PRINCETON ALUMNI WEEKLY CLASS OF 1962 ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "PRINCETON ALUMNI WEEKLY CLASS OF 1962 ORAL HISTORY PROJECT"

Jesse Reeves
5 years ago
Views:

1 1 PRINCETON ALUMNI WEEKLY CLASS OF 1962 ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Interviewee Bob 62 Date May 31, 2012 Place Blair Hall Interviewer Brett Time 26 minutes So I guess to start could you tell me a little bit about how you came to Princeton? I mean, how did you know about it and what drew you to Princeton? Well, it s interesting that you say that. I had a grandfather who was class of 09, a great uncle who was class of, I think 13, father of 34, uncle in 37, brother in 60. I applied actually to Cornell, for their engeneering physics, nuclear engineering program, which is a five year program, which was my first choice. And I also applied to Princeton. My grandfather was not happy that I applied to Cornell. The nuclear physics program took in 26 students, and I was number 27, on their waiting list. Princeton accepted me. The thing that was interesting about that, my grandfather, who was a trustee here, Harold, Judge, he had four grandsons. He always assumed that three would get in and the fourth would not. Here s the fourth. He didn t count on, on got a second prize in the science fair, in New Hampshire, and I had 800 on my college math, although there was one question on the advanced physics exam I never did figure out. To this day don t. A large chimney falls. Why does it break up into little pieces. I still don t know the answer. Anyways, I was accepted here, and I came in

2 2 the fall of 58. I was an engineering student. Took the surveying course, which I gather is no longer around. So we came, I guess, a week or two weeks before everybody else. And I had a pretty good time here. And your grandfather was a legendary presence in the Yeah, he s a very interesting character. He was an honorary member of our class, and in the book, our yearbook, I wrote his thing. And I think people expected me to write about what a great jurist he was, or a great this or that, and I took an entirely different tack, about things he failed at, and what he did about them. He was a bit of a well, I ll give you an example of him. The year that, he came back one year expecting to carry the cane, as the oldest returning alumni. And some guy appeared who was three weeks older than he was, and got the cane. That man died two or three weeks later. That summer my grandfather turned to me in all sincerity and said, you think the son of a bitch could have died before reunions. The next year he was the oldest returning alumni, I guess at 98, and we re sitting at Nassau Hall ready to go in the P-rade as oldest returning alumni, and I m driving the golf cart. And just before the thing starts, he turned to me and said, Bob, what time of year is it? And I said, it s June 2 nd. And he said, oh no, this is the time of year that girls take off their bra. Here come three now, pretty good, huh? At 98! And he went through that entire parade waving the cane and hooping and hollering, and when the P-rade was done, his car was waiting for him, and it s obvious that he got totally up, for the P-rade; almost collapsed in the backseat of the car, and off we went. I ve been to a lot of reunions, I, this year I m running my 50 th, didn t ask to run it, but I was appointed by, a classmate, Sam Reiken got up there and said, and we nominate Bob, and before I could say no, I was nominated and elected. But any rate what was I going to say? At 71 you forget things.

3 3 You said you d been to a lot of reunions... Oh yeah, one of the signs that I had made up for this year s P-rade is a sign that says, I saw the Class of 1879 march, and the Class of And that is the essence of reunions. There s the fact that the university has the seniors graduating this Monday, so that they participate, draws them into this entire Princeton family in the most unbelievable way. There s no other college my wife went to Cornell, I ve been to Cornell reunions, they re very nice. But they re different, and they don t have the same togetherness as, you know, going well beyond your own class. It s a unique affair. So, although, although you had a, you know you thought you d like to go to Cornell, were you happy when you got here. Oh yeah, I wasn t disappointed to go to Princeton, it was outstanding. It was probably good, because my wife went to Cornell, and had I gone to Cornell she probably would never have married me, as my undergraduate years, she probably would have said, that guy s an idiot! You know? I didn t meet her until, oh gosh, 65 I guess. After Princeton I went to the Navy. I had no clue what I wanted to do, career wise. So I went into the Navy, went through OCS, got out in 65. Was in the Cuban blockade and I volunteered for swiftboats in the Navy, got accepted, and then, was in June of And in early July of 65 they said well, we re cancelling the program for a while, cause these swift boats are being, they re not very swift. And they came out with a new boat, oh, I guess late October. But October I got, was my, end of my stint, so I was out. So I went to New York, where I was from, and I applied to an advertising company, I applied to an actuarial company, to insurance companies, to banks, you name it, I applied. And I got an offer from Chase Manhattan Bank. So I went and I said, well, I m a banker. And that s how I started my career.

4 4 What was your Princeton experience like, kind of on the academic side? Did you know, did you have a sense of what you wanted to study I started out as an electrical engineer. In those days, Princeton required that you work in your field in the summertime. And I went out to Grumman Aircraft and worked in their avionics department. I said to myself, I don t want to be doing this. And I switched out, and became an economics major. None of which I learned was particularly helpful in the real world later on. But I don t think that s my view is that a college education is not there to teach you application. In fact, to redo it I d be a history major. What a college education should teach you how to do is to organize your thinking, how to communicate verbally and orally. And if it s successful in those things, you re there. Grad school is there for a vocation, and I didn t go to grad school. Today it s probably be a requirement, but in my day it wasn t. So were there professors, courses, things that stood out, that even though maybe they didn t necessarily specifically apply to what you were doing in your work life, that really you carried with you as you went? The two best professors I had, my junior year I decided to take Spanish, which shocked the professor, because I no longer had a language requirement. And he took, and I forgot the professor s name, he became my cousin Jeremy s mentor, and he, my cousin Jeremy went on to become a Spanish professor at Hamilton College, also taught at Princeton, during a sabbatical. And I wish I could remember the man s name, I don t. But I really thought he was a really fine teacher. Really appreciated and remembered his classes. I don t remember his name; I m very bad at names. And I had a teacher, I think it was my senior year, who taught Latin American history. And when this man talked about the marines in

5 5 Nicaragua and whatnot, he participated in it. He was just telling stories from his past. Very, and I was fortunate enough to be in the precept with him, and it was fascinating. And I also don t remember his name. He was a very old man at the time. But I was not one of these students who relished and looked for having, socializing with all the professors. A pretty blond with blue eyes was more my off time than professors. And how did you find it when you kind of tried to integrate yourself with the social scene at Princeton. Was it an easy thing, for you? I didn t, I never had that problem. I went to Exeter before hand, and I think Exeter was the most competitive place, at the time, that I ve ever been in. It made Princeton easy, eh, not easy but, it didn t make Princeton horrendous, handicap, you know. It made it easier. And the quality of the students at Exeter, and the sports and everything else was highly competitive, and of course, at a much younger age. So I didn t, when I came to Princeton I didn t have problems with being away from home. Already been through that. I didn t have problems of insecurity, because I d long ago decided that it s more important to do what you think is right or what you like for yourself than worry about whether the guy next door cares. I made a lot of good friends here. Interesting enough, I don t have a whole lot of very close Princeton friends today. I have a few, very few. Mainly because we all scattered to the winds. I do find it interesting; I show horses down in the south. In SEC country. And a lot of those people have daughters and sons who want to go to Princeton. And they all think that I can get them in. And I spend more time saying, you know only 9 percent get in, maybe even less than 9 percent. Well my daughter is, has done this and done that, is a very good soccer player or a very good lacrosse player. And I said, they only took five, the freshman class coming in only had five girls who could play soccer. It s very competitive. And I don t think, I don t think any of them have ever gotten in.

6 6 So, so over the years you have obviously come to reunions as a kid, have you made a point to come back often as a I didn t come that much as a kid, I only came once. Okay. My father s class was Class of 34. They had Scottish kilts. Well today you know, it s like wearing a skirt. I was not happy with the uniform. During my undergraduate days I worked for WPRB, we did most of the PA systems at most of the reunions. So we all stuck around for reunions, because that was a big money earner for the station. I don t think I came back for my first or second reunion because, of course, I was in the navy, wasn t I? But in 1968 I moved to Skillman, New Jersey, which is 10 minutes down the road. So, if I m around, I come to the off-year reunions. And its almost the same group of people who come every year for the offyear reunions, which, they re good people, and it s fun to meet them, and fun to see them, and a lot of them I see more than once a year. So I come to a lot of the off-year reunions, and enjoy them. I ve missed, I think my 30 th reunion, I think a horse show conflicted. But I ve been involved with the class, doing the reunion entertainment, for a long time. In fact, I think its, I think I screwed things up, in my 25 th Reunion, because Friday night we had two rotating bands; first time the university, that was the first time we had two rotating bands or anybody on the campus did. So the music never stopped. And it went to 5 in the morning. Saturday morning I had three rotating bands. Mainly because a guy from California brought his band from his bar. So I had three rotating bands, went to 6 in the morning. I think it was the next year they put a curfew on it. Which always annoyed me in a sense. When you wait till you get 40 or 50 years old, plus, you shouldn t have the university say to you what time you got to go to bed.

7 7 But they do. And we never used to have to wear these silly bands, here. I know it s because they re afraid of people drinking when they re underage; I m not big on rules. Having lived so close and having been to reunions also like other coming back for basketball games like that Oh sure, this, Sydney Johnson gave me this shirt. You ve had a chance to kind of see the university change over the years. What stand out to you? How is the university different today? It keeps taking away my parking spaces for going to athletic events. I get four season tickets to the Princeton basketball game, basketball every year, I like to take friends. And those parking spaces have been slowly going away. One where the Armory, I guess was changed over, used to be able to park around that. Then there used to be a parking across the street, the lacrosse, over, stuck over, by the lacrosse field, that parking lot s been taken over by another building. Pretty soon there s no one going to got to any basketball, any basketball or lacrosse games because there s no parking anywhere. So the university really got to take a look at it. And also, the basketball, I think a friend of mine named Delan Schaefer, who has MS, he has a handicap sticker. We, I got to come early to get a handicap space. The university s very remiss, about having the proper number of handicap parking spaces around this campus. And the older I get, the more of a problem that becomes for me. Now, I m not handicapped. But some day I m gonna be. And I won t be able to go to the basketball game, because I can t get a parking space. Or I won t be able to go to a lacrosse game, because there s not enough parking spots. It seems like for a large event like that they d have more special spaces.

8 8 They do, but Just for events only. But half those spaces are already taken up. The parking down by the swimming pool, and the Jadwin, that s only supposed to be for athletic, you know, for events? Baloney! There s cars parked there, you go there, let s say for a Friday game, and it snowed on Wednesday, and there s cars still covered in snow, you know they ve been there for a couple of days. There are students who park their cars there. Of course, in our time, you weren t allowed to have a car. Which I actually think is pretty smart, especially with all the drinking that goes on. What do you remember about, you know, what you did on weekends, or when you were here, obviously, if you could figure out a way to arrange a car there were places to go, things to do, but Very few people, I don t know anybody, I had a car my junior year only because I ran WPRB, and got a special car, a pass for that. Otherwise we didn t have cars. You know, the weekend, you imported women, and they stayed at the local boarding house, and it was a different world. We didn t, I don t recall ever partying except maybe Friday and Saturday night. And I talk to people who have daughters and sons at Ole Miss, and they re partying Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I guess that religion makes them not party on Sunday. I m sure they still do. It does seem foreign to a modern sensibility to think that, you know, there were such strict rules on when women could be in your rooms, and things like that. Do you remember that side of things when you were here?

9 9 Yeah, 7 o clock on the weekdays, 9 o clock on the weekends. Stupid. And you go to church, freshman and sophomore years you got to go to church every once every other Sunday. We ended up going to more Jewish services, and I m not Jewish, mainly because they had a very short service followed by a mixer. With women. So we went there. Stupid rules. It was actually safer, if you brought a girl into your room past 9 to have her spend the night than to have her leave at 9:15. Which is crazy! But you know, just the way it was. Did you have a sense then, in you know, the late 50s, early 60s, that this Princeton as an all male institution, that it s time was limited? Never occurred to me. Never occurred to me. I enjoyed every minute of it. Lot of time the weekends, when you didn t have a date, I worked WPRB. Burt Wunderlich, who was, and I used to do a request show, on Saturday nights. We d play the first record and have requests from then on. It was great fun. Well, I, but the social life at Princeton I thoroughly enjoyed. And if there was women on campus I probably would have been a lot more distracted. A lot more distracted. Tell me about WPRB and what that was like back then. It was a lot different. No one made any money on it, no one was paid. Today I understand they make money. Just stupid things, like the athletics; there was a sports department of WPRB and they had people announcing the football games, etc. And they did a pretty decent job. Now it s all handled by professional broadcasters. Which I must admit, if I m listening to a lacrosse game or baskeball game on the radio, because it s an away game or something, or I m, let s say I m away in Tennessee, or something. I can pick it up over the computer; I prefer that, I mean, they re very good. I think some of the music they play is wacko. They don t have as much

10 10 popular music so to speak, in quotes, than they used to. And I have no idea what their income is. They moved out of Holder Hall, and it was sort of nice being in Holder Hall. We d tear down the studio and redo it about once every two years. And I, after, I think I went back for my 20 th reunion or something, went down to Holder Hall, and it was the same studio we had built back in I was surprised. I think we had a really, much better time, doing extracurricular activities, WPRB, than they are now. I could be wrong, I haven t talked to any of the people working there. But that s just the feeling listening to it. Was it a was it a station that played a certain variety? I mean, were there shows devoted to different genres? Yeah, you had classical music, and we had time spots and we would print a program guide, which had actually, things like the classical music had all the pieces; we would sit there a month ahead of time and say, oh, I want to listen to that, and turn it on at that time. Also, I don t know what it s like now, but the chairman of the board, the president of WPRB, was a junior, not a senior. The senior had a thesis to write. But it was wonderful. We used to go to Peacock Inn, Peacock Alley, which is a downstairs bar. Used to have a room in the back, and whatever our age was, they would serve us. It was a lot of fun, those days. Did you ever have any thought of going into radio, or was that just a No thought whatsoever. There was a guy who was Class of 60, who did go into radio, and was an all news program, back then. I think he s still doing it, and is still bored to tears. There s another guy, Class of 58, who went out and basically, and owned his own radio station. Loved it for a while. I think he s retired now. Although one of our classmates, Bruce Dunning, who became a reporter for CBS, in Vietnam. In his write-up, in

11 11 the yearbook, he talks about how his experience at WPRB helped him be a on-the-air reporter, as opposed to a written reporter, as he was first started out as. So we talked about coming to Princeton, we talked about academics and social life and life after college; what is it like for you to be, obviously as the reunion chairman you have a lot more on your mind, but what s it like to be back for your 50 th reunion? About the same as being back for my 48 th or 49 th, except there s a lot more classmates. And as you kind of see the class, and see it as a group, how would you describe the Class of 62? Older. But still the prettiest class. A lot of classes my be smarter or had a lot of athletes, but we were the prettiest. I, so I ve gone through the questions I have for this project, but is there anything we haven t touched on that you think is worth mentioning? Or any stories, memories, that you can look back to? I m sure there are, but I m gonna try to pull them out of my mind, not really We have two classmates who ve been back to every single reunion. But I guess that s about it.

Smith College Alumnae Oral History Project. Christine Boutin, Class of 1988

Smith College Alumnae Oral History Project. Christine Boutin, Class of 1988 Northampton, MA Christine Boutin, Class of 1988 Interviewed by Anne Ames, Class of 2015 May 18, 2013 2013 Abstract In this oral history, recorded on the occasion of her 25 th reunion, Christine Boutin