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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 6, 1944)
Up From UO By PEGGY OVERLAND Those long months of steady grinding under chemistry, physics, zoology, and other pre-med assign ments seem never to lead very far except up to the “school on the hill” where the grind is even worse. But ultimately the few pull through and someone like Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy, M.D. '94, gets written up in a column be cause of the amazing career she has managed to build out of or dinary routine. Dr. Lovejoy is one of the earliest women graduates of the medical school and also one of its most distinguished alumni. Calm, white haired, clear-eyed, she has per haps one of the greatest collec tions of international medals any single person has ever possessed, except perhaps for royalty and they never receive them for meri torious work. And Dr. Lovejoy’s work has been of the most bril liant. After graduating from the med ical school she began the practice of medicine in Portland and con tinued therein until the beginning of World War I, except for ab sences for post graduate work in Chicago and Vienna. During her practice in Portland she served as a member of the Portland board of health from 1905 to 1909, and as head of the health department from 1909 to 1912. Perhaps at the present time, such a career doesn’t appear very startling, but Dr. Lovejoy had electrified the world of the gay ’90’s when she decided even to major in medicine, and then her entry into regular executive posi tions must have shocked conserva tive Portland down to its finger tips. went i ross oervcu When World War I broke out, Dr. Love joy, like any modern young girl, decided to help as much as she could. In 1917 she served with the American Red Cross in France, and in 1918 was returned to the United States to make a tour of the country and tell the people of the great need of the Red Cross in Europe. During that time she was asked to take active charge of the American Women’s Hospitals service, in which position she has continued to the present time. Since then she has held the position of general director of the organization with headquarters in the Rockefeller Center in New York. Some of her other official ca pacities include: fellow of the Am erican Medical association; a member of the Medical Women’s National association, (president 1932-33); the Medical Women’s In ternational association (president 1919-1924); and an honorary mem ber of the Oregon State Medical society and the Multnomah County Medical society. Owns Medals The colorful part of her, how ever, is her medal collection. A strict listing of them would read something as follows: Cross of the Legion of Honor (France); Cross of the Redeemer; Grand Cross oi the Order of King George 1 and War Cross (Greece); Cross of the Holy Sepulcher (Jerusalem); Gold Cross of Saint Save (Yugoslavia) She is also author of "The House of the Good Neighbor," 1919, and “Certain Samaritans,” 1927-33. Tr June of 1942, this amazing woman received an honorary doctor oJ laws degree from the University of Oregon. Hardly much more is needed tv bo said concerning such an aston ishing record of doing the unusual To the few girls who daringly now attempt majoring in pre-medicine Dr. Lovejoy should certainly set a superb example. Oregon it Emerald MARJORIE M. GOODWIN EDITOR ELIZABETH EDMUNDS BUSINESS MANAGER MARJORIE YOUNG Managing Editor GLORIA MALLOY Advertising Manager ANNE CRAVEN News Editor Norris Yates, Joanne Nichols Associate Editors Betty Lou Vogelpohl, Executive Secretary Warren Miller, Army Editor Bob Stiles, Sports Editor Mary Jo Geiser, Staff Photographer Carol Greening, Betty Ann Stevens Co-Women’s Editors Betty French Robertson, Chief Night Editor Elizabeth Haugen, Assistant Managing Editor Published daily during the oollege year except Sundays, Mondays, and holidays and final examination periods by the Associated Students, University of Oregon. Entered as second-class matter at the postoffice, Eugene, Oregon. _ 'lUe AiAem&lif . . . This afternoon’s all-ca’mpus assembly will be one of the richest experiences students here have ever had. For today they will hear Mrs. Lisa Lindbaek, Norwegian correspondent, who has seen this war since its beginning and who has looked upon its horror and drama and human tears and pain. Mrs. Lindbaek has already spoken in public twice on this campus. Once, to a meeting in the library browsing room, once to the journalism editing class. On both occasions, her audi ences came away thoughtful and inspired. sjc Jfc >|« Thoughtful, because when a person as vital and as exciting as Mrs. Lindbaek recounts such experiences as front line report ing in the Spanish civil war, and the burning of the German Reichstag, which sealed the mold of a future war—the distant sounds of bombs and children crying come very close. Inspired, because they are witness to what she has accom plished. Her career began quietly in Naples where she studied archeology. But while things were happening she felt that archeology was not for her, not until peace. From that time on, until the fall of France, by accident and by calculation, she followed the war. Her trek with the refugees on the roads of France ended that phase of her work. . * * * * Now Mrs. Lindbaek, who was teaching her native language to the foreign area and language students, is working in the library and writing a new book. Her first book was the result of her investigations of the Norwegian merchant marine which probably saved the allied cause in the early part of the war. Talking with the men who manned the ships, discovering “where they were born, why they were fighting, what hap pened when the torpedo hit,” she gathered the story of “One Thousand Norwegian Ships.” ^ Although her talk to students today will be particularly about Norway, and its present occupation by Germany, there will probably creep into her observations the same revolt against fascism which her friend Ernest Hemingway evidenced in “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” If we are still not a\Yare, or if we sometimes forget how war came and how men died and still die—this little, blue-eyed Norwegian woman is our reproach.—M.M.G. Qlaii lost atfeoaHUHte/U . . . Jn the rough and tough days of Captain Cook, as well as in the scarcely less exciting days of the copra-inspired expansion of the white man’s commerce with the South Seas, the posses sion of a few baubles of glass jewelry often meant the differ ence between "keeping one’s head” and quite literally losing it. And in recent times, in fact right down to the outbreak of our present war, the pilots of the gold-carrying planes fly ing back and forth across New Guinea’s 13,000 foot Owen Stanley range dreaded the necessity for a forced landing, be cause it meant risking death by poisoned arrows, the spear, or the kris. Five out of six men who attempted to cross New Guinea or any of the larger Solomon islands by land left their bones somewhere along those sweat-box trails. The sixth as often as not came out alive because he had thought to lay in a supply of trinkets and bright, glittering ornaments before he set out. On islands like Bougainville and Guadalcanal lived head hunters so intractable amid such gloomly, impenetrable jungles and unclimable mountains that when they lopped the skulls of occasional wandering traders and shipwrecked sailors, even the police of the Fiji high court, dreaded throughout the length and breadth of British Oceania by the natives, dared not follow to apprehend them. In those regions a shilling’s worth of cut glass beads was often worth more to a man than his weight in sol ill gold. ij* s{< Since the war has brought about large-scale penetration of these wildernesses, sailors no longer need wear pistols in JletteAA. to tko &<HUo>i (Editor’s note* The writer of this extract from a personal let ter was formerly an ASTP student at the University of Oregon who is now in training at Camp Cooke, California.) This has been a busy day. This morning we went through the in filtration course; this is a game tht is played for keeps, and the object is to crawl over 100 yards of simulated battlefield. You crouch silently in the starting trench— then the machine guns let go a round of live ammunition. You, watch the bullets spatter in the dirt of the bank bthind you. Pret ty darn low—so you keep your head down. Of course they told you it was perfectly safe if you stayed down, but suppose . . . you chew your last fingernails. Then somewhere a whistle blows and the order comes down the line to go over the top. Well, this is it. So you crawl out of the trench like a four-legged snake, seeking every little depression in the ground. Somewhere upwind a smoke shell explodes and the black, billowy cloud rolls down on you. There’s nothing to be afraid of, they told you it was coming, but it chokes you and blinds you. Smoke sneaks into every nook and cranny—some even crawls up your helmet—until you can’t see two feet in front of you. You continue to crawl using the Braille system. Mud Pitfall Now, in the mist, you blunder into a mud hole. You plunge through, nose two inches above the dirty water. You decide you don’t like amphibious training. By now the smoke has rolled over you and you open the throttle. The in creased effort makes you sweat all the more and each damp spot picks up dirt and adds more mud to your already filthy body. The machine gun bullets are chattering merrily overhead but you don’t pay any attention to them any more. You have enough troubles on the ground for you have just struck the first barbed wire entangle ments. Turning over so you can hold the wire up you try a sort of backstroke that wears you out but doesn’t propel you very fast. Now the sun is in your eyes and the sweat runs down into your mouth and eyes. You try to spit but sand is all that comes out. You have eaten your peck of dirt and so you feel prepared to die. The first half of your body goes under the wire easily. This isn’t bad at all. Then you feel a snag, but plunge on with redoubled effort. Instead of breaking loose, the wire catches in half a dozen new places and you thrash desperately trying to un tangle yourself. Voice of Intelligence Then out of somewhere comes the voice of Major Averill, “You AST men are all potentional offi cer candidates. Your are the most intelligent men in the army.” So you stop struggling and try some of this officer candidate intelli gence. You remove the trouble^ some barbs and roll clear. Just as you are complimenting yourself a charge of dynamite goes off in your ear. You had buried your head in the dirt with the first ex plosion and just lie there while stones and debris shower down on you sounding like a hailstorm on your steel helmet. You remember the two engineers from the next battalion who didn’t duck in time when the dynamite went off. They are both blind. You saw them yes terday with their barracks bags all packed, an officer leading each one by the hand. Another barbed wire entangle ment is negotiated easily. Your^el bows and knees are taking an a^ ful beating and your breath sounds like someone dying of bronchial pneumonia. But you are on tiie home stretch so you don’t mind. After what seems like hours of crawling you tumble into the final trench. Taking one look at the grimy figure that arrives two seconds later you wonder—do I look like that — my own mother wouldn’t recognize me. The new arrival looks at you, half smiles, digs a wad of mud out of his, spits, and says, “Quite (censored) a course, wasn’t it?” Soon the guns stop and the or^ay comes, to climb out of the trench and load yourself into the waiting GI trucks. You’re tired and sweaty and filthy and aching but you’re happy; the Battle of Camp Cooke is over. This has been a busy day. PFC. RALPH HOLZWARTH, Armed Field Artillery, Formerly, Co. C., U. O. A branch of the women’s wing has been organized on the Univer sity of New Mexico campus with classes in ground training for women interested in joining the WAFS or some other flight course. The course will include classes in areodynamics, radio code, aircraft identification, physics, military or ganization, calisthentics, and drill. their belts when beating through Torres strait or Bikini pas cage. But the natives are still there, and they still are in trigued by glass jewelry and trinkets. Instead of refraining them from taking heads, the donations of University students’ excess costume jewelry will induce them to build runways, dig drainage ditches, unload ships—these and a hundred other jobs, all of which will aid directly in winning the war. The American soldiers and sailors in .the South Seas have plenty to do in the way of drill, fighting, and camp detail without being forced in addition to take on these incidental, but vitally necessary tasks. Furthermore the sun is intensely hot, the humidity very high, and the malarial mosquitoes cver-preseufe Hardy as the Americans are, they would wilf in droves were they forced to perform many of the duties which the acclimat ized natives carry on with the greatest of ease. >fc jjc )\i j}; Xor are we cheating these erstwhile headhunters by induc ing them to work for baubles measured out by the dime’s worth. Were our men not sweating and suffering and dying in those islands, the Jap would now be there. Ask of the Filipino it he prefers life under the Rising Sun to that under the Stars and Stripes. Ask-the harassed Malay whether he prefers the white man’s rule to that of the yellow man. Ask the overworked Annamese or the freedom-loving Dyak. And when you have received your answers ask of yourself how you enjoyed labor-i ing last summer in your victory garden when the sun shiim mered like a ball of molten copper in a glassy sky. Then thiim> of the tasks our boys are NOT doing because of the jewelry you donated, and make up your mind forthwith to give even more.—X.Y.