Sophomores often are dumped in the worst housing on campus. Freshman are carefully placed in freshmen dorms, which, although usually not elegant, are often positioned to give freshmen a positive view of the college so that they are willing to pay the tuition to come back the next year. Upperclassmen participate in a housing lottery, with seniors going first, juniors second, and then sophomores. So it was not surprising that my sophomore year found me living on the back end of beyond, in Dupont Hall. On the current campus map (like the one above) there are lots of buildings around Dupont – dorms, a second dining hall, and a basketball arena. None of that was built yet when I lived in this dorm. Of all of the brown, blue, and green buildings “above” duPont on the map, only building #636, Yates Hall, was there in 1966. Yates had been built in 1962, and it’s where Tim lived during his freshman year. I lived far away from every place I needed to go on campus. (Yates is currently scheduled for demolition.)
I need to emphasize how much we depended on the college cafeteria (“the caf”) for food. The dorms had little kitchenettes on each floor, but they contained only a refrigerator. No microwaves yet. No coffeemakers (they were forbidden because of the danger of fire or something.) Individually packaged snack foods, common today, were not readily available in those days. If you lived on campus and wanted to eat, you only option was to buy the college meal plan and eat in the caf. This was mandatory for your first three years. For your senior year, you could choose to make other arrangements for your meals — which meant going to a local greasy spoon for their “student specials.” More about that in my Stop 13 essay in a few weeks.
Here's a little history of the building. DuPont Hall opened in 1964 and was named after Jessie Ball DuPont (1884-1970), a teacher and philanthropist whose father, Confederate officer Thomas Ball, had graduated from the College before the Civil War. Jessie married Alfred I. duPont (of the famous and wealthy Delaware duPont family) in 1921. Twenty years younger than him, she was his third wife. When he died in 1935, he left his entire estate, worth some $56 million, to Jessie. The major charity Jesse funded from this inheritance is the Nemours Foundation, which is dedicated to improving the health of children. The Jesse Ball duPont Foundation (her estate) has subsequently given hundreds of thousands of dollars to William and Mary. She’s earned a dorm. (Just so we’re clear — I didn’t know any of this at the time, and I never wondered who the building was named after.)
Here’s a bit more about Jessie’s father, Thomas Ball. (I didn’t know any of this either.)
He was born in 1836 in Northumberland County, Virginia, the oldest child of Thomas and Louise Edwards Spiller Ball. He is related to the Ball family of Virginia – George Washington’s mother was Mary Ball.
He was educated in private schools and went to college at William and Mary. He was admitted to the Virginia bar on February 22, 1858, in Richmond, Virginia.
He was a Civil War Veteran – a Lieutenant in the 47th Virginia Infantry and later in CO. D, Virginia 9th Cavalry Regiment. According to one unsourced anecdote I found on Ancestry.com, he was shot with a rifle. The Minnie ball went through his left wrist, entered his right lung, and was never removed. After he was wounded, he was captured by the Yankees and taken to Camp Chase, Ohio where he was thrown into prison. Later, he escaped and was forced to hide in a hollow log to keep from being recaptured. Two Yankees who pursued him stood on the same log in which he hid. Thomas heard their threats as to what they would do to him upon recapture. Thomas had to crawl through the woods for miles in order to escape. He then walked all the way home.
After the war, he moved to Texas and he practiced law there for fourteen years. He served in the Texas State Senate 1876; was Assistant Attorney General of Texas; was appointed Special U.S. Attorney of Texas." He married Lalla Gresham, on February 27, 1878, in Galveston, Texas
He then returned to Virginia and practiced law until 1907 when he moved to California. . He is listed in the "California History of the Bench and Bar of Southern California 1909.
DuPont is the only dorm I lived in that had semi-private bathrooms – each set of two rooms shared a connecting bathroom. That was the height of luxury – both Jefferson and Barrett Halls, which I wrote about earlier, had one bathroom per floor.
My roommate was Marty McGuire. We had become friends during our freshman year and had joined the same sorority, so when we were looking for roommates for our second year it made sense for us to room together. We got along fine, although I wouldn’t say we were closest friends. It think it’s more important to get along with your roommate than to have your bestie as your roomie. Besides, by that time Tim was my bestie and the college wouldn’t let us live together.
The year in Dupont was fairly unremarkable. Everything was far away – there was still only one dining hall on the campus, and it was the black building labeled 414 (beneath the bright blue building 220 on the far right side of the map above – about a 15-minute walk. Tim was living in Old Dominion Hall (#612, above the Sunken Garden on the map), so that year involved a lot of walking for both of us. The college ran shuttle buses that did a loop around the campus every 15 minutes or so, so I could get a ride to class or a ride home if my timing was right. Generally, however, I walked.
My two economics classes that year met in Marshall-Wythe (or James Blair — I wrote about it on June 24th) – Micro-Economics and Statistics. This building is #122, above the Sunken Garden on the map. My math class met in an old Methodist Church building that the college had purchased to house the Math Department; it was located just off the map to the right, where Talbot’s is now, if you know the area. My art history class met in Phi Beta Kappa Hall near Swem Library. That wasn’t too hard to get to – but if I wanted breakfast first, I had to go to the caf at the far eastern part of campus, hoof it back to Phi Bete for my 9:00 class, and then make it to my 10:00 math class in the Math Building (Church) in the 10 minutes between classes. I hardly ever made it on time – and my math professor sometimes stopped talking and watched me as I came into the class late, and then occasionally thanked me for gracing the class with my presence. Ass.
An aside: A few years ago, I was doing some volunteer work in the memory care unit at a local assisted living facility. You wanna guess who was living there? Yeah, my asshat math professor. I was nice to him, although it was tempting to torment him by hiding his slippers or something. I proved I was a better person than him. Not a high bar.
My other class that year was English, which met on the third floor of the Wren Building (#154 on the map). Like I said, lots of walking. At least the library was close by! Some people had bicycles, but I was too cool for that. Right.
One of my clearest memories of my year in Dupont was exam week at the end of the spring semester. I had four exams (for my English class we had to write a final paper, not take an exam). After several “reading” days, my exams were scheduled on the first four days of the first exam week -- Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning. The college rules said that if you had three exams in two days, you could arrange to take one of the exams at a different time. My exam schedule didn’t meet this standard, but it was a killer. My schedule went something like this for these four days:
Get up early enough to go to breakfast and then take an exam from 9-12.
Go to lunch.
Come back to the dorm. I usually took the shuttle bus.
Dump all my stuff from that morning’s exam, gather up all my stuff for the next day’s exam, and go to a little tucked-away study area in the dorm to study for the next day’s exam.
I had kind of claimed that study room – at least, no one else seemed to want it. I piled books and notebooks in there in preparation for exam week and just kind of lived there for the week. I guess everyone thought I had gotten permission or something to commandeer this room for four days. I probably looked a little stressed so no one questioned me.
Take an hour break to go to dinner.
Come back and study until I was done.
Go to bed.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
On the last night of this schedule, I pulled the only all-nighter of my entire life (well, until I had children). My microeconomics exam was the next day, and I had SO much to study.
On Thursday, after my last exam, I racked shortly after dinner. As we had planned, my father appeared the next morning to pick me up to go home for the summer (students couldn’t have cars on campus). I hadn’t done much packing by the time he got there, so my crap was everywhere. He was kind of mad at me because I wasn’t ready to get in the car when he got there, but I was in NO MOOD. Because it was the end of the school year, I had to clear out my dorm room. I just threw things in the car and, as I recall, we drove home pretty much in silence. My father couldn’t hold a grudge for long (particularly toward me because I was his Baby Girl) and was nice to me once we got home. I think it took me a month to get all my stuff sorted out at home.
So true, especially the part about the exams and the ride home. 😂