everyone lived off campus,” she said. Gordon lived in Forest Hills.

Although there was no on-campus housing, there were still plenty of activities. Students were members of fraternities and sororities. Some were members of the Pitt Players, the Heinz Chapel Choir or were Nationality Room “hostesses” or docents in the Cathedral of Learning.

Faye Schwartz, a 1956 undergrad, said her Pitt experience was shaped by the professors she encountered.

“My English professors took a personal interest in me and helped me to gain my confidence because of it,” she said. Schwartz came back to Pitt in the sixties to earn a Masters in education.

Paul Scarlatta of the class of 1957 recalled how his friend Fred Lissfelt would give him tickets to see the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. “He knew I loved classical music. You could get tickets for cheap, but he’d get them for an even better deal,” Scarlatta said.

Many of the alumni remember Pitt for its football games.

“I loved going to the Saturday football games,” Dr. Earl Caldwell, a 1954 alum, said. He was disappointed when he had to leave at halftime so he would not be late for his job with U.S. Steel.

“I had to pay my way through college, so I worked in the mills,” he said.

Gordon also attended football games, even taking a charter bus to see the Panthers play in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans in 1955. “Pitt had a good turnout of students to the games,” she said.

William Herrup from the class of 1951 talked with fondness about his time at Pitt’s Ellsworth Center in Shadyside. The building was used to educate the surplus of male students in the area after the end of WWII. “The G.I.s who went to this school, they were 22 to 28 years old,” he said. “They let some of us 17 to 18-year-old guys in, too.”

The all-male Pitt branch operated from 1947 to 1951. The students would go to Ellsworth for two years and transfer to the main campus for their junior and senior years. “It was nice,” Herrup said. “Unfortunately there were no girls, but that was the only downside.”

“We used to play softball in the athletic field there,” Herrup said. “We’d sometimes walk down to main campus and watch the football practices.”

The consensus among alumni is that Pitt has undergone a transformation in the past fifty years. “It’s acquired a lot of land,” Scarlatta said.

“I hardly even recognize a lot of little spots where I used to study,” Schwartz said.

Several people looked at yearbooks, reminiscing over memories from their time at Pitt.

“This is where I made most of my friends – lots of doctors, lawyers, business people,” said Reich, who is a lawyer in Pittsburgh himself.

Schwartz made her close friends at Pitt, too. “I still keep in contact with most of them.”