"A Very Special Place in Our Hearts"
Hazelbakers' Gift to IU
Ralph and Billie Hazelbaker, whose gift to the IUB Libraries helped purchase new furnishings for students at the Herman B Wells Library, met at IU as freshmen in 1945. “IU,” Ralph Hazelbaker says, “has a very special place in both our hearts.”
Those were booming times. The country was emerging from World War II, and returning GIs ushered in the greatest period of expansion IU has ever experienced. The Hoosiers even won the Big Ten football championship. “IU beat both Michigan and Purdue,” Hazelbaker recalls with pride.
A mutual friend introduced Ralph Hazelbaker to his future wife, Billie. “We were walking down the street near the Delta Zeta house across from the Union,” Hazelbaker says, remembering it as clearly as if it were yesterday. “We met right on that sidewalk and started a relationship that has lasted all these many years.”
Campus was different then. Hazelbaker’s fraternity house—located on Jordan Avenue and known as the “Castle on the Hill”—has since burned down. The library at the time was located at Franklin Hall, before moving in 1969 to the new Main Library (now the Wells Library). There were no laptops, iPods, or 24/7 computer access, which students now seem to require.
“We perhaps didn’t do as much group study as students apparently do today,” Ralph Hazelbaker says. “ I recall that we’d meet at the library, but typically we were studying individually.” Still, Hazelbaker says, the library was the center of action, and he and Billie spent many fruitful hours there. He remembers Herman B Wells as a “familiar figure toddling around campus.”
For all that has changed, the Hazelbakers believe in the steadfast power of libraries to transform individuals and communities. “I got involved doing things for libraries in my little hometown,” Hazelbaker says modestly. Besides helping establish a library in Summitville, Ind., Hazelbaker and his wife also fund scholarships for students from Madison County, Ind., to attend IU. Three scholarship recipients are on campus now, and two more are expected this fall.
Hazelbaker wants undergraduates—whether those attending IU as a result of his scholarships or students unknown to him who use the library—to realize the benefits of attending IU, which for him, he says, changed the course of his life. “It was a very special time of my life to be experiencing all of the new opportunities,” he says, “having my world open up to me as to what was possible.”
