MARCH 29, 1940

Southwest Louisiana, with the help of college presidents from throughout the state, Louisiana State University’s symphony orchestra and Baton Rouge’s Town and Gown players, is dedicating today its newly completed $1,000,000 junior college, public auditorium and livestock pavilion at Lake Charles.

Dedication ceremonies beginning this afternoon at 2 p.m. include a principal address by Dr. Paul M. Hebert, president of LSU of which the local junior college is the Southwest Louisiana center. The auditorium seats 2,700 people.

Tonight at 8 p.m. it will be officially opened with the Baton Rouge theatrical group and LSU’s speech department cooperating in a presentation of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” the play with which Wilder won a Pulitzer prize for drama.

All three units of the project are to be dedicated at the afternoon ceremonies in the auditorium.

The college building itself officially opened last Sept. 11 when 140 students were enrolled in the freshman class there

Formal opening of the arena awaits the start of Southwest Louisiana’s first Fat Stock Show and Rodeo April 4, though it will be used Saturday night for the Calcasieu Area Council Boy Scouts’ circus.

Besides Dr. Hebert, presidents of seven other colleges and the University of Louisiana will take part in the dedication observance to which the general public has been invited by Dr. Joe Farrar, dean of the local junior college.

The symphony orchestra, under the direction of Francis Bulber, a member of LSU’s music department, will provide music for the afternoon observance and will again be heard prior to the play this evening.

Mr. Bulber, who also directs the Lake Charles Symphony, will include in the personnel of the university’s orchestra several local musicians as well. Solos scheduled on the program include a piano number by Miss Persi Johns, daughter of the Rev. and Mrs. J.L. Johns, a junior college student and music pupil of Mrs. J. Alton Foster.

Miss Hazel Faust, soprano, is scheduled to sing two vocal solos, and a trio composed of Miss Kathleen Allums, Mrs. John True and Miss Florence Kushner will play a Mozart number, it has been announced.

Dr. Farrar, who has had charge of arrangements for the dedication rites, will act as master of ceremonies, presenting besides the college presidents, W.E. Holbrook of DeQuincy, president of the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury, and I.V. Jaurer, president of the Lake Charles Association of Commerce.

Dr. J.G. Lee, dean of LSU’s College of Agriculture, is likewise included on the speaker’s program with Lether E. Frazar, president of Southwestern Louisiana Institute, Lafayette; A.A. Fredericks, Louisiana State Normal, Natchitoches; E.S. Richardson, Louisiana Polytechnic Institute, Ruston; Dr. Rufus C. Harris, Tulane; the Rev. P.A. Roy, S.J. Loyola; C.C. Cottingham, Louisiana College, Pineville; J. Leon Clark, Southeastern College, Hammond, and a representative of Dr. M.E. Dodd, president of the college at Shreveport which bears no name.