Roemer’s Scrapbook

Looking through scrapbooks is something you do when you’re old. It’s something you do when you’re bored on a rainy Sunday and decide to reorganize the attic. It’s something you do to remember the “good times”. It’s something special.

Louise Elizabeth Roemer was a student of Cornell College in 1920 and she made a scrapbook. It is a behemoth of a book and shows its school pride in its bright purple color and giant “C” on the front. The first page is an illustration of a warrior angel standing on a hill with a basket of fruit at her feet. Behind her there is a town on fire with smoke billowing into the sky. At the bottom of the picture there are the words “Beyond the Phantom of a World at Strife, the Promise of an Ampler Life”. To the side of this is the name of Louise Elizabeth Roemer.

The next page is another illustration, huge enough to cover the entire length of the book. It shows a man and a woman holding their “memory books”. Above that there is a line of men and women playing sports, making music, and graduating. In the center of the picture is an original introductory poem. This elaborate introduction grants some basis to the theory that things were crafted better in the old days.

The majority of the book is devoted to the written entries of Ms. Roemer’s friends. I initially didn’t pay them much attention wanting to get to the pictures and momentos, the interesting stuff. At the end of the book there are numerous newspaper clippings many of which pertained to marriages. This met with my expectations. Women were attending colleges, but there was still the overall mindset that a proper women should get married at that time. So typical.

At the beginning of the momentos there was a bat.

There was also a bit of orange streamer and a party invitation with a witch on it. The first page was devoted to Halloween. Not much of an order was established in the book, but that was pretty common fare in a scrapbook. Grade reports and ticket stubs were scattered about but an idea of Ms. Roemer started falling into place. She was an average student and got “A” through “C” grades. She was a member of Kappa Phi, a group with a strong Methodist affiliation that is no longer active in Cornell. She may have been interested in music since she was invited into the Cornell Oratorio Club and had concert handouts for people like “The Great Frieda Hempel World Famous Soprano”. She had a copy of a “Keep Well” pamphlet and it was instructive. It had several words of wisdom such as “chew slowly—eat thoroughly”, “keep serene, worry is the foe of health”, “avoid self-drugging”, “do not let poisons or infections enter the body”, “stand, sit, and walk erect” and “evacuate thoroughly, regularly”. She also had a copy of “General College and House Rules” which was informative. The students (whether just the females or in general is unspecified) had a curfew. They had to be in their rooms at eight and lights were to be out at ten. Young women weren’t allowed to leave town or go to “evening engagements” without permission. “Gentleman callers” were only allowed in the reception room and only during calling hours. Young women were not allowed in the men’s halls at all.

This would seem overly restrictive but Ms. Roemer’s personal photos tell a different story. There were several that show the Palisades, a popular student hang out. It was one of the places they would have needed permission for so either permission was easily gained or the rule wasn’t very well enforced. There was also a photo of a group of young men with the description “the waiters” of Bowman Hall. Apparently calling hours were put to great use. There were other photos. Photos of friends spending time together, laughing, making jokes. There was a picture of a girl wrapped in a towel with a toothbrush in her mouth. There was one of them all dressed up for some event. There was a picture of a girl “after she got her ring”. There was one of four girls laying on the grass outside Bowman Hall with the description “not a care on Earth”. The photos portrayed the life of a normal college student. Years apart but not much difference.

The written entries (now that I had time for them) told the same story. The makers of the book had a column called “ambitions” that friends of the book owner could fill out. There were some entries that seemed a little indicative of the times such as wanting “to never be tired of working” and “to be great in Faith, Hope, Charity, and Love”. On the other side of that coin there were a couple that wanted “to be a suffragette” and “to be an old maid”. Some were normal like wanting “to be an actress”, “to be a model”, “to be a ballet dancer”. Some were not normal like wanting “to be a cabaret dancer”, “to roll down campus hill”, “to bomb ye faculty”. Some were so very university student like wanting “to get an A once in my life” and “to sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep”.

Now the campus is different. The buildings are older, the students are given more free reign, and values have changed. Despite this college students still manage to find things in common even generations apart.