The Day We (Almost) Lost Trevorrow Hall

One morning in the spring semester of 1992, I climbed the stairs to my corner office in Brotherton Hall. When I reached the second floor, a large group of faculty from the Liberal Arts Division was waiting for me. They told me our division chairperson had resigned (I already knew- he left his cover letter to his new university in the library photocopier), so I acted surprised. They asked me if I was interested in the job. I was,  but told them I would only do it if they all supported me. So began my long journey into the strange and dangerous land of college administration.

One of my first tasks was to replace some senior faculty who were retiring. The most difficult slot to fill was chemistry. I had to hire some adjunct (part time) faculty until I could find a full- time person to take the job. I couldn’t offer the kind of salary they could get in private industry, so it was tough to find someone.  

I interviewed several candidates, all who declined my offer. Then, one day, I received a résumé from a retired high school teacher who was interested, and didn’t care about the salary. 

That’s how I found Dr. Ann Felder. She was born and raised in South Carolina and was incredibly smart, warm, and pleasant. I instinctively knew she was the right person for the job. Ann had infinite patience with students struggling through chemistry class. When she took over the classroom, she hung a large banner above the blackboard which said “CHEM-IS-TRY.” I loved it. 

Dr. Felder was scheduled to begin teaching in the fall, but wanted to come to campus during the summer to clean up the lab and order supplies. The person she replaced was Professor William “Bill” Hedges. His long career went back to Centenary’s junior college days. When he left, the chemistry lab was untouched. Professor Felder spent the summer months preparing the laboratory for the fall semester.

The lab was filled with unlabeled glass bottles and jars of chemicals. Most were long expired or unusable. All of this stuff must have been sitting on the dusty shelves for years.

It was a hot July day in the summer of 1992. Except for a soccer summer camp, the academic buildings and dorms were empty. Most of the administrators were on vacation, leaving me to mind the store. 

By the afternoon, my faculty office was a furnace; my ancient oscillating fan merely pushed the hot air to-and-fro around the room. Suddenly the phone rang. It was Dr. Felder. 

“Ray,” she said, with a tone of fear in her voice, “you need to come over to Trevorrow right away.” 

I walked across the campus and climbed the stairs to the second-floor lab, where Ann was waiting for me in her white lab coat. 

“Look at this,” she said. She pointed to two glass Skippy Peanut Butter jars on a shelf above the lab sink.

Now, I must confess that I flunked chemistry my freshman year in college, but I’ll bet if I had Professor Felder as my teacher, I might have eked out at least a C minus. I dropped out of college for a time, re-emerging as a philosophy major.

“Do you know what’s in those jars?” she asked. 

Of course I couldn’t answer intelligently. 

“It looks like rock candy to me,” I said. 

“Well, it’s actually Picric Acid. It’s usually in liquid form, but when it crystallizes like that, it becomes very unstable.” And then, with safety goggles on, she looked straight at me, with terror definitely in her eyes, and said, “If those jars fell off that shelf, it could destroy the whole building.” 

“Picric Acid is used in the production of explosives, matches, and electric batteries. Picric acid is very unstable and is a flammable/combustible material,” according to Samantha E. Gad’s article, “Picric Acid.”

“OH S***!” I said. 

I had to think fast. 

“I’m going to call the State Police.” 

When I explained the problem, the dispatcher said-- “OH S***! The Bomb Squad is on the way—and get away from the building--NOW.” 

When the troopers arrived, two followed me up to the lab. I showed them the jars. 

“OH S***!” they said in unison. “We have to evacuate the campus and the houses close to the building.” 

Suiting up outside in a thick, white, bomb-proof suit, looking like a giant July snowman, an explosives expert entered the lab and retrieved the jars. They were placed in a special bomb-proof trailer. The troopers said the chemicals in the jars were too unstable to transport very far, so they decided to take them to the large grass field near the state fish hatchery behind the campus and detonate them. 

This should be interesting, I thought. 

A trooper took out a shotgun from his car and placed the jars on a plastic milk crate in the middle of the field. Moving back as far as he could, he took aim and fired one shot. The jars shattered, exploding with a flash and a very loud bang. They blew a huge hole in the ground. 

I was thinking about what might have happened if the jars had blown up in the lab. 

Trevorrow Hall was built during World War Two, and it was also once the campus bomb shelter, made from a special reinforced concrete. At the very least, it would have destroyed the lab, the chemistry classroom, and most of the second floor. I also thought about the horror of the jars falling off the shelf with students in the lab.  

When my boss, Dr. Tom Brunner, vice president for academic affairs returned from vacation a few days later, he stopped me as I was walking across the Quad and said--(somewhat jokingly, I hoped)--“I just can’t leave you in charge when I’m not here.” He smiled, then shook his head and walked back to his office.