Embedded Files
“It’s just a bunch of things that happened… but I enjoyed it so much.”
This is a rehash of my 12 months at Gettysburg College (September 1968 - August 1969). An eventful year in history and a coming of age time in my life. I had just turned 18 a few weeks before arriving on campus and would leave just after turning 19. I was not especially enthusiastic about attending college at the time although it had always been expected of me and what with the Vietnam war and my family situation I had to admit that college at a small residential campus far away (300 miles) from Strongsville, Ohio was the only reasonable choice.
I had a particularly good high school English teacher my senior year, a recent small college graduate, who convinced me that my future might not totally suck. I had been especially intrigued by his tales of fraternity life, he had been a football lineman and a member of a jock house and it sounded a whole lot better than high school. To a sheltered person like me at age 18 the process of rushing, black balls, and pledging cloaked by the word "brotherhood" was irresistibly vile. Apparently even back then I was capable of a little self-knowing whimsy. I was in the grip of Kerouac's Dean Moriarty character and began to view my first year of college as a chance to live in the moment and explore my untapped wild side.
Dean features prominently as a hero. An incredibly flawed hero who tends to abandon those who love him and feel no remorse whatsoever at his poor judgment and horribly timed actions. But a hero nonetheless.
I was Lutheran, serving two years as an acolyte and spending three summers at a Lutheran church summer camp, Lutheran affliated Gettysburg seemed a comfortable choice that would make my mother happy. But beyond that I had no special academic interest. My father was an amateur Civil War historian and many of our family vacation destinations had been Civil War battlefields, so Gettysburg College had been a front - runner as a college choice for as long as I could remember, and during my visit for an Admissions Office interview I took note of the college's very visible fraternity life. Including campus tours by upperclassmen who pointed out their respective houses, with Phi Delta Theta the one that stuck in my mind (more about his later) . One of my uncles had been a member of Phi Kappa Psi at Wittenberg College where my mother had been a member of Gamma Phi Beta sorority (in 1968 both had chapters at Gettysburg).
There was also a childhood memory of a pledge skip week visit by my oldest cousin and several fellow Miami University Delta Upsilon pledges who had fled Oxford Ohio in an old flatbed truck and hidden out in our house in Ashland for a night or two. This exciting visit planted an early seed in my ten year-old mind about the excitement of Greek life. Skip week would be one fantasy that I would make happen at Gettysburg.
So I hit campus and discovered it was full of Eastern preppies, a bit of a culture shock to a midwestern public school graduate - with my last two years in a rather poor high school even by midwestern public school standards. I'm sure the college is more diverse today but at that time only a tiny handful of the student body came from anywhere to the west of town or from south of Maryland. And the male female ratio was over two to one so the social situation was a bit unnatural. There were a lot of beautiful and classy girls but they were being pursued by a lot more good looking guys. A campus of beautiful and well scrubbed people going to their backup school because their test scores were not high enough. Which included me as I had been unable to gain acceptance to The University of Virginia as an out-of-state applicant although in my case the short fall was more GPA than test scores.
There were a number of girls at Gettysburg who were prettier and sexier than any of the girls I would later encounter in my years at Cornell. Although that was probably a perception issue resulting from my time at Gettysburg being a more impressionable period in my life. In my cultural ignorance I elevated these girls to idealized status and attributed to them an unwarranted level of refinement and sophistication. Even so it would be fair to say that on the whole they were more polished than the Ohio high school girls I had known.
Although at first glance Gettysburg College struck me as filled with the prep school sons and daughters of wealthy socially prominent easterners, it was solidly middle class. More often than not those from the larger metro areas lived in baby boomer neighborhoods of 15-1600 square foot post WWII houses. Much the same as the "Miracle on 34th Street" house in Port Washington, New York.
Those from smaller cities and towns lived in neighborhoods of slightly larger 1950's ranch houses like this one which was very similar to my parent's house in Ohio. So there was little basis for my feeling social inferiority or resentment of eastern elites. And there are far worse things than being among people who have good reason to be unpretentious.
The college published a book showing each member of the Freshman Class, about 475 total - roughly twice the size of my high school class, with name and home address (this was 1968) along with a high school graduation photo. It was known as the "Pig Book", a dig at the freshman girls but also applicable to the boys as the 14 fraternities used it for selection purposes during rush. And seriously, unless you were completely antisocial or were intent on practicing absolute sobriety and celibacy, you pledged a fraternity or sorority at Gettysburg in the 1960's. Unlike back in Ohio where 18 year olds could drink 3.2 beer, in Pennsylvania the drinking age was 21 and older fraternity brothers were essential providers.
There were three freshman dorms for men and only one upper class men's dorm, Apple Hall. The rest of the upperclassmen lived in one of 14 fraternity houses and a limited stock of off campus apartments. Even to freshmen it was obvious that three years in Apple Hall would make for a bleak existence. The girls lived in their dorms all four years with each sorority having a chapter room within a dorm.
1968-69 Campus - McCreary Hall is under construction.
The most memorable thing "culturally" for many of the new residents of the three freshman men's dorms was easy access for the first time to Playboy magazine which was sold in the college book store. Each dorm was soon awash with copies and the arrival of each new issue became the most important day of the each month.
The October 1968 issue was the first I ever purchased. This particular issue had a Playboy Club Bunny as the centerfold and thus began a life-long fascination with those creatures and their iconic costume, culminating in gambling visits to the London Playboy Club while stationed at a nearby Air Force base.
I had an extraordinary bit of luck my first week on campus. I attended a meeting at the offices of the Gettysburgian, the weekly student newspaper of Gettysburg College since 1897. I made a good enough impression to be placed on the staff as the freshman member of the three-man Sports Department. Fortune smiled as my first published article was good enough for me to be entrusted with covering varsity football away games, to me the paper's plum assignment. My work didn't have to be too good because the Sports Editor did not want to travel and the sophomore sports reporter was in the marching band and could not be on the field and up in the press box at the same time. The band director let me ride to games in one of the band buses.
Things continued to break my way when I met the college's Sports Information Director, Bob Kenworthy, to get my first press pass. He hired me to work as a spotter in the press box at both home and away games, duties that were complementary to my newspaper assignments, but for which I would be paid. I bused to football games at Kings Point, Lafayette, Albright, Lehigh, Bucknell, & Towson.
Over the course of my year at Gettysburg this also led to my working as a scorekeeper at away baseball games. As the announcer at home basketball games and wrestling matches. And even occasional spots on the college radio station. I rode on the bus with the freshman football and basketball teams and with the varsity baseball team.
The varsity baseball coach was pretty indifferent to what was going on and many players smuggled beer on the bus for the trips home. Drinking and then peeing into the empty beer cans and draining them out the bus window as we rolled along the highway in the dark. Years later when the movie "Slapshot" was released I would think back on these trips. But given my sheltered "boy among men" POV at the time, "Almost Famous" seems a more accurate parallel. My year at Gettysburg has a lot of parallels to that movie.
My own freshman baseball aspirations died when I landed in the school infirmary with mono but I think we had only four games on our schedule so it was no great loss.
Finding A Fraternity
(or maybe not)
It was evident to everyone that he was labouring under some tremendous emotion, and Campion, who caught a glimpse of his eyes as he looked up, felt that sudden thrill of mingled pity and nausea which a healthy mind must always feel before such a revelation.
The actual pledging of a fraternity at Gettysburg was something freshmen did in their spring semester. But there were open houses during the fall semester in which freshmen could visit each house. I think these occurred on Friday nights, about four fraternities each week. And these were as much about each fraternity assessing you as it was about you assessing them. I visited 13 of the 14 houses, deciding to pass on the one that was obviously struggling with membership. I tried hard to get noticed by Phi Delta Theta but did not make any strong connection. Several decades later I would work for someone from the Gettysburg chapter but that would be of no help during this rush. Throughout the fall I was busy determining the coolness factor of the guys walking around campus wearing the various Greek letter jackets.
The amount of energy that I brought to this activity is startling in retrospect and my evaluations were remarkably accurate given that the whole concept was a new one for me. It did not take long for me to conclude which houses were realistic possibilities. And which would be a good match for someone wanting to introduce some joie de vivre to their personality. Both of the sports guys on the newspaper were in Sigma Chi so I was confident of their interest and figured that was where I would end up pledging.
This highly stratified world was sick, sad, and extremely cruel. And my embracing it was like a boxer who sees a left hook coming and leans into it; be it for the experience, out of boredom, or perhaps as some weird type of atonement.
Note to self: Think of your own silliness during this time should you be tempted to criticize
the shallowness and plasticity of "Bama Rush".
In retrospect I think that I would have made a better impression on these rounds of house visits if I was with a girl instead of with a group of guys from my dorm. There was a sophomore girl with whom I played pinball and pool. Her name was Peggy, she was a fellow mid-westerner, the best pool player on campus, and a member of the best sorority although I did not know that at the time. Being a year older she seemed completely out of my league, not to mention that I was in awe of her. But I suspect she would have been perversely entertained going to these open houses with me. It would be fun to be able to explore that in an alternate reality and see how much difference it would have made.
About this time it was becoming likely that I would be transferring to a larger school, one that offered a major in geology, a minor in journalism, and a four year ROTC program. The fall semester had at least started me thinking about what I would do after college, becoming cognizant of the draft, and adding a fifth year to my degree plans. But I had not firmly decided to transfer and I decided to go through Gettysburg's rush process. I wanted to experience it (it was after all the main reason I had elected not to defer college) and I felt that if things went well it might factor into my transfer decision, perhaps tipping the scales toward staying at Gettysburg.
January came at last and the night when the fraternities sent their members to the freshman dorms to begin serious rushing activities. If a fraternity was interested in you they would knock on your door and present you with a formal written invitation to participate in the next step. This was the first stage in the weeding out process and did not take more than a hour in total. I got four invitations, one of which I turned down on the spot wanting to hold open a spot for Sigma Chi. But Sigma Chi never came around although I held out hope until the end. This rejection took me completely by surprise.
There was some consolation in that four of the houses were interested but I could not get past the fact that Sigma Chi had rejected me. I would never confront the two guys there who I had thought were my friends and they never approached me with an explanation.
I probably could have ranked the remaining houses but in my eyes there was little difference. They were pretty much fungible although they could be differentiated by secondary characteristics in their memberships, with some a better fit for me than others.
I found the rush process extremely entertaining although after the Sigma Chi debacle I was not open to really connecting. One house took me to a major rock concert in Baltimore where I got my first real exposure to full-on freaks, feeling completely out of it because as a rush function we were all wearing sports coats and ties. But it was still fun, and definitely the highlight of the whole rush process for me.
Three houses eventually extended bids for me to pledge but by that point the whole rush process had me thinking like Groucho Marx . Several days went by until finally two friends physically dragged me to their house to pledge. Although I had a brief sense of relief, the next day I retracted my pledge and went with Sigma Nu, excusing myself from the first one because it did not have enough chapters nationally to make much sense if I decided to transfer. While I could fit in at Sigma Nu with "moderate" effort they really were not what I was seeking. The membership included a lot of straight arrow Young Republicans and excelled at things like the "Spring Sing". These were not the guys I would be sitting with later that spring on the varsity baseball team bus.
On the other hand the Sigma Nu pledging process was considerably less abusive than what my friends at the other houses were relating to me. And not being especially impressed with my pledge class allowed me to relax and assert some leadership.
When I pledged I was up front that I might transfer. At first I was serious about getting initiated and should I transfer joining the Sigma Nu chapter at my new school. This was probably a bad idea but at the time seemed a reasonable course of action or at least reasonable enough to use as an excuse for me to participate in the pledging process. But what had seemed like a good idea became less appealing a few weeks into pledging as I contemplated the implications. Its main appeal was that it was a way to do an end run around the selection system but that idea presented integrity issues should it become my sole motivation for getting initiated. Better to just start over and go through the rush process at the next school.
I began noticing that I was increasingly reluctant to be seen with my pledge class, to wear the pledge pin, or to disclose my membership to people outside the fraternity. I had by that point concluded that I would be transferring or more accurately I stopped kidding myself that I might be staying.
So having nothing to lose I stopped taking it serious, abandoned even my minimal efforts to endear myself, got playful, and indulged my high school fraternity fantasies until they threw me out - deservedly so as it was extremely bad form on my part (and immature). Although cutting loose, going a little crazy, and transforming my repressed identity was pretty much the whole point of that year. I did take considerable pride in having organized and led the successful pledge skip out where we kidnapped a brother and hid out in a cabin in the woods miles from campus, inspired by my cousin years earlier.
And I was rather taken with the notion that I (of all people) had behaved badly enough to have actually gotten thrown out of a college fraternity.
There were "some" great guys in the brotherhood with whom I enjoyed hanging out. And the time and expense was worth it just to get some association with upperclassmen as freshman were otherwise pretty much isolated on campus. My fellow pledges however, were largely a desultory lot. I came back for a visit the following year and aside from Terry Weir - who had de-pledged days after my exit and Mark Dewald - who I knew before pledging, I had zero interaction with any of my "almost" brothers and don't even recall their names.
I joined a fairly wild Phi Delta Theta chapter in my sophomore year at least in part because of how I had perceived them at Gettysburg. I never lived in their house but during my final year I boarded at the Lambda Chi Alpha house behind the law school and backing up to Cascadilla Gorge (see below), finally getting to experience living in a fraternity house. This even included being on their meal plan. Although I was the only nonmember in the house I really enjoyed that year and my dog made it into their yearbook group photo - posed with all the members on that little piece of land (see below) jutting out into the gorge.
I was never into the whole thing enough to purchase a fraternity pin but I did have the Phi Delta Theta letters placed on my Cornell class ring.
I guess the other footnote is that I spent the summer of 1969 in Gettysburg, taking a summer school class, driving a forklift on the swing shift in an applesauce warehouse, painting Wolfe's Restaurant a/k/a "The Pub" with a couple TKE's from the baseball team with whom I shared a house on Carlisle Street, and at the end working as the night clerk for Larson's Motel. Unfortunately I did not make it to Woodstock although it crossed my mind at the time that I should go.
While Gettysburg College did not actually chew me up and spit me out several incidents did a lifelong job on my capacity to trust people. And it reinforced my belief that the most rational response to the human condition was to view life as a trick bag and behave accordingly. It is easy in moments of negativity to forget that when I arrived on campus I was guileless and incredibly immature, with occasional moments of clarity that could unexpectedly put me ahead of the curve. Gettysburg was not at all a throwaway year as I made considerable progress toward growing up, a coming of age in all the typical good & bad contexts. I have many good memories of my year in Gettysburg and fortunately I am able to compartmentalize these and over the years have enjoyed nostalgic visits to the campus and the town, including eight recent summers attending their Civil War Institute.
There is a 1944 movie called "Between Two Worlds" about an ocean voyage on a strange passenger liner. In this film John Garfield plays a jaded reporter whose career has been destroyed by powerful enemies he has made through his aggressive investigations and arrogance. He has become a self-destructive and disillusioned shell who takes pleasure in making his fellow passengers uncomfortable. He comes before a character called "The Examiner" (played by Sidney Greenstreet - who else) whose job it is to dispatch him to the appropriate afterlife. Garfield's character expects the worst as he has grown during the voyage - accepting culpability for his actions. But it turns out that he is not judged that harshly, the message being that God has designated certain people to play designated roles during their lives. Arguing against free will and in favor of destiny. The purpose of their reckless behavior being to test other humans.
Perhaps that is why God placed me at Gettysburg College for the eighteenth year of my life, to learn the lesson that taking responsibility and then forgiving ourselves leaves a new chance at acceptance and the promise of calm. And what a nice thought that is as it puts an order to the universe.
In search for a deeper meaning to this year I can look at the liberties people have took with me, things that I would never have been presumptuous enough to have inflicted on someone else. While I have many things I am thankful for and I recognize my culpability for other things, making sense of my life is far easier if I accept this as part of a role that I am designated to play. I'm not claiming that God has spoken to me about such a role unless this realization itself is the voice of God.
I am only just beginning to work this out but a belief in one's role as an instrument of God has its attractions, just ask a Quaker. It can increase your feelings of importance while at the same time forcing you to confront your insignificance - both are good for your mental health. And not having free will tends to lessen guilt for all sorts of things from common sloth to aggressive self - destruction. Of course being such an instrument would almost guarantee a tragic life, a high price to pay that one might not have chosen had they a choice. Think "Cool Hand Luke".
.... what we are (which we call personality) and what we do (which we call choice) are merely the life of the universe living itself through us. (Anyone able to think calmly, deeply, and undefensively about free will will readily recognize this.)
You see, we are all just waiting for someone to notice—notice our pain, notice our scars, notice our fear, notice our joy, notice our triumphs, notice our courage.
And the one who notices is a rare and beautiful gift.
My first dorm at Cornell was Sage Hall - the Gothic monster on the left - now the business school. I had a fourth floor room on the front side with a great view of Lake Cayuga. Little did I imagine that 50 years later that window would be displayed on the my personal computer.
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