Robert Earl Wildermuth — Stanford Bachelor of Arts diploma, 1 October 1948
Robert Earl Wildermuth’s Stanford diploma — the first Stanford degree in the family. Conferred October 1, 1948, in Biological Sciences. Signed by President J. Wallace Sterling, the eighth president of Stanford; by Paul C. Edwards, then President of the Board of Trustees; and on the School of Biological Sciences side by Douglas M. Whitaker, a developmental biologist who in the same period oversaw the post-war expansion of biology at Stanford.
The path to this document is, in a single sentence, the path of his entire generation: a B-24 navigator from Marietta, Ohio, recently returned from the Pacific theater, finished a Bachelor of Arts at Stanford on the GI Bill in two years.
It is the first piece of paper that makes Robert Earl’s later remark — closing his family history by addressing “future genealogists” — rhyme with his grandson Chuck joining the Stanford faculty a generation later. The diploma is the document that put both of them on the same campus.
Catalogue
- Type
- Diploma
- Medium
- Engraved and printed parchment; Old-English typography
- Creator
- The Leland Stanford Junior University
- Date created
- 1948-10-01
- Place created
- Stanford, California
- ID number
- WILDERMUTH-DIPLOMA-1948
- Provenance
- Family collection; held by Chuck Eesley.
- Inscription
- The Leland Stanford Junior University, to all to whom these letters shall come greeting. The Trustees of the University on the recommendation of the University Faculty and by virtue of the Authority in Them vested have conferred on Robert Earl Wildermuth who has satisfactorily pursued the studies and passed the examinations required therefor the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with all the rights, privileges, and honors thereunto appertaining. Given at Stanford University in the State of California on the First Day of October in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred and Forty-eight, of the Republic the One Hundred and Seventy-third, and of the University the Fifty-eighth. — Signed: J. Wallace Sterling, President of the University; Paul C. Edwards, President of the Board of Trustees; Douglas M. Whitaker, School of Biological Sciences.
- Rights
- Family use; permission required for republication.