Today $10 will not even fill the gas tank on the smallest of cars. In 1917, when Irene Newman graduated from UW-Madison, that now-paltry amount paid for an entire semester of college.
Newman, who passed away Jan. 14 at the age of 109, was the oldest known UW-Madison alumna, UW-Madison spokesperson John Lucas told the Wisconsin State Journal.
She received a bachelor's degree from UW-Madison in 1917 and then went on to earn a librarian certificate the following year She worked as a librarian for the state Department of Public Instruction for 43 years before retiring in the mid-1960s, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.
Newman spent 100 years of her life in the same house on the 200 block of N. Broom Street.
Newman was three weeks away from her 110th birthday when she died and had recently had surgery to repair a broken hip, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
\She was the kindest person I ever knew,"" said Gloria Carpenter, a nurse who was with Newman at her death, told the State Journal
When Irene Newman graduated in spring 1917, students also balanced daily life with concern for an ongoing war abroad this time World War I.
The Daily Cardinal reported that students were very involved in the war effort. In January, 10 UW-Madison students were mobilized in Europe, 20 students drove ambulances in Paris and nine volunteered in prison camps. ""YOUNG MEN!-ENLIST"" blared the paper after war was declared months later.
The campus mood was tense. Administrators, worried about socialist propaganda, denied the famous radical Max Eastman entry to campus. This sparked a flurry of debate on the proper use of campus buildings and freedoms during wartime.
Still, this urgency was balanced by the campus' obsession with spring prom, the social event of the season. Many a conservative eye was offended, however, when some women wore dresses that ""bared the shoulders and arms and back part of the upper portion of a specimen of the feminine sex."" One legislator called the incident ""satanic.""
Sports, too, held sway on campus. Then-University President Charles Van Hise requested $20,000 to expand Camp Randall to accomodate 10,000 spectators, and one of the biggest victories of the season was basketball's 25-16 ""trouncing"" of the University of Chicago Maroons.
