Kurt Vonnegut, who died this week at age 84, received part of his education at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Writing in the Tennessee Alumnus Magazine, writer Aaron Purcell describes the program that brought Vonnegut to The Hill in 1943:
“With lower enrollment and nearly empty dormitories, the university easily accommodated such groups as the air corps cadets, who received five months of instruction in English, mathematics, history, geography, physics, and physical education while completing flight training. The Army Specialized Training Program also sent several hundred students to the University of Tennessee, including then-engineering student Kurt Vonnegut. This national program was distributed on college campuses across the country to prepare specialists in engineering, science, mathematics, and foreign languages for wartime demands. During the war, these and other government-sponsored programs educated thousands of soldiers on the Knoxville campus.”
I met Vonnegut once in Massachusetts and found him to be a personable and kind individual. Here is a photo of him as a young man:
photo by Edie Vonnegut
Tennessee Guy 
Thank you for posting this photo.
i found it via Google image search & used it in this post, in memory of the anniversary of Mr. Vonnegut’s passing.
So it goes.
I’m a current student at UT, and an AVID Vonnegut fan, and I was wondering where he lived when he went to UT. I live in a bery old building on cumberland ave, 1721 west cumberland, I was curious if he maybe stayed in my building, or where it was he stayed. Do you know what resources I should use, or someone who was maybe friends with him during this period i could speak to? I am absolutely dying to know. Feel free to email me at qzk839@vols.utk.edu thank you.
Alas, I have no further information on Vonnegut.