Fifty years ago today, Student Association President George Barry watched Old Main Dormitory burn to the ground. Barry, a business alumnus, said the first thing the SA did was confirm the survivors.
“Trying to determine that everybody was out and alive was quite an effort,” he said. “The big thing was the loss of one person.”
University archivist Michael Ballard said the victim was Henry Williamson.
“He had gotten out of the building because people saw him outside, and then a few people saw him go back in,” he said.
Ballard said the dorm was first opened along with the school and was expanded incrementally before the time of the fire.
“It extended from about where the front of the Union is to about one-third of McCool Hall,” he said. “It had 500 rooms and was four stories high. Supposedly there was always three or four students to a room.”
He said there are stories of students setting the paper in their trash cans on fire and rolling the cans down the hall, which could have led to the fire.
Charles “Tex” Ritter, a 1956 agriculture alumnus, was working for student affairs when the building burned. He said he and others gathered under an oak tree near Old Main with the president’s administrative assistant, Alec McKeigney, to decide what to do during the fire.
“Of course, our first concern was to make sure that everybody knew that the dormitory was on fire and that they needed to exit the dormitory,” Ritter said. “When that was completed, Alec said, ‘Well now, we should make some effort to save the furniture because that’s going to be one of the questions that the building commission is going to ask.'”
Ritter said he and others entered the first floor of the burning building.
“We emptied two rooms and I remember Mr. McKeigney said, ‘That’s fine, don’t go back in. We can tell the building commission now we made an effort to save the furnishings,'” he said.
A business alumnus from 1962, Bob Bailey, said he credits the burning of the dormitory with helping him pass chemistry.
“Dr. Sheely was my professor and he was one who separated the sheep from the goats and I’m afraid I was a goat in engineering school,” he said. “The burning of Old Main I think brought out the only soft spot he had in his heart and he gave us passing grades if we lived in Main Dormitory because my exam was the next morning after Main Dormitory burned down.”
The residents of Old Main Dormitory played many tricks on each other.
Barry said he remembers the time someone poured lighter fluid on his door and caught it on fire. He heard someone knock, and then the door suddenly burst into flames.
Bailey said residents would often play with the dorm fire hoses on Friday and Saturday nights.
“We had one guy down the hall that had a tendency to come in drunk late at night as freshman would,” he said. “One night there was a dog that hung around the dormitory, so we put that dog to bed in his bed and he came in. Of course he went screaming up and down the hall.”
He also said the janitors would pile trash up in the corners.
“It was not uncommon for somebody to come along and set them on fire,” Bailey said. “It’s a wonder the dormitory didn’t burn down years before.”
The Mississippi State University Alumni Association and the University Libraries sponsored Thursday’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the night Old Main Dormitory burned.
Executive director for the MSU Alumni Association Jimmy Abraham said former residents of Old Main were invited back to campus and a reception would be held for them at 6 p.m. in the Colvard Student Union Ballroom.
“At 7 we’re going to move over to Lee Hall Auditorium, and we have a program that’s open to the public where we’ll show a film of Old Main,” he said. “Then we’re going to ask Dr. Roy Ruby to come up on stage and he will have five or six residents of Old Main and they will just talk about what took place back in the good old days.”