In honor of tonight’s ghoulish festivitieshere are some Special Collections selections featuring ghosts, witches, mysteries, the occult and paranormal. Take a look if you dare. Who knows you may find a last minute costume idea or a recipe for your haunted house.
Coincidentally, I found mention of “the first SF I ever read” in a few places this year. The authors all happened to be about the same age, and all reading Gernsback publications with memorable Frank Paul covers. Paul, the primary illustrator of the first dedicated American SF magazine, is well known for hisarchetypal depiction of the alien machines from War of the Worlds. But the monolithic impression he made on Arthur C. Clarke is not so widely appreciated!
Arthur C. Clarke – Amazing Stories, November 1928
“The very first science-fiction magazine I ever saw had a cover by Frank Paul – and it is one of the most remarkable illustrations in the history of science fiction, as it appears to be a clear example of precognition on the part of the artist! I must have seen Amazing Stories for November 1928 about a year after it had been shipped across to England- so rumor has it, as ship’s “ballast”- and sold at Woolworth’s for 3p. How I used to haunt that once-famous store during my lunch hour, in search of issues of Amazing, Wonder, and Astounding, buried like jewels in the junk-pile of detective and western pulps! – Korshak, ed. From the Pen of Paul (Orlando: Shasta-Phoenix, 2009): 9.
Frederik Pohl – Amazing Stories Annual, 1927
“The name of the game that year was the Great Depression, but I didn’t know I was playing it. And at some point in that year of 1930 I came across a magazine named Science Wonder Stories Quarterly, with a picture of a scaly green monster on the cover[unfortunately not in our collection; how did that happen?!].I opened it up. The irremediable virus entered my veins . . . That first issue of Science Wonder was heaven, but I didn’t realize that the fact that it was a magazine implied that there would be other issues for me to find. When another science fiction magazine came my way, a few months later, it was like Christmas. That was an old copy of the Amazing Stories Annual, provenance unknown. Given two examples, I was at last able to deduce the probability of more, and the general concept of “science-fiction magazines” became part of my life.” –Pohl, The Way the Future Was (New York: Del Rey, 1978): 2, 6.
Lester Del Rey – Science Wonder Quarterly, Fall 1929
“The Fall 1929 Science Wonder Quarterly has an unusually effective cover by Paul, showing three men in spacesuits, tethered by air lines to a rocket…This, incidentally, was the first science fiction magazine I ever read.” –Del Rey, The World of Science Fiction (New York: Garland, 1980): 50-51.
While Special Collections is primarily concerned with collecting rare and unique textual materials (we are, after all, part of a library, NOT a museum), there is still the occasional three dimensional artifact that finds its way here, usually as part of a larger manuscript collection, and/or because it provides valuable documentation of a particular subject in a significant way.
And as far as significance goes, one could argue that a Medal of Honor would be near the top of that list. The Medal of Honor is the United States of America’s highest military honor, awarded by the President of the United States in the name of Congress to US military personnel for personal acts of valor above and beyond the call of duty. Since its creation in 1861, 3,468 Medals of Honor have been awarded to servicemen (nearly half of those were awarded during the Civil War, when it was the only military award available). Due to its prestige and status, the Medal of Honor is afforded special protection under U.S. law against any unauthorized adornment, sale, or manufacture, and recipients are given special lifetime privileges and benefits from the US government, with their names and actions immortalized in ceremonies and monuments.
We have one of these Medals of Honor here in our collection, and this particular medal was awarded to Virginia Tech alum Sergeant Earle Davis Gregory (1897-1972). Gregory, of Chase City, Virginia, was the first native Virginian to receive the Medal of Honor, and one of seven Virginia Tech alums that have received the honor. Gregory earned the Medal of Honor for actions as an Army Sergeant in the 116th infantry regiment during the Meuse Argonne Offensive in World War I. The medal was awarded for gallantry at Bois de Consenvoye, north of Verdun, France on October 8, 1918. With the remark, I will get them! Sergeant Gregory seized a rifle and a trench-mortar shell (which he used as a hand grenade), left his detachment of the trench-mortar platoon and advanced ahead of the infantry, capturing 22 enemy soldiers, as well as a machine gun and a howitzer.
On October 11, 1918, three days after Gregorys heroic charge, he was seriously wounded by shrapnel from an exploding artillery shell in the left thigh, earning him the Purple Heart. Exactly one month after he was wounded, World War I ended. Gregory spent four months in a hospital in France before returning to Virginia in February 1919. On April 24, 1919, he was awarded the Medal of Honor by Major General Omar Bundy in a ceremony at Camp Lee. Gregory was also subsequently awarded equivalent medals from the Allied countries, including the Italian Merito di Guerra, the French Croix de Guerre and Medaille Militaire, and the Montenegrin Order of Merit.
After the war, Gregory enrolled at Virginia Tech as a member of the Corps of Cadets and studied Electrical Engineering, graduating in 1923. As a senior, he was a Cadet Captain and Company Commander, President of the Corps of Cadets, and selected as “Most Popular Cadet.” After graduating, Gregory spent his career working for the Veterans Administration and was an active member of several veterans organizations. He passed away in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on January 6, 1972.
The Virginia Tech precision military marching unit, The Gregory Guard, was named in honor of Sgt. Gregory in May 1963, and in 1965, Gregory bequeathed his medals, along with his papers and photographs, to Virginia Tech Special Collections. An exhibit of highlights from the Earle D. Gregory Collection, including his medals, are currently on display in the Special Collections reading room.
Sixty years ago in September 1953, Irving Linwood Peddrew, III was the first black student admitted to Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI). Everett Pierce Ramey applied to VPI in 1951, but his application was refused because he wished to study business. Black students were considered for admission only if they wished to pursue a curriculum, such as engineering, that was not offered at Virginia State, the black land-grant state school near Petersburg. Once admitted, a black student was not permitted to change his major from engineering to another course of study.
In November 2002, Peddrew did an oral history interview with Tamara Kennelly, University Archivist, in which he spoke of the loneliness of desegregating Virginia Tech. Just this year he released the interview to the public. The interview is available at https://web.archive.org/web/20170403191202/http://spec.lib.vt.edu/archives/blackhistory/oralhistory/peddrew/
Peddrew was not permitted to live on campus or eat in the cafeteria with the other cadets. He boarded with the Mr. and Mrs. Hoge about a mile away from campus. He had to lug his cadet gear back and forth each day and change in another cadet’s room to be prepared for the meticulousness of military bearing. Several students requested him as a roommate the following year, but that was not permitted.
In the fall of 1954, three more black students entered Virginia Tech: Lindsay Cherry, Floyd Wilson, and Charlie Yates. They too had to live and eat their meals off campus. In 1958 Yates became the first black student to graduate from Virginia Tech. Yates earned his doctorate from Johns Hopkins. He later returned to Virginia Tech and taught first in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and then in the Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering. For more interviews, images, and information about the first and early black students at Virginia Tech, visit https://web.archive.org/web/20170403174318/http://spec.lib.vt.edu/archives/blackhistory/
In 2003 New Residence Hall West, which was built in 1998, was renamed Peddrew-Yates Hall to honor Irving Linwood Peddrew, III (on the right) and Charlie Yates.