Word: lawson
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People in Des Moines have been wondering for years about the mysterious school that took over the old Des Moines University* campus in 1943. A silvery-haired, 82-year-old gentleman named Alfred William Lawson had bought the grounds and announced a new school: the Des Moines University of Lawsonomy. From time to time, a few students of varying ages were seen through the high picket fence, but there seemed to be no faculty. Founder Lawson, a pioneer aviation man who claims that he built the first double-decker airliner and got the U.S. started on its aircraft industry, kept...
...Moines newspapers got interested in the strange school and started asking questions. School officials were reluctant to talk, but Lawson's newspaper described the founder enthusiastically as the kind of teacher who comes along "about every 2,000 years." Reporters found that Lawsonomy was sweepingly billed as "the study of everything," based on 47 principles set forth in the dozens of books of which Lawson is the author. All life, according to Lawsonomy, operates according to the laws of "maneuverability, penetrability, and zigzag-and-swirl...
...degree of "Knowlegian" in Lawsonomy, but that 20 full-time students are working away at it. The school charges no tuition, they said, and it pays no salaries to its teachers. Students (men only) are accepted only on a ten-year basis, and the curriculum consists largely of memorizing Lawson's books. No other reading is permitted; on one occasion, it was even forbidden to refer to a basketball rulebook...
...Moines's 1950 records show $12,000 paid in taxes on land held by the college. Lawson's books are peddled around town for as much as $5 a copy and contributions seem to pour into the university's coffers. In Detroit a Ford worker said he had donated $8,000 to the school; a postman said he gave close to $5,000. Yet Founder Lawson insists that he is a poor man, frequently turns his pockets inside out at meetings, and lives in seclusion away from the school...
...Closed squad lineup is as follows: Frank Basius, Hugh Graham, George Leary, Neil Howland, Oscar Swenson, and Bill Whoriskey of Dudley; Larry Boies, Bob Farnham, and Mitch Rosenholz of Dunster; Dean Howells, Mike Jackson, Terry King, Pete Lawson, Mike Ward, and Peter Ward of Eliot...