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The Gold Star Hall puts the “memorial” in the Memorial Union.

“The Gold Star Hall was to be a memorial to the Iowa Staters that died in World War I,” said Kathy Svec, MU marketing coordinator.

Svec said she spoke with a MU staffer who worked in the building during World War I. He told her “how strongly people felt about this war.”

“It was a truly horrible war, and for those countries that were involved, many families lost family members,” she said. “We need to remember the lessons we learned from the war and that it wasn’t worth it.”

The name “Gold Star Hall” came from a World War I tradition. Families with members in the war placed a card with a blue star in their windows. A blue star was replaced with a gold star if the soldier was killed in action.

“Students wanted to have a memorial and at the same time accomplish some other needs of the student body,” Svec said. “There was no building like the Union where social events could be held. The students wanted to have a campus center that included a memorial.”

ISU students collected pledges from students and alumni to pay for the building, Svec said.

The MU opened in 1928, and the names of students or alumni who died in World War I were carved into the walls.

According to Harold Pride’s “The First Fifty Years,” the MU’s architect, W.T. Proudfoot, put great effort into the hall.

“The care with which [Proudfoot] planned the vaulted stone ceiling supported on free-standing stone columns, the tall round-topped stained glass windows, the stars embedded in the marble floor of the hall proper and the bronze signs of the zodiac in the floor of the vestibule, grew out of his patriotic reverence for the men and one woman whose names were to be chiseled into the stone panels below those lofty windows,” Pride stated.

In 1943, stained glass was installed, replacing the clear glass that was needed to illuminate the hall before the Pride and Main Lounges and the Campanile Room were added.

The 12 stained-glass panels depict symbols for the “homely virtues” of Learning, Virility, Courage, Patriotism, Justice, Faith, Determination, Love, Obedience, Loyalty, Integrity and Tolerance. The panels include emblems representing the branches of the military, aspects of ISU and majors and training offered.

In 1984, the names of those ISU students who died in World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars were added to the walls.

According to ISU legend, Gold Star Hall is reported to be haunted by the only woman who died in the war, Hortense Elizabeth Wind. Wind was a home economics graduate in 1915 and later enlisted as a nurse in World War I.

“Some of the staff have commented that they have heard noises late at night that don’t seem to come from anywhere in particular,” Svec said. “We sort of developed this notion that there is a ghostly entity. There is no other real explanation for the noises.”