Good Afternoon Mrs. E

By By Frank Tankard (Contact)

Thursday, February 1, 2007

Mrs. E lives in a stone ranch house a block and a half west of Carruth-O’Leary Hall on Stratford Road. She is warm and personable and wears her curly white hair short. She is left-handed.

South and west of her house, on Daisy Hill, in the dining area behind Lewis Hall, students eat in Mrs. E’s.

Mrs. E sits in her living room.

“Do you eat liver?” she says.

No.

“Well, I don’t either.”

I came into her neat living room because… she is Mrs. E. I don’t really have any questions lined up.

So the 79-year-old Lenoir Ekdahl and I talk about liver. A ways back in the widow’s 35-year career as head of KU Dining Services, she used to have to serve it to students once a week to give them a little boost of iron. We talk about KU basketball. She tells me about the wild road trip she took through Europe with a group of friends when she was young.

My fascination with Mrs. E is simple. She is a person. And she is a dining hall.

Every day on campus, students coexist with names like Wescoe, Malott, Budig, Mrs. E. Some names belong to benefactors, some to professors, some to chancellors, some to dedicated staff members.

A TREAT FROM MRS. E

Lenoir Ekdahl, the original Mrs. E, has a recipe for homemade Twix bars, taken from an old cookbook by a woman named Euny Stoen.

Ingredients:

soda crackers

graham crackers

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1/3 cup milk

1/2 cup butter

2/3 cup peanut butter (Mrs. E recommends chunky)

one cup chocolate chips

Instructions:

Line a 9-by-13 cake pan with half a box of soda crackers. If the crackers don’t fit right, break them in two. Mash graham crackers into one cup of graham cracker crumbs

Combine the graham cracker crumbs with:

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1/3 cup milk

1/2 cup butter

Boil mixture for five minutes. Let cool slightly. Pour and spread mixture over soda crackers. Top with another layer of soda crackers. Combine 2/3 cup peanut butter with one cup chocolate chips. Melt peanut butter and chocolate chips together (you can use a microwave). Spread over the crackers. Let cool. Then eat.

One-hundred-and-thirty-seven major buildings occupy the 1,000-acre Lawrence campus. More than 100 of them are named for someone. Add to that lecture halls, floors and anything else that can be named, and campus is so stuffed with archaic names it’s a wonder anyone remembers any of them.

Some of these named things work to perpetuate the legends of the people they’re named after, like Allen Fieldhouse, named for KU basketball coach Forrest “Phog” Allen. But most go on to take on a life of their own, and the memory of the person behind the name is lost — so that when we think of Wescoe we think not of the late W. Clarke Wescoe, the University’s 10th chancellor, but of the parking garage-like building clogging the middle of campus.

So spend a few minutes and get to know a few of the people behind the names. That way, the next time you say, “Wescoe is an eyesore,” you’ll know exactly who you’re insulting.

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MRS. E's

About the dining hall: Ekdahl Dining Commons, commonly known as “Mrs. E’s,” opened in 1983 in back of Lewis Hall. It was named for Lenoir Ekdahl, commonly known as “Mrs. E,” in 1993, four years after her retirement.

Does Mrs. E ever eat in Mrs. E’s?

“I go up to eat there every once in a while, not very often,” she says. “They’re so surprised that I’m still alive, I think.”

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WESCOE HALL

About the building:

Designed in 1967 as a 25-story skyscraper and the third-largest educational building in the United States, a lack of funds led to the scaled-down four-story building that opened in 1973.

Wescoe Hall is known by many as the ugliest building on campus. This year the building’s air flow was tested because five people with offices there had developed brain tumors in the past eight years. Initial reports indicate the building is safe, although it does have zero air flow in some places.

About the man:

W. Clarke Wescoe (1920-2004) served as the University’s 10th chancellor, from 1960 to 1969.

During an era of Vietnam protests (some of them taking place in the “Wescoe Hole,” as the pit where Wescoe Hall was to stand was called in the years awaiting its construction), Wescoe was known as a friendly man with a sense of humor who worked with students more than his predecessors had.

He was so friendly with the students, in fact, that he once had his ribs broken by one. That happened when 6-foot-8 defensive end Vernon Vanoy stepped out of the shower and gave Wescoe a giant bear hug in the locker room following the KU football team’s defeat of Missouri to advance to the 1968 Orange Bowl.

In the mid-60s, Wescoe began serenading students at commencement with lyrics he’d write to the tune of popular songs of the time, with the University orchestra backing him.

Wescoe and his wife, Barbara, would occasionally enjoy a drink. But because the chancellor’s residence, The Outlook, is on state property, drinking wasn’t allowed, his son David says. One day the chancellor at the University of Nebraska told Wescoe that what he did was toss his bottles onto the yard, then call the buildings and grounds crew and complain that those danged fraternity boys were at it again. Wescoe found this to be an efficient way of discarding his empties, David says.

As far as the connection between Wescoe Hall and the name goes, David Wescoe says that from the time he enrolled in the University in the mid-70s to when he graduated, no student ever made the connection.

“Not one time did any student say, ‘Oh… the building,’” he says.

But years later, when David’s son, Ben, attended a golf camp at the University, the other golfers gave him the nickname “Beach.”

It’s ironic that the Wescoe building is such an eyesore, given Chancellor Wescoe’s eye for art. He and Barbara donated many pieces to the University, including the tai chi figure in front of the law building.

“You’re kind of stuck with what you’re stuck with,” David Wescoe says. “There’s nothing you can do about the look. But I think that with my dad’s eye for art, he might have picked a different design.”

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BUDIG HALL

About the building:

Budig Hall opened in 1997 to replace Hoch Auditorium, which burned down in 1991 after lightning struck it. Hoch’s limestone façade was saved and included in the design. The building includes two 500-person lecture halls and a 1,000-person lecture hall, plus a computer lab and a few classrooms.

About the man:

Gene Budig would like you to know that he is not dead. He lives with his wife in Isle of Palms, S.C.

“Many people who visit the campus believe that I am dead because a building carries my name,” he says by phone from New York City, where he often does business these days. “People in the Lawrence community tell me that they hear this often. They are surprised to learn that the former chancellor is among the living.”

Budig, chancellor from 1981-1994, was born in 1939 in Lincoln, Neb., and lived in an orphanage for the first months of his life before he was adopted by Arthur and Angela Budig of small-town McCook, Neb.

Baseball dominated his childhood. He grew up going to semi-pro baseball games with his father and quickly became enamored with the game.

When Budig’s big-league dreams didn’t pan out, he enrolled in journalism school at the University of Nebraska, moonlighting as a reporter and editorial writer for the Lincoln Star and the Lincoln Journal newspapers, according to kuhistory.com. He went on to get his master’s degree in English and doctorate in education from the University of Nebraska while serving in the Nebraska Air National Guard. He served for 30 years, until 1992, reaching the rank of major general.

Budig quickly climbed the academic ranks, becoming the president of Illinois State University at the age of 34 in 1973. He also served as president of Western Illinois University before arriving at the University of Kansas.

In 1994 the baseball bug bit Budig again when Major League Baseball’s owners asked him to become president of the American League. He jumped at the chance. He had developed friendships over the years with current MLB commissioner Bud Selig, Royals owner Ewing Kaufman and other baseball executives.

Twelve days after Budig assumed the presidency, MLB players went on strike. The World Series was canceled. Budig spent the rest of his tenure as American League president working to restore the league’s tarnished image. In 1999 the American League and National League presidencies were dissolved, and Budig became special adviser to Commissioner Selig.

After spending several years at Princeton University as a professor in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, he now coordinates major studies for the College Board in New York. He has written several books, including one on the business of Major League Baseball and one on leading universities.

Despite his wide range of experience, Budig says his time at the University was the most fulfilling period of his life.

“I thought being a university president was the most meaningful position in America,” he says. “It gave you the opportunity to make a real and lasting difference. Society is only as strong as our institutions of higher learning.”

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MALOTT HALL

About the building:

Malott Hall was built in 1954 and is home to various science studies, including chemistry, physics and the School of Pharmacy.

About the man:

Deane W. Malott (1898-1996) served as the University’s eighth chancellor, from 1939 to 1951, before leaving to serve as president of Cornell University for 12 years. Born in Abilene, he was the first native Kansan and the first KU graduate to become chancellor.

In the World War II years, Malott had to make tough decisions and was instrumental in bringing military training programs to campus. His daughter Janet Malott Elliot remembers that he could be a firm leader when the times demanded it.

On Nov. 17, 1941, following the football team’s 20-16 upset victory against K-State, thousands of students demanded a holiday so they could celebrate. When Malott refused, a mob surrounded the chancellor’s mansion on campus.

“They absolutely took over the front yard,” Janet says, who was inside the house at the time. “They surrounded the house. It was kind of scary, really. They all had candles and were yelling and screaming that they deserved a vacation because they beat K-State.”

When Malott refused, students paraded downtown with a casket labeled “Malott’s coffin,” and hanged a dummy of the chancellor, according to kuhistory.com.

Malott’s wife, Eleanor, led an effort to plant 1,200 crab apple trees on campus, many of which still stand today. For help planting the trees, she enlisted German prisoners of war captured in Africa, who were being detained in Lawrence. These POWs also helped build Danforth Chapel.

The Malotts also organized a “dandelion day,” and recruited students in greek houses and others to spend a Saturday picking dandelions on campus.

“And it was fun,” Janet says. “They made it fun. It didn’t cost the University anything, and everyone got out and dug the dandelions.”

Once, son Bob Malott says, when the Malotts were leaving the chancellor’s residence, Eleanor’s finger got caught in the heavy oak door. Her finger was bleeding profusely, so they went to Watkins Memorial Hospital, where she realized her finger had been cut off. Bob ran back to the house, grabbed the finger, and brought it back to the hospital, where it was sewed back on, good as new.

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