Life in the San Jose State Tower

    No, I wasn't incarcerated in the tower 50 years ago for an undergraduate prank nor did I spend the bulk of my time there during my membership in Tau Delta Phi, the Men's Scholastic Honor Society. (Thanks to Title IX the society became co-ed circa 1974.) [For a brooding view of the tower taken by Steve Sloan click here.]

    As I understand it, former SJS President Thomas W. Macquarrie looked favorably upon Tau Delta Phi and allowed the organization to use the top three levels of the tower. Photos of exterior of the tower have usually appeared on virtually everything connected with SJS. (Indeed, the yearbook is titled La Torre.) Succeeding presidents allowed the fraternity to continue using the tower until it was declared sesmically unsafe in 1963. [Here's another colorful Flickr photo taken by Darshan Karia.]

    I was invited to join TDP during the spring semester of '59. The requirements back then, if memory serves, were a 3.20 (B+) or better GPA for at least two semesters. (Both my father and the uncle with whom I lived had similarly been invited to join, but both had to work part-time to remain at SJS during the 30s and 40s.)

    I joined the fraternity during the spring semester of '59 and was an active member until graduation in June 1961. Some of the newer members have asked what the tower was like back then. Here's my recollection of life in the tower.

Entrance/Bookshelves
    Dues were collected each semester and the key to the lock on the large red door at the base of the spiral, cast-iron stairs was also changed each semester. In my case, the bookshelves just inside the door to the left were extrememely beneficial since no one thought to use backpacks to carry books around back then. And when the aunt and uncle with whom I lived moved from South 5th Street about a block and a half from the Men's Gym to the corner of 16th and San Fernando, I had to carry a passel of books slightly more than 10 blocks to the bookshelves at the base of the stairs.

 

First Level: Rec Room
    The two principal features of the first-level were the ping-pong table and a couch to the right. While I became more proficient at ping-pong during my 3 years in the army (since I had more time) I don't recall playing more than once or twice on the TDP table. But those waiting to take on the winner of the game in progress could talk between the gNip-gNop sounds of the ping-pong ball.
Second Level: Kitchen
    While the appliances behind the partition which separated the kitchen itself from the benches and tables were 30s-vintage, they worked. (Don't recall seeing any beer in the fridge, but I'm certain that any cans or bottles which were smuggled in and left in the fridge did not last long; in all likelihood there was a prohibition again bringing alcholol into the tower.)

    The main feature of the kitchen was a pegboard with hooks where coffee-drinkers hung their cups. Since I didn't drink coffee, I soldered a small wire handle onto a thimble and put my initials on the thimble. It was generally in the upper left of the pegboard. I assume that coffee-drinkers kept a coffee pot going most of the day.

    Once when I received a warning slip at mid-term in a Projective Geometry class, a fellow Tau Delt who was also a member of a social fraternity brought in their file of past tests given by that particular professor. I don't remember my final grade in the class, but it was at least a C. (As a math major it would have been rather emnbarassing to flunk that class.)

The kitchen windows were the site of the pledge plank-walks. Of course, current members had you do a practice session inside of the kitchen, but, even though one was blindfolded, it was obvious you were inside. But once you got up on the window sill and had a harness connected around your middle, it was clear that you were headed outside. There, of course, was some trepidation since the salutes to the tower and plank prior to the initiation made it obvious that it was a long ways from the third-level windows to the lawn below.

    The trickiest part of walking the plank was putting your hands, while blindfolded, on the top of the small chair, and then turning so that you could sit facing back toward the window. While the plank was only 6-10 feet above the roof of the Morris Dailey Auditorium, the rope attached to the harness and over a roller above the window came very close to one's neck. Faculty Adviser Edward J. Laurie of the Business Department felt that the risk of an accident was too great and threaten to quit unless the plank-walk was excised from the initiation. (Since I was the 7th person in the 7th pledge group that spring, I may have been the last person to walk the plank; I did keep the ivy leaf I plucked after walking back to the window for some time and only recently discarded it while whittling down my possessions.)

Third Level: Meeting Room
    If you had some reading to do, the top or third floor was the place to do it. There were numerous chairs and sofas along with a desk up front near the windows. Or, if you simply wanted to look out of the windows, the "view from the top" was the best.

    Weekly meetings were held each Wednesday evening, usually with an attendance of 15-25 people. There was often a larger turnout for elections than for regular meetings. I recall one candidate for Master of Admissions was a psychology major; he pointed out that his speech had been written on toilet paper. When I asked him what psychological significance he would attach to his choice of writing paper, he thought for a few seconds and replied that it showed he could do his thinking anywhere. [He got my vote!]

    Many members felt membership would look good on their records or resumes and rarely attended meetings or otherwise take part in the activities of the fraternity after they pledged and perhaps attended the formal banquet. But some others often attended meetings. One notable, Stu Bartell, SJS's last NCAA Champion as a middleweight boxer, was one of those. I got to know Stu because my father had come to SJS to box on the first boxing team in 1937 under Coach DeWitt "Dee" Portal, who has previously run the Community Club in Fort Bragg, CA.

    In going through my father's 1938-1940 La Torres I noted that two other well-know SJS Coaches were members of Tau Delta Phi when they were undergraduates: Walt McPherson and Bob Titchenal. Walt, who played football, basketball, and baseball, went on to become a longtime SJS basketball coach while Bob, who played both football and basketball, played center for the Washington Redskins for two years before becoming a football coach at several colleges -- including his alma mater.
--
    As Uncle Walter would say, "And that's the way it was in the tower during the late 50s and early 60s."
....
    Finally, here's a photo of the tower taken at night by Ditus Alviar.