Cauldron

Issue date: 9/20/07 Section: Features

Media Credit: UST Archives THE FOUNDING CLASS of the University graduated in 1951 with 20 students.

The faces in the 1940s and '50s black and white pictures in UST's archives look as if they are from the movie "Pleasantville." The students in the first graduating classes of 1951 and 1952 are aglow with the spirit of being a part of something greater than themselves: the founding of the University of St. Thomas.

The purpose of the University was clear: "It will not satisfy me what satisfies so many, to have two independent systems, intellectual and religious, giving once side by side, by a sort of division of labor, only accidentally brought together," read Cardinal John Newman's quotation in the first University catalog.

In hindsight, it is easy to forget the rough beginning, but, according to alumni, numerous challenges faced University founders.

Betty Fischer, class of 1952, began attending the fledgling university in 1948, one year after its official opening. "My dad had some reservations," she said. "He wasn't quite sure how the school would last."

Fischer, who helps maintain UST's archives, said it had been a dream of the priests of the Congregation of St. Basil to build a Catholic university in Houston. From 1899, the University was a work in progress. Bishop Christopher E. Byrne approved the university in 1947, and the Basilian Fathers appointed the Rev. Vincent J. Guinan as the first president. The University of a St. Thomas was the first coeducational Catholic, liberal arts college in the United States.

UST began with 57 students and seven faculty members when it officially opened in fall 1947, housed in Link-Lee Mansion.

"Because we were such a small group, we were really a community," Fischer said. "We really had a close relationship with the professors. You never got the feeling that they were in a hurry."

Vincent D'Amico, class of 1952, agreed. "The small class-size really did build friendships that endured," he said. He added that members of the University's second graduating class still meet occasionally, even after 59 years.

In the beginning, the campus consisted of only one square block, on the corner of West Alabama Street and Montrose Boulevard. All three floors of Link-Lee Mansion were used for the library, classrooms, offices, a women's lounge and a gym for physical education classes. There was also the Science Building, later renamed O'Rourke Hall, with classrooms, labs, the bookstore and a men's lounge. The nearby carriage house was converted into a cafeteria, and the walkway connecting the mansion to the carriage house was nicknamed "tobacco road" because students hung out there and smoked.

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