LEUVEN, Belgium – WestConn has connections all around the world, and for this Veterans Day we will take you to Belgium, where a nearly 100-year-old gesture from Danbury State Normal School is memorialized in a library wall.
As World War I raged through Europe, German troops burned the library at the university in Leuven, Belgium. More than 300,000 books, manuscripts and other historical and irreplaceable items were lost. The destruction of the library, built in the 1400s, became a rallying cry in the United States, where residents saw evidence of German blood lust and argued it was one reason to enter the fighting on the side of the Allies.
Veterans Day was originally called Armistice Day to recognize the end of fighting with Germany on Nov. 11, 1918. The call to rebuild the university library was one of hundreds of efforts around the world to memorialize those who fought and suffered during the war.
In the 1920s, the president of Columbia University in New York began fundraising to rebuild the library. The Danbury State Normal School — now Western Connecticut State University — sent money, which Leuven University recognized with a brick inscribed with the name of the small school in Danbury.
Although the library was attacked and largely destroyed one more time during World War II, it was again restored, and the brick survives in its original wall, surrounded by names of other donors, including Herbert Hoover, Tufts and Yale universities, the American Association of University Women, and “The Puerto Rican School Teachers.”
WestConn Archivist Brian Stevens became aware of the recognition when he was contacted by Ingrid Tierens, a Ph.D. student from Chicago doing research on the library’s reconstruction. Stevens relayed that Lothrop D. Higgins, was the Normal School’s “principal” during the time of the reconstruction fundraising, and Tierens provided him with background about the project, along with photos of the brick.
Although Stevens found no archival material on how Danbury’s school for teachers got involved, he has a theory.
“Here is my guess: Perkins died in 1923. He went to Dartmouth, was in ROTC, and he was in the military for a couple of years. His son was in the military, too. Perkins was too old to get into WWI, but through that experience, and having a kid who was eligible to go to war, I’m thinking that Perkins probably spearheaded the fundraising on campus. That’s all speculation, but money was raised, because they put our brick in the wall.
“It’s just kind of moving, right? They were thinking, we’re going to philanthropically get involved with helping this place 4,000 miles away get back on its feet after the war. The First World War was the biggest thing in that first 20 years of WestConn’s existence, but it’s interesting that this small school with a very modest economic student body would endeavor to do this. It probably involved the faculty more than it did the students, but they probably hit up the students for donations, too. I think it speaks to this commitment to being good citizens and being good people. It’s nice that you find out about it almost a hundred years later. This happened and nobody has any idea, but now it’s a real thing to us.”
WestConn will celebrate Veterans Day with the Veterans Day Ceremony and Reception, beginning at 11 a.m. at Ives Concert Hall, White Hall, Midtown campus.
Western Connecticut State University changes lives by providing all students with a high-quality education that fosters their growth as individuals, scholars, professionals and leaders in a global society. Our vision: To be widely recognized as a premier public university with outstanding teachers and scholars who prepare students to contribute to the world in a meaningful way.