Bee Mail Letters provide insight into a campus in wartime

March 26, 2007

“You don’t know it,” begins the first volume of Lillian Brown’s newsletter, written on May 10, 1943, “but I have let you down.”  

As improbable as this confession sounds with the knowledge that Mrs. Brown, known both affectionately and reverently as “Mrs. Bee,” would go on to carry out correspondence with hundreds of PC servicemen stationed abroad and to write forty-seven additional volumes of her newsletter, her original intention as stated in the letter had been to write to her list of PC students and graduates serving in the Second World War a week earlier, on Mother’s Day. 

The forty-eight installments of the “Bee Mail Letters,” written between 1943 and 1947 but predominantly during wartime, provided servicemen with information about life back at their college and included excerpts from letters she received from them, chronicling their own experiences in the war effort all across the globe and, in many cases, their fond reflections on the value of their education completed or begun at Presbyterian College.  

Lillian Gross Brown, a Tennessee native, was the wife of Marshall W. Brown, a PC history professor, who went on to become Dean and finally, in 1945, President of the college.  In 1928, shortly after her arrival at PC, Mrs. Brown took the position of registrar, which she kept until her husband assumed the position of the President.  She served the college in an official capacity until her husband’s 1963 retirement but continued to support the school that she loved until her death six years ago, at the age of one hundred and three.

Though Mrs. Brown had begun her letters with individual correspondence and continued to write personal letters throughout the war, most of her efforts went toward the forty-eight detailed newsletters.  With the exception of the first newsletter (addressed, “Dear ‘Old PC Man’”), Mrs. Brown’s letters were addressed to “PC’uns,” and included details about an evolving campus, seasonal greetings, invitations for those returning, constant calls for updated addresses and even artwork, in addition to her indispensable excerpts from the letters she had received. 

Under an initiative explained in a news release from December 30, 1942, PC had significantly altered much of its program to provide better support for the war effort.  Provisions of this plan, outlined in a “Quarterly Bulletin” mailed out during this time, included a new training program for four hundred aviation “cadet-candidates,” “accelerated pre-medical courses for future Army and Navy Medical officers,” a degree program that could be completed in twenty-seven successive months of study, and a system of quarterly graduation, all geared toward allowing students to complete their education quickly, so as to go on to make personal contributions to the war effort.

References to these adjustments, as well as references to other campus changes not related to the war, peppered many of the Bee Mail Letters.  In her first volume, Mrs. Brown refers to the “unit of 400 pre-flighters,” and details a graduation ceremony for eighty of them, in which the remaining 320 were in attendance and sang to the graduates, who were to be immediately replaced by eighty new students who would begin the training. 

The second volume then includes a comment by a 1939 graduate expressing how moved he was to hear about the program and his belief that, with such activity, PC would help to win the war.  One newsletter includes a sizable quotation from Allsobrook McCall, Jr., 1935 graduate and PC Alumni Association president at that time.  He alludes to some of the new wartime activity but also discusses other events on campus.  McCall’s survey of campus affairs references the activity of some student organizations, the inactivity of others due to the quick turnaround of the war program, and the naming of Neville Hall.  He also notes with particular surprise the introduction of a “lady professor” and marvels at the “beautiful” new, renovated Doyle Infirmary.

In Mrs. Brown’s letters, PC servicemen received these and other reports from back home at the college but also heard about the progress of their fellow classmates and other graduates in different theaters around the world.  Men fighting from France to North Africa to the Philippines replied to the newsletters, sharing details from their own circumstances and sources that ranged from the mundane to the tragic. 

One man wrote of finding the French he learned at PC to be very helpful in Europe but being surprised at how residents would respond to him in perfect English.  A serviceman who lost his foot to a mine sent a tongue-in-cheek report to Mrs. Brown, writing, “I got bunged up a little, but there’s nothing left of that mine whatsoever.”

Among the sixty-five PC graduates killed in action during the World War II, a number had corresponded with Mrs. Brown, and several had their reports included in the Bee Mail Letters.  One of these fallen alumni had written to her about the shock and sense of loss stemming from the idea that he could never again have a “chance meeting” with any of those that had died.  The death of graduates and comrades was clearly an important theme in the letters. 

Many letters would contain, amidst sections about campus events and wounded men in recovery, lists of three or four graduates who had been killed.  As much as the deaths of her beloved students undoubtedly saddened her, Mrs. Brown usually closed out her newsletter with a more cheerful note about happenings back home.

Several of the men who corresponded with Mrs. Brown were notable for their accomplishments following the war.  Charles MacDonald, a 1942 graduate, wrote a book entitled Company Commander about his experience becoming the leader of a group of seasoned soldiers immediately after graduating and spent his post-war career at the Army Center for Military History. 

Leland “Lou” Brissie overcame shattering a leg fighting in Italy in 1944 to fulfill his dream of playing professional baseball, starting in 1947 for the Philadelphia Athletics and later joining the Cleveland Indians.  Powell “Pop” Fraser returned following the war to serve as PC’s Director of Development and was also an active leader in the Presbyterian Church.  Hugh S. Jacobs, great-grandson of PC’s founder, returned to Clinton following the war and became the co-owner of Jacobs Press, later serving on PC’s Board of Trustees.    

Through the dedication of “Mrs. Bee,” and the help that she received from these and other servicemen who shared their experiences with her, the Bee Mail Letters became a popular delivery to PC graduates in the war (and sometimes even men they were stationed with, who had no knowledge of PC) in conflict zones all over the world. 

Mrs. Brown’s legacy of charity and warmth endures in the memories of those still living who knew her as well as in her letters of love to men facing the daily unknowns and agonies of battle. Copies of the Bee Mail Letters as well as numbers of those that she received are available for perusal in the PC Archives.

Special thanks to Nancy Griffith and Sarah Leckie in the Presbyterian College Archives.  The Archives are located on the top floor of the James H. Thomason Library.  Archive hours are Monday through Thursday, 9 – 12 and 1 – 4, as well as Friday from 9:30 – 1 and 2 – 4.   

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