Gene Haley left the Marines with dreams of a college education and few ideas about how to pay for it.

Then he heard about the GI Bill of Rights.

Gene Haley browses an album filled with relics of his tenure with the U.S. Marine Corps. Haley served for two years during World War II before enrolling in Kansas University. He paid for his education there with money from the GI Bill.

“That was a godsend,” he said.

Haley, who spent two years in the Marines, was among an influx of veterans who returned home from World War II and enrolled at Kansas University, more than doubling enrollment.

KU’s enrollment, which hovered around 5,000 students during the war, hit 11,000 by the 1948-49 school year.

More than 6,000 of those were veterans. And they were at KU to learn, Haley said.

“The military experience, it really grew a lot of people up real quick,” he said.

Henry Fortunato, a KU graduate student who is compiling information about campus history for a Web site, said some traditional KU shenanigans such as requiring freshmen to wear beanie caps disappeared during the late 1940s.

“The GIs who came back were older than the typical college undergraduate and they’d gone through hell,” he said. “They didn’t have time to go through the collegiate pranks.”

The influx of veterans had other influences on campus. The average age of the football team in 1947 was 25. The team went to the Orange Bowl that year.

And according to “The University of Kansas: A History” by Clifford S. Griffin, Chancellor Deane Malott told the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce that having more men on campus delighted the women already at KU.

The increase in students left many without a place to live. Lawrence residents converted basements into apartments and rented rooms to students. Sunflower Ordnance Works offered houses built for workers during the war to students, and KU offered bus rides to campus.

KU made makeshift housing in the basement of Memorial Stadium, Spooner Hall and Robinson Gymnasium.

“You wouldn’t believe what we faced,” Haley said. “If it was clean and warm, it would make do. I knew a lot of people who had one room and shared the bathroom with three other rooms.”

KU also had problems with space. The university bought temporary buildings for some classrooms.

Haley, 73, earned a bachelor’s degree in business and continued on to earn a master’s degree.

He said he would have enrolled in college even without the GI Bill. But the money made the experience more convenient for him and thousands of other soldiers.

“It was good for everyone,” he said. “It was good for us and good for the country. It satisfied a need.”