Hilltopper Heritage

Passing Institutions, The Spoonholder

Citation: Wilson, Gordon. "Passing Institution, The Spoonholder" March 22, 1935, newspaper unknown.

It is gone, and there are few who could tell why it was so named. It had nothing to do with cutlery, I hardly need say; it was not a receptacle to hold spoons or other tableware. But in its way it has contained many a heart that must have rattled around like a whole set of knives, forks, and spoons of Woolworth's sterling silver. Good old Dr. Kinnaman gave it its name, consiously or unconsiously, for he told us more than twenty years ago that a certain place in the college where he was educated was so frequented by love-lorn couples that it acquired this name. On the famuous trek to the General Assembly in Frankfort in 1912, a young man who is hardly so young now acted as news butch and sold spoonholders on the long train; incidentally, he had a sore throat for a week or two thereafter. Various places were temporarily called spoonholders, but the name stuck in only one instance. Some twelve or fourteen years ago, when the loafing place around the big elm was built, the old-timers recalled the term Dr. Kinnaman had used. At first the teachers rather frowned on the name; later they accepted it as officially the name of West Hall or the Training School. It had become within a brief time, an institution.

Decay of the wood in the structure, primarily was the cause of its being torn away, but it was never so popular after the Library [Gordon Wilson Hall] was built in 1926. Somehow the place seemed too crowded. A more sophisticated group, who probably liked the smell of tobacco smoke to flit through their romantic moods, long ago deserted it for other places. But, like all the good people who are buried in Spoon River and other graveyards, it is "gone but not forgotten." The next school generation after my day may forget what they learned in English, and Math, and Phys. Ed., but they will not forget the exquisite moments of the Spoonholder.

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