Criminal
Justice grads
Secret Service men
return to alma mater
The hall of fame on MSU's 16 - member class of 1948 in criminal justice includes five graduates who are or were with the U.S. Secret Service.
H. Stuart Knight, who was named head of the agency last fall, has been with the service since 1950, and says he probably would have joined earlier if he had not been a Canadian at the time. In the two years before his naturalization in Detroit he worked with the MSU campus police and the Berkeley police force in California.
Knight and a 1948 classmate, Kenneth E. Balge, came to MSU last week to meet with school Director Arthur F. Brandstatter and other faculty and students at their alma mater.
Balge has been special assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury (Secret Service) since 1972. He joined the federal agency immediately after graduation, and has served several times in Detroit, and in Columbus, Ohio, Charleston, W. Va., and Washington.
In his college years Balge played at right end for Spartan football teams. He had planned to be a policeman since the age of 10 when he tried on an uncle's policeman hat.
"The competitiveness and the knocking around is good training," the ex - footballer said. "We have to keep in top physical condition. Anytime, we may have to run steadily for five minutes or longer."
Rex W. Scouten, who came to MSU from Snover in the Thumb area, also graduated with Knight and Balge.
Scouten served with the U.S. Department of the Interior, then became special agent with the Secret Service, and five years ago moved to his present post of chief usher at the White House.
Also graduating in 1948 was Vincent P. Mroz, who was also a football player. He is now deputy assistant director of the Secret Service; in charge of the Protective Force which guards the President and other high ranking officials.
Robert R. Lapham, who came to MSU from Ludington and graduated in 1948, is now special agent in the Secret Service's Protective Support Division.
Asked about student life and attitudes now and in 1948, Director Knight points out that he and his colleagues were at MSU after military service and were among the first group of GI students after World War II.
Knight by then was 25 years old and married, had been in the armed forces in the Pacific for four years, and had been wounded and decorated.
Balge had been in Europe with the Rangers, Mroz had been with the Fleet Marine Force in the Pacific.
The students they met on campus last week, Knight said, were "full of practical questions about job opportunities, equally full of philosophical questions, and generally optimistic."
In the interval since 1948, Knight and Balge pointed out, career opportunities have changed. State and municipal agencies have grown, there is more federal funding of programs, at the lower levels, more job opportunities, and more chance to make a real contribution.
Knight's recollections of student life and living on thin dimes, included the admission he had spent a crime - free two weeks in the Washtenaw County Jail in Ann Arbor, sleeping in the "capias" (civil arrest) cell because he was doing field work with the sheriff and was between pay checks.
Balge agrees that things are different now, and job possibilities are different.
"Most of the old - line police officers have retired," he said. "Now the forces are generally younger, better educated, with more money to operate better in a highly sophisticated and complicated society. There is also more chance for innovation and imagination in your work. And more opportunity for women to get into the field."
Together they agreed that the image of police
has improved. Only in isolated areas do they hear the word "pig" anymore,
and there are other evidences of a less turbulent society.
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