That Was the College Then, This Is Now

The Class of '61 was, like most, a reflection of the times. Our four years came during the second Eisenhower term and it was a time of rest. We were between Korea and Vietnam, and, like the country as a whole, it seems, floated on a quiet stream.

E.B. White wrote: "Each day when I awake I am torn between a desire to enjoy the world and a desire to improve the world. This makes it hard to place the day." We tended more towards enjoyment than improvement. This was not all bad, for the improvement part would come later. We were the lull before the storm of the 1960s.

I can remember that the "in" or "cool" people were those who were laid back. Enthusiasm was gauche. There were few passionate causes and in, direct contrast to the apparent college climate of the 80s, we certainly were not driven. Look at our

Charles Ravenel, Democratic nominee for governor of South Carolina in 1974, and the U.S. Senate in 1978, is the first class marshal for the Class of 1961. response to the switch from Latin to Englishdiplomas. We protested becoming modern. Itwas a paean to liturgy.

Harvard's community was and is so diverse, soeclectic, that I hesitate to describe my ownreminiscences because they may not berepresentative. But I'll bet many of them were.These were, then, the passionate exceptions to ourquiet four years. They became the memories. BertMessenbaugh, Bob Freeman, Larry Noitou, WalterGoulke and many others had an awesome floatingpoker game with stakes high enough to cover ayear's tuition.

Our sports were damned good in spots. Rememberour swimmers topping Yale to go undefeated withworld record kinds of performance? Our class beatYale in football three out of four years. Hubrisdisappeared when they clobbered us as seniors, butwe had had our moments. And our entire collegecommunity quivered with pleasure as theCleary-Harvard-led U.S. Olympic team beat theRussians in the most thrilling athletic contest Ihave to this day ever seen. Our Dave Bohn-ledlacrosse team was championship quality as wassquash, crew, and several others. All in all, wedid Harvard proud.

Academically we were journeyman students. Byand large we did the work, pulsing under theguiding hands of the faculty. Will any of us everforget John Finley '28 in his waltz across thestage as he described Agamemnon, (he laterdescribed an Eliot House senior as a cross betweenAchilles and Harry Truman), pivoting as he reachedstage end and swirling the cord of his microphonein a deft arc.

How many of us moaned out loud when I.B. Cohenof Nat Sci III assaulted us with the worst everexam questions? "What was the final temperature ofthe beaker of water into which fell the steel ballthat had bounced off the nail after it rolled andfell off the table which was X inches off thefloor?"

Fine Arts--"Darkness at Noon"--was not only forsome the first exposure to art in any intellectualsense. It was the recurring opportunity to sit ina dark, and private hole in the ground watchingopulent, passionate pictures while never quitebecoming unaware that there were dozens of warm,soft, breathing Cliffies all around you. Theintellectual awakening took a clear second place.

Sex played its usual dominant role. I rememberFinley remarking that "if Harvard can reduce thetime you think about the opposite sex from 90percent to 70 percent of your working hours, thenwe will have succeeded in reaching you something."Women generally were reluctant, not aggressive.This was P.P., pre-the-pill. No women spent thenight in our dorms, openly that is, and alas, oneof our class' great regrets is that we just missedthe sexual revolution. Not completely, thankgoodness, though the Cliffies were so bright manyfound them intimidating and headed happily for themore yielding fields of Pine Manor and Simmons.

Jerome Bruner exposed us to the foreign land ofthe inside of the mind as social relations grewfrom a "gut" course to riveting new knowledgewhich would last long in its impact on our dailylives.

John Galbraith gave me my only "A" at Harvardthough I could not believe him when he said boardsof directors often fail truly to represent theinterests of the shareholders. Now, as I sit onsome boards, I see he knew what he was talkingabout.

There were, I know, some strange wonderfulbrains at work in esoteric fields of Sanskrit,Eastern religious, Mayan anthropology and thelike. To my regret, I came into contact with toofew of them. They were little pockets ofexcellence in the Harvard tapestry and gave lustreto those of who did not fully plumb the depths ofwhat Harvard offered. I felt them out there,though, and I was proud of them and their work andwas glad to be among them.

One of the explorers was Timothy Leary. Hiswork ended up leading many to great trouble withdrugs, but he was one of those intellectualpioneers I had never seen. In fact, I never oncesaw, or even heard of, anyone using drugs while Iwas at college. How long ago! So relatively quietwas our time.

We had some social and political moments ofpassion. Castro at the stadium before we knew hewas going to corrupt his revolution, excited us.So did John F. Kennedy '40, the Democratic nomineewhen he showed up his at his first Board ofOverseers meeting. I saw him that day, as did manyof the Class of 1961.

We had the normal panoply of Harvard types. Wehad our scholars, our jocks, our socialites andserious students, grinds, preppies, animals,workaholics and alcoholics. We had hellraiserstoo. Who had not heard of the tales of Fat City atMad River when with Rusty Mead and John Hall orthe story of Red Dog Desloge's theft of a policecar? I remember the absolutely sinful delight ofzooming down Memorial Drive at midnight in earlyJune, finished for the year and free beyondbelief, astride my BSA 5000 motorcycle withPantaleoni and Eric Nelson on their bikes rightalongside of me at 60 mph.

Through all this the College really worked forme, and I know it worked for most of us. Theclassic, unfettered debauchery of suddenlyunsupervised young people was matched by anequally explosive unleashing of a freewheelingintellectual energy. We stepped into the1