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SERVING THE CAUSE had during any previous period in the College's history, although classes were suspended following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and during some of the turmoil in the decade that followed. Eventually the traditional football holiday became a thing of the past and, when Saturday classes became optional under 4-1-4, only a few professors chose to continue holding them. The well-established practice of having a father's day in the fall and a mother's day in the spring was continued. Walter Langsam considered observing these two special days one of his predecessor's "greatest contributions" to the life of the College. Equally aware of their value, Arnold Hanson gradually converted these occasions into fall parents' and spring parents' weekends. The admissions problem facing the College in the fall of 1945 and for several years thereafter was how to make an equitable selection from the several thousand applications which it received annually. If we can believe the surviving data, the College rejected more than 5,000 applicants during 1946-1949. The administration and faculty were equally determined, not only to give preference to veterans, but also to be as fair and reasonable as possible in their treatment of former servicemen and servicewomen. The 1946 catalogue announced that, since Gettysburg was seeking veterans "functionally prepared to do college work," whether or not they had the proper credentials, it had "liberalized" requirements for their admission and graduation. To avoid unnecessary delays, they were permitted to enter at six different times during a year. A pamphlet entitled "Gettysburg College Plans to Meet the Needs of Returning Veterans" went through several editions, as experience suggested that its provisions be updated. Early in 1946 a Veterans Administration Guidance Center, to serve a ten-county area, opened on the campus. During the 1946-1949 years about 57 percent of the students, who then numbered about twelve hundred, were veterans. Fears that they might find it difficult to adjust to the demands of College life proved to be groundless. This was due in part to the fact that the administration and faculty realized that they were dealing with two student bodies, the larger of which consisted of persons who were adults and deserved, even demanded, to be treated as such.187 The closing of the guidance center and the expiration of the liberalized entrance requirements in 1947 were signs that the bulk of the veterans had 1B7"Perhaps the greatest surprise of the year," President Hanson told the board in May 1947, "was in relation to our veteran students." Despite fears in all parts of the country, at Gettysburg "the veterans were not only capable of adjusting themselves to the routine life of the campus, but they entered wholeheartedly into all college activities." The ages of students during the year just closed, he wrote, ranged from seventeen to thirty-four. 89