The Memorial Grove and Cenotaph

When the United States entered World War One in 1917, the Michigan Agricultural College answered the call to arms.

Along with many colleges and universities across the country, M.A.C. contracted with the U.S. government to provide housing and training facilities for the Student Army Training Corps. Williams Hall and Wells Hall were conscripted to house trainees, and several barracks were constructed north of Laboratory Row. Trainees engaged in military drill and physical training, and studied practical skills such as auto and truck mechanics.¹

Nearly all of the local societies closed their doors during fall term 1918, “for with almost the entire student body of men in barracks on the campus and under strict military surveillance there can be no society activity.” Many of their houses were repurposed, some to cope with the second wave of the 1918–1920 influenza epidemic: “The Columbian Society house [at 131 Bogue Street] has been taken over by the college as quarters for twenty or more Red Cross nurses, who are taking care of the influenza patients at the hospital. The Columbian House adapts itself very well to this use, being close to the new barrack buildings which are being used as the hospital.”²

Regular enrollment at the College declined sharply as many of its students enlisted for the war effort. Sadly, it goes without saying that many of these young men did not return home.

Seven months after the war ended, during Commencement Week in June 1919 the cadet corps held a dedication ceremony to memorialize M.A.C.’s war dead on a hilltop location west of Faculty Row and the “Senior House,” the former president’s house that was then in use as a women’s dormitory annex.^† A stone cenotaph about four feet tall was erected, bearing a bronze tablet with the names of thirty-six alumni and students who had died in service.⁴

Robert S. Welsh ’94	Laurence J. Bauer w/’18
Ira D. MacLachlan ’10	Gordon W. Cooper w/’18
Franklin E. Leonard w/’11	Frank Esselstyn w/’18
William R. Johnson ’12	Louis K. Hice w/’18
Leonard Crone w/’13	Cosmer M. Leveaux w/’18
Arling F. Edwardsen w/’13	George Smith Monroe w/’18
William T. McNeil ’13	William H. Rust w/’18
Herbert J. Sheldon ’14	James S. Palmer w/’18
Thomas W. Churchill ’15	Olin N. Hinkle w/’19
Eugene E. Ewing ’15	Olin C. Luther w/’19
Norman F. Hood w/’15	LaVerne T. Perrottet w/’19
Donald C. McMillan ’15	Burrell F. Smith w/’19
Ernest E. Peterson ’15	Garth J. Williams w/’19
Francis Irving Lankey ’16	Hubert Barnes Wylie w/’19
Donald A. Miller w/’16	Earl Halbert w/’20
Lester P. Harris w/’17	Samuel Robinson McNair w/’20
Silas D. Harvey w/’16	William Bryan Lutz w/’20
Harold R. Siggins w/’17	Otto W. Wissman w/’20

This list was far from complete. In 1925 the M.A.C. Record announced that a bronze tablet was being procured for the Union Memorial Building and pleaded for input to ensure it was complete; the article tallied forty-eight men. The memorial wall of the Alumni Chapel bears fifty-one names of WW1 dead.⁵

During the ceremony, in a speech that quoted Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and the popular anthem “Michigan, My Michigan,” Lt. Col. Augustus H. Gansser of the 125th Infanty, 32nd Division, paid tribute to the M.A.C. men and briefly described some of their heroic actions. Five of the names on the cenotaph were men who had served in Gansser’s regiment, so he knew well of their individual sacrifice.^††6

Along with the cenotaph, a grove of thirty-six red oak trees (Quercus rubra), one for each man in memoriam, was planted a few days after the dedication ceremony.

The Memorial Grove is little known today but it remains intact, west of Sarah Williams Hall, its cenotaph standing near the sidewalk alongside the Beal Street entrance drive. For years the stone was flanked by a pair of shrubs that served to conceal as much as highlight it, but in spring 2024 a project was undertaken to preserve and improve the site. A brick courtyard area, seating for quiet reflection, lighting, landscaping, and a flagpole “allow for the M.S.U. community to pay respect to those who gave their lives protecting the United States of America.” The rededication ceremony was held on May 23, 2024.⁷

As powerful a statement as the stark, rough-hewn, stone cenotaph is, and as thoughtful and fitting as the site’s new improvements are, the most powerful and fitting memorial is the grove of red oaks that stand tall upon the hill like a loose gathering of silent, majestic mourners. It is a testament to the skill and care of the M.S.U. Grounds Department that twenty-four of those trees, two-thirds of those planted and each one now over a century old, still stand.⁸

 

1. MAC Record, 24(1), 30 Sep 1918, p. 3. ↩︎
2. MAC Record, 24(1), 30 Sep 1918, p. 3; 24(4), 25 Oct 1918, p. 3. ↩︎
3. Minutes, 26 Aug 1863, p. 113. MAC Record, 18(27), 8 Apr 1913, p. 4. ↩︎
4. MAC Record, 24(29), 9 May 1919, p. 4. ↩︎
5. MAC Record, 30(16), 26 Jan 1925, p. 245. ↩︎
6. MAC Record, 24(33), 20 Jun 1919, pp. 9–10. ↩︎
7. MSU Today, 24 May 2024. ↩︎
8. MSU Campus Tree Map, filtered on “Collection contains ‘COM-Great_War’” and accessed 5 May 2024. ↩︎

1. † This was the site of the college’s first pear orchard, planted circa 1863. The trees had produced well for many seasons but had suffered from pear blight and judicious preventative prunings for many more, so the orchard was deemed an unsightly display alongside the main entrance to campus and was removed in 1913.³↩︎
2. †† Gansser closed his speech by reciting from the popular hymn “God bless our native land” which surely seemed appropriate at the time; this author finds it a weird choice since it is an English translation of “Gott segne Sachsenland,” the national anthem of Saxony, which was part of the German Empire.↩︎