1976 Annalist’s Letter
The Highlight Zone
You are entering another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. A land of shadows and substance, a land of things and ideas. In September 1972, 266 freshmen were dropped on a hilltop in Clinton, N.Y., and expected to learn. What happened and how? You have entered the highlight zone!
Our national atmosphere? A controversial president elected by a record number of votes, soaring gasoline prices, abortion rights in the headlines, impeachment being bandied about, the vice president, a graduate of Yale Law School, huge Middle East tension, astronauts being celebrated for a lunar excursion, an unwanted war, inflation busting out. Sound familiar? The difference between today, of which these comments may have reminded you, and our era? We still had a Gulf of Mexico!
We each had our own unique journey to Hamilton. A kernel of my journey might be illustrative. In the spring of 1971, we had a day off from school, and my mother and a friend of hers in nearby Dewitt heard that there was a fantastic bakery, the Clinton Home Bakery specializing in raisin bread, in Clinton, N.Y. In order to justify the trip to the bakery, she thought her friend’s son and I, both members of the baseball team, could interview at Hamilton College while they shopped for raisin bread and other goodies. Root Hall beckoned as we got out of the car and walked across the quadrangle. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Effinger talked with each of us for about half an hour, then suggested that I spend some time with Christopher Covert, the head of admissions. I was a naïf in the admissions process, and as a high school junior I knew none of the jargon associated with it. My vague understanding was that you applied and were admitted or rejected. After several minutes of what seemed to be a positive conversation, Mr. Covert asked me how I felt about early decision. I had never heard of this term, but I assumed it was another one of those highfalutin terms that colleges use, like calling a résumé a curriculum vitae. Wishing to appear cooperative, I replied, “I could decide as early as tomorrow morning!” Mr. Covert’s face lost a bit of the enthusiasm I thought I had detected. I think I saw him write English 11 on a pad. He proceeded to explain what early decision meant. I asked a clarifying question: “Do you mean I can get admitted to college before my fall grades have been revealed?” He gave a speech about how a student must continue to work hard and earn good grades. I smiled. Another thoughtful applicant had been found.
On Sept. 7, 1972, 266 of us began orientation. A large gathering was held in the Chapel led by President Chandler, Dean Kurtz, and Dean Bingham. We were told about various traditions at Hamilton, including snapping fingers instead of clapping, the Honor Code, the designated hitchhiking spots, the key role that our faculty advisor would play in our lives, the bumpy transition the College had recently made to coeducation, and how we would need to be on our best behavior to try to make the melding of the two institutions, Kirkland and Hamilton, better. President Chandler was from central casting for college presidents. He was tall, had elegant gray hair that was never out of place, and spoke with a stentorian voice that impressed us all. We listened respectfully — or fearfully — to the speeches that warned us of the difficulty of college work, of no longer being the academic stars, and of Hamilton’s policy of grading to a metaphysical standard that no one could explain except that it meant low was the norm. A Dean Kinnel study revealed the average course grade at Hamilton was 2.3 versus 2.8 at Colgate for the prior year. Two years later, John “Sudsy” Needham ’75 was explaining this grading anomaly to an admissions official at BU Law School as we were assured the graduate schools would understand the Hamilton standard. The official interrupted John and proclaimed, “We have a saying in admissions: the thicker the file, the thicker the candidate!” John ended his soliloquy on the grading. Dean Kurtz, reminding us of his heart-of-darkness relative, explained the grades we might receive. Have you ever watched the evening news and heard a court sentence someone to not one, but two life sentences and think that seems a bit severe? His explanation created a similar feeling. He said we could receive A, B, C, D, or F. But that was not the end. Certain work might receive an FF for a “serious failure” as opposed to the lighthearted F that was a zero in your GPA. What did a serious failure mean to your GPA if an F was zero? Do you now owe points to get back to zero? Would four FFs mean a GPA of minus one? Did that mean you had to return to high school?
Later we took placement tests for writing, for math, and for foreign languages. We began physical fitness tests and proficiency tests in carryover sports, which were sports you could play for the rest of your life.
The physical fitness requirements were an interesting test of our acuity not just physically, but also analytically. First, we had to demonstrate proficiency in strength through doing pull-ups, push-ups, and sit-ups. For speed we took a running test. For carryover sports there were choices both for warm weather and for cold weather, in which you had to demonstrate proficiency to avoid having to take classes. For winter sports, one’s sense of measuring difficulty became important. Many signed up for the test in badminton believing they had mastered it at summer picnics. The test required you to score at least three points in a game of badminton against Athletics Director Gene Long to avoid taking lessons. No one disclosed that Gene was a national champion in badminton, which made playing him a bit like playing an octopus. Every student who took the badminton test qualified for a winter full of lessons.
The basics of our daily lives for the next four years were now being established. Mail was delivered three times a day to the basement of Bristol. As it was our only cheap form of communication, we were in the Bristol basement three times a day to see if we’d heard from any high school friends or girlfriends. Friendships were forming among roommates and other men down the hall, daily routines such as brushing your teeth and showering became a subject of great interest as we were introduced to the water being pumped from the reservoir above the College that filtered through layers of Onondaga limestone. The water was a shade of gray and of a hardness that none of us had encountered. According to a study conducted by Professor Cratty of the Chemistry Department, it contained calcium, magnesium, 100% more iron than the New York City water supply, and was 35 times harder than the New York City water supply. Two students were knocked unconscious by their showers. A physics major used a magnet to change the direction of the water coming out of our faucet. The Chemistry Department collected rainwater via a cistern to be used in chemistry experiments as it was purer than what was available through the faucet. The College assured us the water was potable, but it was not enjoyable.
Much that one needed was available in Dunham. Today we have Amazon. We had Jack Syage, our Mr. Haney. Jack trafficked in army coats, sunglasses, Columbia record albums, and stereo equipment. Others were available if you wanted to get herbed up. The food at Commons, except for steak night, was what one expected from institutional food. In addition to eating, one of the more common practices at breakfast was to launch fried eggs Frisbee style at the portraits hanging above the Commons tables. A particular achievement was to get the eggs to adhere directly to the eyes of the Soper portrait.
Housing was a particular concern to all of us, but particularly to the 240 young men placed in Shawshank — sorry I mean Dunham. Architecture of the type that Tim Robbins escaped made life exceedingly uncomfortable, but greatly increased the chance you would know your neighbor well. The proximity of dozens of other men led to interesting pranks in Dunham. Alan Silverman remembers returning to Dunham in the middle of the winter to discover a full set of furniture, arranged exactly as it would have been in a dorm room, sitting in the Dunham parking lot. When Alan went up the stairs to his floor, he discovered that the room where that furniture belonged was now packed to the ceiling with snow. The halls of Dunham proved to be a great spot to practice your slap shot or your tennis forehand. As we thought to abide by the wise words that we were told by President Chandler during orientation, the College apparently forgot them. We were doing our best to make the Hamilton/Kirkland relationship smooth when we received a memo, for all freshmen, from Dean “The Bong” Bingham that the next weekend the College would be busing in dozens of women from Keuka College for a mixer with Hamilton College freshmen. He wanted volunteers to escort them. Unsurprisingly the Kirkland women did not regard this as an act of peace.
The final act of opening the now enlarged campus was the dedication of the new Burke Library at the north end of the quad. A large beer truck from Utica Club was placed on the patio, before the library steps, doling out free beer as we all celebrated this monument to Dewey decimals. Bill Voorhees commented that he thought free beer, and same for the next four years, would be the case for the rest of our lives as he didn’t realize you had to pay for beer until he graduated. During the opening I strolled into the library to wander around the building that The Spectator referred to as “looking like a large Exxon station” to patrol where all these loud orange carpets led. When I reached the second floor, a high school buddy of mine in the Class of ’75, Dave Duggan, ran toward me and asked, “Have you seen the men’s room?” What kind of place was this? I followed him into the men’s room. He chalked his hands, gripped the two new silver bars on both sides of the stall like Bart Conner on the parallel bars while doing a full L with his legs. Neither of us knew what all this equipment was in the bathroom. We were witnessing the first handicapped toilet installed in New York State.
We were now part of this spectacular campus with its alabaster dolomite stone buildings, connected by a necklace of red shale paths, the quiet beauty of Root Glen, the towering elms and chestnut trees. Gary Buonanno mentioned he chose Hamilton partially due to its idyllic pastoral setting. We were beginning to spend four years in a cocoon for our minds and personal confidence.
The first class for many of us that morning was English 11, as two-thirds of us had been required to take it. The first piece we were asked to read was “The Case of the Speluncean Explorers” by Lon Fuller, a Harvard law professor. The case explored a fictional situation where a group of cave explorers was trapped for many weeks underground with a small supply of food. We were asked to discuss whether the group marooned below the earth was subject to the law of the state above it or was subject to a greater natural law as they sought to stay alive. The group chose to have a lottery to decide which of the group would be killed to be a source of protein. The premise was hypothetical, but the same dilemma occurred in the Andes five weeks later when a plane crashed carrying a Uruguayan rugby team. Survivors spent 72 days on the mountain and sourced protein from their fellow passengers. College was getting interesting.
At 10 a.m. Monday, the Chapel bell sounded. We lived and were moved by the sound of the Chapel bell as it both ended and began classes with its dulcet ring. The College was founded as a Presbyterian-inspired institution and remained one for over a century. Since the early years, mandatory daily chapel was required for all students, perhaps a burden for Christian students, but a requirement that amazed those that were not Christian. As the 1960s unrolled and attitudes changed, chapel was reduced to one session weekly and then eliminated by the late ’60s. In its stead, Monday morning chapel arose at 10 a.m. each week. Classes were postponed for 30 minutes. It was completely voluntary, was led by what The Spectator called a witty interlocutor, which Webster’s defines as a wiseass. Freshmen would sit on the balcony, faculty and administration would sit in the front rows, and others would sit anywhere. The protocol was called Roman Forum, I think a reference to the Colosseum not to the senate, as the audience was encouraged to shout their comments at any moment. They ranged from appraising a speaker’s height by inference when yelling “Stand up!” at a short speaker to snapping fingers in favor of a good announcement. Skits were staged, songs were played, karate board breaking was demonstrated, and some serious moments for the whole campus were held there. On our first day, we left our 9 a.m. classes to see hundreds heading toward the Chapel. We found our seats on the balcony to await the antics. The first speaker introduced was Dow Brophy ’73, head of ZPG. We, the freshmen, had no clue what the initials meant, but the Chapel roared as he was introduced. Instinctively, we knew nothing could incite a crowd of men like this other than sex. Dow said he wanted to introduce this year’s models and began tossing condoms into the crowd. It turned out ZPG stood for Zero Population Growth, and he was their campus representative. The interactive feature with the audience made this a place President Chandler and a few others did not like to tread, but others like Sidney Wertimer loved it. As we left Chapel that morning, Professor John O’Neill was overheard asking a colleague if he had tried the new watts system that permitted unlimited free phone calling. The College still employed a phone operator to direct phone calls, but technology was arriving.
During our years at Hamilton, we would prove to be somewhat ungovernable. While we were here, the president resigned and the vice president resigned — and that was just the United States. Deep into the winter of 1973, the Monday morning Chapel filled. A solemn Sid Wertimer walked to the podium carrying a tape player. Had Sid discovered Steppenwolf we wondered. He pressed the play button and stepped off stage before the quiet crowd. A Mission Impossible-like recording in President Chandler’s voice began “Good morning, Mr. Phelps. By the time you hear this I will be in Williamstown” as he announced his decision to leave Hamilton. The crowd remained silent at both the news and the disembodied aspect of it. As the tape finished, Olive, one of the campus dogs, trotted up the aisle to the podium to demonstrate the only kind of streaming we then had: lifting a leg to claim the podium.
Several weeks later on Oct. 19, Ernie Fung awoke his roommates at 6 a.m. in South dorm to announce, “It’s all white outside!” Ernie, from Hong Kong, had never seen snow. His roommates, Messrs. Morris, Geary, and Buonanno, had never seen 6 a.m. We now had six inches of white powder. “Snow Thyself” as the College motto was evident.
A year later on a freezing winter’s day, the Chapel was filled as Dean Kurtz headed to the podium. DKEs blocked the left side door and DUs the right-side door as the dean began his remarks. He too was resigning and very focused on reading his prepared remarks. In the middle of his comments a cold wind whipped down the Chapel aisle as someone opened the front doors. A Kirkland woman, clad in only the gifts God had given her plus a ski mask and sneakers was sprinting down the center aisle tracing the sine curve against the horizon. She reached the podium and turned left as part of a rapid exit. The DKEs had not been given her plan and did not move. Dean Kurtz, unaware of the unmounted Lady Godiva, continued his remarks. She reversed course, again passing by the podium, which did catch the dean’s attention, and headed for the opposite door. The DUs, showing their respect for the dean, remained still and blocked the door. At this point Dean Kurtz — muttering to himself “What the devil?” — left the podium and assumed the role of Moses in the Red Sea as he parted the DUs to provide an exit. The devil wore nada. Streaking season had begun at Hamilton.
Many different streakers appeared that winter. For a period, each night at 9 p.m. people would gather around the central atrium of the library expecting a runner. They were never disappointed, although one fellow circumnavigated the library on a bike wearing only a scarf. One memorable night a Mutt and Jeff twosome appeared at the threshold of the carpeted stairs on the third floor wearing only Converse and ski masks. I will not use real names, but let’s refer to these two as Sal and Tom so we can distinguish them. Sal was a diminutive fellow with olive skin finished with a swarthy coating of hair and possessed of a memorable giggle. Tom, a tall gangly runner with skin the color of fish belly white, set the pace. They reached the second floor with a certain amount of grace, but the blinding effect of the ski mask sent Tom stumbling toward the rug and Sal to the high decibels in giggles as it happened. Tom recovered his balance like a bare Baryshnikov and danced to the first floor as the crowd applauded the effort.
Unlimited beer and limited supervision combined to activate some of our more primitive genes. A hallmark of several late nights was Demo, short for demolition. Windows were broken, furniture was tossed, and general chaos often ensued. After one episode that caused several hundred dollars of damage, the dean required the perpetrators to turn themselves in or the entire class would be billed for the damages. Remarkably, they did as Hamilton’s Honor Code was having its effect. Two or three more serious episodes of Demo took place. Professor Wertimer appeared in the Chapel to lecture us on the problem. Near the end of describing in detail the damage that had been done to the College and how disappointed he was in the behavior, he told the story of a prior generation that had placed two cherry bombs in the loins of the Alexander Hamilton statue causing $1,000 in damage. After a brief pause, with excellent timing, he analyzed this to mention that this was about $500 a piece and brought the house down. One of our classmates, Steve Gorman, is now an advisory policeman, skills we could have used then.
We lived just above the bucolic village of Clinton, N.Y. The village was still somewhat cast in its idyllic period from the ’40s and ’50s. It had its own bakery, Clinton Home Bakery, the Park Row Pharmacy that sold both prescriptions and scoops of ice cream, a local theater named the Cannonball, the Cider Mill, and, of course, two local taverns, the Rok and the Village Tavern. Jakob Verhoeven, the owner of the bakery, had learned to bake in his village in the Netherlands as a teenager in order to help feed people as the Germans occupied his town. All his baked goods were savory, but the raisin bread was world class. Jakob was a savvy businessman and realized that late Friday nights most of the Hamilton College students were getting oddly hungry, perhaps because of a visit to Fanguitos field. Hearing of late-night demand, he decided to open his bakery at midnight every Friday. Long lines formed late at night to purchase the raisin bread, the homemade doughnuts, and other delightful pastries into the wee hours of the morning. Jakob also delivered fresh homemade donuts to the frat houses on weekend mornings.
The relationship between the college students and the town was very good. Members from TKE volunteered to clean up the local Civil War cemetery, others to tutor inner-city Utica and Clinton students who needed help, others to offer aid to patients at Marcy hospital, and on campus to tutoring students and playing sports with students at the ABC house. On campus the kindness continued. One of our classmates, Steven Blow, was completely blind. Many of us volunteered to read textbooks to Steven. For some of us, although they were taking the same class as Steven, it was the first time they had seen those textbooks. Steven, to his credit, went on to graduate from Cornell Law School and had a long career as an attorney for the state of New York. The acts of kindness went in both directions. Victor and Shirley Flax of Utica opened their home to several students at Hamilton, including two of our classmates, Ernie Fung and Stuart Muszynski. Ernie, of course, could not easily return home to Hong Kong on holidays and was grateful for being a guest in the Flaxs’ home and later for help they gave him after Hamilton. Stuart could return home, but home was in Cleveland, a city whose mayor, Ralph Perk, and his wife were invited to dine with the president at the White House in December 1972. They turned it down because it was his wife’s bowling night. Stuart clearly had a need for a home away from home. In the late ’90s, Stuart and Ernie’s families each made a gift to Hamilton to set up an award, named for the Flax family, for simple acts of kindness done in the community.
The challenge of governing us had yet another chapter to be written. In December 1973, Joe Cisco, from the State Department, was named our new College president. To great fanfare he appeared with his family on this very stage to express his ardor for the College. Seemingly moments after his appointment, Henry Kissinger told him, “Joe, I need you here in the State Department to help solve ze Palestinian situation.” His term ended at fewer days than that of Pope John Paul. The trustees returned from the airport. They selected Martin Carovano, who served the College well for over a decade.
We had our own thirst trap on the Hill. It was a basement with a 7-foot ceiling beneath Commons. The pub served beer, popcorn, and bonhomie. It was filled with cigarette smoke, the floors were like a glue trap, and it was as roomy as a porta potty. We loved it. The DKEs seemed to occupy a frequent-flyer status in the pub that led to free beers and to peculiar inspiration. One late spring evening, Jim Lotze, Buzz Morison, Walt Stugis, and the late Dave Marshall, inspired by the muse of Utica Club, concluded it was important they appear the next day at the opening game of the NY Mets. They tumbled back to the frat house and shortly later were buzzing down Route 17, stopping once to wire the muffler back on to the frame. Early in the morning they arrived at the Manhattan apartment of their freshman RA, Craig Fallon ’74, and asked to crash. Craig, as a recent graduate, was now a reader of newspapers. After browsing the Daily News, he queried, “Did you say you were here for the Mets opener?” They nodded. Pointing at the newspaper, he drawled, “It is in Cincinnati!” They raced back in time to attend afternoon classes.
Travel away from the College seemed often to create stories that we can add to this three-story chapel. One long weekend, a group of our classmates headed to Skidmore College. In the 1950s when the New York thruway was being constructed, rest stops were often built on opposite sides of the thruway directly across from each other. Overhead bridges were added so travelers could walk from one side to the other, I assume this was in case they were out of toilet paper on one side. One of the locations where this arrangement existed was in nearby Little Falls, N.Y. The thruway issued all drivers a paper ticket that would be used to calculate the fare based on the distance their car had traveled from the entry point. Irrespective of which way you were traveling, you were handed the same card as everyone else who entered the same toll plaza. The group got out of the car at the Little Falls rest stop and climbed onto the bridge from the eastbound side. They stopped halfway across the bridge and held out their thruway ticket. Moments later a group from the westbound side appeared also carrying their thruway ticket, which they exchanged. Each were now driving back in the direction from which the ticket had been obtained and reduced their toll by each mile. A Benjamin Button of miles. The only caution was to make sure one did not exit from the same toll plaza where the ticket had been issued and raise suspicion with the toll keeper. It would be very hard to explain how you’d spent three-and-a-half hours on the thruway and did not travel a mile. Since we are not sure what the statute of limitations is on illegal use of a toll card, I will not reveal the names of those involved. The group involved all became traders on Wall Street.
Cars were mostly dull, old VWs and Chevys on campus, but two were memorable. Bill Purcell rolled around the Mohawk Valley resplendent in a 1957 Cadillac Coupe DeVille with power windows as he channeled his inner Boss Hogg. Rand Carter shuttled around in his Rolls Royce and is pictured in our yearbook during the DKE Easter vigil quietly supine in his own back seat.
Music played a huge role during our four years on the Hill. Whether it was the music blaring from speakers large enough to be visible from space perched in the windows of our dorm rooms or an array of large or small concerts held around the campus in the Alumni Gym, the Chapel, or in the Kirkland coffeehouse, music was ubiquitous. The Hamilton Folk Festival was notable for its display of local talent that included many students and once featured the original song, “The Waffle Ceiling Blues.” Wafting from the dorms one might hear Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, The Temptations, Carole King, The Doors, The Spencer Davis Group, or The Spinners — or sometimes Bach. For those who enjoyed both classical and rock, Procol Harum was also heard. In concert we saw Bonnie Raitt, Orleans, Elvin Bishop, The Persuasions, the James Montgomery Band, John Prine, and Steve Goodman/Loudon Wainwright. Dennis Walsh found Steve and Loudon hungrily giggling in the dark and sent them to ELS for sandwiches at 11 p.m. after their show. Steak Nite and Uhuru were two excellent student bands often heard playing at campus parties. We also had excellent films on campus arranged by Barry Kreiswirth of AMENIC. Choices ranged from The Graduate to Wild Strawberries and were often preceded by Flash Gordon shorts to excite the crowd.
Images and memories of the faculty remain strong in our minds. Professor Anderson wearing coat, tie, and red high-top Converse sneakers, Professors Colby and Barrett strolling around campus in capes, Professor Wagner’s belly laugh, Professor Wertimer’s carefully tied bow ties, Professor Kinnel in custom lab googles, and Professor Jones walking his low-slung basset hound, Jennifer, all come to mind. Annie Karl and I sat in Professor Ogilvy’s calculus class in the Science Building. He was a touch absent minded as he wrote out and discussed a proof on the blackboard centered between two open doors to the hallway. Upon reaching the right-hand side of the board, he walked out the door and continued to discuss the proof. We looked at each other quizzically. The class heard muttering from the hall until he reentered via the left-hand door a minute later and well ahead in the proof. We just shook our heads.
In the surveys many mentioned how important professors and coaches were in their lives. “Asian Ed” Lee was mentioned by Bob Howe, Steve Gorman, Bob Grieves, Walt Stugis, and Alan Silverman as being a trusted mentor. Ed Lee even vacationed with the Silverman family; when your 6-year-old had a question about the Ming Dynasty, the family was prepared! Professor McManus started Joe Pechmann on studying ecology, which became part of his career. Doug Glucroft watched and analyzed the Watergate hearings with Professor Pete Suttmeier. Fred Wagner, John O’Neill, and Austin Briggs were mentioned by many as being inspirational. Steve Schiz remembers Professor Haltzel joining students drinking vodka in Moscow while singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with Tbilisi activists during Winter Study. Mitch Radin and Tim Woodlock report taking Thirty Plays in Thirty Days in London with Messrs. Barrett and Wagner. The scheduler, who had too much wine, scheduled them seeing Henry IV, Part 2 the night before Henry IV, Part 1. They were amazed to see Henry get younger and Falstaff get thinner as the sequence progressed.
Great speakers and theater marked our time on the Hill. We heard lectures from B.F. Skinner, Class of 1926, who denied putting his daughter in a Skinner box, Thomas Eagleton, and Andrew Young, who described the fighting of injustice as requiring testicular fortitude. We saw H.M.S. Pinafore featuring Sam Babbitt and Chris Caswell, 1776, and AD hosted My Fair Kirkie, a play unlikely to find a producer today.
Small memorable events also filled our lives. Jim Le Porte recalled watching the aurora borealis one winter evening. Doug Kinney tells the story of painting the Delta Phi basement over Spring Break while hearing a distant piano play Chopin. He went to investigate the wonderful music to find Tony, the Bundy maintenance man, at the keyboard. Rick Chormann and the late Linda Anzalone K’75 remembered the beautiful solitude in Root Glen sometimes broken by the sound of an acoustic guitar or a bagpipe.
Often the faculty could be blunt in their assessment of our work. Jim Benson reports that on one of his papers, Ivan “The Terrible” Marki wrote “trite, pompous, and wordy,” which Jim says was a notch up from high school. I submitted a blue book essay on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to Professor Wagner. In the margin next to my section on Twain’s technique, Wagner wrote “idea not fully developed!” I thought what a thing to say about Twain! Some were more nuanced. When Professor Falvey found the late Brian Smith, after an early start to houseparties, asleep on his desk during class, Falvey asked, “Do you all notice Brian checking his eyelids for pinholes?”
The inordinate attention paid to us peaked in our senior year. The Spectator ran an article listing faculty-authored books that were recently published. Professor Fred Wagner had just had his publisher release his new nonfiction book titled Robert Morris: Audacious Patriot. Was I flattered. I wrote to Fred: “One of the things that attracted me to Hamilton was the low student-to-faculty ratio, but never did I think such attention would lead to an unauthorized biography!” Fred sent back a simple “You are welcome. Signed Boswell”
Sports, both team and intramural, were a large part of our lives on the Hill. The football team was so intimidating that our first opponent, Haverford College, did not arrive for the game as they were unable to assemble enough players. The record did not improve from there despite Dave Joelson and Craig Sonnenberg leading the kazoo band at halftime. However, Gene Long as athletics director introduced a Grover Cleveland strategy for coaches. Football’s Coach Jones was removed after our first year to be replaced by Coach King, who was replaced by Coach Jones after our junior season and led the team to a 4-4 record our senior year. Nothing was more fun, nor more exciting, than heading into chilly Sage Rink, our colosseum, to watch hockey games. Our team had a winning record led by Rick Anderson and Dickie Malcom. Cross country, led by Bruce Carter, had a 26-4 record in our years, and swimming led by All-American Joe Shrum was 33-8. The top sport on campus was beer drinking. Psi U felt the responsibility to rank the talent in their annual beer drinking contest. As in golf, they decided to assign handicaps based on a competitor’s size. Vlad Hoyt ’75, an impressive large lad was given a zero handicap to add to his total, whereas our own diminutive Scott Atwater was given the max handicap of six beers. Penalties were assessed for various infractions ranging from technicolor yawns to spillage. No All-Americans were named.
On June 2, 1976, 5 inches of snow shrouded the campus as we prepared to commemorate “Snow Thyself.” We threw snowballs one day then golfed the next. On June 6 at graduation, we were the inaugural class to be given wooden canes as we crossed the stage. We have gone from a generation passing joints to one that is now replacing them, which gives us an opportunity to use those canes.
Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It is not even past.” The large group here joyfully confirms that truth.
Robert S. Morris ’76 P’16,’17 migrated to Hamilton from nearby Dewitt, N.Y. Upon graduating from Hamilton, he spent several months in Europe, courtesy of what is now called the Bristol Fellowship, writing a more current version of Twain’s The Innocents Abroad. He was detained by Spanish authorities in Ibiza for illegal possession of a towel, but was released after promising never to return. He earned an MBA at the Tuck School at Dartmouth College before spending several years at General Electric. He founded Olympus Partners in 1988, a private equity firm that manages $12 billion in investor capital. He greatly enjoys spending time with his family, golfing, writing, and involvement with several not-for-profit entities. He serves Hamilton as a life trustee.
