1959
Alaska became the 49th state in January and Hawaii the 50th in August. The National Safety
Council reported 37,000 auto deaths in 1958. Russia's Premier Khrushchev visited the US and
the UN. The Guggenheim Museum, designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright, architect,
opened in New York City. Castro seized power in Cuba. The AEC demonstrated an atomic
generator smaller than a man's hat. American Airlines began the first coast-to-coast air
service, New York to Los Angeles, on Boeing 707. Thirty million Americans twisted with Hula
Hoops. The first Titan missile was fired from Cape Canaveral, and the first American weather
satellite, Vanguard II, was launched. The St. Lawrence Seaway opened in April after five years
of construction. Thirteen million Americans owned stocks. Four hundred American high
schools began teaching Russian. First telephone cable link to Europe was inaugurated. The
public was reading Michener's
Hawaii
, Packard's
The Status Seekers
, and Drury's
Advise and
Consent
. Movie audiences were watching
The Anatomy of a Murder
and
Ben Hur.
Twelve
nations agreed to set aside Antarctica as a preserve for scientific research.
The Sound of
Music
opened on Broadway to rave reviews.
• Golden Knight Armor
• Technical Paper Prize
• Tuition
• Tree-planting Tradition
• Alumni Office
• Freshman Hazing
• Mabee's Book on Seaway
• New Regulations
• Lambda Iota Petitioned DU
• Chadwick Basketball Coach
• Petition Day
• Freshman Expelled
• Charity Hop
• Construction Equip. Distrib.
Golden Knight Armor.
As its gift to the College, the graduating Class of 1959 presented a
bronze-coated suit of armor to symbolize Clarkson's Golden Knight. Spotted in a Long Island
antique shop by Dan Degni, president of the Class of 1958, too late for his class to obtain it, this
nineteenth century suit of armor was chosen by the Senior Class Council of 1959 as its gift.
Mike Schwartz and Martin Doherty purchased it during Thanksgiving Break and brought it to
Potsdam in December.
With the suit in their possession, the Council debated what could be done to make it the
right color. Gerald Claffie and Prof. Brad Broughton, Senior Class Advisor, were told on their
visit to Alcoa and Reynolds Metals in Massena that their suggestion to have the suit anodized
was impractical. Mr. Calvert of Reynolds, however, went one step further by contacting his
firm's home office in Richmond, Virginia, to see what the firm's metallurgists could
recommend. Reynolds even sent a representative to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for any
advice, but received only information about the care and preservation of the armor, and not on
how to make it golden.
Professor Ralph Gentile of Clarkson's EE department suggested that the suit be brass
plated. Seneca Brass Works in Utica did the work in only two weeks, just in time for Class
President H. Allan Graham to present it officially to President Van Note at the annual
President's Dinner for seniors on May 21, 1959.
For a few years thereafter, it was worn at hockey games by whatever slender, short, ice-
skating student could be convinced to don it and to skate around the ice before hockey games
