Letters: A Life-Changing $64

“Tuition on the Rise” [Fall 2011 News & Notes] caught my attention in regard to how things have changed.

I was sixteen when I started at the UW in 1941. I came from a one-room school, located in what is now Nicolet National Forest, where my sister and I were the only students for six of our eight years of elementary school. In the winter, our father took us through the woods in a sleigh, and in fall and spring, in a Model A Ford. Mr. Thornton, principal of Mountain High School, changed my life when he stopped me and said, “Joyce, if you would apply yourself, you could be valedictorian and earn a scholarship to the University of Wisconsin.”

Graduation night proved him correct, and I earned the scholarship. Of course, I had to work twenty hours a week for my room and board, rode the bus for two hours a day, and did extra babysitting for any other money. (Never ordered a Hamburger DeLuxe in the Rathskeller, because they cost fifteen cents — I never felt I could afford that extra nickel.) My tuition scholarship in 1941 was for $64 a year! Because of that $32.50 a semester scholarship, my life (in spite of challenges along the way) has given me everything anyone could ever desire. Thanks from the bottom of my heart.

Joyce Grindle Weix ’49 New Berlin, Wisconsin

Published in the Winter 2011 issue