Class Note 1972
Issue
Jan - Feb 2019
This column will reach you sometime in the holiday season. That got me thinking about what we all may have been doing in 1968 during our first holiday break. I asked a random selection of our classmates to tell me about their first holiday. Their stories reveal something about the world we lived in 50 years ago.
Chris Brewster remembers: “I took the bus from White River Junction to that miserable Greyhound station in Boston, which bordered on the ‘Combat Zone.’ The name alone was sufficiently scary to keep me inside the station, where the greatest danger was the sandwiches in the vending machine. I took a shuttle to Logan and, after waiting several hours, I took a flight to Chicago. Twelve hours later, with no sleep, I got on the plane to Indianapolis, Indiana, and flew home. The whole trip took me close to 24 hours. When my parents later booked me a direct flight back to Boston I didn’t object.”
John Collier relates the following: “My parents had moved to London just after high school graduation, so my freshman break was a trip through JFK to Heathrow airport and into the city. It was a gray, rainy December and my focus became the purchase of a reel-to-reel tape recorder so my parents could record all of the well-cared-for LPs that they could borrow from the library. After visiting the local pubs, I came home an enthusiast for Worthington E, a brew that was a bit more intriguing than the Budweiser that was so ubiquitous in Richardson Hall.”
Chip Carstensen says, “I definitely remember where I spent Thanksgiving. My dad explained that unless I could pay my own way home, I would need to choose between Christmas and Thanksgiving for his one contribution. Since he already paid for all my tuition, books, room and board I saw his point. I spent a very lonely Thanksgiving weekend in Hanover. I never forgot it and was never so broke again.”
Jim Borchert offered this: “My December break was a trip home to Minnesota to see family and friends and play a little hockey, but it turned out to include an event that changed my life. I ran into a good friend who was a Ranger in Vietnam. I was in Army ROTC, and I asked him what Vietnam was really like. He told me that it was ‘an awful bunch of crap.’ He said, ‘I went over there to help keep the world safe from communism, but we’re not doing that. They lied to us. We’re burning farms and villages and killing everybody; it’s total BS.’ That was the last time I saw him because he came home in a box four to five months later. My conversation with him led me to question what I thought I knew. Leaving ROTC then, and withdrawing from the College later, was the start of going down ‘the road not taken’ by many.”
Powerful stuff! Let me hear from you. In the meantime, stay well.
—David Hetzel, 5 Chestnut St., Windham, NH 03087; dghetzel@gmail.com
Chris Brewster remembers: “I took the bus from White River Junction to that miserable Greyhound station in Boston, which bordered on the ‘Combat Zone.’ The name alone was sufficiently scary to keep me inside the station, where the greatest danger was the sandwiches in the vending machine. I took a shuttle to Logan and, after waiting several hours, I took a flight to Chicago. Twelve hours later, with no sleep, I got on the plane to Indianapolis, Indiana, and flew home. The whole trip took me close to 24 hours. When my parents later booked me a direct flight back to Boston I didn’t object.”
John Collier relates the following: “My parents had moved to London just after high school graduation, so my freshman break was a trip through JFK to Heathrow airport and into the city. It was a gray, rainy December and my focus became the purchase of a reel-to-reel tape recorder so my parents could record all of the well-cared-for LPs that they could borrow from the library. After visiting the local pubs, I came home an enthusiast for Worthington E, a brew that was a bit more intriguing than the Budweiser that was so ubiquitous in Richardson Hall.”
Chip Carstensen says, “I definitely remember where I spent Thanksgiving. My dad explained that unless I could pay my own way home, I would need to choose between Christmas and Thanksgiving for his one contribution. Since he already paid for all my tuition, books, room and board I saw his point. I spent a very lonely Thanksgiving weekend in Hanover. I never forgot it and was never so broke again.”
Jim Borchert offered this: “My December break was a trip home to Minnesota to see family and friends and play a little hockey, but it turned out to include an event that changed my life. I ran into a good friend who was a Ranger in Vietnam. I was in Army ROTC, and I asked him what Vietnam was really like. He told me that it was ‘an awful bunch of crap.’ He said, ‘I went over there to help keep the world safe from communism, but we’re not doing that. They lied to us. We’re burning farms and villages and killing everybody; it’s total BS.’ That was the last time I saw him because he came home in a box four to five months later. My conversation with him led me to question what I thought I knew. Leaving ROTC then, and withdrawing from the College later, was the start of going down ‘the road not taken’ by many.”
Powerful stuff! Let me hear from you. In the meantime, stay well.
—David Hetzel, 5 Chestnut St., Windham, NH 03087; dghetzel@gmail.com