Columbia University is the New York setting for the opening of Willie Keith’s naval life: amid its buildings, he parts from his mother and enters the midshipmen school at Furnald Hall. The university’s role is less that of a developed campus portrait than a threshold between Willie’s former life and the Navy’s regimented world.

Setting and Departure

On a cold, sunny morning in December 1942, Willie’s mother drove him from Manhasset to the midshipmen school despite his preference to take the train. Near Broadway and 116th Street, the family Cadillac stood beside the gray-and-red buildings of Columbia University as mother and son said goodbye. Willie had wanted his departure to feel more like going off to war, rather than being escorted to the Navy by his mother.

Furnald Hall and Naval Training

After their farewells, Willie walked past the School of Journalism and down to the entrance of Furnald Hall, formerly a dormitory for law students and now the site of the midshipmen school. There, a Navy chief handed him his papers. The building soon became the setting for the repetitive collective routine of training: bugles, assemblies, announcements, marches, lectures, and aptitude tests sent hundreds of sailors in and out as instructions were issued and revised. The men on the upper floor had to negotiate nine flights of stairs when the elevator could not accommodate them all.

Narrative Significance

The Columbia University surroundings establish the point of departure from which Willie enters a life organized by Navy schedules and shared quarters. By nightfall, the new routine and intimacy of the small room he shares with strangers have already made the morning’s goodbye feel remote. The university thus marks a change in scale: Willie leaves a familiar family setting for the crowded institutional life of Furnald Hall, the first step in a story that will carry him far from New York.