Photos by Chris Meyer
A shiny silver urn sits on a
shelf in the main room of IU Archives. In 1935, it contained
the commingled ashes of Mathilda and Otto Klopsch, from
the Class of 1896, who had met and fallen in love at
IU. In a touching letter that accompanied the urn, the
Klopsches’ children wrote: "We feel that it would
only be fitting and proper that we should make [our
parents’] final resting place at the Campus of the University
they so dearly loved. Therefore, we have scattered their
ashes to the winds at the sundial on the University
Campus. May their spirit rest as peacefully, as it lived
happily, while they studied and loved on these same
grounds." | While this treasured repository is known for its vast photography collection and its comprehensive administrative and faculty documents, it also contains a number of three-dimensional artifacts which would surprise most visitors.
Photography curator Brad Cook pulled something out of a bookcase. “This is the steering wheel from Wendell Willkie’s ‘One World’ tour,” said Cook. In 1942, having lost the presidential election to FDR in1940,Willkie traveled 31,000 miles in 49 days in a converted military bomber, visiting people and places that most Americans could not picture, much less fathom visiting—Africa, China, the Soviet Union and the Mideast. The following year, Willkie published a book, One World, based on his adventure, which sold more than 2 million copies its first year in print. Cook can’t tell us which scrap yard became Willkie’s bomber’s final resting place, but he does know where its steering wheel is.
Other unexpected items can be found among the eclectic mix of artifacts donated
to University Archives through the years, including IU’s flag
from its WWI ambulance corps, Theopolis Wylie’s (brother of
the first IU President Andrew Wylie) mercury switches, the
first touch-tone phone used in Monroe County, the late professor
Carl Eigenmann’s shell collection and a pair of Little 500
boxer shorts.
1. (from left) The first touch-tone phone used in Monroe County,
2. IU’s flag from its WWI ambulance corps, 3. Little 500 boxer
shorts (right). From behind a cabinet door, and 4. Cook appeared
holding a medium-sized, very square box. He turned it around
to reveal a somewhat eerie, life-sized plaster “face” of William
Lowe Bryan, who served as president of IU from 1902 to 1937.
While plaster masks made from the faces of deceased persons
were fairly common in the 19th century, Cook explained that
this is a “life mask,” and Bryan was very much alive when
the mask was made by artist Gordon Reagan sometime between
1935 and 1941.
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