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"...NESTLED IN THE TALL GREEN SHADOWS, OF THE ADIRONDACK HILLS..."


There was no doubt about it!  The winters in Canton were brutal.  One cold day (-40 degrees F), I was trudging through the snow to class and saw a friend going in the opposite direction.  I said "Hi!" and smiled, finding it very difficult to unfreeze the smile on my face.  And so, the splendid Autumn with its reds, golds, and yellows and the resurgent Spring with the smell of grass and the first daffodils were always a welcome time for the students.  We made the best of winters we could with parties, dates, ice hockey games, and the trickle of entertainers that would brave the elements of the North Country.

"Where were you when..."

That Fall of sophomore year was particularly memorable, as though it was yesterday.  It was a Friday afternoon on a beautiful November day and I was in Hepburn Hall finishing up my organic chemistry lab experiment and being one of the last to leave the laboratory.  By now I was living in a fraternity house which had its own challenges among which were the noise on weekends, and sleeping in what was known as a "cold dorm", a ventilated, unheated space reserved for sleeping in the attic of our old wood frame house on Park Street.  I got back to the house and most of the brothers were already beginning the weekend festivities.  I turned on the little black and white TV down in the living room hoping to "veg out" after a long week as a challenged chemistry major.  I remember the news popped up on the screen and there was old, faithful Walter Cronkite talking about how some President had been shot, my first thought being some South American dictator had been assaulted as was par for the times.  It was in the middle of a regular broadcast, oddly enough, of the soap opera "As The World Turns".  But Walter looked far more serious and saddened than I had ever seen him as I continued to keep my eyes transfixed to the screen.  I suddenly realized that is was OUR President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy who had been shot.  I ran through the house banging on doors like a modern day Paul Revere alerting all in the house that they had better race downstairs as fast as they could.  By the time I returned to the TV, there was a silent crowd in the room  when we saw Cronkite shed a public tear for the first time as he announced what we all feared:  JFK was dead.  We sat there in silence, shocked, many of us with tears in our eyes, not knowing what was to come next.

Our beloved young President was gone, his grieving widow wearing the blood-stained dress in Dallas as Lyndon Johnson was sworn in on Air Force One, standing next to the coffin.

 The rest of the weekend was one of relative silence as we were all glued to the televisions around campus, watching the cortege march down Pennsylvania Avenue to Arlington, accompanied by the muffled drums and the riderless horse, with boots facing backwards astride the beautiful steed.  And our collective hearts broke as we watched the young "John John" salute his father's coffin.  The days of Camelot were over.

We followed the story for days, learning of the capture of Lee Harvey Oswald in a movie theater, after he killed a Dallas policeman as well.  It was only two days later on Nov. 24th that we saw Oswald being escorted out of the police station only to see Jack Ruby step forward and kill him live on television.  Screenwriters could never had made this stuff up.  Conspiracy theories were floated from every corner and, even today, persist after the Warren Commission gave an apparent definitive explanation that Oswald acted alone.

Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald...live on TV!

Later that year...

All was not as tragic the rest of that memorable year of 1963-64.  There were very pleasurable experiences such as going down to our University Center, a relatively small venue, on a cold Tuesday evening for $1.50 admission, to hear a "folksinger", one Bob Dylan.  I think I was in the second row listening to a voice unlike I had ever heard, gravely and yet melodic.  He had a nice rapport with the small audience.  Mind you, he had just made his debut the previous Spring at New York's Town Hall and was relatively unknown.  Billboard had hailed him as "the stuff of which legends are made."  He made a few perfunctory jokes to warm us up, such as telling us he wasn't there to "sell soap"...in fact, he barely ever used the stuff!  But he did hit a very warm chord with us when he said, "since I'm in the North Country, it's very fitting that I sing this song" as he began the beautiful ballad, "Girl from the North Country"... an unforgettable evening with, indeed, a singer who was to become a legend.

Never a hotbed of politics, we'd often have political speakers come to campus and every now and then, I'd go to stay abreast of what was happening beyond the Adirondack hills.  One particular speaker touched a chord with me, Senator Albert Gore, the Democrat from Tennessee who spoke on issues and choices in the Civil Rights Fight.  He was the father of our almost-President, Al Gore, and spoke with conviction and passion about how we all needed to become involved in the struggle for equality for all Americans.

Sen. Albert Gore, Sr.

Later that season, I traveled to the midwest with the Laurentian Singers on our annual Spring Tour, singing mostly at high schools and prep schools, visiting Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois.  It was a varied and unusual repertoire including one of my favorite choral pieces, Jean Berger's "Brazilian Psalm" which I commend to you.  Here's a little sample from one of our country's great college choirs:

Boston, early 1964

As I found I had become victim to cabin fever due to that unusually long winter, I decided to hitchhike to Boston with two friends for a little fun and an escape from being snowbound.  Being young and much more flexible than in my later years, I had no plans of where to sleep or who to visit.
The first night we crashed at a classmate, Ellen Dutoit's house in Lexington before going on to Boston proper.  I visited my cousin, Darryl, at MIT and stayed there one night amongst bespectacled guys with slide rules in their pockets, followed by a night at Quincy House at Harvard the following night.  At Quincy House, there was a suite of rooms for four guys and in the middle of the rooms was a living room with a grand piano, a far cry from my frat house with the cold dorm!  The third night I bedded down in the lounge of the girl's dorm at Boston University.  It paid off having friends at all the Boston colleges.

Quincy House, Harvard

 My oldest friend, Lou Lobes, had a sister, Rosemary, at the Newton College of the Sacred Heart who invited me over to dinner.  Arriving in Newton, I walked up to the big wooden door of her college and knocked, upon which a pleasant nun answered the door and greeted me in.  As she rang for Rosemary, she ushered me into the main dining room where there were around 400 college girls and 40 nuns, me being the only male invited for dinner!  My biggest fear was about what I was going to converse about over dinner.  My dad always warned me that, when I was in polite company, I was never to discuss sex, politics, or religion.  The thing I was most passionate about at that time was politics as there was a Presidential race going on over who was to succeed the interim President Johnson...Johnson himself or Barry Goldwater, and arch conservative whose views and positions drove me up a tree.

Newton College of the Sacred Heart...now the campus of Boston College School of Law

Rosemary came down and introduced me to her roommate, Libby Miller, who I took an instant liking to.  She was outgoing and attractive.  We sat at a table with eight other young women from their hall and, once dinner was underway, I couldn't refrain from discussing the present political situation in our country.  They pretty much let me have the floor as I expounded about Goldwater's insanity and how I would move to Canada should he win as he would certainly drop the H bomb!  I was really holding court when dessert was served and Libby came over to me and said, "I'm sorry but I have an exam tomorrow and must go up to study but it's been a pleasure meeting you and I hope to see you again one day, Sandy".  Wow, I must have really made an impression.  After she left, the table became very quiet and then collectively broke out in laughter.  "What's so funny?", I asked wondering what had just happened.  Rosemary leaned over and whispered, "It's Libby".  "What about Libby?", I responded.  "Well, her dad is running for Vice President of the United States with Barry Goldwater!!!"   The joke was very definitely on me, realizing my dad was always right!  I guess I joined in on the laughter as well.  Later that week, once back in Canton, I was watching the news and saw Goldwater with his running mate, William Miller, and, standing next to Mrs. Miller was my old friend, Libby!

Vice-Presidential candidate William Miller and family.  That's Libby, my dinner partner on the far right!