Well, how many were on the campus Monday to participate in the 80th commencement of Iowa Wesleyan? The guesses run from five to fifteen thousand. But there are extremes in everything. President Coons who has much experience in estimating audiences, fixed the crowd at 7,000. Mr. Miles Babb of Chicago who for years has made a sort of hobby of estimating crowds at football games and such gatherings, and then checking his estimate with the day’s official announcement, and so has become a sort of expert in group guessing, fixed the crowd on the campus at the time of Byrd’s address at about 7,500.

Our official guess, after prudent and thoughtful consideration, is 7,250. Had we not been discouraged by seasoned guesses; we would have followed the good old newspaper custom of making the figures plenty and then adding enough to fill the cup to overflowing and counting the overflow and make it 10,000 flat. We have long since learned that newspaper figures must be discounted.

But when we say that Commencement this year was a big event, we are not going to discount that one jot or tittle. For it was a big event in all four directions, emotionally, culturally, spiritually and educationally. It will be a long time before it will be repeated on Wesleyan’s campus.

There was no more genuinely sincere meeting of old friends Monday, than when Mr. James T. Whiting grasped the outstretched hand of his old friend, Dr. Poulter. For weeks during the long preparation for the trip to the south pole, Dr. Poulter had the invaluable and constant assistance of Mr. Whiting in unpacking, examining, indexing and repacking the immense amount of delicate and highly expensive scientific apparatus, which streamed into Dr. Poulter’s office from all over the country and Europe. Night after night the two men would work long hours checking and re-checking each and every item, and perhaps no man in the expedition had a more thorough knowledge of the accumulation of scientific instruments than Mr. Whiting. So, Mr. Whiting was the personal guest of Dr. Poulter in the parade.

Superintendent McMillan was another whom Dr. Poulter was especially glad to see again, for McMillan, too had afforded Dr. Poulter much assistance in getting off, his wide mechanical experience being of great help, and the facilities of the city were freely used to aid the great adventure. In fact, Mt. Pleasant directly and indirectly was a far more important factor in the success of the expedition than our own people realize.

The Junior Chamber of Commerce is to be congratulated upon its first baptism of fire. To it was delegated the mechanical part of the big day, the decorations, the parade, in fact all the details off the campus. The parade was colorful and started on time and moved on schedule, which is worthy of note. Traffic was handled with marvelous efficiency, and in spite of the flow of cars and pedestrians, there was no blocking of streets, no accidents, no disorder, nothing to mar the proceedings of the day. The decorations were excellent, three bands enlivened things up, the people were out and everything was in harmony. Which means that those in charge put over their task to the satisfaction of everybody.

With the return of Dr. Poulter, however, after two years absence, there also returns more or less of confusion and embarrassment on campus and about town. We regret to mention this, but cannot get away from it. The old problem of telling Brother Tom from Brother John again harms us.

Just what Dr. Poulter’s relations to Iowa Wesleyan will be in the future is not quite clear. He will be away the coming collegiate year on leave of absence. During this time, he will appear on the lecture platform, assist on a screen story of the expedition’s work in the Antarctic and will assist in sorting and arranging the vast amount of material gathered during the expedition. He goes back to Boston for a spell and will also go to Hollywood to work on the screen story.

President and Mrs. Coons will go off this evening or early tomorrow morning for New Hampshire their future home. They will go immediately to their summer camp, but next week the Doctor must appear in Boston where he will be given a doctorate by Boston university. The summer will be spent in camp resting up for the new years’ work as Head Master of Tilton school.

Byrd and Poulter are not the only famous men who have visited Mt. Pleasant. Mr. Max Babb, formerly of this community and now president of the great Allis-Chalmers corporation at Milwaukee likes to tell of his first interview with Marshall Field, head and founder of the nationwide firm of Marshall Field of Chicago. Mr. Babb had just cut loose from the old home here and had an appointment with Marshall Field. They had never met before and the first thing Mr. Field wanted to know was where Mr. Babb was from. “Mt. Pleasant, Iowa?” repeated Mr. Field with some interest and then to the surprise of Mr. Babb, he began to inquire after some of the old timers, and the hotels and one thing and another. And then said that he often made Mt. Pleasant on his trips over the territory and well-remembered being snow bound here at the Brazelton hotel one winter and with him and others was John D. Rockefeller when the latter was putting Standard Oil on the industrial map of the nation.

This will interest housewives. Dr. Poulter said that when the winter party arrived at Little America, the first thing done was to locate the camp abandoned by the first Byrd expedition to see what the elements had done to the great camp and its contents. As no living animal life was there to break in and destroy, the interest centered in the damage by storms and cold. A storage battery was still strong enough to send a current into the abandoned lighting system and the globes gleamed feebly. A telephone set, also abandoned, worked well. A large amount of provisions were abandoned when the party left and these were found preserved and were actually consumed by the new party. Among the provisions were several cases of eggs. These eggs, frozen solid for several years, were used by the second expedition. Asked if the eggs would thaw out and hatch, Dr. Poulter dodged by saying that none were left to experiment with and so would be unable to answer.

(“Mt. Pleasant News”, June 4, 1935, page 2)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Resource provided by Henry County Heritage Trust, Mount Pleasant, Iowa; transcription done by Liam Christensen, University of Northern Iowa Public History Field Experience Class, Spring 2025.