Carroll H. Dunn
There were several reasons for my going to the University of Illinois. One, I had always
had a mechanical aptitude. I had done the usual working on cars, things of that sort,
worked around farm machinery. And I had had some encouragement. Dad had always
felt somehow, and I don't know why, that mechanical engineering was a good thing for
me to do. My grandfather (my mother's father) was very ingenious and on their farm
in Mississippi had developed a number of things. He had dammed up a creek and put
in a small hydroelectric plant so that they could have electricity back in the early
twenties. He had taken the engine block of an old Ford car engine and built it into a
pump. He dammed another creek and put in a waterwheel and, using this block as a
pump, had running water at their dairy barn and at the house. He had also developed
a sawmill. So I think primarily from him I inherited an inclination toward engineering
and mechanics.
You saw these things when
I spent nearly every summer for about four years from about 8 to 12 with my maternal
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grandfather and my uncle, who worked with him. I'm sure that at least indirectly this
influenced my movement toward engineering and probably toward mechanical
engineering, although there was no formal background that would lead me to do this.
But I decided early that I wanted to take engineering.
That being the case, my feeling was that employment and opportunities were probably
better in the North than in the South. Realizing this, just as the Depression was on in
the early thirties, made going North to school somewhat attractive.
Second, in actual fact, it was about 520 miles from Lake Village to Champaign, Illinois.
It was about 400 miles from Lake Village to Fayetteville, the location of the University
of Arkansas. The difference was the railroad. The I.C. Railroad ran up the east side of
the Mississippi River, and it was easier in those days to get to Champaign than it was
to go over 400 miles of gravel road to go to the University of Arkansas. That was a
second, though secondary, consideration.
The real consideration was the fact that my mother's elder sister lived in Champaign,
Illinois, and she was there primarily to assist her children in getting an education. When
my older brother two years before, in 1932, decided to go to college, our aunt took him
in and assisted in getting him started. When I came along, he was able to line up a place
for us to live in the home of one of the chemistry professors (chemistry being his
specialty)
we had a basement apartment. In return, I put in about 14 hours a
week working at their house and yard, taking care of their car, and so forth. This gave
us a working opportunity. And my brother had a job in the chemistry library where, as
I remember, he made something like to a month. This was what we used to
buy food. So we "batched." This developed the capability for us to have a place to stay
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