Kenneth Spencer Research Library

In honor of the centennial of World War I, we’re going to follow the experiences of one American soldier: nineteen-year-old Forrest W. Bassett, whose letters are held in Spencer’s Kansas Collection. Each Monday we’ll post a new entry, which will feature selected letters from Forrest to thirteen-year-old Ava Marie Shaw from that following week, one hundred years after he wrote them.

Forrest W. Bassett was born in Beloit, Wisconsin, on December 21, 1897 to Daniel F. and Ida V. Bassett. On July 20, 1917 he was sworn into military service at Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis, Missouri. Soon after, he was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for training as a radio operator in Company A of the U. S. Signal Corps’ 6th Field Battalion.

Ava Marie Shaw was born in Chicago, Illinois, on October 12, 1903 to Robert and Esther Shaw. Both of Marie’s parents – and her three older siblings – were born in Wisconsin. By 1910 the family was living in Woodstock, Illinois, northwest of Chicago. By 1917 they were in Beloit.

Frequently mentioned in the letters are Forrest’s older half-sister Blanche Treadway (born 1883), who had married Arthur Poquette in 1904, and Marie’s older sister Ethel (born 1896).

Highlights from this week’s letter include horseback riding (“nearly three weeks of loafing around in the corral made them feel pretty funny”) and guard duty (“All I did Wednesday after 8:30 A:M was to take one of the prisoners from the guardhouse to his Company mess house for dinner. This fellow had a couple pretty serious charges against him”). This week’s letters also include a field message from Forrest (writing as “Gen. Nuisance”) to his sister Blanche, thanking her for the “war munitions.”

Click images to enlarge.

Jan. 27, 1918.

Dear Marie,

Stock has gone to K. City so I came down to the Leav. “Y” to write. I sure was glad to get your letter. Yesterday I tried to bribe the C’p’l in charge of quarters to bring a letter from Beloit with the mail, but even a big slice of Blanche’s cake was not enough.

I am still going to the motor class at the Service School. Have you a picture of the latter?

Tuesday afternoon we took the horses out for exercise. Nearly three weeks of loafing around in the corral made them feel pretty funny. We had quite an exciting time rounding up our own horses. I got “Ten” out before the stampede but had a gay time “snagging” a mule to lead. “Ten” had fattened a little since I saw him last, and when I saddled him, had to let out the cincha (which is the strap around the belly) about two inches more than usual. I am showing the effects of Army starvation in the same way. The mule I caught was a new one but he performed alright except that he kept a good stiff pull on the rope most of the time. Neither the Captain nor the Lietenants were with us and when we got into the woods we kicked a few slats loose. We hooted and yelled like a bunch of kids on the last day of school. The horses and mules had the same spirit and about every two minutes one would get loose (accidently on purpose on the part of the rider) and we would have some more fun catching them. Ten sure is one wise horse and is “on” to everything going, whether it’s heading off loose mules or jumping up a slippery hill. Gee, but you can’t imagine what great fun it is to ride a good, easily guided horse. When I think of the good times we used to have canoeing, and in the water, and shooting, it makes me wish we could be together on horses. We have fine saddles and the Company looks great mounted, every man in same uniform and every one in line with his “lead” horse to the right of the horse he is riding. We rode again Thursday but we didn’t have much fun as it was too slippery to let the horses go faster than a walk.

Tuesday night and Wednesday the Co. A-6 went on guard. I had it pretty soft, as I only had 6:30-8:30 P:M 12:30-2:30 A:M and from 6:30-8:30 A:M on actual guard duty. The night was not very cold and was clear and moonlight. All I did Wednesday after 8:30 A:M was to take one of the prisoners from the guardhouse to his Company mess house for dinner. This fellow had a couple pretty serious charges against him. One was impersonating an officer and the other was being absent without leave. He belonged to the same Co. that the other Bassett is in. The latter is in the same class with me at the Service School. His home was in Rockford, Ill. and he worked for awhile as telegraph operator at the N.W. R.R. depot in Beloit. When he enlisted he was in San Francisco. This makes me think about addressing my letters. It is uneccessary to write out my middle name. (but always my first)

Here is the address:

Forrest W. Bassett
Co. A-6th Fld. B’n. Signal Corps
Ft. Leavenworth, Kans.

Write Signal Corps in full as you have been doing but abbreviate the Fld. B’n.

Well I am in hopes that there will be a letter from A.M.S. [Ava Marie Shaw] on my bunk when I come in tomorrow noon. Please.

With love,
Forrest.

Click image to enlarge.

Meredith Huff
Public Services

Emma Piazza
Public Services Student Assistant

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 34,800 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Have you braved the cold this week to enjoy some sledding on campus?

Sledding on campus with Memorial Stadium in the background, 1950s.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Snow 1950s Prints:
Campus: Areas and Objects (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

One of my first projects in the African American Experience Collections was to help the Field Archivist/Curator, Deborah Dandridge, put together an exhibit titled Education: The Mightiest Weapon. Many of the items that we used came from the Sumner High School Collection, and it didn’t take long for me to notice how accomplished the graduates of that school were. As coincidence would have it, one of my relatives, Delano Lewis, is a Sumner High graduate. Like many of Sumner’s graduates, he went on to accomplish great things like working as an attorney in the U.S. Justice Department, becoming Associate Director for the Peace Corps in Nigeria and Uganda, and being appointed as the United States Ambassador to South Africa.

Delano Eugene Lewis was born in November of 1938 in Arkansas City, Kansas. His family later moved to Kansas City, Kansas, where he attended Sumner High School, graduating in 1956.

Photograph in the 1956 Sumnerian yearbook showing
Delano Lewis (center) as a Drum Major at Sumner High School.
Call Number: RH Ser D1286. Click image to enlarge.

Sumnerian yearbook photograph of Delano Lewis,
President of the Junior Class of
Sumner High School, 1955.
Call Number: RH Ser D1286. Click image to enlarge.

Lewis graduated from the University of Kansas in 1960 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and History. In 1963, he received his Doctorate of Jurisprudence from Washburn University School of Law, after which he went to Washington, D.C., to work as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice. In 1967 Lewis served as the Peace Corps’ Country Director in Uganda. After leaving Uganda, he worked as a Legal Assistant for Senator Edward Brooke (R-Mass.), the first African American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

Delano Lewis (center) with Senator Edward Brooke (left) and
Vice President Walter Mondale (right), undated photograph.
Delano Lewis Papers. Call Number: RH MS-P 1075.
Click image to enlarge.

While he held esteemed positions in service of the U.S. government, Lewis also had an impressive corporate career. He served as the Public Affairs Manager for the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company in 1973, and in 1990 he became the CEO. In 1993, Lewis was the first African American become the President and CEO of National Public Radio. Then from 1999 to 2001, Lewis was appointed to be the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa.

Delano Lewis (center) with Vice President Al Gore (left), 1997.
Delano Lewis Papers. Call Number: RH MS-P 1075. Click image to enlarge.

Initially proposed and funded by Michael Shinn (B.S., Aerospace Engineering, 1966), the KU Black Alumni’s African American Leaders and Innovators project recognized Mr. Lewis in 2007.

Arielle Swopes
Spencer Research Library Student Assistant
African American Experience Collections

Deborah Dandridge
Field Archivist and Curator
African American Experience Collections

In honor of the centennial of World War I, we’re going to follow the experiences of one American soldier: nineteen-year-old Forrest W. Bassett, whose letters are held in Spencer’s Kansas Collection. Each Monday we’ll post a new entry, which will feature selected letters from Forrest to thirteen-year-old Ava Marie Shaw from that following week, one hundred years after he wrote them.

Forrest W. Bassett was born in Beloit, Wisconsin, on December 21, 1897 to Daniel F. and Ida V. Bassett. On July 20, 1917 he was sworn into military service at Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis, Missouri. Soon after, he was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for training as a radio operator in Company A of the U. S. Signal Corps’ 6th Field Battalion.

Ava Marie Shaw was born in Chicago, Illinois, on October 12, 1903 to Robert and Esther Shaw. Both of Marie’s parents – and her three older siblings – were born in Wisconsin. By 1910 the family was living in Woodstock, Illinois, northwest of Chicago. By 1917 they were in Beloit.

Frequently mentioned in the letters are Forrest’s older half-sister Blanche Treadway (born 1883), who had married Arthur Poquette in 1904, and Marie’s older sister Ethel (born 1896).

Highlights from this week’s letters include new equipment, transfer to a new unit, and typhoid inoculations.

Click images to enlarge.

Jan. 20, 1918

Dear Marie,

I am mighty sorry I haven’t written to you oftener. Please don’t think that I am not thinking of you. I am surely going to write you a long “newsy” letter Monday or Wednesday and try to make up. Now, little Girlie please forgive me this once more will you?

With love,
Forrest.

Click images to enlarge.

Jan 21, 1918.

Dear Marie,

I am sorry that you are not feeling well. What is wrong with Mother? I want you to keep the sweater so of course you may alter it as you like. There are no negatives in my desk except the ones that I took with Roy’s camera. Did you get the picture of the Cantonment that I sent? The little signet ring you gave me shows very plainly in that picture of you picking cherries by the porch. Do you remember when we took that picture on July 4th? The ring is quite distinct in that picture of you in the canoe with the duck. Have you got these two pictures? It doesn’t look as if we will take any more next summer. We have our pistol belts now and all our equipment and clothes has been stamped A6F.BN.S.C. We were all measured for shoes a short time ago. I put on a 9D shoe the first time, picked up the dumb-bell and stood on one foot while the lietenent felt of the shoe to see how it fit. He said it was too small so I had to take a 9 ½ C. It looks as if we are going to do some footwork alright. We are no longer mounted. Never again will the bugle blow “Prepare to Mount” for Co. A-6. We expect to have motor equipment before we leave U.S. Each morning I attend a motor class for two hours at the War College. There are six others from A-6 in the same class. The work is quite interesting.

I have been transferred to the First Section. This section does more actual field work than the 5th section, which moves about very little in real service. The section-chief, Sergeant Baber, is the telegraph instructor of the Company. He sure is a fine fellow and is some operator alright. Corporal Abrahms, with whom rode as far as Chi., Thanksgiving, is also in this section. The “First” is probably the leading section in the Company and I sure am glad to get in it.

I had to take my three triple-typhoid innoculations all over again as the old record was lost at the hospital. This differs from a vaccination as the serum is injected with a hypodermic needle. I am not going to argue vaccination at long range but I know that no M.D. will ever get a shot at me after I get back in civilian life.

Well the Company goes on guard again tomorrow night so I think I will hit the straw early tonight.

With love,
Forrest.

Meredith Huff
Public Services

Emma Piazza
Public Services Student Assistant

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 34,800 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

On this date sixty-eight years ago, ground was broken for the Memorial Carillon and Campanile, which honors the 277 KU alumni, students, faculty, and staff who died in World War II.

Groundbreaking for the Campanile, January 11, 1950.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/22/8 1949 Negatives:
Campus: Buildings: Campanile (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

According to a “data sheet” – located in the Campanile building file in University Archives – the small ceremony began at 11:00am. Moreover, the document notes that

The ground breaking today is arranged only for picture-taking purposes and a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Memorial Association. The University held an impressive memorial service May 5, 1946, for its war dead. The chief celebration in connection with the Campanile will come at the time of its dedication. At that time one of the great Carillonneurs of the country will be called in to play the dedicatory recital and doubtless great crowds will gather for viewing the Campanile and hearing the Carillon.

An article about the groundbreaking in the January 1949 Graduate Magazine (page 9) noted that

Tommy Constant’s big power shovel [Constant Construction Company] moved in and started operation immediately as soon as the honorary hand diggers stepped aside. The power shovel had an excavation down 12 feet by evening of the first day.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services