Bonfire Fireworks

Thanks for your coverage of the recent bonfire (On the Campus, January issue). I was a cheerleader for one year, 1964–65, and I picked a good one: The football team went 9-0 and basketball, with Bill Bradley ’65, went to the Final Four. Yes, we had a bonfire for the undefeated football team, and the cheerleaders were in charge of making it happen. 

It was traditional then to build a tall pole with a hangman’s noose hanging down from an outhouse with the wood piled up high below. We built a dummy out of sweatpants and a sweatshirt with an upside down “Y” and hung it accordingly. A classmate, Nelson Hendler ’66, had a four-wheel-drive Jeep, and we scoured the campus for any and all fireworks we could get. Before the dummy was strung up, we loaded its crotch with fireworks. The fire was lit and slowly worked its way up to the Yalie dummy. You can imagine the rest. Great memory. Alas, no video cellphones then.