This Week in Tower History: February 7th, 2025

Image Courtesy of The Tower, Vol 57, Issue 14

By Thomas Saacks

Here are some fun February stories from this week in Tower history: 

The Tower, Vol 15, Issue 13, (February 6, 1936)

This week in 1936, Catholic hosted its Orange Bowl Victory Banquet celebrating the “Flying Cardinals” 1936 College Football Bowl Game victory. Joseph A. Spitzig reports on this historic accomplishment for the university in which the city of “Washington turned out en masse to render appreciation.” The game itself was highly competitive, with Catholic beating Ole’ Miss 20-19 following the latter team’s kicker missing a game tying extra point. The massive celebration during this week almost ninety years ago hosted a parade of about 3,000 fans, reportedly including then President Franklin D. Roosevelt who was caught in the crowd on his way to church that morning.

The Tower, Vol 38, Issue 12, (February 5, 1960)

This week in 1960, nineteen seniors at Catholic were selected to the 1960’s Who’s Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities. This organization has spent almost a century recognizing the scholastic achievement of students from across the nation. Of the nineteen, the largest plurality coming in over a quarter were nursing majors, followed closely by philosophy. 

The Tower, Vol 57, Issue 14, (February 2, 1979)

This week in 1979, Catholic celebrated the one year anniversary of the CUA-Brookland Metro Stop. Ralph Chite writes on several major affects this brought upon the campus community. The first was greater access for Catholic students to employment opportunities and city resources. The school had begun boasting it was only fifteen minutes from downtown. This was also a two way street, in which campus resources in turn became more available to citizens of the district who sought to utilize the library, as an example. The impact during this first year was not entirely without strife; Security Director William Nork led a yearlong campaign of impounding DC commuter’s cars who sought to utilize campus as a free park-and-ride for their commute. This was a massive effort, impounding “89 cars alone” in the previous fall semester.