Bringing up the rear was an old calliope surrounded by its usual crowd of admiring
children. During the progress of the parade, several planes coming from Malone, Saranac Lake,
Ogdensburg, and one, owned by Frank Roberts, Potsdam Civil Air Patrol, flew over the village.
Personnel.
Hank Hodge became athletic director, and Ralph Damon succeeded Bertrand Snell
as chairman of the Board of Trustees, with Robert L. Clarkson designated as honorary
president. Bill Lowe was hired as assistant professor of English. Captain Lowe had come to
Clarkson in June 1944, the fifth officer to command the Clarkson ROTC since it started in
1936. (See 1944)
Gordon Lindsey.
In the fall, F. Gordon Lindsey, who had taught in the ASTP program in 1943,
joined the mathematics staff, and served as assistant and associate professor of mathematics at
Clarkson. He later succeeded Chester Buxton as director of the Malone Branch. When that
branch closed in 1953, Gordon returned to the Potsdam campus to serve the College in a
number of capacities.
Successively, he served as director of Freshmen Personnel and of the student union;
dean of students and director of Summer Programs; registrar, and director of institutional
research; and assistant to the president, before he retired in 1979; he was named professor
emeritus in 1981.
An alumnus of St. Lawrence University (BA, 1937, MA in Ed., 1942), he taught high
school in Westchester County before returning to St. Lawrence County in 1944. He served on
the curriculum committee which formulated the 4 1/2-year engineering curriculum which was
in effect until 1970. He died on September 28, 1988.
Campus Expansion.
In June 1945, only 17 men graduated, the smallest number since 1920. At
that ceremony, President Ross announced that the State Department of Education was planning
a new campus for the State Teachers College on outer Pierrepont Avenue, and would sell its
present building to Clarkson, subject to legislative approval. This sale included the main State
Teachers Building [the present Snell Hall], with its auditorium, Cook Annex, and the heating
plant. This building was admirably suited to Clarkson's needs and would eliminate the acute
shortage of classroom space. Happy at this prospect, the College put aside, temporarily, its
hopes, begun in the 1920s, for a campus on the hill.
At that same ceremony in June, the Board of Trustees reached its official decision to
launch an immediate campaign of $1,140,000 to construct new buildings on the present
campus, provide increased endowment, create classroom facilities for 1,000 or more students,
erect a War Memorial gymnasium, and insure the enlargement of an overworked faculty.
Shortly thereafter, to begin the campaign goal of $1,140,000, the Hon. and Mrs. Bertrand H.
Snell announced the gift of $150,000 to Clarkson College.
Alumni Gym.
On August 4, 1945, as its specific part of this expansion program, the alumni
petitioned the Board to allow the Alumni Association to take on the War Memorial gymnasium
at an estimated cost of $280,000. The Fall
Alumnus magazine
listed 41 Clarkson men who had
died in World War II to whom this new building would be dedicated. A bronze plaque in the
gym commemorates those men. In 1947, the Trustees authorized this gymnasium to be built on
the hill near Snell Field: the first new building on the hill, and hence, the first
step toward a hill campus.
