The following letters to the editor include stories and memories written by PAW readers.
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Arthur L. Thomas *56
1 Year AgoCorrecting the Record (Rowing at Princeton)
On May 3, 1947, the Princeton lightweight frosh crew raced the Columbia lightweight crew on Lake Carnegie.
Columbia won by about one length. The book Rowing at Princeton states that Princeton won by about four feet. As a loyal Princetonian, I say that Columbia won. I rowed at No. 7 oar in the Columbia shell that day and I was in that race.
Sincerely,
Douglas B. Quine ’73
1 Year AgoRecalling Another Daily Prince Prank
A Daily Princetonian April Fools’ prank this year made national news with the Ivy League admissions day headline “Princeton University accepts 0.00% of applicants to Class of 2027.” While this article was labeled top and bottom as “humor,” 54 years ago when I was a freshman, the issue reporting “President Nullifies Coeducation” two months into the first year of coeducation for the Class of 1973 did not. It caused some considerable dismay, especially among our precious few female classmates. After I told this story to my family, my daughter Victoria made an interesting observation. The old article would have been funnier, and less hurtful to the already stressed coeds, if it had reported “Princeton drops men, goes all female.” The writer could have fun citing statistics that our freshmen women were more selected and accomplished than their male classmates. The prank would have been on the majority men, who probably deserved a good prank and scare more.
Alan Baron ’63
2 Years AgoA One-of-a-Kind Beer Jacket
I am a member of the Class of 1963. We received our beer jackets in 1962, the year of John Glenn’s space flight in the Friendship 7 capsule, and the logo on the jacket features a tiger in a space capsule. A young woman I was dating at the time had some artistic talent and enhanced the original drawing by adding color and other features.
Fast-forward several decades, and I was hired by Glenn, then a U.S. senator from Ohio, to serve as special counsel to him and the Democrats during a Senate investigation into campaign-finance abuses. During that time and for years thereafter, a friendship developed with Sen. Glenn and his wife, Annie. I would stop by their house periodically on the weekend. Although John was in great physical condition, he had a bit of a sweet tooth. I would pick up a tiramisu cake from a wonderful bakery about midway between our homes. Annie would put the kettle on, and John and I would do major damage to the cake. Between bites of cake and sips of tea, we talked politics and John related some of his experiences as a pilot and astronaut. I treasure the memories of those times and many others we shared.
At some point I recalled the class logo on my beer jacket. I showed it to Glenn, who had never seen it before, and he was delighted to autograph it as follows: “To Alan — with best regards — John Glenn 6-12-99.”
J. Michael O’Neil ’64
4 Years AgoThe Tiger Counsels the Bulldog
I thought this poem might serve to entertain my fellow Tigers, in this time of corona.
The Tiger Counsels the Bulldog
I note you are a Yalie, friend,
I do forgive you that.
Not everyone’s cut out to be,
A lithesome Tiger Cat.
Your school is in New Haven,
In that hidebound Nutmeg State,
While Princeton is a garden spot,
Old Nassau is first rate.
What does the pug-faced bulldog do,
But bark and slobber drool?
While Tigers growl a fearsome roar,
And do their domains rule.
I offer you a chance, my friend,
To shed that Yalie blue,
Join the Princeton Seminary,
And spread the good word too.
Tip Stevens Walker ’86
6 Years AgoFun With Numbers
I posted this happy coincidence on the “You know you went to Princeton if ... ” Facebook page, and some people said it might bring a chuckle to people if it were in PAW. My dad, Dick Stevens, is from the Class of ’54. He is 86 years old. I am from the Class of ’86; I am 54 years old.
Bruce Cogan ’73
6 Years AgoThe Second Time Around: Touched by the Spark of Learning
You remember the first time it happens to you at college. No, not that — the other spark. It happened to me in the early 1970s in Professor Carl Schorske’s class on Viennese intellectual history at the turn of the 20th century. There he showed, with remarkable eloquence and erudition, how Freud, Klimt, Schoenberg, and other seminal figures had changed Western intellectual life forever.
After we left college, many of us went on to have traditional, even distinguished, careers, but I venture to guess few had many more Schorskean moments.
Forty-five years after departing from Princeton, I felt something akin to that first spark. Through a CUNY program allowing seniors like me to audit undergraduate classes, I ended up in a class at Hunter College on “Narratives of Adultery in 19th-Century Literature.” Into the class strode young and hip, Armenian-born Professor Margarit Ordukhanyan. “So,” she said wryly, “if you’ve come to talk about sex, you’re in the wrong place.” Of course, that’s all we talked about during the remainder of the semester as we pored through novels by Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Hardy.
Though the two professors have different teaching styles, they have something fundamental in common: They both revere the artists whose works they are explaining. Sitting in class, you hear this: The artists you are studying are people who take ideas seriously and practice their craft at the highest levels. Put in the time to try to understand what they are trying to create and you will be rewarded, even changed. At the end of each class you feel it: You are being consumed by an intellectual delirium.
Editor’s note: To share a learning experience after Princeton that left a lasting mark on you, write to PAW or email paw@princeton.edu.
Michael L. Brown ’98
7 Years AgoA Tiger Tale
Published online Oct. 23, 2017
This summer I moved back to Princeton with my wife and two young sons after almost two decades in Manhattan. I brought my 3-year-old to the opening football game against San Diego — his first Princeton game. He quickly spotted the Tiger mascot and kept updating me on the Tiger’s whereabouts as I attempted to explain the action on the field. At one point in the third quarter, the costumed undergrad headed off the field through the tunnel, presumably for a respite from the heat. A few minutes later, an injured Princeton player limped off through the same point of egress. As questions ensued about the Tiger’s continued failure to reclaim its post on the sideline, the injured player suddenly re-emerged, sporting a heavily bandaged knee. My son, sizing up the situation, speculated: “Maybe the Tiger bit him.”
David S. North ’51
8 Years AgoHolder Tower
Published online November 30, 2016
It was graduation week in 1951, and I was at loose ends. I lived in Holder 13-A, a third-floor suite, overlooking Nassau Street. I had often wondered what was inside Holder Tower.
Nassau Street runs east and west, Holder Hall is on the south side of the street, and the tower is at the northwest corner of the building. My bedroom window was 30 feet east of the tower. There seemed to be no way to get into the tower, except maybe through a window on the court side of the building.
To reach that window, I had to exit my bedroom, climb up the steeply slanted roof, and then climb down the other side. That sounds dangerous, but at the bottom of the roof on both sides of Holder were three-foot-wide gutters behind the battlements. If I slipped, I would fall into them.
I was in sneakers as I moved over the heavy slate roof. I think I went up backward with my feet braced against the slates. When I reached the peak, I reversed my position and inched my way down.
The window (on the east side of the tower) was ajar. There was evidence on the wall that someone had been there earlier, and evidence on the floor of the past presence of pigeons. It was a biggish room, maybe 20 or 25 feet square, and it was completely unfinished. It could be used for an office or a dorm room, if an entrance and stairs had been built. I then went back the way I came.
I wonder: Is that room still empty? Is that window, 65 years later, still ajar?
Norm Tabler ’66
8 Years AgoTerrifying Alternatives
As my class prepared for our 50th reunion, I found myself reflecting on my time at Princeton half a century ago. My most vivid memory dates back to first semester freshman year. In mid-October 1962, two matters weighed heavily on me. One was the Cuban missile crisis. President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev were in a staring contest, and failure to blink would mean thermonuclear war and the end of the world.
The other matter was the looming threat of midterm exams — my first since arriving at Princeton. All indications were that I would not fare well. And not faring well on exams was something new and terrifying to me.
I was torn. I didn’t want the world to end, but I didn’t want to face those exams, either. So I saw the situation as something of a wash: Either way had some good and some bad. To tell the truth, I probably saw the end of the world as the lesser problem because it was completely unimaginable to me. On the other hand, I could imagine doing poorly on my midterms and facing my mother.
Spoiler alert: There was no nuclear war, and the world did not end. For years we believed that Khrushchev had blinked; later we learned that it was a mutual blink, with Kennedy secretly agreeing to remove our missiles in Turkey in return for removal of those in Cuba. On the home front, Princeton did, in fact, hold midterm exams, and I did, in fact, do poorly — not disastrously, but poorly.
Larry Wyner ’79
8 Years AgoPerfect Palindrome
I have been reading PAW for over 40 years now, and, and must admit that the Class of ’91’s palindromic 25th reunion logo has to be the cleverest one I’ve ever seen on these pages. It reminds me of the antics of John D’Angelo *76, my math TA in freshman calculus in the fall of 1975, who wrote on the chalkboard one morning the longest palindrome I’ve yet encountered: “Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts!”
Arthur Waldron
8 Years AgoRecalling Robert Shell
I hope all members of the Princeton community will join in mourning the Feb. 3 death, at 66, of the celebrated Africanist Robert Shell at his home in Cape Province, South Africa. Shell was my good friend, and he recalled his years at Princeton in the 1980s as an assistant professor as among the happiest of his life. He was reunited before his death with his beloved daughter. A few years ago he remarried, fittingly, a librarian at a major African library. Rob was a man of brilliance, having a good heart, and dedicated to his work. His contribution to his field is truly major.
John Raubitschek ’64
8 Years AgoThesis Lessons
This is my first letter after 50 years. My senior thesis was not fun. It was on hydrogen bonding in substituted amino alcohols. I felt it was a failure because I couldn’t make some of the alcohols to test. My thesis adviser recommended finding out what mistakes I was making in the preparation, which I never could do although I spent hours in the lab. I regretted not doing a library project, because it would have been easier. As a result of the unsuccessful thesis, I chose not to continue in chemistry but became a patent attorney. Many years after graduation and discussing the thesis failure with some classmates, I learned that my thesis was not a failure, but an adventure into science.