Bucknell Magazine - Summer 2016

Dishing Out History Tom Bonan ’ 17 always had a hankering for the humanities, but when he arrived at Bucknell from Boulder, Colo., he decided to plot a different career path. “I’m more inclined to history and writing, but math is a good skill to have in our economy,” he says.

The son of Gordon Bonan and Amie Elcan ’84 sought Bucknell for the quality of its math and economics programs and soon settled into a work/study job grading math papers. While admiring a library exhibit last spring about Bucknellians who served in World War I and the campus environment during that era, he introduced himself to the exhibit’s organizer, Isabella O’Neill, head of Special Collections and University archivist.

When O’Neill saw his keen interest in history and learned that he had written for The Bucknellian, she made a quick assessment. Bonan was just the student she’d been seeking to write blog posts highlighting and promoting Special Collections/University Archives materials that could be posted on the Library & Information Technology blog and disseminated through social media.

Though abroad in Cork, Ireland, in the fall, Bonan was back to
blogging this spring, writing a 500-word piece most weeks on topics
that range from a Gutenberg press replica created by a mechanical
engineering senior design team 15 years ago to the University charter.
Bonan spends time every Monday working in the reading room of
Special Collections/University Archives uncovering interesting future
topics. He also consults a list of ideas that O’Neill had long been
compiling — waiting for the right student writer to come along.
One recent post that “got a lot of attention,” he says, was about
Philip Roth ’54 and the New Yorker-style literary magazine Roth
started on campus. Et Cetera “began as a humor magazine then
became a sardonic literary magazine,” he says.

Bonan, who may study economics in graduate school, says of his work, “Getting to deal with University history in a tangible way has been interesting. There are 3,600 kids on campus who haven’t seen these things. I’ve been given free rein to do what I want.”

— Sherri Kimmel
To read Bonan’s post on the Gutenberg press and other features go to
bucknell.edu/SCUA-blog.

It’s been a century since more than 650

Bucknell students, alumni and faculty served the Allied cause in World War I. Special Collections/University Archives commemorates the University’s doughboys by displaying several personal items. One is a croix de guerre, a French military decoration awarded to Harold Thomas ’ 21. A citation depicting Thomas’ actions in war-torn France reads that he “displayed an absolute zeal under all circumstances. During the period from Aug. 1–6, he kept up a service of evacuation in a zone subject to violent bombardment.” Thomas also contributed another interesting World War I relic: a gold cigarette lighter with an engraved image of a French soldier on one side and an American one on the other.