Michael Choukas, Jr. ʻ51 Director of Alumni Affairs Emeritus

Transcription

1 ʻ51 Director of Alumni Affairs Emeritus An Interview Conducted by Jane Carroll September 4, 1996 September 11, 1996 DOH-23 Special Collections Library Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire

2 INTERVIEW: INTERVIEWED BY: PLACE: Michael Choukas, Jr. Jane Carroll Baker Library Hanover, New Hampshire DATE: September 4, 1996 [Today is] September 4, 1996, and Iʼm speaking with Michael Choukas, Jr., Class of ʻ51 and the Director of Alumni Affairs Emeritus. I wanted to start and have you talk about your long association with Dartmouth. Did you grow up here in Hanover? CHOUKAS: I grew up here in Hanover, yes. My father, who was the Class of ʻ27, came back in the fall of ʻ29 to teach and he was a professor here for 39 years. So at the age of a year and a half I moved to Hanover and lived here well, we moved to Norwich in ʻ41 but I went through the Hanover school system into high school and then went to Vermont Academy as a student and graduated from there. I then went to Clark School, which was in Hanover, as a post-graduate day student, and then to Dartmouth, and graduated in ʻ51. What was Dartmouth like back in the 40s? CHOUKAS: And the ʻ30s? And the ʻ30s, yes, thatʼs right! CHOUKAS: Well, Dartmouth was this is a stereotypical quote monolithic, although we didnʼt realize it in those days. It was a small college but it was very nationally prominent, and I guess I can talk more about what Hanover was like from through the eyes of a young kid growing up here. It was a small town and you sort of knew most of the people who lived here, and the summers were very sleepy summers. There was nothing going on at the College at all, and not much in the way of tourists or anything. It was just a very comfortable every kid had the run of the town. I was a very gregarious young boy and I was very interested in athletics, and I followed all the Dartmouth sports teams. So I knew so many athletes and so many students, and in and out of dorms and 2

3 everything else, at age ten, 11, 12, 13, without any of the problems that, from todayʼs perspective, one might think about. So I just have very happy memories of my childhood. Could not canʼt think of a better place for a young kid to grow up than Hanover in the 1930s and early 1940s. Was it isolated here without the freeways coming up? CHOUKAS: Yes, it was or the airport. There were it was I can give you this example: it was a four-hour drive to Boston; it was a seven and a half to eight-hour drive to New York; the train to Boston took four and a half hours, and there were several trains probably six or seven trains a day from White River [Junction] to Boston. And the train to New York I think was about an eight and a half hour ride. And that was right up through 1945, at least, and beyond, so thatʼs what... yes, it was isolated. And then during World War II, did they actually train officers here? CHOUKAS: Yes, they had the V-12 Program. Oh, thatʼs it. CHOUKAS: Yes, and that was a lot of fun for us because by then we were teenagers and we were still moving around town a lot and it was very exciting having the sailors and Marines and everything in town. So it changed then, and that was when the summers no longer were sleepy little summers. Did you have brothers and sisters? CHOUKAS: No. Ah, so [when] you say we, it was a pack of, a gang. CHOUKAS: Thatʼs right. Exactly. In the best sense of that word. Thatʼs right. And then you decided to come here. Why did you decide to come to Dartmouth? CHOUKAS: Well, I guess I just liked it so much, and I had been away at prep school for three years, and it was just where I wanted to go and I wanted to play sports at Dartmouth, so thatʼs why I I mean, it was I never wanted to go anyplace else, to tell you the truth. Did your dad try to dissuade you, or did he... 3

4 CHOUKAS: No no, no. And since, in those days, faculty children went free of tuition, he certainly did not try to dissuade. I think he was very positive about that decision. Was it different being a student, from being a townie? CHOUKAS: Yes. And because I put we lived in Norwich, in fact in the house that Seaver Peters lives in now my folks built it, itʼs right on the bluff overlooking the river. And I very definitely stayed in dormitories and then fraternities, and I saw about as much of my home, I think, as kids who lived in New Jersey or whatever. Occasionally I would run across my parents on the street, but since my father was a professor, obviously I saw him. And that makes me think I should say a little more about childhood in Hanover, because you not only knew students, but you knew so many of the faculty. I mean, I knew as from a childʼs point of view I just knew all the names that you would think about and associate with Dartmouth and the faculty in the ʻ30s and ʻ40s. I knew all those people, and I knew them because my parents socialized with them, and my father played bridge with them, and you know, and I just I knew them as personalities. And it was very interesting then to come as a student and see them from a different perspective than I had growing up. Was it hard to make that transition, to sit in the classroom and be judged by these friends? CHOUKAS: Well, no it wasnʼt. It was interesting. I mean, I think I knew about because... Well, for another thing, one of my hobbies obviously because my parents were very interested in contract bridge I learned very early. And by the time I was 16, with a couple of other guys who were peers of mine, we played in the there was a weekly duplicate bridge tournament in the Hanover Inn every Wednesday night, and it was mostly faculty and faculty wives, generally not playing with each other. But there would be, you know, eight or ten or twelve tables every Wednesday night, and we did very well. But the only reason Iʼm mentioning it is that we began to form opinions about these faculty professors that were quite unlike what you would form in the classroom. It was really fascinating. Not connected to academics. CHOUKAS: No, it was fascinating, it was really fascinating. What did you major in? 4

5 CHOUKAS: Sociology, which was my fatherʼs field, and I like to say, in spite of the fact that my father was in the department. I mean, I was just very interested in sociology. Did you take courses with him? CHOUKAS: I had one course with him, yeah. He had a very, very popular course on propaganda. He was really a forerunner in this country, heʼs published a book on it. But I donʼt need to be modest on his behalf. He really codified--he was so far ahead of his time, and I canʼt tell you how many alumni in the last 20 years told me as I would travel around, that my fatherʼs course meant more to them than almost anything else, including my friend Berl Bernhard ['51], who says the same thing. Because all of the techniques that you see now, that are unfortunately so commonplace now, were not generally known. And his course, from a sociological and psychological point of view, got at that. And of course he had Goebbels in Nazi Germany as one a very good practitioner, producing plenty of material for his classes! But he was because of this he was recruited by the OSS in 1942, and he went to Washington, and he headed up the whole propaganda campaign in Europe until the fall of the Nazis, and then he took over in the Pacific arena against the Japanese. He was in charge of that whole effort in this country. Did your family move down to Washington? CHOUKAS: Yes. My mother moved she did in she moved down in ʻ43. He was there a year, and then because he wasnʼt sure where they were going to send him and so forth. Yes, so I lived in Washington, although I was going to prep school, so it was only during vacations. I was in Washington the summers of ʻ44 and ʻ45. That must have been an incredibly exciting time. CHOUKAS: It was, it was. I was 16 and 17, and Iʼll never forget VJ Day in Washington, it was some experience. I was there to see Truman come out on the lawn and speak briefly to all of us who were on Pennsylvania Avenue, and it was quite an experience, yeah. Did it block up traffic, was there I mean did people just stand there waiting? CHOUKAS: Yeah, there was yes. We were all just right there on the street, and there were lots of funny things going on too, so... It was very interesting. 5

6 Well, that would have been made you right in the center, in the eye of the storm for all this. No wonder sociology seemed so exciting. CHOUKAS: Yeah, very much so. And I can tell you that when we get to talking about alumni views on coeducation, etcetera, and the shanties and everything, I canʼt tell you how valuable my sociological background was, I mean how valuable. And I also--this is a--not a self-serving, but a subjective observation. Iʼve been very disappointed in the directions of sociology in the last ten or 15 years. I think they got away from what was really the human aspects of it and they got too caught up in statistical stuff. And also people who were social activists who were getting into sociology for reasons other than being objective and scientific. But in the days that I took it and my father was teaching it, it was really a terrific subject. But it really proved invaluable to you. CHOUKAS: Invaluable. Also through my prep school teaching and headmaster days as well. So when you got out of Dartmouth now you had you did a lot of athletic here, you were in hockey and... CHOUKAS: Yes. Well, was it hard to be here sort of right after with all these soldiers coming back, to be at Dartmouth at that time? CHOUKAS: No, no, it was terrific. I mean, I remember playing my sophomore year our hockey team went to the NCAA tournament, went to the finals in the NCAA tournament. And I was playing I mean, [William] Billy Riley ['46] was 28 years old [laughs] and I was 20 years old 19, 20, something like that. No, it was very good, it was a nice I mean, it really didnʼt it really wasnʼt a there was no generational thing at all, and not even the experience that so many of them had in combat in the war, it was just a very good place. There must have been a lot of joy, too, at putting World War II behind you. CHOUKAS: Yeah, exactly. But it must have been a different place, too, because a lot of them came back with families and wives. 6

7 CHOUKAS: Yes. And you probably know this, and I donʼt think this is of particular interest anyway, but Sachem Village do you know where Sachem Village is? [West Lebanon, New Hampshire] Sure. CHOUKAS: Well, it was built for married students coming back after the war. And it wasnʼt where it is now. It was right next to Hanover High School, right it was between the Catholic church and the middle school which is there, thereʼs a soccer field and a lacrosse field well, that was Sachem Village, that whole thing right there. And that got moved I donʼt know, I was I was out of town when they moved it. I came back whereʼs Sachem Village? You played hockey and baseball and what else? CHOUKAS: Yes. I played freshman football, and in those days freshmen were not eligible for varsity. I played freshman football, hockey and baseball. And then I did not go out for football after that, and I played hockey and varsity baseball, and did not go out for baseball my junior year. And then I broke my arm in hockey in my senior year and so I couldnʼt play baseball my senior year I was going to go out again. When you were here, was this the time when Dartmouth became part of an Ivy League was formed? CHOUKAS: No, that was after I graduated. OK. And who were the teams you played, most of the time? CHOUKAS: Well, it was pretty much the same schedule. During the war, before I came here, it was quite different. I mean, we played Notre Dame, and... But my letʼs see, my time here it was really the Ivy League, it just wasnʼt formalized. And then you could play a couple of outside games. It was pretty much the same way. But we did have one my senior year we played the University of Michigan in football, out in Ann Arbor. That was quite an event. We did pretty well with them. And in hockey we were you know, we were one of the top teams in the country, so we played not only all of the eastern teams, the Ivy League and Boston College and so forth, but we would play University of California, Michigan, Minnesota, all those teams. Where did you go did you fly out to play them, or did you meet somewhere in the middle? 7

8 CHOUKAS: Well, they might make a trip on the East Coast and we would play them as they came through, or my freshman year, so I didnʼt make this trip there was traditionally a Christmas trip and theyʼd go by train to California or the Midwest, and theyʼd stop and play those teams as they were going out. And then when we were in the NCAA tournament, in those days it was always held at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. Oh, wow! CHOUKAS: Yeah. Wow is right. And we did fly out to that, and that was a big deal in those days, it was pre-jet travel and so forth. Exactly. And who did you play? CHOUKAS: We played the University of Michigan in the semi-finals, and beat them, and then played Boston College in the finals and lost 4 to 3. We had split with Boston College during the regular season; we had beaten them 4 to 2 and they had beaten us 2 to 1. Itʼs very respectable! CHOUKAS: Oh, yeah. Well, I like to say that I was playing hockey during the decline and fall of Dartmouthʼs prominence. Because all during the late ʻ40s, or mid- to late ʻ40s, Dartmouth was number one in the country in hockey. And some of the remnants of them, of those teams, particularly veterans coming back, were who were like, Billy Riley was a Class of ʻ46 and his brother Joe his brother Jack was ʻ44, and they all went into the service and then came back, and they were terrific. But by then there was a dramatic shift in the admissions policy in the late ʻ40s, and thatʼs what there were two things that contributed to Dartmouthʼs decline as a national hockey power. One was the fact that we didnʼt have artificial ice. We played in Davis Rink, in a closed rink but on natural ice, so we were very dependent on the weather. We could never get on the ice until early December, whereas more and-- that was built in ʻ28--all through the ʻ30s and ʻ40s we were one of the few colleges that had its own rink, even though it wasnʼt artificial ice. Most of the colleges would play like all the Boston colleges played in the Boston Arena, and so we that gave us a leg up in terms of kids wanting to come here. And then we had this nationally known coach, [Edward Eddie ] Jeremiah, and people wanted to play for him. The two things that happened was, right after the war college after college began building their own artificial ice rinks, and two and this is the 8

9 more important one the admissions policy changed. I mean, it was dramatic. College boards were not required when I came in as a freshman. And right after that they did, and the numbers crunch came to what it was, and it was a quantum leap. And so a lot of kids who still wanted to come here to play hockey couldnʼt get in. And they started showing up on our opponentsʼ teams, and that was the beginning of you know, we had a we still had enough in the pipeline so that by my senior year we were still very respectable, but then after that it really started to go down. This is neither here nor there, but have you been going to the womenʼs hockey games here recently? I think theyʼre good. CHOUKAS: I have, yes. Theyʼre very good. Yes, I love to watch them play. Theyʼre very disciplined and George Crow does a tremendous--and Judy Parrish--does a tremendous job of coaching them. I--they play the style of game that we played. Thatʼs interesting. CHOUKAS: The way they set up their plays, and the way theyʼre disciplined and everything. I donʼt like the college game as much today, and Iʼm not talking like an old you-know-what alumnus, believe me Iʼm not. Because these kids that are playing today are so much more talented than we were. But I donʼt like the game. Thereʼs too much hitting and grabbing and holding and everything. But I still prefer to watch menʼs hockey to womenʼs hockey because, for me I guess I have to put all my credentials on the table. I canʼt stand soccer because it is so damned slow. You know, I sit there and I watch a soccer game and I say, well, heʼs going to pass the ball eventually to this guy running down over here, and I watch, and then sure enough, sooner or later he does. But and womenʼs hockey is better than that, but it doesnʼt move fast. The power. CHOUKAS: Yeah, thatʼs right. But Iʼll tell you, I scrimmage against the womenʼs hockey team every fall, and I am impressed. I mean, when Iʼm out there on the ice, because Iʼm just a--you know, Iʼm over the hill and everything--but I have to work hard against those women, and I canʼt stay with them skating anymore. And I donʼt even think Iʼm playing against women when Iʼm out there, donʼt even think of it. Itʼs just a group Iʼm playing hockey against. 9

10 Itʼs getting better, I think. CHOUKAS: Yeah, it is, oh, itʼs terrific. That kind of got us off the track but I thought it was fascinating. What prompted you then to enter the Marine Corps after Dartmouth? CHOUKAS: Well, I went in--first of all, in terms of oneʼs input and intake in growing up, very positive feelings about the military, if you think about the fact that my generation really came into their teens in the early ʻ40s and World War II, so you had these feelings. And then--and it was very honorable. And then we had to go in the service, Iʼd quickly add that. You did? CHOUKAS: Oh, yes. You were either going to get drafted, or something. It was still required. And the Marine Corps there were several programs here. The Navy had its NROTC program, and the Marine Corps had a program, the Platoon Leaders Class, which was called the PLC program. And in the NROTC you got a scholarship that went with it, and you had to drill every Monday. And then you had to go every summer for eight weeks. And you got--and you also got paid a modest amount. In the Marine Corps you didnʼt have to take any military--oh, and you had to take a Naval Science course each semester in NROTC. In the Marine Corps, during your college time, there was absolutely nothing. You didnʼt have to drill, you didnʼt have to take any military science courses. They didnʼt pay you anything, and you had to go two of your three summers for six weeks each to Quantico, Virginia for training, for which you did get paid. Thatʼs all you did. And then when you graduated you were commissioned a Second Lieutenant, and then you had to serve for two years. So a whole bunch of us did that, and you know, the Marine Corps--even in those days we were wise enough to know how much better the Marine Corps was than any other... [laughing] Spoken like an old Marine! Well, you must have known Quantico to some extent, having been down around Washington, so it wasnʼt unfamiliar territory. CHOUKAS: No, except I didnʼt know really didnʼt know I only knew Quantico was down there someplace, but I didnʼt really know. Did you like the Marine Corps? CHOUKAS: Very much, yeah. I got married the fall of ʻ51, which was the fall after I graduated, at Quantico. My wife had been a student nurse here at 10

11 Mary Hitchcock and thatʼs where I met her, so weʼd been going for about a year and a half. Did you meet her because you got sick? CHOUKAS: No, no I didnʼt. Iʼve heard two stories like that, so I was curious. CHOUKAS: No. So when she graduated just before I did, she knew I was going to go to Quantico, so she got a job at Childrenʼs Hospital in Washington. And we got married in November, and we went to Camp Lejeune after Quantico, and we just we just loved it. We really loved it. In fact, itʼs hard for us to realize this, but we really thought seriously about whether to stay in the Marine Corps or whether to get out. And the Korean War was just ending, and it was--it was very exciting times. But by the time Iʼd been out for three or four months I couldnʼt believe that I ever wanted to stay in. What prompted you to make the decision to get out? CHOUKAS: Well, I mean my two years was up, and then I mean, itʼs either, youʼre going to be a regular and thatʼs going to be and I think Iʼm remembering this correctly, because we did talk about it. I think it was the fact that you had to--you were going to get transferred every two or three years for the rest of your professional life, and we just wanted to sink roots someplace and raise a family, and I think that was probably as major a determinant as any. So then you started looking around. CHOUKAS: I did. I came back and I started having some interviews. The college placement office was nothing like what exists now, it was one guy, [Donald W.] Don Cameron ['35]. And he set me up with an interview with Procter & Gamble, and someplace else, and then I just--i was just very unhappy. We were living with my parents in Hanover until I got a job, and I think my father was looking for me harder than I was looking for myself. Well, you had a child then, right? CHOUKAS: Yes, thatʼs correct. Your research is excellent. Our child was born in Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. So one day Don Cameron and my father ran into each other in the post office, and Don said, I donʼt imagine Mike would be interested in anything like this, but theyʼve just had a death on the faculty at the Millbrook School in Millbrook, New 11

12 York, and theyʼre looking for somebody to run a dorm and coach hockey and so forth. So my father came home and told me about it, and I said, Well, jeez, sure, Iʼll go down and talk to them. So I called up the headmaster and I went down, and--iʼll never forget this--the experience that I had in that interview process and touring the campus and everything was like night and day with my interviews with Procter & Gamble and other places. I mean, this is like Psych 1, but it was so obvious that I had found a niche that I was comfortable with and so forth. So they hired me, and I spent the--i went down there in January and I was there until graduation, and then the then--headmaster of Vermont Academy, [Laurence] Larry Leavitt--I donʼt know if that name has ever crossed your--heʼs Class of ʻ25 at Dartmouth, and he was my headmaster when I was a student. He heard that I was--had gone into teaching, and he called me up and said there was going to be an opening the next year at Vermont Academy, and would I be interested in coming on the faculty. And so thatʼs how we went to Vermont Academy in the fall of Now, what jobs did you hold there? I know you eventually became headmaster. CHOUKAS: Well, I was--i taught mathematics and I coached football, hockey and baseball--varsity football as a backfield coach and varsity hockey, and third group in baseball, but eventually I became the varsity baseball coach as well. I was on the faculty eleven years. Leavitt left--letʼs see- -after Iʼd been there five years, I think, and then the new headmaster after a couple of years asked me if Iʼd like to be Assistant Headmaster, and I said yes, and I did that. ` And then he resigned and there was a search for a new headmaster. I was not a candidate. I didnʼt want to be, but I was the acting headmaster. Frankly, as I saw the candidates coming through, after a while I got in touch with the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and I said, you know, I think maybe I would like to be a candidate. And then I was appointed Headmaster. So I was the headmaster for 12 years, so we were there 23 years professionally. You really raised your family there. CHOUKAS: Raised my family there, exactly right. What town is that in? 12

13 CHOUKAS: Saxtons River, Vermont. Saxtons River, OK. CHOUKAS: Itʼs about 50 miles--45 miles south of here. Itʼs five miles west of Bellows Falls. OK. What a pretty area, wow. CHOUKAS: Yes, it is. Yeah, it is, itʼs really nice, very rural, not so rural anymore, but very rural then, and my kids just loved Saxtons River. Their real roots are there. Now was Ludlow so developed in the skiing at that time? CHOUKAS: No. Okemo was there, and interestingly enough [Donald] Don Cutter ['45], the father of the Don Cutter ['73] who runs the Dartmouth Skiway now, Don Cutter who was also a Vermont Academy alumnus and a Dartmouth alumnus, was running Okemo in those days. And Okemo was a--you know they had one or two chairlifts and lots of poma lifts, and it was not what it is now. But it was there, yeah. So did your kids grow up with the skiing and the... CHOUKAS: No, it was--itʼs really kind of sad, but in those days Hanover had some good programs, but most of the Vermont towns, they didnʼt have that, I mean, all they did was play basketball. Really, Iʼm not kidding you. There was no hockey anyplace except at Vermont Academy, the prep schools. None of the high schools except Hanover High put it in. There were four high school teams in New Hampshire, and I think maybe zero high school teams in Vermont. Isnʼt that incredible? Itʼs hard to imagine! CHOUKAS: It is, but you see there were no artificial rinks, and it was everybody played basketball. And I used to go around and say, you know, look at all these kids that are 5ʼ7, 5ʼ9, what the hell are they doing... [laughing] But thereʼs that whole Canadian influence in Vermont and New Hampshire, all those... CHOUKAS: Well you know, there were quite a there were more teams before World War II, but the transportation was such during World War II that they were all cut out, and they never picked them up again. Now there as you know, there are I donʼt know how many high school teams in both the states. Hockeyʼs a big sport. 13

14 Yeah, it is. Now, when you were there at Vermont Academy, did you think you wanted to spend the rest of your career there? CHOUKAS: Uh-uh. Never? CHOUKAS: No, but I never Iʼm sort of a now person. I never really thought much ahead. When I became headmaster, I made it very clear with the chairman of the board, not with the rest of the trustees, that I was interested in something like about a ten-year appointment. And I said, I think thatʼs probably about the right amount of time. And thatʼs something we ought to talk about a little later, because itʼs true of college presidencies as well as headmasters. That was an amazing transition from the venerable old headmaster who headed the school for the rest of his professional life, to the young headmaster who would run the school for ten or so years. [End of Tape 1, Side A Beginning of Tape 1, Side B] CHOUKAS:... I mean, if you go back and look at most college presidents, it was assumed, I think, when they took over that that was kind of it. Like Supreme Court justices, you die in this institution. CHOUKAS: Thatʼs right. And for lots of reasons, most of them sociological, that just was not the case anymore. And it was amazing the changing. Well anyway, so I said ten years. We both agreed to review it every year, and we both agreed that we would not tell anybody else, because as I said to him, I donʼt want--at the end of my sixth year I donʼt want the faculty to start counting down with me, you know. But I was very clear that I was going to be about 48, 47 or--46 or 47 at the end of ten years, and then I would--i wanted out, because Iʼd seen too many cases of people who stayed in schools longer, and I didnʼt want the trustees--you know, by the time I got into my mid-50s I wasnʼt going to be too excited about looking for a change in career, and I didnʼt want them saying, "Well, what are we going to do about old Mike? You know he was OK 20 years ago, but my God, heʼs got eight more years?" So that was kind of what actually happened was, at the end and we also agreed that we would make the decision a year to a year and a half before, and then I would and announce it. And at the end of my eighth year the country was in double-digit inflation and the Vietnam War was in full fling, and it was very hard to find students, and our enrollment was dropping as it was in other places, and we were 14

15 starting a capital campaign and it was clearly not the time to change headmasters. So I agreed to stay on until those things turned around. Thatʼs why I ended up going 12 years instead of ten. But when I resigned I had not a clue as to what I was going to do, not a clue. No job lined up? CHOUKAS: No job. When I announced a year and a half in advance to everybody well, a year and a half in the spring, that the next year would be my last year, you know I thought I was going to have to hire a battery of secretaries to handle all the job offers that were going to come and that the phone was going to be ringing off the hook. [laughter] Uh huh. I did not get I left Vermont Academy on June 30 of 1977, and I was offered a job at Dartmouth in late July. So I was a couple of months without any job, or even knowing what I was going to do... And three kids in college. CHOUKAS: No. That was another thing about our timing. My son, who is our youngest, graduated in ʻ77. So we I mean, we were free to whatever happened, happened, and we were so happy to get out of being the headmaster and headmasterʼs wife, and the freedom that that [brought] not donʼt take me wrong, I wouldnʼt trade those years for anything, they were very rewarding years. But... Are you a headmaster 24 hours a day, is this...? CHOUKAS: Yes, itʼs like being a captain of a ship. Iʼm telling you, the phone rings in the middle of the night and itʼs not good news. And everybody, and particularly in a small school I mean, I would make a distinction between the Exeters and Andovers and Deerfields and St. Paul's, where thereʼs quite an administrative structure to go with the headmaster. But here, one of the reasons parents pick a small school is they want the intimate contact with the headmaster. So, you know, Iʼm supposed to know that so-and-soʼs kid lost the J.V. tennis match by double faulting, you know I mean, itʼs just I have a most of the positions are the administrative positions are part administrative and part faculty, so the director of athletics also teaches Spanish, and the director of studies also teaches English, etc. And the assistant headmaster also does this, and the dean does this. So trying to get those people doing these things, and the parents if theyʼve got a problem if everythingʼs going OK thatʼs no problem, but if the parents have got a problem they donʼt want to talk to the dean or the assistant they want to talk to the headmaster. And itʼs very, very 15

16 involved. Wouldnʼt trade the experience for anything, but there was no way I would ever go back. I will never ever forget the end of my first week working at Dartmouth, in September of ʻ77, and on Friday afternoon leaving my office in Blunt, which was then Crosby Hall, and walking across the campus to walk home, and thinking, My God, I donʼt have anything to do until Monday morning, this is incredible! It was true luxury! CHOUKAS: Yeah, right. Did your wife like being the headmasterʼs--i mean, in a sense itʼs a job you donʼt get paid for. CHOUKAS: Thatʼs correct. Yeah. I think thatʼs changing now. I mean, with the changing role of women professionally, I know--iʼm not guessing-- either theyʼre getting paid for these things or theyʼre not doing them. One or the other. Like, thereʼs a very funny story--i mean thatʼs part of the transition. If you think of the years that I was a headmaster weʼre supposed to be talking about Dartmouth. Thatʼs OK, this is about you too. CHOUKAS: The years that I was a headmaster ʼ65 to ʻ77 and you think about what was going on in this country at that time, with the Vietnam War, with kids, with relations between parents and kids, with the counterculture I mean, you know what Iʼm talking about. Yeah, I lived through that. CHOUKAS: I know you did. And so, we also had the transition with our faculty. The younger faculty that were hiring were coming out of colleges--yes-- and those that are married--we were an all boys school then, although I did have a couple of women teachers, mostly male--their wives, you know--thereʼs a very funny story. I donʼt know if you know who [Stanley Stan ] Colla ['66] is, who is the Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations? Sure. CHOUKAS: Well, I hired him at Vermont Academy, and it was his first job when he graduated from Dartmouth. And he came with his wife Judi, who had just graduated from Princeton in the first all-coed class from Princeton, and Nita, my wife Nita, was lining up faculty wives to pour at receptions 16

17 after games and at faculty coffee and everything, and Judi said to my wife, I donʼt do tea. And this is kind of a--and the reason that this is kind of a funny story is that Stan Colla ended up being my final--my last boss here at Dartmouth. And so I made the comment at my retirement party that, when the person that you hired--when you end up working for the person that you hired, you get the message that itʼs time to move on. But my wife and Judi have a great relationship, and that little story--i mean, my wife was able to kind of turn it around at one point, in a very amusing fashion. I like that. Well then, so you came here and you were first, as I understand it,... CHOUKAS: Director of Leadership Gifts, yes. What is that? CHOUKAS: That was the Campaign for Dartmouth, the previous major capital campaign. And I was hired to it was a five-year appointment, and there was no guarantee of anything after the campaign ended, it was a five-year campaign. So a number of us were hired that way. And the breakdown was Major Gifts, and [Lucretia Lu ] Martin, who had been working in the Presidentʼs office, was appointed at the same time I was as director of major gifts; and those were defined as--her prospect pool was those people who had the capability of giving over a five-year period a hundred thousand dollars or more. So she focused on them. Leadership gifts were defined as those who had the capability of giving five thousand up to a hundred thousand over a five-year period. And there was a differential in the way that this was done. The major gifts, as you would imagine, there were long-term cultivations, and she had a couple of officers working for her, and they would go any place in the country to see people and ask for gifts and that sort of thing. And the people had been identified as capable of making those kinds of gifts. Whereas Leadership Gifts, which were the bulk--i mean, we had the most prospects. So we set up regional offices. My job was, in effect, to establish a national sales force, and I hired six regional directors; and unlike this campaign, where those regional directors all were located in Blunt and went out to their regions, we had an office in Boston and New York and Atlanta and Chicago and in San Francisco. So I hired people to run those offices. Those were the officers working for me. And then they in turn had all the cities in their region, and they would establish volunteer 17

18 committees in each city to do the solicitations of all of our prospects. So thatʼs what the job was. To be hired did you have to be a Dartmouth alum? CHOUKAS: No, but it sure helped. And let me see: all of the people that I hired as regional directors I had six, as I told you had Dartmouth connections. One was the wife of an alumnus, and one had worked in the admissions office here, although she was a Smith graduate had worked for [Alfred Al ] Quirk, and [Edward Eddie ] Chamberlain, I guess. She was the first woman ever hired by the admissions office, in fact. Whoʼs that? CHOUKAS: Her name then was Ginger [Virginia L.] Soule. She has since married a Dartmouth alumnus and sheʼs Ginger Norton. She would be a very interesting person for you to talk with. They live in Portland, Oregon. Oh, what a pretty place. CHOUKAS: But anyway, that was the job that I came here to do, and I had no experience in fundraising at all. In fact, itʼs funny when I in fact Berl Bernhard, who was a classmate of mine, was on the trustees then, and his son one of his sons was going to Vermont Academy. And so he knew that I was leaving, and I think he and [Franklin Frank ] Smallwood, also a classmate, kind of put my name in up here. And when I came to interview for the job, I really was not very I did not think I was going to be very interested. I mean, I didnʼt like fundraising as a headmaster, and it didnʼt strike me as a kind of productive thing to be doing. But when I began to learn that, one, I would be traveling all over the country, and two, I would be organizing people who would be doing all this stuff, and I began to get the dimensions of the job, I began to think, jeez well, you know, after 23 years in Saxtons River, population 722, the thought of, you know, zipping around the country Iʼm sort of a geography freak anyway. I mean, Iʼm one of these guys that used to travel be in the plane with my head glued to the window, saying, Oh, thereʼs the Snake River, and thereʼs the... So anyway, it became a very attractive thing and I pursued it very actively. And obviously Oh, the other downer, as Nita and I talked about whether or not we really wanted to do this, was, although I had loved Hanover as a kid and growing up in it, as Iʼve already said, and I thought maybe when I retired I might want to come back here, but the 18

19 idea of coming back when I was still in my professional years really didnʼt appeal all that much. I mean, we had been living in a fishbowl for 23 years, and what really appealed to us was midtown Manhattan. [laughter] And anonymity. CHOUKAS: Yes, exactly. But I spent enough time here my folks had moved away by then so I didnʼt come up much anymore I spent enough time here during the interview process to begin to see that Hanover was quite a different town, and it was very cosmopolitan, and I could walk up and down Main Street and I didnʼt have to stop and explain to everyone why my arm was in a sling, or whatever. And so this turned out to be just a great move for us. The years I guess I spent at Dartmouth, were very very happy, very happy years. When you set up these offices, then, did they in turn go out how did they do their solicitations? To individual people, or did they go to alumni meetings? CHOUKAS: No, to individuals. They would organize the committees, and then these volunteers would each have five prospects, and they would go and set up they would go from city to city; and I would usually go with them to the original meetings to recruit the area chairman and to have sort of a training meeting of the committee, once my regional directors helped the chairmen recruit these people. But we found out after a couple years that the volunteers werenʼt really I mean, they werenʼt being paid, and we were getting what we were paying for. With many exceptions, obviously. But we began to evolve and change our tactics. Pretty soon we began using the volunteers to set up appointments so that the regional director could go with them and make the solicitation. And they were the volunteers were much happier with that. And then I began doing them too, and we began we really did most of the solicitations the last two or three years of the campaign, using the volunteers as much as we could, helping us get appointments and that sort of thing. But I think I mean, most of the volunteers volunteer because they want to help Dartmouth, but their take on fundraising was about what mine was before I got the job, and therein is a problem. And there was so much controversy going on at Dartmouth during the Campaign for Dartmouth in those days, that people being solicited really wanted somebody in touch with the College to talk to about this, either to vent or to ask honest questions about, what the hell is going on up there? 19

20 So we were in fact, one of the things that I really inculcated in my regional directors was, I really donʼt care as much whether you get a contribution or not, I just want that alumnus to feel better about the College when you leave than they felt when you got there. So we did a lot of stuff of I mean, I would bring them back here four or five times a year for a week at a time, and so they were really in touch. And we talked a lot about college issues and the perspective and all of this. Who would target the alumni to contact and ask for gifts? CHOUKAS: You mean, how did we know who how did we identify... Potential givers. CHOUKAS: Well, thatʼs an ongoing process, not just at Dartmouth but at every institution. You have you just have all this information, and we would start I mean, itʼs just historical, itʼs gathered files on everybody are kept in terms of what theyʼve given to the Alumni Fund, which is the annual giving fund, and what their job is I mean, if somebody, you know, is a senior vice president with Merrill Lynch, I mean, that tells you something, right? And then what we would do is, we had something called screening meetings, which preceded the establishment of any area committees, when we would ask one person who was sort of the Mr. Dartmouth of a particular community if he would get five or six alumni together who knew the community, and meet with us, and we would go there and sit down, we had all these lists of all the alumni, and weʼd go over them, and they would just give guesses as to what they thought the person might be able to give over a five-year period. And so then weʼd come back and pump all that information into the computer and get our list. When you were going out making contact with these people, what were the questions that they had, what were their reservations about the university? This would be what, about ʻ77, ʻ78, ʻ79? CHOUKAS: Well, in those days and there is a constant in that all these questions are always there but the nature of the questions changed a little bit. Well, the concerns were, one group was very upset with John Kemeny as president. Why? CHOUKAS: Well, thereʼs a surface why and thereʼs an under the surface why. The under the surface why was, they blamed him for the loss of the 20

21 Indian symbol and for the advent of coeducation, in which order I donʼt know. I donʼt know which is the more important concern. And it was so clearly generational. You know, the younger alumni, who we saw less of because fewer of them made the cut in terms of who we wanted to solicit, were mostly very positive. But the older alumni, you know, who didnʼt for reasons we can talk about later... There were many, many exceptions in the older alumni, and thatʼs important to know, I mean there were a lot of people who felt very good, not only about their college but about what John Kemeny was doing and all of this stuff, and were supportive of coeducation, and who were once you talked to them about the problems that led to the Indian symbol going away, were comfortable with it, accepting of it. But those were the major questions in terms of why they didnʼt like Kemeny. Whatʼs under the surface, as to why they didnʼt? CHOUKAS: Well, I suspect, his Jewishness. I suspect, that he wasnʼt an alumnus, that he wasnʼt an athlete, that he wasnʼt in the Dartmouth mold, and all of that. Those were and you know, you see so many irrational manifestations in a lot of the alumni. It was so disappointing. It is so disappointing to see people who, you know, went to this fine liberal arts college, and who are out there, and seem incapable of getting a new set of information and changing their thinking at all. And when you spot somebody like that, then you know youʼre shoveling it against the tide, so you take a little different tack. But anyway, those were the major concerns, I would say, in the late ʻ70s. And could you convince people? In other words, was venting enough, or did you have real reasoning... CHOUKAS: Well, this is very individual. Yeah. I mean, I would meet with my regional directors (Iʼm sure they hated these sessions), drawing on my vast sociological background and getting them to understand why coeducation, and how much it had to do with the changing role, professionally, of women; how much it had to do with the fact that since our graduates were going to go out into the professional world, where women and men were working comparable positions, it was important for them to live and study and play with women the male aspect, to play with women during... and all that sort of stuff, anyway. And you could size up the person that you were talking to, who might be expressing some of these concerns, and most of them were rational, and you could say this thing and they would accept it. And the same with the Indian symbol. 21

22 The one thing I kept hammering at, and this is one of my pet peeves about most of the administrators who are making public comments now it was then and it is now and it probably will ever be but we had a cardinal rule in my office: you never said and the College today is better than it ever was. [laughing] It gets the hackles up. CHOUKAS: Oh! you know, Iʼd say, everything is relative. When these guys went to this college it was a first-rate college. It was terrific, theyʼve got great memories of it, and it was prominent, and itʼs different today, you know. And maybe some of you younger regional directors working for me think itʼs better, but let me tell you, parts of it are better; parts of it, in my opinion, are not as good, but parts of American society I donʼt like the way it was when I was growing up, but most importantly, the College has to be contemporary. If it isnʼt contemporary, no high school kidsʼ gonna want to come here. Anyway, so we gave them all that stuff, but donʼt ever say the College today is better than it ever was, or donʼt ever say, you couldnʼt get in today. True though it may be! CHOUKAS: True though it may be, yes. Ruth Adams said to me, she thought that the key argument that convinced a lot of older alums is when their granddaughters got into Dartmouth. Did you come across cases like that? CHOUKAS: Oh, yeah, but Iʼm not sure how much it convinced them as opposed to how much it confused them! [laughter] Because it gave them conflicting emotions that they had to deal with. But you see, what I think really I mean, clearly the climate is not the same now, thereʼs general acceptance. Not only acceptance of coeducation in a resigned sense of that word, but acceptance in that, yes, we had to do that. So now I donʼt think itʼs an issue, I mean I really donʼt. It was not an issue the last few years I was working, except with some of those old... who are irrational about their thinking anyway. You know, and you just take one look at them. Another thing I used to say to the regional directors, when youʼre in a meeting speaking to a group of alumni, and somebody gets up and starts to rant about this and give half-question, half-speech, when you respond to that person donʼt think that youʼre going to convince him. Thereʼs no way. But remember, there are a lot of people sitting in the audience who are going to be very interested in your response, and 22

23 who have identified that person in the same way that you have, and maybe know him a hell of a lot better than you do, and you give a rational, objective response, and just remember youʼre really talking to all of them, youʼre not talking to this guy. Thatʼs something that worked very well for us. But anyway, back to this other thing of the concerns on coeducation. The same thing is true of the Indian symbol. I think that right now itʼs probably flip-flopped a little bit, and there are probably more people still, if not upset about the loss of the Indian symbol, wishing that we would get it back somehow. And as for coeducation, I donʼt even think that thatʼs an issue anymore. I mean, itʼs so abundantly obvious where we are in this country. Was their concern with coeducation the loss of tradition, or was it something more specific like the ability to field a football team, and that kind of detail? CHOUKAS: I think that, although some people might have said it was what was going to happen to our sports, I think that was a smokescreen for what they really felt emotionally. And I think it really comes down to their experience in college, and the all-maleness of Dartmouth was an important part of that experience. And so they think that thatʼs being lost, thatʼs been lost. And I agree with them. But itʼs lost! Itʼs lost in this country, so hang onto your happy memories of going down to White River late at night and having a beer with some guys, and everything. Fine, I mean that was great, it worked for us then. And I think another point I used to make about it was that when my generation and generations before me were growing up, most of the private institutions were single-sex. The universities were coed, but other than Middlebury, Iʼm hard-pressed to think of other colleges that were private. And thatʼs a reflection of the fact that it was just an assumption, I mean, when I grew up I wouldnʼt think of going to a coed institution. And yet I have no trouble knowing that if Iʼd grown up 20 years later or 30 years later, I wouldnʼt think of going to a single-sex institution. And thatʼs what I meant earlier when I talked about the input of oneʼs generation, I was talking about the military, your feelings about the military at that time. But you know, there were all these absolute truths that teenagers have, just because they just kind of ingest it, right from the first grade on up, theyʼre absolute truths. And so, when you get into your later years and you start to find out that these absolute truths 23

24 arenʼt so absolute, you know, some people can handle that and some people canʼt. The other thing Ruth Adams says is that she had as much opposition, if not more, from Dartmouth wives, the wives of the older alumni. Did you find that as well? CHOUKAS: Yeah, although I wouldnʼt call it opposition because I didnʼt have as much contact. In her position she would have seen a little more of that. But I know what sheʼs talking about, and I agree with that phenomenon. And again, it isnʼt all wives, to be sure, but I think I mean, I guess I could generalize it by saying, probably around the reunion tents the wives are saying, well, I grew up and Iʼve had a happy life, and I went to a single-sex college, and I didnʼt need coeducation, and I knew my husband when he was a student at Dartmouth and it was terrific, and... yeah. But I think that probably thereʼs a little bit of envy or sour grapes or something down in there. Did it help you at all in communicating the new atmosphere on campus the fact that you had a son who was the class of '77? [End of Tape 1, Side B Beginning of Tape 2, Side A] CHOUKAS:... and you know, when my son was here coeducation was still there were a lot of problems in the student body at that time. I mean, he was ʻ77. Seventy-six was the first class with coeds who had entered as freshmen, and there were a lot of nasty things going on between the male students and the female students. Again, thatʼs a generalization. And there was a group of males, probably the same group that today hover around The Dartmouth Review or whatever, and fortunately it has been an ever-shrinking group, but there were a lot more of them feeling that way in the early ʻ70s. What helped me, I think, was, with the age group we were dealing with for the most part in the Campaign for Dartmouth, a lot of them knew who I was, a lot of them knew I had played sports at Dartmouth, a lot of them knew me when I was a little kid--a lot would come up to me and say, I remember you when you were 11 years old and running around the campus. A lot of them knew my father, so between my father and me, I had a certain amount of credibility which, as long as I didnʼt blow it, was very helpful, because I think alumni like to have a link back to the College, a personal link back to the College, and thatʼs one of the problems with turnover. If they look up here and they say, My God, I donʼt know a single person up there any more, then thereʼs a little something lost. And so, if they have me as someone thatʼs credible, 24