Men whose names are on UWL buildings made news in 1973

Former university president Rexford Mitchell died on the 4th of July in 1973. He was 77. Mitchell holds the longevity record among the people who have led the La Crosse campus, serving as president for almost 30 years. The campus only had four buildings when Mitchell became president in 1939. The main physical education building is named after him.

That same week, Carl Wimberly was appointed vice-chancellor at UW-L, following the retirement of Maurice Graff. Wimberly came to La Crosse to teach political science. His name is on the classroom building that originally was called North Hall. Graff’s name is on Main Hall.

Former White House counsel John Dean spent a full week in front of the Senate Watergate committee, implicating President Nixon in the cover-up of political dirty tricks. The hearings, broadcast live on network TV that summer, delayed the debut of CBS’s new version of ‘Match Game’…which would feature Richard Dawson and Charles Nelson Reilly as regular panelists.

On Saturday nights that summer, you could watch reruns of ‘All in the Family,’ Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, and ‘Bridget Loves Bernie.’ ‘Bridget’ was a top-10 comedy, but it was cancelled by CBS after just one season, apparently because of too many complaints about the plot, of a Jewish cab driver marrying a Catholic schoolteacher. Bye bye Bernie, in 1973, yesterday in La Crosse.