Widener University Archives Oral History Project

Dr. Joseph Edgette, Professor of Education Interviewed June 28, 2001 by Becky Alexander

Becky Alexander: So, just for the record, I guess you should probably introduce yourself.

Dr. Edgette: I am J. Joseph Edgette, Ph.D., Professor of Education, Center for Education, School of Human Service Professions, .

Becky Alexander: Thank you. Okay, so I hear that you have been researching some of the important families in Widener’s history, and I’m interested in what got you interested in doing that, and what families you’ve been focusing on.

Dr. Edgette: By training – at the graduate level, anyway – I’m a trained folklorist. I have always had an interest in the four major areas of folklore – there’s oral tradition, belief systems, popular culture, and material culture. My own dissertation was on gravestones and cemeteries, and as a result of working in that area, I have obviously come across the grave markers of famous people. And when I joined the faculty here at Widener in 1979, as part of my undergrad English expository writing course, I had each person in the class select one of the buildings on campus to do a history of and then establish the connection between Widener University and why was that building named whatever – Kapelski Hall, Kirkbride, etc. And it worked pretty well. And it’s probably time to revise that [project] now and go back and add new buildings that have come aboard since. As a folklorist, certainly I’m interested in local history and local legends, and Widener or the former Military College, PMC, had its own rich military history. But once we became Widener, the obvious question is “Why ‘Widener’ University?” And there are those who don’t know why [the school was named] Widener University. Well, since I was in the position to find out why and I had the power and the authority to ask the right people, I was able to glean that information. And it’s very, very basic.

Currently, on the Board of Trustees, there is a gentleman named Fitz Eugene Dixon, Jr. Fitz Dixon has been on the board for many, many years, and he served admirably as the Chairman of the Board for many, many years. In the early years, prior to our becoming Widener, he had always been very generous to the institution with financial assistance.

1 So the time came when a decision had to be made during Vietnam as to whether or not Pennsylvania Military College would be able to survive in terms of enrollment, because Chester essentially is surrounded by major Quaker communities – very anti-war. And to have a military institution at your doorstep training new proverbial warmongers created a lot of problems, so enrollment noticeably was declining. And when you have an institution with declining enrollment, the future of that institution comes into question. So the decision was made – “Let’s dissolve the military college and go civilian, and we will open the doors to females. We will keep the cadet corps in the form of ROTC [Reserve Officers Training Corps], but we will no longer be known as a military school.”

So that’s what we did – we went and changed the name from Pennsylvania Military College to Penn Morton College. Penn for William Penn, who founded Chester, essentially, [though he was] not the first person here. William Penn brought the English over, but prior to his arrival, the area was settled and inhabited by Swedes and the Dutch, and then the English came in and drove them out, and William Penn took over. And he lived here in Chester for about a year before moving on to , where he found a more suitable location. So it was Penn for Penn, and Morton for John Morton, one of the early signers of the Declaration of Independence. John Morton was born in Ridley Park, which is a mile from here, and he lived about two miles from here in his adult life. And he was a political leader, and certainly a person who would be appropriate in terms of representing the citizens [by signing] the Declaration of Independence. Because Penn and Morton were both locals, they decided that would be a nice name – PMC Colleges. They were retaining “PMC.”

But the Pennsylvania Military College association never went away, because as long as you have PMC – it was never referred to as Penn Morton – you know, [individuals] would correct people – “Oh, no, that’s really the Pennsylvania Military College.” So they said, “What are we going to do?” So at a board meeting, they decided, “Why don’t we make a complete change to a totally different name?” So they had approached Mr. Dixon and had asked if he would allow them to name the institution Dixon College for him. And he was very flattered and very pleased with that, but there is a Dixon University already in existence in Harrisburg. So if you have a Dixon College and a Dixon University, it would be like having a Harvard College and a Harvard University – which is which? So he said, “Thank you, but, no – it would probably not be appropriate in this case.” They said, “Okay.” He said, “However, if you really want to do something like this, I would consider it an honor if you would name the school for the maternal side of my family, my mother’s family, the Wideners.” And they said, “Oh, that’s a good idea, we’ll use Widener.” So Widener was selected because of that reason.

Now, one of the other things they had to do was to change the school colors, because the military colors were maroon and gray. And once the change came about, they decided, “Well, let’s go with new colors. Now, what will those colors be?” And I don’t know who decided or how it came about, but the final decision was that they would go with the light blue and yellow, the colors of the riding silks of the . Currently, the Widener family is heavily invested in race horses, and so when their riders ride their horses in races, they wear the colors of the Widener stables, which varies from member

2 to member of the family. So that’s where the school colors come from – the Widener family crest which happens to be blue and yellow.

Now, Fitz’s mother was Eleanor Widener. She was married to Fitz Eugene Dixon, Sr. Eleanor was the daughter of Eleanor Widener and her husband, George Widener. She had two brothers, Harry and George, so there were only the three children. George was the son of Peter A. B. Widener and Josephine, and he had a brother, Joseph. Joseph was very much into collecting, and George was the one with the business mind, and Peter, his father, is the man who created the whole notion of a transit authority or a transportation system for a city. He started in Philadelphia, and, as a very young man, he worked in a butcher shop. And he was pretty good at this, and then he opened his own shop. And I think he opened two or three [after that]. And at that time, each of the major neighborhoods in Philadelphia – and a neighborhood would consist of, maybe, six to ten square blocks – had a little trolley car that you could ride around and get from one end of the neighborhood to the other. And so Peter bought one of these trolleys and owned it, and you had to pay to ride the trolley. And then he bought the [trolley car in the] next neighborhood, so he owned both trolleys. So then he went to a third, and then he decided to buy up all the trolleys and have a network. It worked so well that he was invited to come to Pittsburgh to set up their [transportation system], and to New York and Chicago and Boston. So all these transportation systems came from the Widener family.

Well, Joseph went on to spend a lot of the money on books, paintings, and the rest [of the arts], and with the full support of his parents, Peter and Josephine, who were also lovers of the arts, he became quite an expert. Peter built a beautiful mansion on Broad Street in Philadelphia, and later moved to Elkins Park, where he built a 110-room mansion “”, and the whole family lived there – they each had their own wing. The entire building was slightly larger than Kapelski Learning Center, and that was their private home. The building still stands today. Beautiful, beautiful estate. Originally had a hundred acres, and now I think it’s down to twenty-five. But they lived there in great wealth, and were highly respected in culture circles.

And then later, Joseph moved to Florida and built a beautiful estate, and he called the estate “Hialeah”. He loved horses, so he started breeding horses, and these horses were entered into races, and they were good, and they would win. The Widener family has had numerous winners in the Kentucky Derby and all the other great races. Today, they have the running of the Widener cup every year – it’s a hundred thousand dollar purse. But Hialeah racetrack was the estate of Joseph Widener. And he took a portion of that estate and made it into a private racetrack, and now today, it’s one of the finest racing courses in the world, and people by the millions flock there every year. But that’s still part of the Widener estate. And even to this day, they’re still racing horses, and that’s why we have this connection there.

But Peter was well-connected. He was involved with J.P. Morgan, he was a friend of the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, all of the major, major wealthy people in the world. J.P. Morgan decided to get involved with shipping, so he created the international Mercantile Marine Company, which was basically a parent company, and they would buy up

3 shipping lines. One of the companies that they bought was the , owners of the “”. And so Peter was on the Board of Directors, and George, his son, and Eleanor and young Harry went to Paris in the fall of 1912. And George went to Paris to represent his father in consulting with the Paris transportation people to set up a system – they had done that in London. The Wideners were already co-owners of the Ritz London and the Ritz Paris Hotels, because there was also a Ritz in Philadelphia, which they owned outright. So they were well-known. George was also looking to hire a French Chef for the new Ritz Philadelphia.

So Peter was too busy with affairs at home so he sent George to Paris, and Eleanor said she would go along because young Eleanor was going to get married in June and her mother had all this family lace, and she took it to Paris to a designer to design the wedding gown for her daughter. And they took it over in the fall, hoping they’d have it back by June, when the wedding was to take place. And there was no problem with that happening, because with their money, it would become the primary project for this designer. So they figured it would take probably about a month to make the dress, and then another month to ship it so they’d have it here by April, several months before the wedding.

So the second reason for going there on Eleanor’s part was that they just had built a cottage in Newport, on Bellevue, which is the street of all the mansions. And they were neighbors of theAstors. And their ‘little cottage’ – I think it was a sixty five room mansion overlooking the Atlantic Ocean – was magnificent, like a little palace, with the manicured gardens – they brought in a French horticulturist to design the gardens. And [it had] the white pillars, and the stained glass windows – the whole nine yards. And so Eleanor thought it would be nice to buy some furniture in Paris and have it shipped to the , up to Newport. Harry was a graduate of Harvard, and he went along because, like his uncle, he loved to collect things. But he was into books [as opposed to paintings]. He would travel all over the world buying first editions or only editions of books, so that’s why he went to Paris – to buy books. And he went to and bought books there, et cetera. So while he was running around buying books and Eleanor was running around buying furniture, George was tending to the family business.

So they decided it was time to go home, and because George’s father was on the Board of Directors of the company that owned the ship, they got passage on the Titanic. And they were in Paris, they went to the coast town of Cherbourg, were put onto a “tender,” which is a small boat, taken out to the middle of the harbor, put onto the Titanic, and they went to Queenstown and then the next stop was supposed to be New York. And so George and his manservant, Eleanor and her servant, and Harry all boarded the ship and were on their way home.

The night it hit the iceberg, the Wideners hosted a dinner aboard the Titanic. So Mrs. Widener was in charge, so she had everything top-drawer. And there was to be no expense [spared]. It was a small dinner party, but only the very best people were invited. And most of the people there were Philadelphia families, [seven of which] were on the

4 Titanic. And among some of their nearest and dearest friends were the Thayers – Mr. Thayer was vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

So at noontime aboard the ship the day before the sinking, Eleanor and George were talking to the captain, Captain Smith – just small talk. And the captain assured Mrs. Widener that everything was ready for the dinner and everything would be carried out, because Mrs. Widener was supposed to meet with the cook that afternoon to go over the final menu. We have copies of the menu, the whole thing – we know [all about what happened] because it came out in the testimony when the Senate investigated this tragedy and Mrs. Widener was called to testify. So then, in the course of the conversation, somebody came down to the wheelhouse and handed Captain Smith a note. And he read it, and he looked a little anxious. So then Bruce Ismay, who was the managing director of the company, came up. So Mrs. Widener said to the captain, “Are you all right?” And he said, “Oh, yes, I’m fine.” And then George says, “Well, I hope that wasn’t bad news.” And as he said that, Ismay grabbed the note from the captain and crumpled it and put it into his pocket and said, “It’s nothing.” But it was an urgent message from another ship warning the Titanic to slow down, because “you’re going to be entering a major ice field, and you’re not going to hit this ice field until very late at night, so you won’t be able to see. So be very careful.” But Ismay did not want to slow down, because he wanted to make it to New York so not only would it be the maiden voyage, but it would break all records. And, of course, the rest becomes history.

But they had their dinner, and then after dinner, young Harry and John Thayer’s son, John Jr. and Archibald Butt, who was an attaché to the president of the United States, went up to the smoking lounge – men only. They had brandy and they had cigars and they were discussing politics, things like that. George wasn’t feeling well, so he went back to the cabin and so did his wife, and they had gone to bed. And when they hit the iceberg, young Harry woke his parents and said, “Now, I think we’re okay, but you’d better get dressed just in case.” And so they did, and of course, Mrs. Widener did not want to leave. And finally they convinced her to board the lifeboat, and they put her in lifeboat number four, the last lifeboat to leave the ship. Ten minutes later, the ship sank from sight.

So she just made it off the boat. She collected jewelry – she loved precious gems, and she had all kinds of diamonds and rubies and pearls, and she had a necklace that, according to records, cost $150,000 – it was a string of pearls. And they had to get a special insurance policy for it when they boarded the ship. So Lloyd’s of London insured it with the proviso that they never leave the pearls out of their sight. And when they had gone to bed, she had removed them, so in all the excitement, she left them in the cabin. So she said, “Oh, I don’t have the pearls.” And George said, “Well, I will get you the pearls, because they’re too expensive to just [leave in the cabin].” Even though they were multi, multimillionaires, you don’t just throw $150,000 out the door, no matter how wealthy you are. So he ran back and got them from the cabin, so she put them into her pocket. And then he removed from his fingers his two rings and gave them to her. She said, “Why are you taking your rings off?” He says, “Well, if we get involved with water and all, you know how rings can slip off if your hands are wet, and I just don’t want to

5 lose them.” And she said, “Oh, well, okay.” He probably knew that he would not survive.

Young Harry knew that he would not survive. Young Harry was not a swimmer, and even most of those who jumped overboard died from the shock of the water, because it was 38 degrees. So young John Thayer did jump overboard – he was an athlete, a champion swimmer, and he made it to a lifeboat, and they pulled him in. He had severe frostbite, but he survived. But young Harry did not have that stamina to do that. So Harry and George and John Thayer, Sr. remained, and George was with John, and they were smoking cigars, and they turned around to go back into the grand saloon, and that’s the last thing they saw of them. Harry disappeared. He told his father that there was nothing more to do, that he was going to go forward to help load 3rd class children aboard the other boats on the other side, and that’s where he went, and no one ever saw him again. Their bodies were never recovered, either.

The bodies [that they did recover] were brought to Halifax, but the survivors went on to New York, to Pier 54. So when Eleanor got back, she and John Jacob Astor’s widow and Mrs. Thayer cabled the people at home, and the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad sent a private train all the way to New York to bring them back. They brought back Mrs. Thayer and her son, John Jr., Molly Brown from Denver, and Mrs. Astor, and they all went to Philadelphia. And then Molly Brown made her way back home, until eventually she went back to New York to live out her life, but that was all that was on the whole train. It was very private.

And Mrs. Widener decided that she needed to do something for Harry, and she contacted Harvard and gave them four million dollars to build the in memory of Harry. I don’t know if you’ve been to the library, but it’s a phenomenal library. There were certain stipulations – you could never add to it, and you can see, when they added the new wing to Harvard’s library, the modern section, there’s no outside connection. It’s all underground, which was okay, and therefore they are not in jeopardy of losing [support from the Widener family]. Some believe that she also made a stipulation that all graduating seniors would have to be able to swim as a requirement for graduation. Some say that was true, others say that it isn’t. Fitz Dixon was supposed to fill me in on that piece, but I know he told me himself that every day, they put a fresh flower on Harry’s desk in the library, and that is part of the deal, and that has been ever since 1915 when they opened that library. And it is his [actual] desk – they moved it from Elkins Park up there together with his entire collection, and so it’s in a private Harry reading room, and only V.I.P.s get in there. You actually have to have a letter of introduction from the Widener family to get in there so you don’t just go in and just – “Oh, let’s go in and look around.” It’s still very private. It’s almost like our [Widener’s] library, in that it’s a memorial to someone who is deceased. Except our library looks more like a mausoleum than a library. [laughter] It’s an architect’s dream, but a user’s nightmare.

But that’s the Wideners. And then young Eleanor gets married, as planned, and her mother Eleanor was an Elkins – the only child of William Elkins, who was a partner with Peter Widener. So his daughter and Peter’s son marry. So there was a good example of

6 the upper class keeping [the money] in the upper class. So young Eleanor gets married to a man named Fitz Dixon [Sr.], and they have a child – more than one, but Fitz Eugene was the first son. When he was old enough to appreciate it, his grandmother Eleanor called him in, and presented to him the two rings from her husband, who went down on the Titanic, and said, “These were your grandfather’s, and I want you to have them.” To this day, Fitz wears the rings on his fingers, just like his grandfather did. He is very proud of these rings, because these rings were actually on the Titanic, and they survived. They were survivors.

So, that is the connection with the name. We are fortunate to have the Widener name, because many people associate Widener with Harvard. And there are many people who believe all the Wideners must have been a very upper class, Bostonian family, or at least from Cambridge, but the fact is, none of them were. They were all from Philadelphia. And they helped establish the Philadelphia Museum of Art and helped to establish the Academy of Music, which brings another tie in, then, because right down the street we have the Manor House, which was owned by Louise Deshong Woodridge, and we have the Deshongs.

The Deshongs were a major family here in Chester, who basically made a lot of their money in lumber. Chester used to be the ship-building capital of the United States. So you have a man by the name of John Roach, who ran the shipyards, and he built the ships. In order to build a ship, you have to start with the scaffolding, and the scaffolding is made of wood. So the Deshongs could supply the wood for the scaffolding to start building these ships. When the ships went from sail power to steam power, you now needed boilers and motors and engines, so the Weatheralls were manufacturers of furnaces, boilers, and motors. So they’re all working together in shipbuilding, so they’re all making money.

Now, Richard ran the manufacturing end, and his brother Robert controlled the banking interests. So whenever there was money to be borrowed, it would go through Robert. And of course there was an interest that you paid to borrow. So all these people were in this together. And they all had children. And the children start to intermarry. And because they are all Chester’s elite high society, they start rubbing elbows with Philadelphia families. And so Louise Deshong, whose brother Alfred was the great collector of things, especially sculpture and paintings – he was friends with the Wideners. So when they got together, they decided that there should be a Museum of Art for Philadelphia. Louise, she helped with that. The same applied to the Academy of Music. She worked with them to make this happen. And then Louise built an opera house in Chester and invited all the metropolitan opera companies to come perform in Chester on their way to or from the Philadelphia, to their opera house.

So it became this elitist group that made everything work. And they were not selfish. They shared everything they had with the community. At one time, Chester had five theaters. And these were not movie theaters – these were legitimate theaters. And they were always packed. When the Wideners went to Paris, they spent a lot of time going to theaters and to the opera – we have photos of this stuff. So you have the Woodbridges

7 involved, you had the Weatheralls, you had the Deshongs, and they all become part and parcel. We, as a university, have bought their properties, so we own the Castle, which was one of Weatherall’s homes. We bought the Woodbridge estate from the Woodbridge family, which was indirectly related to the Deshongs. And then the old Art Museum across from the church over there, and the Castle – that was a wedding gift that one of the Weatheralls gave to his daughter so that she could be living near the father. And that’s a beautiful home. It still is a beautiful building.

And then of course you have Kapelski. Kapelski was the man who owned the ferryboats that ran from Chester to Bridgeport. There was no Commodore Barry Bridge – the only way to get across was by ferryboat. Kapelski owned the water rights and owned all the boats – had a whole fleet of ferryboats. So when he decided to retire, he sold each of the boats for a million dollars a piece. And he also sold the water rights to the state [so they could] build a bridge. And he sold that for millions and millions, and of course Kapelski lives out in Newtown Square in a beautiful estate.

And then Kirkbride, who was a friend of his and an engineer, he lived in Wallingford. And when he died, he left his home to the university. And so there is the Billy Kirkbride house, and that is the home of the President of the University. It’s almost like a miniature of the Governor’s Mansion in Harrisburg. The second floor is the private residence, and the first floor is for functions. But all these families then become tied, and there are still survivors of these families who are still very generous to the institution, not only because we’re now Widener, but because many of those people went here when it was PMC, so you still have that old money involved. And then because of some of the old money, you have this. So the family has been very important.

There have been some interesting other people, [like] the Hyatts – you have the old man, the colonel, who was the first president. His son took over, and his son took over, and it just went right down the line, and Hyatt Hall was the private residence of the colonel – that’s where he lived. And in its day, it was a fashionable home. And then you have Colonel Howell, who was president for a while – he’s buried over in Chester Rural Cemetery.

You have Edward Fitzgerald Beale, who was a member of the PMC faculty. He was a Lieutenant, and then President [Theodore] Roosevelt called him in to conduct an experiment. The army decided to experiment with camels instead of horses. They felt that camels would survive longer in the desert, because during that period we were expanding westward, and we were discovering what was west of the Mississippi. So the armies that went ahead to protect the explorers were losing a lot of horses. So someone came up with a bright idea – “Oh, let’s try some camels.” So they brought camels over here – they purchased them from some foreign country, shipped them to Smyrna, Delaware, and then they shipped everybody down to Port Arthur, Texas. And then they went down around Florida, up to the Gulf [of Mexico] to Texas. They disembarked at Port Arthur, and they walked from there to California, through the desert. But they took the camels. They made it as far as Arizona, and most of the camels died. Because, you know, they thought, “Oh, yeah, they’re camels. You fill them up in Port Arthur and

8 they’re good for the rest of the journey.” Well, it didn’t work that way. They’re still living creatures.

Edward Beale was selected to oversee and lead this expedition. They were called the Camel Brigade. And the men that were going to go on this expedition were trained right here. And then he was promoted to general, and he went on and he survived – the camels didn’t, but he did – and he made his was all the way to California, and he is one of the founders of the state of California. And then while he was there, he died. So they cremated his body, and they shipped it back – it took a year to get back – and he’s buried in Laurel Hill, right behind the Weatherills, but next to the Deshongs, because the Beales were very important people in Chester, too. They had the first so-called “high rise” in the city – it was, like, a four story building, but [it was very impressive] for then, [because] there was nothing above two stories. And then they had this big high rise called the Beale Building, and then they called the whole block the Beale Block. But he was very instrumental in the early years here, so these are some of the major names that have come and gone, but a lot of people were never able to establish the connection. And it’s important to establish those connections. So those are probably the major names, the major ones. So that’s a very long answer to your first question.

Becky Alexander: That covered a lot of what I was interested in hearing about, yes. But the other major thing that I was interested in asking you about was – I know that in the library, we have one of your student’s papers about general folklore of PMC, and I was wondering if you could talk about that.

Dr. Edgette: I have a folder called “Widener Folklore,” and I happened to go through this before I came over. One of the major pieces of the so-called folklore here is that surrounding Old Main. Old Main was the original building [of the university], and everything was in the one building – everything. The [original students] went to school there, they ate there, they recreated there, they slept there, they had their classes… And there was a terrible fire in 1882. Now, that fire burned the building to the ground, and the reason for that is that if you face Old Main, over to the left, there’s this little building that was the science room, and there is a skywalk that connects it [to Old Main]. Originally, that piece was attached to Old Main. And there was a chemistry explosion that created a fire, and eventually the entire building was burned to the ground.

One of the reasons why it was burned to the ground was because they couldn’t get to the fire to put it out. Apparently, in February of 1882, they had very bad weather – lots of rain. So we are on a hill here, okay? If you go to some of our higher buildings and you look toward the east, you can see the Delaware River. So this hill was also known as Knob Hill. And once you crossed over the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad to the other side of the tracks, which would be on this side of [Interstate] 95, [you can see] lots of very large houses. Those homes were built by Philadelphia society for their summer homes. [They would] get out of the city, go down to the river, which is only fourteen blocks away, and they could have all the recreation. It was a wonderful little seaport, so people would go and [spend time there].

9 Well, because the weather was so bad [when Old Main caught fire], the horse-drawn fire wagons they sent out got stuck in the mud. They just couldn’t go. And once they got up here, the only sources of water were horse troughs. You had this huge building in flames, and you had a couple horse troughs. So they had to run hoses all the way to the river, which was fourteen blocks away, and then pump it all the way back up. So there was nothing that they could do – it burned to the ground. And they were devastated.

And so there was a man by the name of John Crump who decided that maybe we should rebuild the building. So he designed it for the cost of $72,000. It took him one year to build what you see, with the stipulation that the chemistry department be separate from the main wing and [students] use a skywalk [to get from one to the other] – [that was] one of the first uses of a skywalk. Inside Old Main, on the first floor, are huge iron doors that go from the floor all the way to the ceiling – they’re probably about twenty-foot doors. In the case of a fire – and they still work – those doors can be closed. So you would seal off three sections of the building. But that’s something a lot of people don’t know.

And then inside the old Dome upstairs, there are lots of signatures of some very, very famous people. And they wrote little notes – college students did that. My name has been scrawled in all kinds of unlikely places – when I was in college, it was the thing to do, and it’s probably still done today. I know that many, many years ago, one of my students asked if she could do an article on the Dome, and I said, “Well, you know, for insurance purposes, you can’t go up there. It’s off-limits.” And she said, “Oh, well, don’t worry about that.” But she got up there, and she took photographs – the Dome is filled with all this wonderful graffiti, and it’s a marvelous collection of stuff. And that stuff is all intact – they’ve never done anything to destroy that. Hopefully, they won’t.

But under the Dome, it’s a very large room, probably a thirty to fifty foot circle. And then within the room, it’s been compartmentalized. So they would use it for storage and things like that. But the students used to go up there and write all over everything, but that’s part of the folklore of Widener, too.

The other [interesting story had to do with] ‘Cat Lady’. We had a woman who lived in the Alsop House, which is no longer there. The Alsop House was on the corner over there. And they have torn it down to make room for the new business school. But for a long, long time, [‘Cat Lady’] lived there. Her name was Crecentia Heberly Begley. She lived in Alsop House, which was the inside portion of the house – the other side was Bullock – and she died in 1987. And several years before, she had made arrangements with the university – actually, a deal – that if they would take care of her, she would leave her property to the university, which they agreed to. All they had to do to get the property was to look after her, make sure that she was fed, and that she was protected. So a couple times a day, security would stop to say, “How ya doing?” and that was it. And then when it was time to eat, she’d go over to the cafeteria and have her food, and it was fine. But she, too, was a collector – cats. Any stray she could find, she would take home.

Now, at one point, it got so bad that on humid days, the stench would get crazy. And the Board of Health came. And that’s one of the reasons she made arrangements – they were

10 going to put her away, and she said, “No, I don’t want to go away from my little kitties.” So then she asked the university if they would do something, and they said, “Oh, well, no, we can’t. We’ll have to strike up a bargain here.” But the SPCA came, and I think they counted 250 cats that they took out, and they allowed her to keep two.

But every day, when she had those cats, she would walk to the trash behind the old cafeteria. And back then, all milk was served in small, half-pint cartons, and people would drink the milk and throw the carton into the trash. Every day, she would go over and get these cartons and pour the milk out that hadn’t been drunk. And then she’d go – she had, like, a couple gallons of milk – and take it back to the cats. A couple of gallons of milk for 250 cats is not going to go far. So it got pretty bad, so they had to exterminate the room and remove all those cats.

Then, when she died – she died in bed of natural causes – security went to check on her and she didn’t answer the door, so they had the keys, so they knocked on the door and went in, and they called 911 – or, there wasn’t 911 then, but they called for assistance – but she died.

Very wealthy woman, very wealthy woman. Her father was very heavily invested in a stock, and the earlier families in Chester used to say how, on the first of the month, she would literally run through the neighborhood looking for the mailman to get all of her checks, because all of the [estate] was left to her, so she got all the income from all the stock, and she lived on the dividends. But she was very, very wealthy when she died, and then when people saw this, they said, “Well, how can you allow yourself to live in such squalor?” But she was of the notion, “Well, I don’t want to spend it, because if I need it….” And there are some people like that. They have the money, and they’re afraid to touch it, because they think “I might need it.” Well, hey, spend it, you know, because it’s not going to go anywhere. You can’t take it with you. But that’s the famous Cat Lady, and that’s an oldie but goodie.

Oh, and Mr. Andorn – his ashes are interred outside of Kapelski. What is now a seating area – that rectangular thing – used to be a reflecting pond there, so it was a big rectangle with a fountain in the middle, and water. It became a health problem, because all the dogs and animals used to hang out in the water, and then sometimes the pump didn’t work, and the water would be stagnant, and they were saying, “Let’s get rid of it.” So they cut sections so you can sort of walk around and sit in there. So now, rather than [displaying] a literal reflection from the building, it’s become philosophically reflecting, I guess.

But at the head of what was the reflecting pond, what most people never even looked at and assumed was a drain, is a medallion that gives Mr. Andorn’s name and his dates [of birth and death]. And he was a benefactor, and when he died, he requested that he be cremated and that the ashes be interred here. So they had to get a special permission to do that, but they did. And a lot of people [say], “Oh, that is all made up.” Well, it’s not made up, and I kept telling them. [They said,] “Oh, Dr. Edgette, you’re just telling us folklore again.”

11 I said, “Well…” “Did you ever see the ashes?” I said, “Well, no.” “Then you don’t [actually know it’s true]…” I said, “They’re there, I guarantee it.”

When they went to convert the reflecting pond into a seating area, they dug up that whole area. So security came to my office and said, “Dr. Edgette, we have a problem, and we went to the President’s Office and they suggested that we talk to you, because you might know something about this. We were digging, and we found something out there. We don’t know if it’s a time capsule or a bomb or whatever.” I said, “Well, what does this thing look like?” “Oh, well, we’ll bring it over.” So they brought it over, and I said, “This is a cylinder.” They said, “Yes…” I said, “These are the remains of someone.” “What are they?” I said, “They are the ashes. Where did you get this?” They said, “We were digging up the pond.” I said, “Oh, no! You just disinterred Mr. Andorn!” [laughter] I said, “That is a criminal event – you can’t disturb the ashes!” They said, “Well, we’re digging up….” I said, “Yeah, but you’ve got to put them back. You can’t just put them on a shelf somewhere.” So then they said, “Yeah, we’ll put it back,” so I called Vice President David Eckard and I said, “David, what are you doing here? You guys are mutilating a grave over here.” He said, “What are you talking about?” I told him, and he said, “Oh, I never knew that!” I said, “You [should have know about it, since you] went to school here. It’s Mr. Andorn.” He said, “Oh, boy.” So then the person in charge of the physical plant took the ashes. First they put them on the mantle – with his college diploma and all that – over in the Andorn Conference Room named for him. He left a lot of money to the institution, and that’s why one of the dorms is named for him. So they put his little cylinder over on the mantle, and then people came over [and said], “What is that?” “Well, that’s Mr. Andorn.” “Oh, please!” So people were getting a little nervous sitting around in the conference room seeing this thing. They said, “Well, we’d better get it out of here.” So they moved it across the hall into the Director of the Physical Plants office. So then after they were finished, they reinterred him, so he’s back where he belongs. But it’s for real. I mean, his ashes are actually there. But that’s Mr. Andorn. But that’s all part of some of the really colorful things that go on around here. It’s wonderful. Every institution has [folklore], but unfortunately, the general community members of Widener do not know [many of these stories]. They’re not aware of this stuff. But it’s sort of what puts local color into the surroundings.

So it’s always fun to talk about Widener, and there are just so, so many different things [of interest]. [As for] the little gravestones around – it used to be the custom here at PMC

12 that the graduating class, before graduating, would actually build a very small coffin, and into it, they would place a class list by rank and the yearbook. They would put in the class flag, because each of the graduating classes would design their own little pennant – a military kind of thing, almost like an Italian flag. And I believe that they also put in there a copy of a textbook that represented military science, the humanities, and science. And then they would have a little interment, and they would bury this, and they would mark the grave with a stone.

Well, in the early years, these stones could be anywhere on campus, and then when they started straightening out the campus, they said, “We’re gonna pull all these stones in, and we’ll put them around Alumni Auditorium.” And it’s just circles [of gravestones – no actual coffins]. The coffins are all over the place – we don’t know where they are. And [probably, not much is] left of them, because they were only made of pine, and they’ve since disintegrated. Anything inside would disintegrate, too, because they’re all biodegradable. So each of those stones has a date on it, and that’s the Class of Whatever.

And there’s a stone for the last class of PMC, and then there’s another stone that says “The Last Class.” [That’s because] the last PMC class had their stone saying “The Last Class,” and when Penn Morton [put down a stone], it was “The Last Class of PMC.” Penn Morton College didn’t last long – I don’t think it was here for more than four years. But they only placed stones – they did not go through the rest of [the rituals], because they didn’t know [to make a coffin]. They just thought, “Oh, well, we’ll just put a stone up.” But of course we don’t do that anymore. That’s gone.

And of course the stadium itself, until it was torn down, was the oldest football stadium in the country. And the whole system of calling the football signals by numbers was created right here at Widener. The words to [the song] “Taps,” [traditionally] played by a bugler, were written here. So there were lots of things that we had done first.

Becky Alexander: Great! Thank you so much.

Dr. Edgette: You’re quite welcome.

Disclaimer: Although every effort has been made to use the correct spelling of proper names, in some interviews not all names could be verified.

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