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How the "Shakes" Fulfilled Their Mission
The Storrs Literary Society was a student club devoted to the study of Shakespeare's plays during the early days of the Storrs Agricultural College. It became the Greek fraternity Theta Sigma Chi in the 1950s. The "Shakes," as members were known, established a fund to assist students in the field of literature but, over time, the fraternity became inactive in its original mission. They continued, however, to be interested in the library. The fund, unnoticed and unused, quietly continued to accrue interest. Reuben "Ben" Johnson, a Shakes member in his student days, and later the dean of men and alumni director, became executor of the fund, which remained unspent. Following his death in 1993, his widow, Louise, consulted with members of the faculty and administration, and with library staff and a few surviving Shakes to identify an appropriate use for the money. All agreed that the library should be the recipient of the fund. The money has now been used to purchase networked versions of the Oxford English Dictionary, Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, the Arden Shakespeare, and the Middle English Compendium. Louise Johnson summed up the situation nicely when she wrote, "With the Homer Babbidge Library acquiring strategic supporting reference materials, the historic Shakes literary emphasis of early days on campus is commemorated in the benefits now accessible to scholars." Or, as Will might have put it, "All's Well That Ends Well."
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