Letters and a love of music provide chronicle of WWI
"World War I in Remembrance" exhibit
The unveiling of Coe’s “World War I in Remembrance” exhibit coincided with the observance of Veterans Day. Alice Kitchin Enichen ’53, daughter of former Coe professor Dr. Joseph Kitchin, visited Coe on Nov. 12 to deliver opening remarks.
Kitchin joined the Coe College faculty as a professor of music in 1916. The following year, during World War I, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and was assigned to an evacuation hospital at Chateau Montanglaust in Coulommiers, France. This particular hospital, stationed near the front lines, proved to be one of the busiest throughout the war.
Musical instruments were not allowed on the battlefront; however, as Kitchin’s May 21, 1918, letter states, “I walked right on the ship with my fiddle under my arm, and nobody said a word.”
While deployed, Kitchin religiously wrote letters to his family. These letters have been chronicled and are on display with the exhibit. Kitchin’s letters detail the sights, sounds and mood of WWI — poetically describing how soldiers found goodness in their surroundings despite the ongoing war.
If you wanted to listen to music on the battlefront, you had to make it yourself, and Kitchin loved music. During his downtime, he would play the violin and pair with singers to entertain the troops and drown out the incessant sound of gunfire and “aeroplanes.”
The “World War I in Remembrance” exhibit also contains other war mementos including the journal entries of Marvin Cone ’14.
Organized by Director of Library Services and College Archivist Jill Jack along with library colleagues, Coe students and professors Bethany Keenan and Ranelle Knight-Lueth, the exhibit is open to the public during normal hours of operation and housed in Cone Galleries in Stewart Memorial Library. Letters were donated to the Coe College archives by Alice Kitchin Enichen.
Kitchin, formerly a longtime faculty violinist and conductor, was instrumental in the development of the music department at Coe — most notably founding the Cedar Rapids Symphony. His name and contributions to the college live on in perpetuity through the Daehler-Kitchin Auditorium in Marquis Hall.