Introduction

I attend a continuing education program at California State University at Fullerton because I have always enjoyed lifelong learning through lectures and discussion. Recently I was drawn to and signed up for a writing class with the program focused on recording stories of my life to share with my family, friends or anyone who would enjoy learning about my life experiences and journey. Listening to the stories of others in class, I had an unexpected powerful experience which gave me a treasure trove of ideas for writing about my own life story. The more I listened and wrote, the more I recalled interesting and challenging life events. Slowly I began to think about experiences in my life like the Vietnam War which I had avoided thinking about and repressed. Writing about these experiences has become very therapeutic and meaningful to me as I released difficult memories and the repressed feelings. And throughout my writing my wife Vicki has always been with me as my first reader offering inspirational and inciteful input which helped me to elaborate the stories. What follows are my life stories which are listed chronologically. There are labels to the right which highlight key subjects in each story, linked to the applicable story. This blog is a work in progress.

My Mother, Elizabeth Smith

A lot of people in my life have touched me but there is one person who not only touched me but stays at the center of my heart. That person is my mother.

My mother, maiden name Elizabeth Helen Mitchell, was born in Oakland, Maine in 1917. She went by the first name Betty. Her heritage is English and Irish. Her father Warren Mitchell’s ancestors go back to Cromwell, England, coming to Maine in 1638. Nine generations later, her father was born in 1892. He became an auto mechanic with his own garage. In 1915, her father married Electra Viola Libby. Electra’s ancestors were Irish from Dublin, Ireland.

My mother never spoke much about her life growing up in Oakland, Maine and I regret not asking her. She had a younger brother and sister. Her mother lost her sight early in her married life from a fireworks accident or glaucoma and also was hard of hearing. Yet her mother was able to maintain a household with all the cooking, canning, laundry, and other tasks required. I’m sure my mother, as the oldest child, was required to help out a lot. And I am also sure my mother had a goal to graduate from college. She bore a heavy load growing up but, as her later life showed, was positive about life, planned, and used her time very wisely and efficiently.



Lester and Elizabeth Smith Marriage Photo 1940

She was the only sibling to go to college, enrolling at the University of Maine in 1934 in the middle of the Great Depression. To make ends meet she made and sold sandwiches in her dorm and worked summers at a summer camp much like the one depicted in the movie “On Golden Pond.” She was outgoing and social and joined the Pi Beta Phi sorority and stayed active in the sorority alumni association for the rest of her life. As to meeting my father, she told the story of being on a date in college with a guy at a play and my dad sitting behind them and remarking how big the guy’s ears were. A smooth talker no but persistent yes. Mom graduated with a BS in home economics in 1938 and taught home ec in high school for two years, marrying Dad in 1940. Dad’s story is that he rescued her from an old maid’s fate.

My memories growing up of Mom are ones of gratitude and thanks for what she did for me and her legacy. With her family, her love was unwavering, unconditional, and enduring. She always acknowledged our accomplishments when talking to her friends and defended us when we were criticized. To this day I have newspaper clippings she cut out and saved of my exploits in little league baseball.

Mom brought me home from the hospital in September 1945

Perhaps the best quality to use to describe her is selflessness- she sacrificed her immediate happiness for others, especially our family. By the time our family settled in Lafayette, Indiana when I was 8, the family had moved 17 times. My Mom had 3 kids quickly and my Dad made little money at the University of Vermont Agronomy Department in the early 1940s and was on the road a lot. To save money we shared a farmhouse with a family, then moved to Burlington and rented a house to attend city schools. We then moved twice a year. My dad bought an “economic” camp on Lake Champlain for summer living, sublet the Burlington house, and then moved back in the fall in time for school. Mom was constantly packing and unpacking our meager family belongings, making do with a small amount of furniture which took a terrible beating with all the moving.

Through all the moves with 3 boys (later 4) and a girl, mom adapted to increased laundry, food, and so many other roles so we kids could focus on education. I always had clean clothes for school and sports. She was an excellent cook, although not with seasoning like salt and pepper. She cooked nutritious meals with inexpensive ingredients, paid the bills, and handled all our school and other activities. I remember a man telling me at my mom’s funeral in 2007 that he remembered me playing Pony Colt baseball in large part because I always had the cleanest-looking uniform on the field. No complaints from Mom, just encouragement and selfless support (always positive, wise, and efficient- sometimes I wonder if she ever slept), and that played a huge part in determining our family attitude of hard work, education, and self-sufficiency. I have no doubt that had mom not chosen to devote herself to her 5 children over a career she would have had outstanding career success.



Mom in Kitchen on Hitt Street

Mom was also selfless in helping others, whether through visiting the sick at homes or in the hospital, volunteering for a charity, or opening our home and treating so many others as a family. I remember my Mom in the 1960s, while taking care of my 95-year-old grandfather at home, reaching out and connecting with foreign students at Purdue University, and being a host family for students from Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, and more. She invited them to join our family for all holidays and counseled, or encouraged us to counsel them about our culture. All these students stayed in touch with Mom for years afterward. In 1975, mom, at the request of a 1960s Vietnam host student, opened our home for a year to his wife’s relatives- 17 and 19-year-old Vietnamese girls driven out of Vietnam by the communists. They were refugees, spoke no English, ate different foods, and had no future as they were. Mom treated them as family, cooked meals for them, signed them up for English classes, and then Mom and Dad worked with Purdue to get them admitted and allow them to record, not attend, classes to avoid tuition costs. They were both diligent learners, got degrees (one Purdue, the other a business school), and moved to LA County where they got good jobs.

Letters were a passion to my mom. When I went away to college and the Army, I got a letter from Mom almost every week. When I was in Vietnam and away from my family, the most treasured gift I received was the mail – a letter from home. Most of my days were filled with fear, loneliness, and disillusionment. Mom’s letters were from “The World”, they were an escape, allowing me an opportunity to temporarily remove myself from the war and enter into a dimension that is humane, friendly, and warm- a personal one with mom and home. It was huge emotional support and relief from an unknown future. She was the only one that wrote me letters while I was in Vietnam and I remember feeling depressed if there was a mail call and I didn’t receive a letter.



Mom and Dad in Elk Rapids, MI

Mom died in 2007 knowing all of her children including the foreign students had done well. Under her direction, she maintained the pride that was so important to our family with Northeastern roots. Mom’s positive, encouraging, and selfless attitude, her wise planning, time management, and efficiency, even in the face of a huge life load, were the glue that kept our family connected and had the most positive impact on me of anyone in my life. She was an amazing woman!

Growing Up In Burlington, Vermont

I was born on September 23, 1945, in Bishop Degoesbriand Hospital in Burlington, Vermont, and spent most of the first 8 years of my life in Burlington.



My two older brothers, Warren (3 years older) and Steve (4 years older) were also born at that hospital. My father and my mother were both born in Maine, grew up during the Depression, and somehow both managed to graduate from the University of Maine but not without an extreme frugality that came from living through that era. My father had also received his master’s degree from the University of Maine and in 1945 was working for the Agronomy Department at the University of Vermont. This is my story of those early years told primarily through the eyes of my older brother Warren.

Our family lived in houses near the University on School Street, Booth Street, Main Street, or elsewhere depending upon the amount my Dad could negotiate for a year lease. In the summer he would try to sublease the house to students and we would move to our “Camp” on Spaulding West Shore on Lake Champlain from June to August.




If Dad could not sublet the house, he would give up his lease and we had to move all the furniture to the Camp and then back to town again when school started. He also had to find a place to stay until the next summer. When we finally moved to a permanent home in Lafayette, Indiana, it was the 19th move of the family.

Another house was on Main Street at the top of the hill just across the street from the University Infirmary. It was an older two-story duplex with each side having a basement and 2 floors. Behind us was a sorority and next door was the owner of our house Harry S. Howard. His dad was General Oliver Howard, a friend of President Lincoln, who had an illustrious career as a Union general in the Civil War, losing his right arm in battle and earning the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was named to run the Freedman’s Bureau following the Civil War. He realized blacks could not be integrated into American society unless they, among other things, had universities to attend for higher education. He founded Howard University and aided in the charter of Atlanta University, now Clark Atlanta University. He was an excellent negotiator and the Army sent him to negotiate major peace treaties in the West including with Geronimo and Chief Joseph. My brother Warren used to go over and visit with Harry Howard in his house which was full of Indian artifacts and proclamations lining his stairway signed by Lincoln and Grant. He died in Burlington and is buried there.

My brothers and I always sought ways to make some money. My brothers would go out with a wagon and collect paper, cardboard, and cans which they would flatten before putting them in the wagon. There was a scrap yard a few blocks from us that would give them ½ a cent a pound for the paper, which seemed like big money. Collecting bottles around construction sites gave us 2-cent deposits and milk bottles 5 cents. Snow storms were a great money maker and we would hit the neighborhood early charging at most 25 cents a walk. Most houses were close to the sidewalk. We had some customers who were regulars. If we got a few pennies in our pocket, there was an IGA store just a block away that sold penny candy. At some point, we had an allowance of 25 cents a week. Within walking distance were several movie theaters with the movie 12 cents with a 3-cent luxury tax. There always seemed to be a cowboy movie playing at least one of them starring Roy Rogers, Gene Autrey, Lash Larue, Hop-along-Cassidy, or the Lone Ranger that drew us in. If the candy and popcorn didn’t get the remaining 10 cents, the 5&10 Stores on the way home did. My brother Steve was the only one to bring home change to be saved.

My Dad always sought ways to save money. He used a University camera for his work and always saved the last shots on the film roll to take pictures of us and get them developed at the University’s expense. When he traveled on the University expense account, he got a set per diem amount and always tried to stay with a farmer attending one of his field days or in the most reasonable rooming house in the area. The barber shop we went to was only about 6 blocks from our house and my Dad would take all three of us along with him when we needed a haircut. He had a deal with the barber to give him a cut rate if he cut all of our hair. Across the street was the Nearly New Shop where my mom bought a lot of our clothes. This is where I got the name “Poor Peter”. The clothes were previously worn and then handed down from Steve to Warren and finally to me, Poor Peter, getting what was left of them.

The one time I remember him being a big spender was when he took the family on a train out of Burlington to Montreal to an Ice Follies show. We went to a pretty nice restaurant that had a tablecloth and menu. After the meal, I went running through the restaurant to him yelling, “Dad you left a quarter on the table.” He wanted to hide his head as it was a pretty cheap tip for the meal we had.

The University was a favorite place to go with the first stop at the Union Building. We went from end to end checking all the machine’s change returns to see if we could find a coin left behind. There was a university dairy that made wonderful ice cream as part of the training. There was a large gym with a track for winter running, basketball practice, and gymnastics equipment. There were greenhouses with a lot of different and exotic plants. It was really exciting to go to the University Farm about a quarter mile from the house as they would let us adopt a calf that we could feed after school.

Next to the University was Taft Elementary School where we went to school. The first-grade teacher Miss Fisher lived half a block away from us and my mom would make cookies for her and one of us would take them to her. She passed Steve on even though he could not read. He wanted to quit first grade. The second-grade teacher Mrs. South made Steve spend 2 years with her until he could read. Steve went on from there to become a Rhodes Scholar.

Taft School was a two-story school that had a gym and stage for various events. When the inner com came on with a march we would march down to the gym for the event. I remember one day hearing the music, going to the gym, being told to line up, and getting polio shots- all of us, no exceptions. Recess was always a big deal. The playground had big swings, a teeter-totter, and a Jungle Jim. Spring was for digging holes in the ground with your heel by pounding it down and spinning around. This was in preparation for shooting marbles to it. We were all proficient at this game and Warren still has a small suitcase full of our winnings. Winter time was for rolling large snowballs to make forts and then planning raids on another class's fort with a snowball attack.

My Family

These are some family experiences I had growing up in Burlington, Vermont, and Lafayette, Indiana. In the late 1940s and early 1950s in Burlington, my Dad didn’t think he made enough money at the University of Vermont to buy coal to burn in our home furnace, except during the coldest months. The rest of the time he burned wood, which was like throwing newspaper in the furnace- it burned quickly. My grandfather Smith came to stay with us in winter months and I think he spent a large amount of that time throwing wood in the furnace.

It would be early on a fall Saturday morning when we would hear my dad yell up the stairs "Boys get up we need to go get slabs”. My older brothers Steve, around 9 years old, Warren, 8, and I 5 would shutter awake and drag ourselves out of bed to join my dad to go get slabs. A slab is a piece of wood that is sawed off a log first at a sawmill. It has one rounded face where the bark is and one flat-sawn face. It is not edged and is usually available in 8-foot lengths for sale as firewood. It needs to be cut into furnace-length pieces. A sawmill would pile these up for sale to people like my Dad. Coal was $20/ton and slab wood was $2-3/per truckload.




Slabs


The first stop was the University of Vermont experimental farm near Burlington to borrow a University-staked bed truck. We would all squeeze in the front seat and off we would go to the nearest sawmill. One of the sawmills had the slabs already cut and sitting in a hopper. You could drive under it, pull a chain that would open up the bottom, and drop the cut slabs filling the truck. It cost a dollar more to get the slabs this way and Dad figured he got more slab lengths by packing them into the truck by hand from the big uncut pile. When we got the truck loaded, it was a return trip back to the experimental farm where they had a makeshift circular saw with a cradle powered by a leather belt off a tractor power takeoff.




Firewood Saw 1940’s


All the slabs had to be unloaded and piled by the saw and one of us had to hand them to Dad. On the other end was another son to pick up the cut-offs and throw them up into the truck to be stacked again by the third son. We were off to home where we threw them down a coal chute window into the coal bin. Grandpa was down there piling them up. By this time our hands were full of splinters and covered with fresh sticky pitch. We would keep watching the clock as it would be getting close to the downtown movie start time. Dad would finally give us our 25 cents each, then a quick wash up and a sandwich, and a race to the theater so we could also catch the cartoon before the movie.

Steve and Warre seemed to argue and fight a lot while we grew up. One time my Dad had enough of the quarreling and went to a second-hand store and bought two sets of boxing gloves. He moved the furniture to the sides of the living room and let my older brothers box each other. Steve was taller with a longer reach so got in the early jabs. Warren was shorter but more athletic and got to Steve with some early body punches up close when all of a sudden my Mom came home, saw the spectacle, and started screaming. That was the end of my Dad’s boxing parenting experiment.

We moved to Lafayette in 1954 and Steve and Warren were both in the 7th grade and still had not made peace. One day when Steve was in the bathroom for, in Warren’s view, too long, Warren went in and they started fighting. I was in the hallway and heard the fight. They mostly wrestled in a very confined space, cracking some tiles and furniture, until finally they stopped. My brother Warren told me they said to each other that the fighting wasn’t resolving anything and that was the last fight they ever had. They got along after that.

During this growing-up period, my brothers, sister, and I looked forward to family slideshows. In the 1940s into the 1970s, my Dad took thousands of photos, most of which were slides for work. He always saved the last 4 or 5 photos on a film roll for family photos capturing our life as a family- holidays, activities around the home, the camp, trips visiting family. It was our life in Burlington and Lafayette.

It is hard for us now to imagine the significance of the family slide show. It became a way to gather the family together. Since my childhood, we’ve evolved through TVs, VHS/DVD/Blu-ray players, and now streaming to watch whatever we want on TV with whoever is around. So the novelty of “gathering around” is gone. And with a smartphone in hand, most people look at photos quietly, in isolation- sometimes sharing them with friends and family via text messages or social media.

But the 1950s/60s slide show was more than just a way for a family to gather to look at photos. There was something magical about it. It started with everyone viewing one image at a time- together. When you are by yourself and look at a photo, it triggers memories, you think of things, but you stay quiet. On the other hand, when you are watching a slideshow with others, you still think about those memories, but it is out loud. Reactions are together, triggering other comments and stories - making the moment much richer and often more satisfying. That is something that cannot happen with a set of prints or even showing photos to more than one person using your smartphone.

Every couple of months my dad on a Saturday night would say, “I have a new box of slides. After dinner, let’s set everything up.” The anticipation, the excitement! I loved the things we did to get the slide show gear set up and ready to go like unfolding the tripod-legged screen, getting chairs ready, closing drapes, and telling everyone to come in.

When it was set up and the family was assembled (as they all wanted to be a part of it), the room lights went off, and the projector came on.

My dad operated the projector and was in control of how the show would go. He knew the order of the slides and what photo was next and often would provide a brief preamble about what we were all about to see. And then when the photo appeared we would react with laughter or sometimes sighs, shock, or even awe. Here is a favorite-

The point is that everyone was focused on that one image and the conversation that followed dove deeper into what it was that the photo had captured. This conversation often cascaded into other connecting memories and stories. Everyone was participating and loving it. What made it so neat was there was no sound in the photos. Instead, we were providing the sound- the commentary. During this time I never heard Dad say I love you. Looking back I don’t feel his lack of emotional words meant no love. His way of showing his love for us was through his acts like the slideshows that showed his care for us. The memories are now almost visceral.

Growing up there were some family days of hard, dirty work, some intense sibling rivalry, and some immersive bonding. All in all, it was a childhood with memories I treasure and ones that have helped sustain our family cohesion and caring to this day.

First Greyhound Bus Trip

When I was 7 in the summer of 1953, I took a Greyhound bus trip with my 10-year-old brother that is seared into my brain. The trip was part of a plan my Dad hatched to transport our family of 7 from Indiana to Vermont where we then lived. He had been meeting his colleagues and house-hunting in Indiana for a new job to start in October. My Mom had just given birth to my younger brother, was weak, and about to need a hysterectomy so my Dad was under a lot of stress.

The family car could handle only 5 with the new baby for the Vermont trip so he decided to send my brother and me by bus. Two daughters of a colleague were going to Boston and they agreed to accompany us by bus to Boston, then put us on a bus to Vermont. When we got to the Indianapolis bus station my Dad saw the direct trip to Vermont was a different bus from the girl’s bus and on the spot decided to buy us a direct ticket to Vermont. He gave my brother $5 for food and told him to look after me.

We boarded the bus in mid-afternoon and got off the bus in Cleveland at about 7 p.m. to transfer to a bus to Schenectady, which was to leave at 2 a.m. My brother checked with the bus clerk every 20-40 minutes if the bus had arrived. He was in constant fear we would miss it so he never slept. I slept a little. We sat on hard oak benches and I began 30 hours of asking for food. My brother said repeatedly to me we needed to save our money because it would be needed later for food. I ended up in Cleveland with one candy bar. We went to the upstairs bathroom only once because a drunk was in it and he offered us a drink from his bottle.

We got on the bus at 2 p.m. and got off at Schenectady around breakfast time. He finally, after my continuing hunger pleas, bought me an apple, some juice, and crackers. After waiting a long time, we got on another bus and arrived in Burlington at about Midnight. My brother had not slept fearing we would get left behind or miss our bus transfer. We changed buses again and got on the Essex Junction bus- where my uncle lived. The bus was full of drunk Air Force airmen and they exited at Fort Ethan Allen. The driver said since this was the last bus it was turning around.

We got off and went to the guard house. My uncle was a captain stationed there but off duty so the guard called my aunt who picked us up and drove us the 10 miles to Essex Junction, arriving there about 2:00 pm. She called my Dad, who had not told my Mom of our unaccompanied trip, and that was our only contact with him since leaving Indianapolis.

My aunt fed us and my brother slept at least 12 hours. My brother had about $2.50 left over.

The Car Accident

It was July 1954 in Indiana, the corn in the fields around my hometown of Lafayette, Indiana was high, and my older brother Warren, then 12 years old, was playing on the Little League All-Star team in a regional tournament in Logansport, Indiana.  I was 8.  Multiple cars were taking the team to Logansport, including me as a spectator.  The Agricultural County Agent my Dad was working with that day was going to drop him off in Delphi, Indiana, so one of the cars could pick him up and take him to the game. Dad never made it to Delphi.

Dad and the County Agent were almost to Delphi when they came to a crossroads with corn growing right up to the road edge on each corner, which was common in Indiana. Dad’s driver had stopped at the corner and started to cross the intersection when out of nowhere a car hit them broadside on Dad’s side of the car.  In that car were a couple of ladies who were trying out a new car with a car salesman, and they had blown through the intersection. This was a time of no seat belts and Dad flew out of the car, went through a barbed wire fence, and hit his head on a large rock. He was in serious shape and unconscious. 

My brother remembers at the time being just south of Delphi when the car he was in met an ambulance traveling south toward Lafayette at a high rate of speed with flashers and sirens howling.  He remembers a remark made that someone was in serious trouble, not knowing at the time it was our Dad.  We went on to the game and when we got there my brother noticed a stillness around him and a lot of people looking at him. The coaches and team had been told what had happened and they did not want to tell him and upset his play.   The problem was the whole team was upset.  They were favored to win but played the game out of sorts.  A routine fly ball would drop between outfielders, players didn’t concentrate.  The whole game was like that and Lafayette lost.   Following the game, the coach said he needed to talk to my brother, took him aside to tell him my Dad had been in an accident, and told him he would take us straight home. I either overheard that conversation or was told separately.  We still had not put the ambulance and accident together.

When we got home there were some neighbors there, Mom was at the hospital, and it was pretty somber. When Mom came home, she was pretty upset as the doctors had told her there was a good chance Dad would not make it. Going through the barbed wire fence ripped up his face with his scalp cut front to rear and hanging off to one side. He ended up with over 90 stitches in his face and head. When he hit the ground and his head hit a rock, it cleaved off a little of the skull in the back, and the hair never grew back. He had broken ribs, one arm, and a lot of deep bruises. The doctors told my Mom she should go home and get out all our life insurance policies and get our finances in order. Mom let the neighbors know what was going on.  They saw the traffic at our house. 

A neighbor who lived across the street called Mom to tell her they had contacted a registered critical care nurse they knew who had a lot of experience in these kinds of cases. While we never knew for sure, the neighbor paid for the nurse.  The nurse agreed to go to the hospital to see what she could do for Dad. This made Mom feel a lot better, although she was still calling the bank and insurance companies.  He was also still unconscious, but every day he lived increased his chances of survival. My brother believes the special nurse stayed a few days straight sleeping in Dad’s room. Everyone involved feels the nurse saved Dad’s life. Dad was unconscious for 30 days and by the time he woke up his bones had healed, the stitches had done their work, and he didn’t feel anything from the bruises.

During this period of time, the women at church and the Purdue Agronomy Department where my Dad worked had organized a food brigade and we never ate better. We found out then that people who bring you food only bring the best thing they are known for.  Volunteers washed the dishes, and clothes and vacuumed the house so Mom could spend time at the hospital, although she was not able to talk with Dad. 

Warren and my oldest brother Steve had started junior high school, I was in elementary school, my sister Laurie was 5 years old and my youngest brother Greg was not yet a year old.  We never realized how desperate a situation the family was in those first few weeks following his accident.  I remember during that time sitting outside the house backdoor with a hammer slowly chipping a concrete block.  My Mom and my aunt opened the door and asked me what was wrong.  I remember asking what would happen to me and seeing my Mom turn very sad, although overall she was very stable and in control throughout the ordeal. 

When Dad finally regained consciousness, he had a problem the doctors thought might be serious. He was seeing double and thought he was still in Vermont. He kept asking where the nurses were from and could not understand why they were not French-Canadian nurses like in Vermont. I am not sure he ever had a recollection of the accident and how badly he had been injured. A neurosurgeon was brought in from Indianapolis to look Dad over for brain injuries and, in the process, he needed to take a sample of spinal fluid. As soon as the spine was tapped, Dad’s double vision reversed and his knowledge of the surroundings got better. The surgeon said there was nothing for him to do at this point other than let him recover.

By this time, Dad’s medical leave days off from Purdue had expired and his boss came to the hospital to see Dad calling it consulting. When Dad was finally on his feet his boss put a roll-away bed in Dad’s office where he could lie down. Mom would take him to work and pick him up and he would rest a lot in his office. His secretary screened a lot of his calls getting back to those calling with a short answer. Of course, everyone he worked with by now had heard about the accident. We don’t remember if anyone else in Dad’s car or the other car was also hurt in the accident. We never did hear from the ladies that hit Dad’s car, but that was probably on the advice of their attorney. At first, when Dad got home from the office he had to lie down, but enjoyed the food that was still coming in. He slowly gained his strength back and was able to enjoy his family again making pretty much a full recovery. 

As I look back, I realize how different my family’s life would have been had my Dad died in the accident.  As it was my Dad continued to work at Purdue for over 20 years and was able to have an enjoyable retirement, living to 97 years old.  My Dad outlived a number of his insurance policies and the companies paid him off on the full acquired value.    

    

My Big Game

I grew up in Lafayette, Indiana in the 1950s. It was a baseball town in those days. In 1949 a Little League team from Lafayette played in the first Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. A Class D minor league baseball team for the Boston Red Sox was based in Lafayette.

I had a passion for baseball. My older brother was a pitcher and in the spring of 1954 made the little league team representing our area of Lafayette. I tagged along and somehow managed to make the team at 8 years old. That season I sat on the bench for all 20 games, except for one at-bat in the last game.

After that bench experience, I determined to work hard and improve my baseball skills so I could play in all the games. Once the winter faded in 1955, I started riding my bicycle all over Lafayette seeking out pickup baseball games with older kids. I also started a whiffle ball league with like-minded kids my age. Playing on my own and the little league team over the next two summers lifted my game.

By 1957 I had grown and was a pretty good little league pitcher and third baseman. My team was supported by a sports store called Deckers. Deckers competed with three other teams in the Boys American League, while the other side of town had four teams in the Boys National League.

Game attendance was always noisy, particularly for Deckers. The father of our best pitcher was a former Purdue University two-time All-American halfback. He sat right behind home plate and seemed to scream the whole game, mostly berating his son’s pitching, calling him a loser, and not being in the game mentally. No one ever challenged him. As teammates, we cringed at the criticism but said nothing. Later in junior high his son froze on his first football kickoff return and never played football again.

The local newspaper had a reporter regularly check our 20-season games, writing weekly articles about the games, including box scores and key game plays. My mother read the sports page every day and kept clippings of any reference to my play.

On August 10, the paper announced the batting order and lineups for the city championship of Boys Major League Baseball that evening between Deckers and the Boys National League champ Savings. The August 11 paper article described the game as very close, with Savings leading 2-1 going into the bottom of the last inning for Deckers’ last at-bat. The first two batters grounded out. The next two batters doubled and tripled, tying the score 2-2. I then came up to bat and the article read ” Pete Smith then became the ‘man of the hour’ as he rammed a double over the centerfielder’s head to score the winning run.” I remember feeling an intense elation as my teammates hugged me, yelling along with the crowd.

I consider Lafayette my hometown in large part because of my big game, and later games in summer leagues and high school. Baseball gave me identity, focus, and good memories during my socially clumsy junior high and high school days in Lafayette.

 

Lafayette Murdock Park 1957

Paperboy

Me 1957 with my paperboy bike

Pulling a wet newspaper from a soggy plastic bag in the driveway on a recent rainy morning took me back in time. To the day when paperboys biked routes and, from 15 or more feet lofted a folded or rolled morning edition, hopefully, next to the front door. This is just one of my life experiences I took for granted that has become a dinosaur.

I never relished the notion of getting out of a warm bed at 5 o’clock on a winter morning and biking a few miles before school delivering 45 or so newspapers from my bicycle basket. But I feel richer for having lived the experience. Having a newspaper route was part of growing up in Lafayette, Indiana in the 1950s. I did it for the money and made $5 or $6 a week which I spent on a haircut, a movie, or a frozen custard cone from the popular shop called the Frozen Custard.

Lafayette in the mid-50s was a city of about 35,000 and had two newspapers: the evening Lafayette Journal & Courier and the morning Indianapolis Star. I lived in a house in central Lafayette.

My House In Lafayette

When I was 9 or 10 an older neighbor boy convinced me to let him train me, without pay, to take over his Journal & Courier paper route near my house. I learned about all his subscribers' houses and eventually, he said I had earned his trust and could deliver all the papers. He stayed at his house like a good manager while I did the work. After a few months of managing me, with no commitment to getting the route, I applied for a route with the local Indianapolis Star office run by a man named Harry Sealy. My older brothers, Steve and Warren, both had Star paper routes.

Star Manager Harry Seely 1961

Soon the Star newspaper truck would drop off three bundles of daily papers (double on Sunday) around 5-5:30 a.m. in front of our house. Each bundle had a wire around it. We brought them into the living room and used a small circular metal tool with several notches in it to twist and break the wire. On Sunday mornings the bundles needed to be assembled and ended up filling the living room floor. I folded them so I could put them in my bike basket and I got pretty good at throwing them from my bike. Folding them in a small square shape was the most accurate with distance although I had to lead the porches as I rode by. If the paper was thicker I flipped one section around and tucked the open section into the flipped section. I only used rubber bands to secure Sunday papers which had several big sections. Needless to say, my hands were covered each day with newsprint ink.

One memory involves a run-in with a stray dog while riding my bike delivering papers. The dog started barking and going for my foot while I pedaled, keeping me off balance. I started throwing folded papers at him but it just seemed to encourage his trying to bite me. I remember heading for home about a quarter a mile away and throwing papers at him the whole way home, leaving a string of papers along the way. My mother went out and picked up the trail of papers, I waited a while and went back out and delivered them without seeing the dog again.

Another memory is of finishing delivery and returning home at about 7 a.m. for breakfast of dry cereal- Wheaties, Raisin Bran, or maybe Wheat Chek. After I poured the milk on the cereal, I opened an extra paper and went first to the comics to follow one of the continuing strip stories. The Sunday comics were the best as they were in color and comic strips like my favorite, Prince Valiant, told a continuous story. I might check the sports page but didn’t pay attention to anything else but the headlines.

Collecting from customers was one of the aggravations of being a paperboy. I was given a half-size three-ring binder with pages for each subscriber, and it was up to me to collect weekly and keep records of whether they had paid. Generally, I collected weekly paper bills from customers on Saturday morning, but, for some people, I’d go on Thursday after dinner as it was the best time to catch them. Daily subscribers paid 30 cents a week, and daily and Sunday paid 45 cents so I collected 30 or 45 cents per week. Collecting took some time. There were always a few I had to go back to because they didn’t seem to be at home didn’t want to answer the door, or didn’t have change. I had one of those belt change dispensers loaded with nickels, dimes, and quarters.

Christmas was always a good time of the year for paperboys. My brothers and I used to hand-made Christmas cards and put them in the papers before the last collection day before Christmas. The subscriber had to be a real Scrooge not to give me a Christmas gift- the best Christmas tip was a new $10 bill from a subscriber who was the president of the Lafayette National Bank. Mr. Sealy always gave each paperboy at Christmas one of those awful boxes of chocolate-covered cherries.

Every Saturday morning, I carried my collections in a canvas bag and showed up at the Star’s office to pay my bill. Mr. Sealy ran the office, he knew how many papers he delivered to me for the week and demanded cash, no checks, and preferably no change. Any extra I had was mine to keep.

My biggest aggravation of being a paperboy was the Star’s insistence on my canvassing for new subscribers. I remember going 6 months or so without a new subscriber. Mr. Sealy hired a Purdue college student who met me with a car and took me to houses along my route that were not subscribers. I will never forget the first house we visited and trying to remember sales lines before anyone came to the door. When a man opened the door, my statement was “You don’t want to subscribe to the Star do you?” I knew from that point on in my life that selling was not my strong point. On the other hand, my older brother won a trip for signing up the most new subscribers and later won a college scholarship from the Star.

My High School Sophomore Year

My family (my Mom, Dad, younger sister and brother, me, and my grandfather) moved from Lafayette, Indiana to Madison Wisconsin in 1960 for a year.  I was 15.  My Dad took courses toward a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin.  We moved into a 2 bedroom graduate student housing apartment in the fall of 1960.  I slept with my grandfather in one room, my sister and brother in the other room and my Mom and Dad in a rollout bed in the living room.  There was a small dining room and kitchen.  It was a huge downsize from our two-story, four-bedroom house in Lafayette and yet I have good memories of that year.   

 I enrolled as a sophomore at Madison West High School.  Most of the kids there were from families connected to the university and I soon learned they were very academically motivated.  I had spent my 9th-grade year in Lafayette focused mostly on sports and was maybe a C+ student.  During my first month at Madison West, I remember noticing all my classmates studying hard and being prepared for each class.  I failed my first Latin and geometry tests and feared being ineligible for sports.  I started doing homework, studying, and reviewing past material daily.  By late October I was passing all tests and beginning to feel a rhythm academically.  As the semester neared the end I learned there would be a finals week and the tests would account in some cases for up to half the course grade.  I was unprepared and scared.  A neighbor had left for a holiday and I got to use their apartment to study for finals.  I spent three full days studying and ended with a 3.2 out of a 4.0 grade average.

I went out for the football team and soon started as an end on the sophomore team.  Toward the end of the season, I was promoted to the varsity, playing with Tim Van Galder, who went on to star as quarterback for Iowa State and later play professionally for the St. Louis  Cardinals football team.  I knew then I wanted to play quarterback.

(My interest in football started in the fall of 1952 in Madison where I lived a year while my Dad first took courses at the University of Wisconsin.  Alan Ameche, a star fullback for Wisconsin and later a Baltimore Colts star, was my childhood hero.  He played in Wisconsin’s 1953 Rose Bowl loss to USC.)

In December my brother Warren came home on leave from the Marine Corps.  He had enlisted at 17 and just finished basic training at San Diego.  He seemed very different to me- distant and quiet.  My Mom prepared his first meal at home and I remember a few minutes into the meal he said in his normal voice “Mom would you pass the F word beans?”  Mom reacted immediately telling him that you don’t speak that way at this table.  He went silent and I don’t recall him saying a word for the next week.

(Warren in Marine fatigues, Greg, me, and a neighbor December 1960.)

As spring came around I realized my Dad would not finish his courses and return to Lafayette until the fall of 1961- too late to play football.  I wanted to play football at Lafayette Jefferson High School and needed to work out and go through fall practice in the summer.  I convinced my parents and my aunt and uncle who lived in Lafayette that I should move to Lafayette for the summer and live with them.  

Once back in Lafayette, I announced to friends and coaches that I was going out for quarterback.  I played Pony Colt summer baseball but was focused on getting in football shape.  I was a pitcher so no arm strength issues.  I ran several miles a day at a nearby track.  Two-a-day fall practice started in August and my aunt, thinking I needed nutrition, would prepare a big meal before the second practice.  Most times the meal left me shortly after practice started during tackling drills.  I never told her not to feed me like that as I thought it would hurt her feelings.

I felt each practice and each drill was critical, never resting, always hustling, learning, and never backing down.  Slowly I moved from 4th-string quarterback to 1st-string quarterback at the end of fall practice.  I also won the starting cornerback position on defense.  In late August the team traveled to Logansport for a preseason game against Logansport High School.  During the second quarter, Logansport was running an end sweep and I blitzed into their backfield and went helmet to helmet tackling their fullback.  He got up and I was told later I was helped off the field wobbling and talking incoherently.  I sat at the end of the bench and later sat on the grass.  Luckily there was a medical doctor from Lafayette in the nearby stands who saw me, alerted the coach of his concern for my health, took me to his car, and drove me to a Lafayette hospital where I was immediately admitted into intensive care.  I regained consciousness the next day and was told I had suffered a severe head concussion.  I remember nothing about the game or the trip to the hospital.  I do remember waking up the next day and a visit by the coach and some players.

(Me with Jefferson High School Football coach McCaffery, August 1961 in St. Elizabeth Hospital)

I never played football again but I had learned some valuable life lessons.  Athletic success was fleeting; academic success was permanent and the key to my future.

Summer Jobs

It was July 1960 in Lafayette, Indiana, I was 14 years old and wanted to make more than $8 a week delivering newspapers.  Someone had mentioned to me and 4 of my buddies that a hybrid seed corn company was hiring kids our age to detassel corn at $1.00 an hour for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Why detassel?  It is only done on fields growing seed corn to produce hybrid seed which leads to significantly higher yields because of selective breeding or “cross-pollination.” Fields of corn that will be detasseled are planted with two varieties of corn.  Removing the tassels from all the plants of one variety leaves the corn that is growing on those plants to be fertilized by the tassels of the other variety, resulting in a hybrid. I thought what the heck- I can handle it.  How hard could it be? It turned out to be the hottest, scratchiest, most labor-intensive work I could imagine.

On my first day, I wore a t-shirt and had no gloves or sunscreen.  Central Indiana in July feels like a tropical jungle.  Out in the open, without wind, trees, or clouds, moisture evaporates then settles onto the fields – a fat, invisible blanket of humidity woven thicker by the hour as the sun rises in the sky and heats up the corn field and the heat index regularly climbs to 110 degrees.  

The foreman yelled to start pulling off the tassels from 4 out of 5 rows and continued yelling faster and faster.  The experienced workers wanted to get a bonus for speedy work so they insulted the newbies like me as lazy and worse. 

I was desperate for relief by the mid-morning break, disoriented from dehydration.  By noon I was dripping wet and the dry corn leaves had scratched and poked my hands, arms, and face. I was exhausted, took a 20-minute break for a sandwich, and then continued working on autopilot counting the minutes until 5 p.m.  At the end of the day, the foreman came up to us and said they didn’t need our group anymore so we got fired.  My lesson learned after one day was that I was not made out for detasseling corn.

After my junior year in high school, I was 16 and worked the summer at the Purdue University Experimental Farm in West Lafayette, IN.  Our crew of 6 measured corn and sorghum leaves and pulled and hoed weeds as part of research on seed varieties.  I remember at lunch we would heat a big metal pot of water, pick and shuck ears of corn, and immediately toss them into the boiling water for a few minutes. We took them out of the hot water and as soon as they cooled ate them.  I remember the taste as the sweetest corn I ever ate, no butter needed.  Other memories are of raw hands and a sore back from bending over from 8 to 5 in the oppressive Indiana summer heat and humidity.  One day we got a so-called bonus field to weed meaning whenever we finished we were done for the day.  I remember someone saying as we started that all they wanted to see from us was assholes and elbows.  

My most vivid memory of that summer though is of an Indian Sikh Ph.D. student with a turbin who was collecting sheep poop in bags to determine nutrition properties for a forage crop he was feeding them, a job I luckily avoided.  I remember hearing a yell and seeing him chasing a half dozen spooked sheep with a hoe through his forage crop field, probably cursing in a foreign language, as his turban had come undone and was streaming behind him in the wind.

After my high school senior year, I worked the summer on an assembly line at National Homes in Lafayette, a manufacturer of pre-fabricated homes.  The company mass-produced home components in the factory and assembled them on site, instead of building them one at a time by hand.  I worked the daytime 7-3 shift, primarily on the wall panel line with a belt pouch full of nails and a 16-ounce claw hammer.  The one memory that sticks with me is banging my finger the first day, drawing blood, and being told I couldn’t leave the line unless I could see bone through the cut.  The regular workers were tough, they sucked it up and seldom complained about working conditions.  

The owner had recruited a number of these workers in the 1950s from Tennessee, specifically the small town of Tazewell.  I worked beside them and they told me they were recruited because they were hard workers and loyal.  It was my first exposure to hillbilly culture.  The term hillbilly is usually a term of ridicule by many but to me, it represents much that is good bedrock value.  While as a group they have socioeconomic issues like poverty, alcoholism, drug abuse, and violence, my experience was that many were family-oriented, took morality seriously, went to church, joined the US military, supported America’s wars, and listened to country music.  And they loved to hunt.  Starting about Wednesday some weeks they would begin talking about going coon hunting over the weekend.   Coon hunting is the practice of hunting raccoons, usually at night, most often for their meat and fur. It is almost always done with specially bred dogs called coonhounds.  They would leave Lafayette on Friday right after work, drive 6 or 7 hours to Tazwell, do a night hunt that evening and Saturday evening, then drive back Sunday night. I later served in Vietnam with people like this who made up most of the noncommissioned officers I served with and I respect them.

After my freshman year in college, I worked the summer at an Alcoa Aluminum plant in Lafayette on the 7-11 night shift on an assembly line loading aluminum tubes into boxes, at about $2.25 an hour which was big money for me then.  After a couple of weeks, I felt like a walking zombie at work, always checking the clock and trying to wait for the shift to end.  Then every once in a while, there would be a supervisor come along and say we had a bonus batch to load.  The older workers on the shift would agree and we went into all-out loading as the hourly pay doubled during that batch.  

Some of the life lessons those summer jobs taught me were a good work ethic, planning for a future that wasn’t dependent on physical labor, appreciation of and perspective on the physical working class and many of their values, and the value of money.

My High School Senior Year

          

I don’t remember much about my junior year at Lafayette, Indiana Jefferson High School in 1961-62 other than suffering a concussion during a pre-season late August football game that ended my time as a football player.  My dream had been up until that time to start at quarterback and after working and competing so hard and bonding with my teammates I had won the starting quarterback position.  A year later I was drifting, not sure what the upcoming senior year would bring.

As soon as school started in September 1963,  three senior football player friends called me to join them at one of their houses.  They said they wanted me to run for senior class president because they liked me and felt I was a leader.  The most likely winner was then a snobbish bookworm and I was a friend, a letterman athlete and they thought with jock support I could win.   There were 350 in my class.  I was good at sports but an introvert socially.  I agreed but then just watched my buddies promote me to my classmates.  I lost the election in a close race with me coming in second out of 4 candidates but learned there had been a malfunction in the voting machine.  The next day my civics teacher encouraged me to request another vote.  I got energized and involved, bringing the vote irregularity to an emergency student council meeting, and arguing persuasively, based on the teacher's support, for a revote, which was scheduled for the next day. That night at a local frozen custard high school hangout my long-time childhood friend and the candidate who finished third talked to me.   He told me he would tell his supporters to vote for me since he would lose anyway.   I agreed and won the election the next day.  The lesson learned is that the game (whether politics or sports) is played away from the ball.  

One of the football players named Mark Surface who talked me into running for class president came up to me mid-semester and asked if I could help him prepare for an American history test. He was failing history, among other subjects.  I had refocused from football to student leadership and academics.  He came to my house and I showed him how I took class notes and regularly rewrote the notes including key points from assigned readings.  He thanked me as he told me he never took notes and only studied the night before tests. 

I never recalled this incident again until our class’s 50th-year class reunion.  I was praising Mark for his induction into the Indiana High School Football Hall of Fame for coaching wins in over 250 games.  He looked at me, put his arm around me, and said that our high school history study session was worth more than I will ever know in his life. That is one of the best memories I now have of my senior year.  

I was a member of a high school church group my senior year and once a year three of us were asked to give testimonies or Christian experiences in place of the Sunday sermon.  The minister asked me to do it so for my time I read a story I wrote about God’s hand in saving my dad’s life from serious injuries in an auto accident a few years earlier.  Many people came up after the church service and praised me.  When I met my mom later, however, she was angry.  A lady had come up to her after the service and made a point of telling her a word I had mispronounced and the correct pronunciation.  Life lesson learned- look at the positive side of a kid’s behavior when talking to his mom.

A few weeks later I submitted my church talk in my very exacting English composition class.  I got the paperback with a comment that it was very sincere and touching but had two grammatical errors so a grade of C.  The teacher told me that he was preparing me for college and I needed to focus on grammar and punctuation now so it would be second nature in college.  

To help pay for my college expenses I took a part-time job in the Purdue University Agronomy Department watering plants on weekends and holidays in the research greenhouse and in the 6 climate-controlled incubators.  My supervisor said he hired me instead of a university student because I always showed up and they didn’t.  He really shouldn’t have hired me.

As the second semester came around, my parents asked me where I wanted to apply for college.  They never told me I needed to go to college but it was just always assumed in our house we would all go to college as both my parents had and we had grown up near college campuses.  My oldest brother was attending Indiana University and I applied there and nowhere else, never visiting before I enrolled.  I looked up to him and was trying to follow in his footsteps- he was president of the IU student body, Phi Beta Kappa, and had been selected for a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England.  Plus I enjoyed history a lot and in those days IU was the liberal arts university and Purdue, in my hometown which I wanted to leave, was the agricultural and engineering school in Indiana.  

As spring baseball season rolled around, I was slotted as a pitcher, not an every-game player.  The starting left fielder suddenly announced his girlfriend was pregnant and the school administration prohibited him from playing.  He married her (and sent the fear of God about sex through those of us dating) and 50 years later, still married, he still complained about how he was unfairly cheated out of his varsity letter.   My other older brother had been a starting second baseman and I looked up to him too and wanted to follow in his footsteps.  I decided to take daily batting practice, work on fielding, and eventually won the starting left-field position.  Our team won our conference title.

I discovered a lot about myself during my senior year.  I learned that hard work to be a team leader,  friendship and team bonding overcame failure; that a small effort to help a friend can help change a life; that details are important; and that following positive role models is a path to success. 

Fraternity Fun

I grew up in a socially conservative town in Indiana.  I respected authority and was an obedient conformist to rules.  I carried these values with me to college in 1963 where they were put to the test and adjusted.

I was initiated and became a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at Indiana University in the fall of 1964.  My brother had been a member, and I followed in his footsteps with fraternity life.

IU in the 1960s was defined by experimentation, controversy, by challenging conventional lifestyles and institutions.  Did we do stupid stuff back then in the fraternity?  Were we idealistic and unrealistic?  Absolutely.  We could pull the most embarrassing pranks on each other or just embarrass ourselves and know we would come together afterward and be stupid, forgiving, and friends.  We could chase impossible goals but learn important life lessons.

Soon after I moved into the fraternity house as a sophomore in the fall of 1964, I learned about the boulder run.  The boulder run was a fraternity tradition, initiated by a member after the 1 a.m. curfew for having dates back to their sororities or dorms.  The member would yell 

‘boulder run”, strip and wait for any participants to do likewise, yelling out challenges to courage, manhood, and adventure.  Takers stripped and lined up at the door.  Someone would open the door and the participants would run naked down fraternity row, circle a campus boulder, and head back.  On one occasion I remember a member calling the next-door sorority house mother, and his girlfriend there, and telling them to look out their windows. The whole sorority lit up as my naked fraternity brothers ran by.  We could see and hear the girls laughing and pointing and some of the guys indecisive about where to put their hands.  What a moment!   We heard the next day the house mother was totally grossed by the experience and forbid open window shades after 1 a.m. This incident is never forgiven by the runners at reunions, although related always to laughs and gross comments about anatomy.

As the spring of 1965 arrived, I agreed to do fraternity public relations and organized with a sorority a picnic for orphans, as opposed to the normal Geek game event. There was a photograph and heartfelt story about the event in the local newspaper.  Shortly after the event, the fraternity president asked me to meet in his room.  He and two juniors asked me if I would be willing to run for fraternity president, the election being in a month.  I declined as I felt too young and I wanted to focus on academics as opposed to the time-demanding president position.  They finally convinced me saying they didn’t trust any junior with the job, that the fraternity needed me, and that they would handle the election.  I got elected. 

My focus as a fraternity president and member was academics, not social.  I had tried a beer in high school, but didn’t like the taste so had no interest in alcohol.  I wondered at the time what was the attraction of alcohol.  I found out I was an exception.  The fraternity members liked to party.  The University placed my fraternity on social probation in the spring of 1966 for a beer-drinking party off campus.  When classes started in the fall, the University decided to use my fraternity’s incident as a test case to begin enforcing alcohol prohibition at fraternity houses.  I was President of the Interfraternity Council at the time, idealistic and naive, and actually agreed with the action.  I pushed to have the IFC enforce the prohibition thinking it would be more acceptable and the Dean of Students agreed to let the IFC be inspectors.

I set up rotating two-man teams of Friday and Saturday night IFC fraternity inspectors and after a month we found no alcohol.  I decided to see for myself so the chief IFC court judge and I in our IFC blazers, white shirts, and ties went on a Saturday night alcohol inspection of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity which was having a big party.  I remember feeling important and that I was doing the right thing.  Two pledges met us at the door and invited us into the noisy fraternity house party.  But then something didn’t feel right as everything was too polite.  Suddenly four huge guys (the Betas had a lot of football players) appeared as if they had been waiting for us, picked up my companion kicking and screaming, carried him to the patio, and tossed him into a huge party pool to the yells and applause of the partiers.  I managed to help him out of the pool and we immediately left the house in shock and my companion soaked.

The next Monday I met with the Dean of Students and told him the IFC was out of the alcohol prohibition inspection business.  I learned later that various members of the IFC alerted fraternities beforehand to IFC inspections.  I felt undercut by the IFC organization and disillusioned by the reality of learning most 18-20-year-old young men at that time didn’t care about the alcohol rules, only having a good time.  Duh!

About that time my long-time girlfriend and I broke up.  It was emotional and I felt down and alone.  Plus I was graduating in the spring and almost certain to go to Vietnam where guys my age were being killed or wounded in the war.  I began to feel I should just enjoy the moment, the heck with the rules, and adopt a don’t care what happens attitude.  I decided to change my obedient conformist behavior and go for shock and awe. On my first post-breakup date, I bought a six-pack of beer, invited my date to our fraternity living room, and proceeded with my date to drink the six-pack.  It felt like an out-of-body experience as I was openly violating University, IFC, and fraternity alcohol rules, getting drunk and I didn’t care.  One of my fraternity brothers saw me, and then he brought a crowd to observe, all keeping their distance, totally surprised and amazed.  They have never forgotten that moment, nor have I.  The story of that moment is a staple at fraternity reunions, all laughing at the absurdity and shock of the sight.  Whenever I talk to one of my good fraternity brother friends in Portland, a prominent attorney, we both laugh ourselves silly to this day.   He always asks what was I thinking and I tell him I was just being stupid and he agrees.

My fraternity experience took me from a time as a serious rule follower to a rule rebellion; from an idealist about young men and alcohol to a realist.  It was stupid many times but harmless.  My world was enlarged by my fraternity experience and some of the guys in the fraternity are some of the best friends I have had in life.   

(Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity-1965)

My Race Experience

As I entered Indiana University Law School in the fall of 1969, it felt like the country was coming apart at the seams, the fabric pulling apart. The civil rights movement, and particularly the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, coincided with an atmosphere of rebellion against authority that just became explosive. Cities were going up in flames, people shooting from windows killing firemen- we’re talking about serious stuff going on. This story is to portray my experience with race relations between blacks and whites in the 1960s leading up to law school and my first job after graduation.

I grew up in university communities moving around with my Dad and was exposed to students from all over the world. My parents were a host family for international Asian college students so race was not an issue either in my family or my experience until I went to college.


In the fall of 1963, I began undergraduate study at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, and pledged the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, moving into the chapter house in the fall of 1964.



Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity House in 1964


At the time there was one black fraternity, one black sorority, two Jewish fraternities, one or two Jewish sororities, and 50 or so white fraternities and sororities, mine included.

In the spring of 1965, I was elected fraternity president and got very involved with fraternity house operations and rush. Rush meant recruiting freshmen new members and being involved, among other things, in promoting the fraternity and opening the fraternity house on Saturdays for initial introductory visits. The house rush chairman organized and ran the open house activities. One Saturday a black freshman came to our open house and the rush chairman met him after he had signed in and told him he should go down the street to the all-black fraternity. He left immediately. Once I learned what had happened I got his name and telephone number from the rush sign-in sheet, called him, apologized for how he was treated, and invited him to return to our house for a visit- he told me he was no longer interested in our fraternity.

The next day he wrote a letter, soon published in the campus newspaper, recounting his racial discrimination experience. All hell then broke loose. The Dean of Students called me, grilled me on details, and told me I needed to meet with him ASAP. My national fraternity office called me, telling me to say nothing to the press and little to the university. I was 18 years old, had no training or experience dealing with racial tension and discrimination, and had no idea what to say or do. I felt confused, unprepared, and indecisive and boxed in between the university and the national fraternity initially and later between fraternity alumni and members who had very narrow outlooks in their thinking on the question and others who had more inclusive, anti-discriminatory outlooks. After several weeks of stress and ducking my head, the university and my national office somehow resolved the matter. No one came to me later to offer race-related guidance or training for the future. I had a bone to pick with the system.

In the spring of 1966, I was elected president of the interfraternity council which governs all campus fraternities. Using this platform I wrote an article in May for a campus-wide publication entitled “Fraternity Discrimination- A University Responsibility.” *Fraternity Discrimination —A University Responsibility I argued that the university had allowed fraternity discrimination to flourish for 100 years by not taking a position on this critical issue, especially after W.W.II because of a housing shortage for returning veterans or lack of moral courage or fear of losing big donations or all of these. I said the university needed to clearly and continuously communicate expectations, recruit more academically qualified blacks, and offer resources to reach out and train new fraternity members in the values of integration. In the fall of 1966, I initiated and helped replace the traditional IFC sport-oriented Greek Games with an IFC/university-sponsored seminar on fraternity race relations. After I graduated, by the end of the 1968 school year, all but one of the fraternity chapters at IU had certified that any membership discriminatory clauses in any national charters of the fraternities had been eliminated or no longer would be honored at IU. I graduated from Indiana in 1967 with a degree in history and an ROTC commission.

I went on Army active duty in September, reporting to officer basic training at Fort. Lee, Virginia. located in Petersburg. As I pulled into Petersburg, I recall a sign at the local Holiday Inn welcoming the Daughters of the Confederacy which set off some alarms as my New England ancestors had fought for the Union. Most of my officer basic classmates were recent college graduates with ROTC commissions like me. I was assigned to an officer training barracks and befriended a black guy from Michigan State University. After a few weeks of meals on base, he and I decided to go to Petersburg for dinner at a place our captain recommended. It turned out to be an old home turned into a restaurant. My friend and I went there on a Saturday night and were greeted at the door by a black maitre d’ dressed in a red sports coat and tie. When I asked for a table for two, the maitre d’ hesitated, looked nervous, and told us to wait in the entryway. Soon an elderly woman, who was the owner, appeared and stared at us with an icy, bitter look on her face. She told us in a very irritated voice that my friend was the second one (meaning black) that had come to her “house” since he (meaning President Johnson) passed that law (the Civil Rights Act of 1964). My friend looked at me and said let’s leave. I felt provoked and angry and convinced my friend to stay. I then insisted we wanted a table. The customers were all white and I felt the tension in the air as we were seated. The waiters were all black and were dressed in red sports coats and ties and looked very nervous. Our waiter’s hands were visibly shaking as he took our order. We finished our meal and left and the owner glared at us all the way out.

Fast forward to 1973, I went to work for the Monsanto Company law department in St. Louis. At a fall retreat in 1977, our general counsel introduced Clarence Thomas as a new addition to the all-white law department. I was the only attorney to go up to Clarence and talk with him about his background and what to expect. We became friends and I helped him take over my position in 1978 when I got promoted. We stayed in touch for many years afterward. I feel I have stood up for what I believe.