The class of 1947 was, in the words of one graduate, "all mixed up."

While soldiers were marching through the Yard, male students faced the imminence of the draft while women and the ineligible struggled to make the best of their college years. The class also saw 10 of its members loss their lives in World War II.

A normal undergraduate experience was impossible for the class of '47. Many professors and graduate students were gone; student activities collapsed; and the Navy occupied Eliot House.

This class was at the center of some of the most significant changes in the character of the College this century. While the G.I. Bill forever changed the regional, ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the College, the beginnings of "joint-education" offered new opportunities to women and broke down the most significant educational barrier between Harvard and Radcliffe.

At a time of both excitement and disruption, the Harvard experience, Thomas L.P. O'Donnell '47 writes in this year's class report, was marked by "urgency, dislocation and opportunity."

"It was funny time to go to school," says Carl A. Lindblad Jr. '47.

Life in the Service

The class of '47 was fractured from the start, entering the College in three waves: in June 1943, November 1943 and March 1944.

Most students were civilians and immediately moved into one of the three houses--Dunster, Lowell and Adams--that the armed services were not already using for their units. Eliot and Kirkland houses and all of the Yard dorms were being occupied by military personnel.

Most of the students entering in 1943 and 1944 knew that it would not be long before they would join the uniformed ranks marching outside their windows.

"Most of us were under the shadow of the draft," Lindblad says.

"The minute you were 18, they would take you," says William L. Frost '47.

Most students either joined the Navy V-12 or Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) programs. As participants, they would be formally enlisted and trained in the Navy while they remained at Harvard and prepared for active duty.

The Navy students who were drafted would often spend only a semester in their original house before moving into one of the military houses.

At that point, they were moved into Eliot or Kirkland, where they had to make their own beds (the other houses had room service), go to bed at 10 p.m. and rise at 6 a.m. for morning runs and drills.