activities continued through my Junior and Senior year. During my senior year, I was selected to host a student from Malaysia sponsored by the New York Herald Tribune International Student Exchange program. He stayed for five weeks, attended my high school, and participated in a variety of events. His stay concluded with a ceremony and forum at the General Assembly Hall at the United Nations and featured all the exchange students from overseas and their American student hosts.
I also renewed my interest in scouting and was active in the local Boy Scouts of Larchmont. During my junior year, I was appointed “Police Chief for the Day,” had my picture in the local paper, and learned much about the Larchmont Police. On the day I served as “chief,” a marked patrol car came to my home and the chief of detectives took me on patrol. I then went to the Police Station to sign in, met the real police chief, was shown the jail, their crime lab, and allowed to operate their radio dispatch to other patrol cars.
The chief of detectives drove me home and asked if he could inspect our home. I checked with my mother and she approved. First he went to the attic where we had noticed a rusty stove to which were connected wires. He then went to the basement where we noticed similar wires and a buzzer button connected to them.
The chief of detectives explained that his first assignment in 1925 was to watch the house. They noticed trucks backing into the driveway at all hours of the night, loading cases and driving off. The Larchmont Police Department staged a raid and discovered a bootleg operation there and arrested everyone on site. The attic stove was part of a still. The wires went to a basement lookout who signaled if trucks or suspicious people were coming. He was surprised that some of the original equipment was still there. It taught me that community police departments have very long memories.
A college fair was held every year at Mamaroneck High School and I met admission officers from colleges and universities that my parents suggested I consider, and to which I had seen better students matriculate. By the time my junior year ended, I decided I preferred attending a smaller college. I focused on Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan, Swarthmore and Oberlin. At the Fall College Fair during my senior year, I met their admissions directors and dropped Williams from the list. I visited Amherst, Swarthmore and Wesleyan (CT). My parents were not too enthusiastic about Oberlin because of distance. I applied to all four. Only Wesleyan and Oberlin accepted me. I decided to enroll at Wesleyan University. Graduation was on June 25, 1950, the same day as the outbreak of the Korean War.
Four of my classmates joined the National Guard during their junior year. Within a month after graduation, they were called to active duty and shipped to Korea. Two came back in body bags, one returned badly wounded, and one returned intact.
All my friends went off to college except one, Charlie Albert, the star halfback on the football team. Charlie was always full of life with a positive outlook. He was also African-American. His girlfriend, Charlotte Latten, was a cheerleader and extremely attractive. During the summer of 1949, he got her pregnant and they married. Charlie finished high school and then took a job driving a delivery truck. I saw him during a vacation from college. He became a beaten-down man and requested I never contact him again. Regrettably, I honored that request. During my life I met many people with potential who were derailed from their goals because of financial status, unfortunate events, or serious mistakes.
During the summer of 1948, I attend Camp Pocono, a Quaker boy’s camp on Lake Wallenpaupak in the Pocono Mountains. It was a beautiful setting. We lived in tents. I learned canoeing, did a lot of swimming, and a lot of woodcraft.
The following summer, I returned as a junior councilor. I instructed canoeing and swimming. I returned after High School graduation as a regular councilor. Things had changed and I left during the middle of the summer. The enjoyment of the place disappeared. On my return home, I prepared to go to college.
LESSONS LEARNED:
1. How to function and make it in the USA.
2. How to avoid mistakes and which mistakes are likely to cause the most long-term problems (e.g. the Australian fiancées who got pregnant on ship; Charlie Albert).
3. During long voyages on board ship, relationships can become strained over time, particularly because space is limited and it is difficult to hide from others.
4. When choosing a college, pick one where one is likely to be sufficiently comfortable and can achieve success.
5. Try to avoid fights with minorities in today’s culture. Find a way to back away. The incident in the science class would turn out very different in today’s politically correct climate.
Chapter 4
Wesleyan University (1950-1954)
I arrived in Middletown, CT, to start my college career at Wesleyan University, an all-male institution, in Mid-September, 1950.
Wesleyan University was founded in 1831 by the Methodist Church. The university focused on liberal arts, including science, and broke its ties with the Methodist Church in 1937. Founded as a male institution, it was coeducational between 1872 and 1912. Alumni pressure terminated the arrangement and it reverted to a male institution in 1912. The ousted female students established The Connecticut College for Women in New London, CT to continue their higher education. Wesleyan became coeducational again in 1968 and likely will stay that way in perpetuity.
My dorm room was in Clark Hall and consisted of a three room suite. At the front was a larger room with four desks and in the back were two bedrooms with bunk beds. Arriving early, I took the lower bunk bed in one of the rooms.
Soon the three other roommates arrived. Andy Maggatt was a party boy who flunked out by mid November. John Stacey was a quiet individual. He left Wesleyan after a year to attend business school. The person who shared my room and took the upper bunk was Mowbray (Mo) Dietzer. He came from Syracuse, NY, and graduated from a private school, Pebble Hill in upstate New York. Mo and I graduated and Mo made his career with The Wall Street Journal.
The freshman orientation included registration, opening up a local bank account, hearing pep talks from Alumni Trustees about Wesleyan’s virtues, a physical education screen, a cursory medical exam at the university health center, and participating in Fraternity Rush. This was an experience for which I had no preparation as I moved from fraternity to fraternity trying to scope it out.
My three roommates were pledged to various houses. Maggatt was pledged to Delta Kappa Epsilon, Stacey to Sigma Chi, and Dietzer to Alpha Delta Phi. I was not invited to pledge any fraternity but received invitations to join the eating clubs of Delta Tau Delta (DTD) and Delta Upsilon (DU). Although initially disappointed, it gave me more time and options to assess the fraternity system.
Wesleyan fraternities were limited by the number of freshman pledges they could accept so those who were considered “alternates” were invited to join their eating club (one dined there and participated in all their social activities). If all went well, one was pledged the following year. I chose DTD for the Fall Semester, and then switched to DU during the Spring Semester because I liked it better. DU told me at the end of my freshman year that I was on their sophomore pledge list and to return in the fall.
I signed up for the usual distribution requirements expected of freshman: English, Spanish, Humanities, Biology (with lab), and a general social science course. The general social science course overlapped a lot with what I had learned at Scotch College. The Humanities course was of marginal interest mostly because we were trying to divine what the professor in charge wanted us to think was important.
In reality, I was untypical
