In the fall of 1931 Wendell entered Georgetown College in Georgetown, KY where his older brother Paul was a senior and from which his two half sisters had graduated � Helen in 1924 and Ruth in 1926. Initially Walter joined KA, a fraternity Paul was in, but the life didn�t suit him and he resigned. Harry Lancaster, a fellow student and KA member told Walter at the time that he was making a mistake, and that he�d never have any friends. Despite this prophecy, Walter never had any problems finding friends and maintained a long friendship even with Harry Lancaster, who later became the assistant UK basketball under Adolph Rupp and subsequently UK Athletic Director. Perhaps fearing that he would develop some wild behavior similar to that of his brother�s, Lucy rented a house near the campus and lived there with her daughter, Bernice. Wendell may have stayed there some during his freshman year. On some weekends she would return to Salyersville to check in with Eugene. Wendell was a member of the track team but had to drop out because of a hernia. He enjoyed the various college courses but especially took a liking to art and drama. He had to choose between the two and opted for art. Several of his block prints were printed in the college newspaper. Oaks chose not to attend college but ran the store in Salyersville with his dad. Upon graduation from Georgetown, Ruth taught for a couple of years at Campbellsville College, another Baptist college in Ky

During his college days he and a fellow student decided during a hike through the countryside one day to cross a rail road trestle over a deep ravine. They were half-way across when they spotted train coming toward them. They scurried off and narrowly escaped being run down. Several years later when living in Louisville, Walter sketched a "cartoon" of the experience which is available on the slide show for this period. [jwa]

One of his college classmates was Buel Kazee who later became a Baptist preacher and enlisted Walt�s help in 1951 to illustrate a booklet of his called, "Mused Uncle Mose." [jwa]

"When I got to Georgetown College, I joined the MaskCrafters, which was the drama club of Georgetown, and Rita Calhoun from Owensboro was the director. She put me in a lot of plays. I remember the first one I was in was called the Nut Farm. I was Willie, and someone from Shelbyville was my mother in the play, and I threw myself into that thing and it received raves all over the country. George Tonio said afterwards, �Arnett stars as Willie in the Nut Farm.� I always like to be in plays. You'd have to memorize your parts you know. And it was good experience, it cut out stage fright. I never did like debating, but I loved to be in plays. Now Paul was good at mathematics. I was never any good at mathematics. Paul had all of the higher mathematics. That stuff never appealed to me. It worked well with him because he was an architect and he had to have it."[Wendell]

"When I attended Georgetown College I had wanted, in addition to being an artist, to be a track star. I wanted to be the world's fastest 100 yd dasher and also the world's highest pole-vaulter. I had read much about the great track stars of the twenties from the University of Southern California under Coach Anderson and I worshipped Charlie Paddock, Frank Wycoff and Jesse Owens --the world's fastest men. I too wanted to be among the fastest. In January and February while at Georgetown I would put on a sweat suit and take off for Hinton Field and run around the track every afternoon. I had been doing this for some time when one afternoon Dr. Robert Hinton, for whom the field was named, came by. Dr. Hinton, my Biology instructor, was a graduate of Yale University and while at Yale he had broken the world's pole vault record and held it for one day until they heard from another meet. He was the one who had interested me in track and pole vault and I respected him very much. He saw me running around the track and called me over to ask me what I was doing. I told him I was getting in shape for the spring track meet because I wanted to break all records. Dr. Hinton said, "Forget it. You will burn yourself-out before the meet begins." He told me to quit as there would be plenty of time in April to get ready. I stopped, though I didn't want to. I went out for track at Georgetown and ran in several meets with Transylvania, Berea and Centre Colleges. The boys from Berea were the runningest fellows I have ever seen. One boy named Dotson, ran like a gazelle and it seemed he could have run all day without getting out of breath. Our track team did well. I ran in the 100 yd., 880 yd., the mile and two mile runs and placed first in the two mile in one meet, but I never could get the 100 yd. to below 10.8 seconds. Which brings me back to my point that maybe if I hadn't had that congenital hernia I could have been the world's fastest human and run in the Olympic Games!

I continued my study of art at Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky, in 1931 with the hopes of some day becoming a portrait painter or cartoonist. I like both of these fields. My instructor in art, Miss. Irene Cullis, was a good artist and I learned much under her encouragement and instruction.

"I next enrolled at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, Ohio where I developed my skill. The Academy was affiliated with the University of Cincinnati and a lot of students went there. One instructor there whom I especially remember was Carl Zimmerman, a native of Indianapolis. He was a master at painting in oils and he taught me how to paint and not be afraid to make mistakes. He always said, "Don't be afraid of it. You can always paint over it. So splash in and get used to the 'water'." He showed me a trick in painting a bright red Stark's Delicious apple. We always painted from the actual fruit. Mr. Zimmerman would look at the apple, take a palette in his hand, shove his thumb into some bright red paint and then with a sweep of his thumb in a circular motion make a beautiful apple. He took a little black and make the stem of the apple and it looked exactly like the �real McCoy.�" [Wendell]

"While I attended the Art Academy I lived in an interesting place. It was kind of like the YMCA only it was the only one in the country. It was called the L.B. Harrison Club and located in Walnut Hill near Eden Park. It was named after Linden Blackwell Harrison who was a big banker in Cincinnati. He built this club and boy it was nice. On the first floor was the where you administration part, and off to the side there were all kind of billiard and ping pong tables. There was a swimming pool in the basement and a cafeteria where you ate. I had a room and it was $16.50 every two weeks. That included your meals. Momma would send me a check to pay for the room. I ate breakfast and dinner there. I stayed there a year. They would walk down through the park to the art academy. We had people in this place that were business men, bankers and so on and they stayed there." [Wendell]

"We would go to the Art Academy every day but would have different classes. One day we'd have drawing, the next still life, oil paintings and so on. I did my painting at the school and didn�t take the work to the Club. We were off on the weekends but I never went home to Salyersville. I didn�t like the local Baptist church and instead attended the Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church on Sundays."[Wendell]

Ruby Lafoon, the Governor of Kentucky's daughter, Leila Lafoon , was in my oil and watercolor class in 1933. [She�s not in the group photos of Wendell�s classes, but there�s a single photo of her in the slide section for this period.] Every weekend he'd send his chauffeur in a big Cadillac up there to pick up Leila and bring her back to Frankfort. She was the homeliest girl. She had long, stringy hair. When Instructor Zimmerman found out that she was the Kentucky Governor's daughter and that I was from the Kentucky mountains, he said one day, "Miss, Laffoon since you are from the Bluegrass region of Kentucky I want you to do as a project, a design using race horses. Arnett, you're from you're from the Kentucky mountains. Now, I want you to make a design of moonshine stills and show the revenuers raiding those stills, and we'll make a wallpaper design out of it." I said, �OK.� I had seen the sheriff of our county many times bring stills in that he had captured and let the mash and moonshine run out into the dirt road. So I made it and in fact he took it down to a big wallpaper house there in Cincinnati to see if they'd be interested. See, back then wallpaper had nothing on it but little designs, flowers, you know, they didn't go into that pretty stuff on it. He said, �Oh we don't want to take that up there.� Leila completed her design. The last I heard she married an accountant here in Louisville and moved here. Ruby was a good Governor. They thought he might even run for President. One day Ruby had to go up to Cleveland, and Happy [Chandler, the Lieutenant Governor] followed him right up to Covington and he waited until he crossed the bridge into Cincinnati, and then he called a section of the legislature and repealed the Ruby�s sales tax. That made Happy right there. He ran for Governor the next year and because he repealed that sales tax, all the merchants were glad of it. Daddy was. That's why he liked Happy Chandler because he repealed the tax. One cent. That's how Chandler got so popular. In fact he got so popular he thought he'd be president but he couldn't knock out Franklin Roosevelt. Then when Nunn came in. he right behind him - repealed the sales raised it to five [T]

The Rubens paints, which the Academy sold, were highly rated and were supposed to be the best that money could buy. I got tired of paying so much money for the paints so one day when I was in downtown Cincinnati, I happened to walk past a Sherwin-Williams paint store and remembered that my father had bought paint from them for his store in Salyersville. I went into the store and bought a set of oil colors which were much cheaper than the ones the Academy sold its students. I took them back to my room at the L.B. Harrison Club, where I was staying while attending school and I squeezed the Sherwin-Williams paint into uncapped tubes of Rubens. I took the "Rubens" tubes to class with me the next day and I was painting a still-life of oranges, bananas and apples against a colorful cloth drape when Instructor Zimmerman came up. He looked quizzically at my work and said, "Mr. Arnett, that Rubens paint sure has taken on an unusual gleam. Here, let me have your palette." He started mixing the paint and dabbing it on the canvas. Then he said," There's something wrong here! Arnett, what kind of paint is this?" I finally confessed to my deed, much to the laughter of the other students. Then Zimmerman said, "This paint is lousy, and this canvas will last about a month." I made several oil still-lives and landscapes using that paint while I was at the Academy and to this day -- thirty years later- those canvases are still looking good on the wall of our home in Louisville. [ghostbk]

While I was at the Academy however, I did win a cash prize for a poster I designed for the Cincinnati Community Chest.

One of the boys up there was Paul Pearson relative of the ones who own the Pearson Funeral Home in Louisville. Paul was the brother in law, he was a terrific portrait painter and if you look around the funeral home today you can see those big portrait paintings of his brothers and father. I was ???? Pearson not long ago and I said, what ever happened to Paul? He said, well, he drank himself to death. He said before he did that we hired him out here and after we'd do the embalming, we'd have Paul come in and do the faces. He said, we had to fire him. I said, Why - he was a good portrait painter. He said, that was the trouble - he'd try to make everybody look like a movie star. Said we had to get rid of him. He married a girl named Helen Brown from Dayton and they always had these big carnival type of things. Paul and Helen would dress up, he was dressed up as a spider once I remember. Helen was a pretty good artist too.

We had a man a surgeon from Ohio, Kelly Hale was his name. Always smiling. He'd drive down from his town up there every morning to go to school. Then drive back after school. But he'd use the charcoal like he would a scalpel. He was a good artist. He was doing it as a hobby. One day he came to Louisville to attend a medical convention and I was working with an engraving house there in Louisville for a few months and he called me up and Hale said Arnett what are you doing tonight? I said, I don't know. He said, I've been attending this medical convention he said, come on down and we'll eat supper together and we'll go to a show or something. I said O.K. He said, I understand they have a good speak easy place here in Louisville. Well it was notorious, called the, he was thinking women. I'm telling you, we went in there and sat down and these gals came up, stripped, not a thing on, and they grabbed their breasts and they'd push them and squirt, it looked like milk coming out - right out to the audience. And I'm telling you, he just sat there and laughed, he just thought it was great. Then they go through, some man would come out and they'd go through like they were having intercourse up there on the stage. Boy, you never saw such. They finally closed it down. That is the first time I was ever in there, what was the name of it, it's right there by Jefferson Street. Boy, it was notorious.

John: - Did you tell Mom about that?
Wendell: No, I never did. Boy oh Hale enjoyed that.
John: Well that was very hospitable of you!
Wendell: We had another boy from, I forget where he was from, but he was a handsome guy. He did a lot of drawing of a girl from Dayton, Ohio. I didn't learn to draw there. They could teach you there at that place, but I didn't care anything about wall painting.

Slide Show for this period:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59496800@N04/sets/72157631976541353/show/