Photos of Patten Chapel, Founders, Hooper and Race Halls. From the 1919 Moccasin.
More than 100 years ago, the University of Chattanooga class of 1919 had only 15 graduates.
Their class number was a fraction of what it was in their freshman year, because many classmates—men and women—paused their studies to fight or contribute in some way to the “Great War”–better known today as World War I.
Lynville, TN native Mary Sophia Campbell graduated from the University of Chattanooga in 1919.
In the 1919 yearbook, graduating senior Mary Sophia Campbell penned an essay titled, “Telescopic Relations of 1969.”
In the long string of school participation and accolades listed next to Campbell’s yearbook photo—including membership in the Chi Omega sorority, Kappa Chi Literary Society, student body reporter for the University Echo and more—she is dubbed “senior class prophet.”
Her write-up imagines life for herself and her fellow graduating seniors. Although Campbell’s four-page science fiction piece is more dream than reality, some of her musings have come to light a century after being published.
The year is 1969 and as the sun sets on June 3, Campbell realizes it’s 50 years to the day from when she and her classmates received their diplomas in Patten Chapel. She joins a friend—a professor of astronomy—for dinner on Mars, where she’s lived for the past five years.
When he learns it’s the 50th anniversary of her college graduation, the friend invites her to his “astronomical laboratory” to use a telescope he’s just created. His newest invention will allow her to see what her friends are up to now—or within the past two years, give or take—wherever they are in the universe.
Crime fighting in New York City. Summer resorts on Venus. Girls in bloomers and middies playing sports on Uranus. Fellow graduate Hattie seated at the president’s desk on Mercury.
Campbell paints optimistic pictures of the lives her fellow graduates live and, of course, their inventions and abilities that have not just changed Earth for the better but the universe, too.
She also mentions a device she describes as “the most wonderful invention of all generations.” Created by fellow graduate Ralph Harris, it allows people to see and speak to each other at the same time.
Although these days our Zooming or Facetiming remains limited to professors, students, co-workers, family and friends who are here on Earth, Campbell’s imagined device sounds an awful lot like the tech we’re using daily in 2020.
To read Campbell’s full write-up, check out the PDF here or find her essay on page 36 of the 1919 Moccasin Yearbook, available online through the Library’s digital archives here.
