The Case of the Wandering Toilet Seat

The Case of the Wandering Toilet Seat
by
William Lloyd Fox

Early in September 1947 I arrived at Montgomery Junior College, then beginning its second year of operation in the Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. Headed by the enterprising, founding dean, Hugh G. Price, the College that fall had a full-time faculty of fourteen and a student body of 367. The faculty and student body had nearly doubled in size since the opening of the year before. But we had no campus of our own as we were the “guests” of the high school. Accordingly, we had to conduct our classes in the late afternoons and early evenings when the high school was not in session. The only space that we could call our own was in the basement of Building A, where the College library and bookstore were located.

Meanwhile, Dean Price had arranged to have two war surplus BOQ’s (Bachelor Officers’ Quarters), which had been located at Fort Washington, moved to the campus of BCC that fall. Erected as one L-shaped unit, these frame buildings were to house the biology and chemistry laboratories, faculty and administrative offices, a bookstore, and a student lounge. In addition, the Federal Works Agency provided a little building adjacent to the reconstructed BOQ’s that housed Coach Frank (“Rube”) Rubini’s office and an equipment room.

The College moved into these quarters shortly after the first of the year. The office furniture was also war surplus, wooden desks, wooden chairs, wooden file cabinets with no locks, most of which had seen better days. Yet we did not complain because we were glad to have at last a place of our own.

It was in the setting of my office in the new quarters during the spring semester of 1948 that an embarrassing incident occurred. One afternoon a woman student of mine came in to see me about her work, her schedule, or whatever. At one point during our conversation I needed paper and pencil and so pulled open the top drawer of the desk and found to my great surprise and chagrin a wooden toilet seat! I quickly shut the drawer but not before, I am sure, the young woman had seen it. As a young bachelor, not much older than the students, I was embarrassed and, surprisingly for me, tongue-tied. What could I say! What explanation could I make! As it turned out, I said nothing, at least not about the piece of wandering lavatory equipment. Later, I found out that the culprit who had slipped the toilet seat, probably also war surplus, into my desk was my friend and colleague Bill Cohen, a mathematics instructor, who was also a young bachelor. Ultimately the toilet seat wound up in the office of Jerry Kloucek, the registrar, who at the end of the semester threatened to hang it on the office door of any faculty member who was late turning in his final grades.

Thirty-eight years have passed since that embarrassing moment in my office. I have speculated from time to time what Miss X thought. Did she wonder about her history instructor who had his own toilet seat and kept it in the top drawer of his desk no less? Did she years later tell her children about such quixotic behavior? I have often wondered.

Bethesda and Takoma Park Campuses: History, 1947–1976; chairman, Department of History and Political Science, 1961–1967, 1973–1974; Professor Emeritus.