Go Bengals!

Submitted by Barbara Asboe

Passed like a baton from one president to the next, our antique coffee kettle serves as a "badge of office" to those in charge of the ISU Women's Club.  Presented to Mrs. Charles Frazier, wife of the president of Idaho Technical Institute in the mid-thirties, it soon took center stage at the various functions arranged by the faculty wives to help entertain visiting dignitaries and the teaching staff.  Coffee was brewed in the old-fashioned pot by submerging a linen bag of coffee grounds into three or four gallons of hot water to steep for an hour.  

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The growth of the University and the advent of modern conveniences long ago made our revered coffee kettle obsolete.  Banished to the kitchen, it served for many years merely as a receptacle for boiling water to pour into a shiny chrome 36-cup drip coffee pot, now dispensing clear, black coffee from the buffet.  More recently it has become a favorite vase for the colorful fall flowers that decorate the refreshment table at the annual Past Presidents' Fall Social.

 

The coffee pot remains a treasured, antique reminder of a group of women, some also antique, but always percolating, who have graced ISU's history throughout the years.  Each successive term, the new Club President takes the prize home with her, where she strives to store it under her bed or at the back of a broom closet.

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