Almanac: February

February 1

• Langston Hughes, the African-American poet, was born on this date in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri.  He eventually made his way to New York City where he would become a leader in what was to become known as the Harlem Renaissance.  His publications became widely known even before his graduation from college at the age of 27.  His poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was published just after his graduation from Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio. 

February 2

• This is the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, also known as Candlemas Day because of the ancient custom of blessing on this day candles intended for use in the liturgy.
   
• James Joyce, the Irish writer, was born on this date in 1882 in Dublin, the city that would be the subject of nearly all of his published work.  Although he lived in voluntary exile most of his life, he wrote about Ireland with remarkably accurate detail.  This date is also the anniversary of the appearance of his most celebrated novel, Ulysses, which was published by an American owner of a Parisian bookshop, Sylvia Beach. The novel portrays the events of a single day, June 16, 1904, in the lives of three Dubliners, Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly, and the young Stephen Dedalus.   The city of Dublin enthusiastically observes June 16 as Bloomsday.

February 3

• The Church keeps on this day a memorial of St. Blaise, a fourth-century bishop and martyr, long invoked as a patron against diseases of the throat. It remains the custom in many churches to bless the throats of the faithful on this day using candles blessed the preceding day bound together in the form of a cross with the following prayer: "Through the intercession of St. Blaise, bishop and martyr, may God free you from diseases of the throat and from every other evil."
   
• In Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1874, this date saw the birth of Gertrude Stein.  She was as important as a critic and casual commentator on art, literature, and culture as she was as a writer.  It was of Oakland, California, that she complained "there's no there there." Hemingway attributed to her the origin of the term "lost generation" to describe those Americans born at the beginning of the twentieth century who took refuge in Paris in the 1920's.

February 4

• On this date in 1902 Archbishop Alexander Christie telegraphed Father John A. Zahm, C.S.C., provincial superior of the Congregation of Holy Cross in the United States, that the purchase of 44 acres of land adjacent to the University had been accomplished.

February 5

• The University of Portland Almanac presently offers no specific entry for this date. If you wish to suggest material that would appropriately be listed under this date, please contact the editor.

February 6

• A memorial is kept on this date in honor of St. Paul Miki and his companions, sixteenth-century Japanese Christians who were martyred for their faith.

February 7

• St. Jerome Emiliani, a Venetian priest who founded a religious congregation in the sixteenth century for the education of youth is commemorated on this date. 
   
• In 1812 in Portsmouth, England, this was the birthday of the novelist Charles Dickens.
  
  
• In Pepin, Wisconsin, in 1867, this was the date of the birth of Laura Ingalls, known much later in life as Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of Little House on the Prairie (1935).
  
  
• And in 1885 in Sauk Center, Minnesota, it was the birthday of Sinclair Lewis, the author in 1920 of Main Street.

February 8

• Father Louis M. Kelley, C.S.C., president of the University from 1928 to 1934, died on this date in 1964 at the age of 79.  During Father Kelley's administration the University granted its first baccalaureate degrees to six bachelors of arts in 1929; he also  presided over Columbia University during the worst years of the depression.  After leaving Portland he later served as assistant superior general of the Congregation of Holy Cross.  His portrait, painted by artist-in-residence Emil Jacques, hangs on the third-floor of Waldschmidt Hall outside the offices of the dean of the Graduate School.
   
• In 1935 this date marked the first appearance of the Columbiad as a weekly publication.  It had begun as a periodical edited by the faculty but eventually came under the editorship of students.  Later in 1935 it changed its name to The Beacon in reflection of the change in name of the University itself and the adoption of "The Pilots" as a nickname for the school's athletes.
   
• Jules Verne was born on this day in 1828 in Nantes, France.

February 9

• This date fell on a Sunday in 1964, and students on the University of Portland campus gathered around the few television sets available to watch The Ed Sullivan Show and the premier performance in the United States of four young musicians from Liverpool, England.  The Beatles were already popular but this television appearance stirred the enthusiasm of young people across the country.  Some male students at UP took advantage of the long-haired style of the 'sixties to cut their hair after the fashion of their new heroes: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.

February 10

• This day the Church commemorates St. Scholastica, the sister of St. Benedict and foundress of the order of Benedictine nuns.
   
• In 1952, this date saw the opening of Blanchet House, which had begun as a project of students at the University of Portland prior to World War II.
   
• At Notre Dame, Indiana, in 1968, this was the day of the death of Father Michael J. Early, C.S.C., age 82, ninth president of the University,  from 1936 to 1940 and, from 1947 to 1952, principal of Columbia Prep.
   
• Brother Arthur Bouvier, C.S.C., died on this date in 1970 at age 82. He had served at the University from 1950 to 1963.

February 11

• In 1799 at Laigné-en-Belin, a village near Le Mans, France, this was the birthday of Basil Anthony Moreau, who was to become the founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross.  He was ordained a priest of the diocese of Le Mans in 1821 and soon became a member of the faculty of the diocesan seminary, teaching Scripture and providing spiritual direction for young men studying for the priesthood.  Within a few years he had gathered some of the priests who were his colleagues in the faculty into an association of "auxiliary priests" whose mission it was to assist parish priests through their preaching and ministry.  In addition Moreau was asked to undertake the direction of a group of religious laymen, who, since 1820, had been known as the Brothers of St. Joseph.  He joined the two groups into one body in 1835, which he called the Congregation of Holy Cross, after Sainte Croix, a suburb of Le Mans in which he owned some property and which became the first headquarters of the new group.  He also began to accept women into a division of the congregation known as the Marianites of Holy Cross. The Brothers taught in schools, at first in the parishes of the diocese of Le Mans as the priests conducted their ministry in the same area.  The Sisters undertook a number of ministries as teachers and in support of the work of Brothers and priests.  Soon, however, Moreau was responding to calls for assistance in distant places.  By 1853 there were Holy Cross religious in North America, Africa, and in East Bengal as well as in France.  Eventually the Sisters were split off into an autonomous society and today exist in three religious congregations. Today members of the Congregation of Holy Cross serve in France, North America, South America, Africa, and Asia.
  
  
• On this date in 1858 at Massabielle, near Lourdes in southern France, the Blessed Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous. The visions continued until July of the same year attracting large numbers of pilgrims, many of whom claimed to have received miraculous cures in answer to their prayers.  As devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes grew, the custom of building replicas of the grotto at Massabielle also spread.  A large grotto was carved out of a hillside at the University of Notre Dame.  A "grotto" on a smaller scale was also attempted at the University of Portland but its form did not endure; the garden shrine to the Blessed Virgin near the Chapel of Christ the Teacher, a gift of the Galati family, no doubt owes some of its inspiration and form to this movement.
  
  
• On this date in 1950, Father Theodore Mehling, C.S.C., the president of the University, announced that intercollegiate football would be dropped.
  
  
• Rene Descartes, the French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher, died on this day in 1650 in Stockholm, Sweden, at the age of 53.  Because he challenged the reliance on authority of scholasticism, he has been called the father of modern philosophy.

February 12

• This was the birthday in 1809, in Hardin Co. (now LaRue Co.), Kentucky, of Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States.

February 13

• The University of Portland Almanac presently offers no specific entry for this date. If you wish to suggest material that would appropriately be listed under this date, please contact the editor.

February 14

• The Church today commemorates Sts. Cyril and Methodius, missionaries to the Slavic peoples.  These saints are credited with creating the Cyrillic alphabet in order to accommodate the translation and writing of the scriptures and the liturgy in Old Slavonic.
   
• On this date in 1859 Oregon was admitted to the Union.

February 15

• On this date in 1935, the University filed articles of incorporation as the University of Portland, changing its name from Columbia University, the name that Archbishop Alexander Christie had given it in 1901.  On the same date the State of Oregon officially granted the institution university status.

February 16

• This date in 1953 marked the death at age 66 of Father John Baptist Delaunay, C.S.C., who is credited with beginning studies in psychology at the University.  Although he had doctorates in philosophy and theology, he came to Portland in 1933 as faculty member in foreign languages having already served as a missionary in East Bengal.  He was later listed as a professor of philosophy and education. At the time of his death he was head of the Department of Psychology.  His name was long connected with a clinic in North Portland and is still used for a building on North Portsmouth that once housed the clinic and is now part of the residence for Holy Cross religious.
   
• In 1955, this date saw the death of Father James P. Kehoe, C.S.C., at the age of 66.  He had served at Portland from 1932 until 1951.
   
• In Boston in 1838, this was the birthday of Henry Adams, great grandson of John Adams and grandson of John Quincy Adams, the second and sixth presidents of the United States.  As professor of medieval history at Harvard he is reputed to be the first American college instructor to use the seminar method in his classes.  His autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, is a classic of its genre.

February 17

• This date in 1838 saw the death, at age 71, of Father Jacques Dujarie, a priest of the diocese of Le Mans, France, who had founded in 1820 the Brothers of St. Joseph, a constituent society in the founding of the Congregation of Holy Cross.

February 18

• On this date in 1935 the University publicly announced the change of its name from Columbia University to the University of Portland.
  
  
• In 1977 the International Peace Garden was dedicated on this date on a small plot of ground outside Buckley Center Auditorium.  An inspiration of Father Joseph Powers, C.S.C., then Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the garden would contain plants native to all the continents of the earth growing side by side in harmony.  A plaque asks those who pass the spot to pray for a parallel harmony among the representatives of human races and nations.

February 19

• At Torun in Poland, this was the birthday in 1473 of Nicolaus Copernicus (Nikolaj Kopernik), the Polish astronomer who proposed a heliocentric explanation of planetary motion and concluded that the earth was itself a planet.  Although he developed and wrote about his theories earlier, the final version appeared in print only in 1543, the year of his death.
  
  
• This date in 1928 saw the dedication ceremony of Howard Hall.  The building's namesake, Archbishop Edward Howard, was present and spoke at the ceremonies of the importance of Catholic education.  The school newspaper, The Columbiad, noted that the University president, Father Joseph N. Donahue, C.S.C., "pointed out the features of the Hall:  the immense floor that could be used for basketball games and physical culture training, the stage with ample room for two boxing rings or for plays put on by the students, and space downstairs for the music department and for visiting athletic teams."  Events on this day included a swimming meet in the new pool and a basketball game between alumni and current students.
   
• In 1980 this date saw the groundbreaking of the maintenance building.  

February 20

• In 2002 Reuters News Service reported that the time-date notation now common on computers formed a perfect triple palindrome on this date at two minutes past eight in the evening when it would read 20:02 20/02 2002 in the international fashion. The style more common in the United States would read, equally palindromically, 20:02 02/20 2002.  The report claimed that the last such triple palindrome would have occurred more than 890 years earlier, at 11:11 a.m. on November 11, 1111.  At that time, the report failed to note, no one would have been likely to have identified the day of the year as 11/11 much less been able to calculate a time of day as precise as 11:11 a.m.

February 21

• In 1902 the first baseball game between the University and a team from another school was played on the campus on this date.  The opponents were from Bishop Scott Academy.  Columbia University won by a score of 3 to 1.
   
• In 1958 The Beacon reported the removal of the ivy from West (now Waldschmidt) Hall.

February 22

• Until the creation of President's Day, this day was observed as a federal holiday in honor of George Washington's birthday, the first president of the United States.  Washington was born on this day in 1732 as calculated by the reformed (Gregorian) calendar.  Under the calendar still in use in British possessions at that time, the day of the month was calculated as February 11, and the year as 1731, as the new year was commonly begun on March 25.  Great Britain was one of the last European nations to adopt the Gregorian reform when it did so in 1752 omitting eleven days in the calendar in order to accommodate the change.  Anniversaries such as birthdays were commonly adjusted to reflect the actual completion of a year of 365 days, and Washington observed his own birthday thereafter on this date.
  
  
• In the year 1300 Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed on this date the first Christian Year of Jubilee to mark the centennial of the birth of the Lord.

February 23

• On this date in 1971 the University's Academic Senate, in one of its most vigorously debated sessions, voted to terminate the doctoral program in psychology.
   
• At Gottingen, Hanover, in 1855, this date saw the death, at age 77, of Carl Friedrich Gauss, "with Archimedes and Newton . . . one of the greatest mathematicians of all time" according to the Encyclopædia Britannica.  He is especially noted for his revolutionary contribution to number theory.

February 24

• In 1786, in Hanau in the German state of Hesse-Kassel, this was the birthday of Wilhelm Grimm, younger brother of Jacob Grimm.  Together they gathered folks tales, which they published between 1812 and 1822 under the title Kinder und Hausmärchen, known popularly in English as Grimm's Fairy Tales.
  
  
• In 1868 the United States House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson on this date by a vote of 126 to 47.   The Senate, however, failed to convict Johnson when it voted in May of the same year after trying him on the charges put forward by the House.

February 25

• On this date in 1952 the University's detachment of the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps held its first military ball.
  
  

• Nikita Khrushchev, addressing the 20th Communist Party Congress in Moscow on February 25, 1956, made his famous speech condemning his predecessor, Josef Stalin, not only for his "intolerance, his brutality, his abuse of power," but for the ineptitude of his policies and his military leadership.  The speech was officially secret but was reported by a Reuters correspondent, who had been given the information, apparently with official approval.

February 26

• This date in 1944 marked the death of David Wheeler Hazen, benefactor of the University's library.  Two years later his widow donated his collection of 4000 volumes of Americana to the University.

February 27

• This date in 1969 saw the dedication of Buckley Center.  Named for the first lay chairman of the Board of Regents, Mr. James C. Buckley, a former executive of the Georgia-Pacific Corporation and benefactor of the University, the new building provided nearly 130,000 square feet of space.  In addition to three floors of classrooms in its central section, the building provided individual offices for more than 100 faculty, five suites of administrative offices, lounge space for students and faculty, a language laboratory, an instructional media center, a mail center, a board room, a music practice room, a tiered auditorium seating 464, a lobby that would come to be used as a gallery, and a small exhibition greenhouse.  The placement of the building also led to a redesign of the entrance drive to the campus and helped to confirm the development of a quadrangle bordered by the University Commons and the engineering building on one side and by the library and Buckley Center on the other.
   
• In 1807 in Portland, Maine, this was the birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  His efforts to establish an American literary tradition led not only to such works as Hiawatha and Evangeline but to the translation of Dante's Divine Comedy and the fostering of other links to the cultural tradition of continental Europe.

February 28

• Father Robert J. Sheehan, C.S.C., who taught biology at the University from 1931 to 1945, died on this date in 1962.
   
• On this date in 1964 the University erected the plaque for Rigley Field in memory of Father Maurice Rigley, C.S.C., once an English professor at the University.  The marker quotes a line from Richmond's speech to his troops before the Battle of Bosworth field as found in Shakespeare's Richard the Third:  "In God's name, cheerly on courageous friends."
  
  
• On this date in 2013 Father John Kurtzke, C.S.C., died at Holy Cross House at Notre Dame after several years of serious illness.  He had come to the University of Portland after his ordination to the priesthood in 1985.  He had already earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from UCLA.  He served as a faculty member in mathematics for nearly twenty years and for six of those years also served as chairman of his department. 

February 29

• The University of Portland Almanac presently offers no specific entry for this date. If you wish to suggest material that would appropriately be listed under this date, please contact the editor.