EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part one of a story written on Aug. 26, 1940 by Ernie Pyle and is from the Brown County Historical Society archives. Pyle was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and war correspondent. He is best remembered for his stories about ordinary soldiers who fought in World War II. He was also known for the columns he wrote from 1935 to 1941 for the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate. He died after being hit by enemy fire during the Battle of Okinawa. He was known as one of the best war correspondents in America at the time of his death.

The president of Indiana University threw a couple of steaks as thick as your wrist onto the outdoor grill, and called out, “How do you like yours?” If you could have seen Herman B. Wells at that moment, you would have seen him engaged in one of his three greatest loves, which are cooking, eating and teaching.

Herman Wells and I were in school together 18 years ago. (Yes, we actually did know each other.) Since then, he has gone up through successive stages of administration and teaching to the highest attainable point at his alma mater. As for me, I’ve just gone down and down until I have to look in the dictionary to see how to spell “c-a-t.” Despite these differences our paths crossed again the other night at Nashville, Indiana and they crossed pleasantly indeed. The president invited me to his house for dinner and since there were just the two of us, we sat all evening rehashing old times and conjecturing on new ones.

Hermie Wells isn’t the youngest man ever appointed to the presidency of a large university, but he was very young for such a job. And he handles it as a young man should, with hardly a cobweb in his brain. I am not being an upstart in calling him “Hermie,” because everybody else does, even the students. And he is not being over-familiar in calling me “Ernie,” because everybody else does that too, when they don’t just call me “Hey.”

Hermie is a bachelor. He keeps a large home in Bloomington. But in the summer, he lives over in Nashville, in his beloved Brown County, only 18 miles away. He drives back and forth every day. When he starts home in the evening it is like starting to heaven. Hermie for many years has shared his home with a close friend named Sam Gabriel, a Bloomington clothier. The other day Sam up and got married on him. But Hermie is a fixture, and the newlyweds are not rid of him, and there is no indication that they want to be.

The summer home in Nashville is a lovely big cabin on the hill well screened by trees with a yard and an open terrace, upon which we had our dinner. Hermie keeps a cook named Rosie all year round. She is from Brown County, and she, too, addresses the president of Indiana University by the exalted title of “Hermie,” and she personally invites the guests to come back again, if she likes them.

It was with considerable trepidation that I accepted Hermie’s invitation to dinner, for I know well of his affection for food, and his ability to consume it. Many times have I gorged my inadequate stomach into the miseries to avoid offending a large host. My fears grew when I saw the couple of half-cows that Hermie threw onto the grill, and I got practically hysterical when Rosie started piling some eight different kinds of vegetables and other accessories onto my side of the table. But let me say once and for all that I heaped no disgrace upon my alma mater. That evening I ate more, and truly with greater ease and more relish, than I’ve ever eaten in my life before. I believe that even Hermie was proud of me.

Rosie washed the dishes and bade us goodbye, and we sat and talked the evening through. We discussed mutual friends from our school days and told each other of our near tragic fraternity experiences when fires came into the big world of school from our respective farms and small villages. Hermie did an exceedingly nice thing for me. The annual yearbook put out by Indian University is called The Arbutus. The one that had my picture in it was the 1923 issue, and although I had left school by then I bought one anyway. And then, some 10 years ago, it disappeared. I don’t know to this day what became of it. But as the years passed and the mists of old age began to enshroud me, I saw more and more what a pleasure it would be to have that book for looking back upon. And what do you think Hermie did? He dug into the stockroom at the university, found one of the few un-owned copies in existence and brought it to me as a gift. So, once again, I can actually prove that I did have at least a little education.

And since I’ve used up most of this column on President Wells in talking about myself, we’ll have to wait until tomorrow and see if we can’t work him in somehow.

To be continued.

Submitted by Pauline Hoover, Brown County Historical Society