1967-1969 Part 3B: The Guys of Allen Rumsey House

The guys whom I remember. Continue reading

From my sophomore year through my senior year I knew the name of every resident of Allen Rumsey House. In the lounge was a large glass-encased photo board with names and room numbers. I studied it often, and in those days I had a quick memory.

AR had about one hundred residents each year, and the annual turnover was at least 30 percent. So, more than three hundred guys lived there while I did. Fifty years later I have forgotten the names of a substantial portion of them. I blame the guys. If they had all become major league ballplayers, or if they had just done more outrageous things, I would probably remember more of them.

I have done fairly thorough Internet searches on all of the following guys, but I did not find anything substantive about many of them.

Staff: The Resident Director (RD) lived in a two-room suite on the first floor near the western door. There was a Resident Advisor (RA) on every floor. The other staff member lived in a two-room suite on the first floor near the eastern door. I am not sure whether this person was considered the Assistant Resident Director or the RA for the first floor.

Andy Something was the RD for my freshman year and, I think, for my sophomore year. My only interaction with him was at the bridge table in his suite. He was a graduate student in “Communication Science”, which was the name of U-M’s academic department that taught about computers.

Gritty

Jim Krogsrud, better known as “Gritty”, was the RA of the third floor during my freshman year. He also had a staff position during my sophomore year, but I am not sure which one. I think that he was RD for my last two years. He studied some kind of engineering. He was a very good athlete, and he competed for AR in a few sports. I don’t know where he got the nickname. He had it before I arrived.

In 2020 Tom Caughey wrote me that Gritty was a lawyer. In fact I learned that he was now retired from a long career as a public defender. He now lives in Freeland, MI, and works for the Saginaw-Tittabawassee Rivers Contamination Community Advisory Group.

John Dalby was the RA for the fourth floor for two or three years. During my senior year he lived in the first-floor suite on the east side. I think that he was also an engineer. He was the captain of the undefeated A volleyball team. He scouted for new team members from all the new arrivals every year and initiated practices as soon as he had recruited enough guys.

For at least two years Ken Nelson was probably my best friend at AR. He was one year older ahead of me. I think that he was president of the House Council either my freshman or sophomore year. During the summer before my junior year I was very surprised to receive an invitation to his wedding in Niles, MI. He had never mentioned an HTH (hometown honey). I did not attend the nuptials, but I sent a gift.

Blow-Up

In my junior year Ken lived in the eastern first-floor staff suite with his obviously pregnant wife. It was a deplorable situation. She was the only female in the dorm (maybe in all of West Quad!). She wasn’t a student. Ken still hung around with the rest of us pretty regularly, but she almost never came out of their suite. I don’t remember what they did for food. Maybe the suite had a kitchen.

After I saw the movie Blow-Up, I casually remarked in the lounge that, in my opinion, it was one of the best movies ever. Ken evidently respected my judgment and took his wife to see it. They both hated it.

I guess that it was not a good date flick.

Eventually Ken’s wife had a miscarriage. Ken graduated at the end of my junior year. I don’t remember seeing him at all when I was a senior. I was not the kind of friend who would have reached out to him.

CharlieD

Roommates: Charlie Delos was my roommate for the second half of freshman year and the entire sophomore year. In freshman year we were in room 315. The next year we moved to the center and across the hall. I think that our room number was 308.

Desi

We got along quite well until the day that I accidentally locked him out of the room when he was taking a shower. Charlie was quite angry, but he eventually got over it. I think that he had pretty much forgiven my thoughtlessness when I did it again, this time on purpose.

“Lucy, let me ‘splain.”

The two guys who lived across the hall from us were named Ryland Truax and Tom Cobb. They seemed to study all day and all night. When I left they were both sitting at their desks, and their door was open. As I departed I gave my key to Ryland. I told them to let Charlie get upset for a minute or two and then let him in. They agreed. They dutifully followed the first half of my instruction, but they ignored the part about opening the door for him.

CJ_F

The final straw for Charlie was when I scratched his Country Joe and the Fish album while he was home for a weekend. I apologized and bought him a new one, but he had had enough of me. He moved into an apartment for junior year. I could certainly understand why.

A biographical web page devoted to Charlie is available here.

Coxswain

My roommate for the last two years was a very good-natured guy from Pittsburgh named John Cruickshank. He was small enough to serve as coxswain (the guy who yells the stroke to the other guys but doesn’t actually row) on the crew team (or club or something).

He was a year younger than I was. In his freshman year he roomed with Ken Nelson, during which time he was awarded the name of Cramdrink or Crammy for short. This appellation was bestowed upon him because he was the recipient of far more shower parties (details below) than anyone else in the house. Crammy was addicted to puns, not clever or witty puns, just anything that sounded like what someone else said. He was always warned, but he just could not help himself from committing these execrable offenses. He never complained about the punishment. How could he? This was justice.

For some reason Crammy put up with me. I can’t remember any arguments or frustrating moments at all. We lived in the best non-staff room in AR, 109. It was a suite on the first floor in the corner bordering the passage into the courtyard on the south side. The beds and desks were in separate rooms.

I lost touch with Crammy when I went into the army. At some point in the eighties or nineties I received a phone call out of the blue from a Rumsey resident named, I think, Bob Ortman. He told me that Crammy had been shot and killed in a taxi in Pittsburgh. That is all that I know. I certainly hope that that information was wrong.

Officers: I am embarrassed to report that I remember few of the people with whom I worked. Part of this is due to the fact that the vice-president of the House Council had only one responsibility, to attend the meetings of the Interhouse Council (IHC), an organization hardly ever did anything noteworthy. The secretary took the minutes of the AR councils meetings. I did not need to work much with any of them. I interacted a lot with three guys.

KeithH

Keith Hartwell, who was one year younger than I was, served as treasurer during my junior year. He lived on the second floor with Ernie Brown. He always had a good handle on how much money we had and how much we still needed to spend. As a result we were able to give a refund to all of the residents at the end of the spring 1969 semester.

I remember the first sentence of my “interview” of Keith Hartwell in the Rumsey Roomers: “Svelte is the word for Keith Hartwell.” I also remember that Keith was a very smooth dancer. I found his Facebook page on the web.

Roger Warren was probably the best social chairman that AR ever had. How he managed to get Stockwell House to serve as sister house for the smallest male dorm on campus I will never understand. Roger was enthusiastic about everything the house did. He also played on the house’s football teams.

Mike Murphy was undoubtedly the best athletic chairman who ever lived in AR. I think that he was one year younger than I was, but He might have been two years younger. We could not have won the overall IM title in 1970 if he had not been our athletic chairman. Not only was he great at inspiring or, if necessary, shaming guys into participating in sports in which they did not excel. He also was such a good athlete that his direct role was important in many events. For example, the scores that he and Bob Carr together earned in the track meets bested the totals produced by most houses.

TD

Athletes: If any athletes resided in AR in my freshman year, I do not remember them. In my junior year two very famous football players, Thom Darden and Bill Taylor lived on the second floor. At AR they were called TD (or Thom) and BT (or Bill). I never heard anyone other that Bob Ufer call the latter Billy. Thom enjoyed an all-pro career as a defensive back with the Cleveland Browns. Bill had a lot of difficulties after he left U-M, but he evidently turned his life around.

BT

I had one significant interaction with them. The football players were apparently given tickets for the home games. Before one of those games TD and BT asked me if anyone was looking for tickets. I happened to know someone who was. I found him and brought him to their room.

Thom’s Wikipedia page is here. BT’s page is here.

At least three other football players stayed in AR that year. Dave Zuccarelli, a high-school all-america running back from Chicago, roomed with quarterback Kevin Casey on the first floor across from the lounge. I did not know Kevin well, but Dave hung around the lounge quite a bit when football season was over, and he played cards there quite a few times.

I was shocked to discover that Dave had died in 2000 at the age of 50. You can read about his career in and out of football here.

The fifth footballer was Bruce Elliott, the son of the legendary U-M quarterback Pete Elliott and nephew of U-M’s football coach Bump Elliott.

U-M football coach Bump Elliott and his nephew Bruce.
U-M football coach Bump Elliott and his nephew Bruce.

Bruce and Thom both played intramural basketball for AR. Thom played on the A team, and he was easily the best player in all of intramurals. We had some other good players, too. I am pretty sure that we won the championship that year.

Bruce was the best player on our B basketball team. We might have won at that level, too. I am not certain.

Jim_Burton

Jim Burton, the first pitcher to throw a no-hitter for U-M’s baseball team, also resided in AR for several years. I knew him quite well. He was one year younger than I was. He played on quite a few of the house’s athletic teams. He quarterbacked one of the house’s football teams. I actually was on the receiving end of several touchdown passes from him. I remember that he took an anatomy (or some such) course in which they dealt with cadavers. He complained that the obese ones were really gross to work with.

Jim’s quite detailed biography, which includes his death in 2013, can be read here.

In my senior year some freshman swimmers lived in AR. One of them was tall and sleek. The other guy had arms that hung down nearly to his knees. I don’t remember the name of either fellow.

A couple of hockey players from Canada also lived in AR my senior year. They kept to themselves and played a lot of darts and pinochle. My freshman year a hockey player who lived in one of the other houses in WQ caused a minor sensation in the cafeteria. He was a defenseman who was really thickly built. When he ate he bent his face down towards his plate and shoveled the food into his mouth at an incredible rate.

I remember one basketball player from Milwaukee who lived in AR. I don’t remember his name, but he spent a fair amount of time in the lounge. Sometimes he brought a basketball and worked on dribbling.

Others whom I remember by name: Frank Arundel Bell of Bethesda, MD, was two years behind me. As a freshman he approached me to ask for advice on an unusual conundrum that he faced. He was in Navy ROTC. They made him keep his shoes shined. He needed a cotton rag for that purpose. He asked whether I thought it was a “good idea” to cut a piece from the middle of one of the university’s sheets before turning it in.

I paused a moment, feeling some pride that he respected my perspicacity enough to elicit my opinion on the matter, and then replied in the negative. I suggested that he buy a 100 percent cotton tee shirt instead. I am not sure whether he took my advice, but he politely thanked me.

Frank never attended the commissioning ceremony.
Frank never attended the commissioning ceremony.

Frank was not a fashionista. He wore his Navy uniform when it was required. Otherwise, he always wore black trousers and a light blue or light green short-sleeve shirt. For him it was seldom cold enough for a coat.

Frank’s taste in food was equally simple. He would eat bread, peanut butter, mustard, hamburgers, and pickles. Occasionally, but not often, he would try something else, but he could easily go for a week without deviating from his five basic food groups.

Frank drank pickle juice. I often witnessed him drink a jar of pickle juice without stopping. Later he found out that he could earn money by betting strangers that he could drink the jar in five minutes. He could easily manage it.

He invented an imaginative approach to the sport of water ballooning. I documented it here.

Frank learned to play bridge in the AR lounge. He became quite a good card player. He is now a Sapphire Life Master in the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL). He currently lives in San Antonio. He contacted me when, as a bridge player in New England, he had received promotional materials about an upcoming bridge tournament that I had sent via email.

300 meld!
300 meld!

The Navy had paid Frank’s tuition for his freshman and sophomore years. After two years he was expected to commit to serve as an naval officer when he graduated. Frank declined. He had to sit and listen to various officers scream at him for being coward, a cheat, and a traitor to his country. Nevertheless, he persisted in his refusal. I heard a rumor that he paid a good part of his tuition in his last four semesters by playing pinochle for money with Canadian hockey players.

UV

Ernie Brown roomed with Keith Hartwell. He told me that the best thing about life was dreaming. That is why he loved to sleep. One day long after I graduated I got a phone call in Kansas City from him. He was going to be in town for some kind of event at Unity Village. I don’t remember why, but I was unable to meet up with him, and I then lost touch.

Incidentally, Ernie Brown was the first black guy that I ever made friends with. This occurred at the same time that my debate partner was Alexa Canady just after the explosive summer of 1968.

I did not know Bob Carr too well. He did not look like a great athlete, but he was very fast, and he was the first person whom I ever saw do a back flip.

Tom Caughey was one year younger than I was. He had a 4.0 grade point average in high school. His parents were very distraught when he got a B in freshman year. He roomed with Tom Rigles for—I think—three years. He liked to wear overalls. His mother tried to buy him a pair, but the salesman at the men’s store would not sell them to her because “that was not what the kids were wearing.”

He did not look like a Tom. I had a key to the picture board with names and faces of all of the residents. I replaced his name with a better one, Fred Moron (accent on the second syllable). i don’t know why; it just seemed appropriate.

He surprised me once by telling me that he had a slight crush on Celia Phelan, the president of Stockwell House.

Dr. Caughey’s degree was in Chemistry. He got his doctorate at Wisconsin. I am not surprised; he was smart, and he studied a lot. In 2020 he is VP of Product Development at Inrad Optics in NJ.

GSS

Tom Cobb roomed with Ryland Truax right next to Caughey and Rigles. Tom was into studying and the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. The only encounter that I remember with either of them was the second time that I locked Charlie Delos out of our room. The circumstances are detailed above.

Mets

Bruce Edwards came from Long Island. He was an important player on the B volleyball team that I captained. I remember him mostly as a big fan of the Mets, whom he called the “Amazin’s”. The Mets upset the Orioles in five games in 1969.

Ken Gluski ran against me for president of the House Council in the spring of 1968. I remember what he looked like, but I cannot recall anything else worth mentioning.

Riegle in the sixties.
Riegle in the sixties.

Thom Heinrich was a freshman from Flint when I was a senior. He loved politics, and he held strong conservative views. He had worked for Don Riegle’s congressional campaigns in 1966 and 1968, and he considered Riegle a wonderful man. He must have been crushed when Riegle switched parties a few years later.

For some reason Thom really got on my nerves. I think that he was attracted to power, and, since I was the president of AR, he always seemed to want to be around me. It got so annoying that I would occasionally climb out of my window to go to lunch rather than pass by the lounge where he was waiting for me. I called him “The Grippe”.

Larry Hull was, I think, three years younger than I am. Since most guys called him Larry Polack, I was not too surprised when, as we were walking south toward the IM Building, that his family name was not originally Hull. It was something that sounded like shuh HULL ski. The first four or five letters were consonants. I don’t remember much else except that he was a very friendly guy.

Type 3 CRS consists of levitra free sample an abrupt worsening of renal function which is caused when various chronic kidney diseases develop into the end stage. All these acquire able accoutrement on the beastly adjustment of every woman, abating the amore that may appear with menopause, adequate the all-embracing beastly action as able as artlessly acclimation the estrogen as able-bodied as the backdrop of the changeable arrangement of a lady. tadalafil tablets 20mg Vodafone has tonysplate.com cheap sildenafil claimed that Brolly would charge a battery of a smart device within underneath three hours by means of plugging into a USB port in the handle. Uncircumcised men harbor harmful bacteria over their penis foreskin which increases the risk of getting infections like HIV/AIDS. levitra price John LaPrelle was called Raz by everyone. He got this moniker from his penchant for razzle-dazzle plays in our pickup football games. He came to U-M in 1966, as I did, and he lived at AR for all four years. I think that he was an English major; nobody talked about classes. He certainly was not an engineer. I knew him as well as anybody did. He was, to put it mildly, a most unusual fellow.

Raz spent a lot of time in the lounge. He was a big guy, and his fashion taste ran to grunge. He loved to philosophize, and he was equally knowledgeable on all topics. This did not bother me, but it drove many guys crazy. I am not sure whether he played bridge with us or not. He certainly was not one of the best players. When we went to Blimpies he always ordered a triple cheese on a regular (not onion) role.

He attended high school in Chapel Hill, NC, and he knew James Taylor. I should say that he knew of James Taylor before anyone else in the house had heard of him. Wikipedia says that Sweet Baby James only spent one semester at Chapel Hill High, but he was born in 1948, which would put him in the right class. Raz also knew about Jerry Jeff Walker before anyone else did.

Checkmate

One day Raz got out the chess set that resided in the lounge. He challenged anyone to play him. We were playing cards; there were no takers. I was less interested than anyone. I had played a lot of chess when I was in high school, and I had to quit because it gave me insomnia. I had no interest in starting again.

Day after day Raz would talk about how good he was at chess. Finally, I got sick of it. I told him to get the set. We played one game. He was awful; the game only lasted about ten or fifteen minutes. He never brought it up again.

Raz attended most of the House Council meetings, but he never sought any office. He had rather strong opinions about many topics, and, when I was president I had to tell him to shut up a few times. He usually did.

Raz got me in trouble with my parents. My dad had called me at the dorm about something. I was not around, and Charlie must have been in another room and left our door open. Maybe there was a card game somewhere. At any rate Raz answered the phone in a voice in a deliberately effeminate voice. He might have said something rude, too.

I called my dad back as soon as I found out, but he and my mom were so upset that they somehow wangled a flight on my dad’s employer’s private plane to come visit me. The visit actually turned out pretty well. Not only did I get a free dinner at Win Schuler’s, they also brought all my records with them.

One day Raz let slip that his family was somehow involved with followers of Edgar Cayce. I had heard about the “sleeping prophet” who died in 1945, but I knew very little about him. I cannot remember Raz ever bringing this up again. He certainly never evangelized. I did not press him about it. I never quizzed people about their beliefs.

Raz7

A google search for “John LaPrelle Cayce” yielded a sizeable number of results. On the third item I found the picture shown at right on the website for “The Big House”. There was also a “Contact” email address. When I inquired at that address about Raz, I received an email from Sandy LaPrelle with Raz’s phone number and email address.

Raz responded to the email that I sent him about this project. He wrote that he was currently in rural Virginia. He had done a lot of things over the years including getting married, producing three brilliant children, and becoming a professor of psychology.

Martinov

Dave Martinov was also in the class of 1970, and he stayed in AR all four years. He is the guy who gave me the nickname KC, which quickly got abbreviated to Case. He was a rabid fan of all of the Chicago professional teams, especially the Blackhawks. He was tall and a very good athlete. He played every year on the football, basketball, and volleyball teams for AR at the A level.

Dave’s roommate, whose name I have forgotten (Vlchek?), was also a Blackhawks fan. They both watched all the hockey games in the game room, often wearing Blackhawks jerseys.

Dave has reportedly retired in the Tampa area.

Jack Matthews lived on the fourth floor when I was a freshman. He may have stayed another year or two. The fourth floor and my third floor were mortal enemies. We did not associate much with the fourth floor guys. I remember only that he really liked Motown music.

What I remember about Dave Nemerovski was that he had a relative in the band named the Long Island Sound, which I discussed here.

Bob Ortman was a quiet guy. I do not remember a lot about him. I think that he was one year behind me. Several decades back he phoned me to tell me about John Cruickshank. I have been unable to locate Bob on the Internet.

Rolf

Rolf Parta was a couple of years younger than I was. He hung out around the lounge pretty often. He might have played bridge with us. I am pretty sure that he was from Novi. When we lived in Plymouth (1974-77), we sometimes visited a pet store in Northville. The signs on the road gave the mileage to Novi, and when I saw them I would always think of Rolf.

Rolf’s LinkeIn page says that he is an “ex-manager, consultant & author/inventor” who lives in Bradenton, FL. His Facebook page is here.

Heikki Petaisto was an uper, which means that he came from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. People in Ann Arbor called him Henry rather than his real name, which is Finnish. He was always smiling.

Somebody owned this game or one very like it. They also had players for every NHL team, even the Seals.
Somebody owned this game or one very like it. They also had players for every NHL team, even the Seals.

He played in the table hockey league that someone organized. I don’t remember which team he owned, but they ran roughshod over everyone, especially the California Golden Seals, the team in which I had a 50 percent ownership. I don’t remember what my franchise cost, but it was worth it just to watch and admire Heikki’s hell-bent-for-leather approach to the game. His hands were constantly moving from one lever to another, slamming his players forward and twisting them magically. I don’t know how he did it.

Heikki Petaisto is an uncommon name. I think that he ended up graduating from Michigan Tech and lives in Chino Valley, AZ in 2020.

Peter Petty was, I am pretty sure, the largest student on the U-M campous. He certainly was by far the largest whom I had seen before I attended a WWE wrestling match that featured Andre the Giant. Peter was over 6’10” tall, and he weighed at least 350 pounds. His biggest contribution to the AR athletic championship was his participation in wrestling. I think that most of his wins were forfeits when the opponent first caught sight of him. He made it to the finals, where he was scheduled to face another AR wrestler from Coldwater, MI, whose name I definitely should remember—he was a key player on the B volleyball team that I captained—but I don’t. I don’t think that they held the match.

Coke

Peter could grasp a coke machine, which in those days dispensed twelve-ounce bottles, with one hand on either side near the top. He could then rock it back to him a foot or two and then slam it back into the wall. This maneuver would often cause a few coins to appear in the coin return or some bottles to appear in the dispensing area. Occasionally, a bottle would break inside, thereby causing the machine to appear to be bleeding.

One year Peter attempted to participate in varsity football as a walk-on. My recollection is that he quit after a few days. He did not have the demeanor of the jocks who lived in AR.

Peter’s famous shower party is described here.

I found some evidence on the Internet that he has joined Andre in the land of departed giants, but it was not conclusive.

Phil

Phil Prygoski was a year older than I. I don’t remember him too well, but I think that he might have been president of the House Council when I was a freshman.

I remember that he said that his family name was changed to Prygoski to make it sound more American. The original version was pronounced shuh ZIT ski, and it started with “Prszcz”. Needless to say, everyone called him Phil Polack.

He became a professor of constitutional law at Western Michigan University. He died in 2019. His Wikipedia page is here.

John Reynolds was, I think, a year behind me. He lived on the other end of the first floor. All that I remember vividly about him was that he delighted in telling a story about an irate parking attendant who once told him, “Get back in dat ho dere!” He meant for John to park his car in the empty spot to which he was pointing.

Tom Rigles was from the ski town of Boyne City. A physics major, he roomed with Tom Caughey. He was a good friend. I “interviewed” him for the Rumsey Roomers. The main motivation was to provide an excuse for a cartoon of “Rigles’ ear” which was almost never visible beneath his mop of hair.

Tom was the slowest bridge player in the world. He also single-handedly ruined one poor female grad student’s study by taking forever to do relatively easy math problems. As a physics major he was expected (by her) to handle them swiftly.

VMM

Tom’s greatest contribution to the field of contemporary education was an adaptation of Mr. Spok’s Vulcan Mind Meld. Before an important test he would move his chair near the pillow side of his bed. He then placed the textbook open to the most difficult section. He took off his glasses and placed them on the chair between his pillow and the textbook. He aligned them carefully so that, while he was dreaming, he would be able to view the text through the glasses. He swore that it worked.

Tom once told me that if more people were like me, life would be a lot easier. This was one of the two or three nicest things anyone ever said about me.

I am not sure, but I think that Tom currently lives in Coeur D’Alene, ID.

Kurt

Kurt Scarbro lived on the third floor. The only thing that I remember clearly is that he thought that Myrna Loy was the most beautiful woman ever. I would certainly rank her in the top 1 or 2 percent.

Mryna

From references on the Internet I deduce that Kurt must currently live in Maryland. I think that his Facebook page is here.

Mark Skipper was one year behind me. He played on the AR tag football team, and he was a ferocious pass rusher. Nobody could stop him.

I remember that he was known as a real ladies’ man. I never witnessed this, but the legend was that he would spend time on State St. approaching various girls and asking them if they wanted to go out or something in more Saxon terms. Allegedly he seldom struck out and nearly always persuaded one of them to, in the words of Mick Jagger on the Ed Sullivan Show “spend some time together”.

In 2020 Mark is a lawyer in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

Ron_Sign

I used to attend mass on Sundays at St. Mary’s with Ron Verleger. I never saw anyone else in AR go to church even once.

Ron, known in AR as Ron McDon, was very devoted to his father, who was a builder. After a short time at the big U, Ron met a lot of people who thought that his father’s conservative values were outdated. Ron seemed to have a hard time with this.

He graduated with a degree in business and set up his own contracting company. It still has a website, but it has not been updated in a while. It says that he is 55, but he did not wear diapers when he lived in AR. In 2020 he lives in Lawton, outside of Kalamazoo.

Dave Zuk was my age. He lived across the hall with Paul Stoner when we were freshmen. He stayed in AR for at least a few more years. He studied some kind of engineering, and he has been the Chief Engineer at Michigan Aerospace for fifteen years.

Unless my eyes played horrible tricks on me, he had two sets of two nipples, one over the other.

Memorable Guys; Forgotten Names: The level of bridge in AR was elevated by a couple of guys from Ypsilanti. The one who lived in AR had a Polish name that began with an L. I remembered it for a decade or more, but over the years it has been confused in my mind by Lewonczyk, the name of a family of friends, and Lewandowski, the name of both the guy who worked for Trump and a world-famous soccer player.

Schenken

The guy who lived in AR tried to get us to play some conventions, but nobody was really interested in taking the time to learn them. At least I wasn’t. I did buy a copy of Howard Schenken’s Big Club book. He talked a few of us into playing in the sanctioned game at the Union once or twice. He also played the piano pretty well.

The other guy from Ypsi was an equally good player. I think that he lived in South Quad, but he spent a great deal of time in our lounge.

I also remember another outsider named Mike Smith who dropped into the lounge to play cards from time to time. I am pretty sure that he belonged to a fraternity, maybe nearby Delta Upsilon. I am fairly certain that he was left-handed, but that is all that I remember.

I have drawn a complete blank on the name of a talented cartoonist who was a great help to me. I enlisted him for Rumsey Rumors. He did some wonderful illustrations that I always featured on the cover page.

We took an anthropology class together during my last semester. He went to all of the lectures, and he let me use his beautiful notes from the class to study for the final. This allowed me to pass a class that I almost never attended. I hope that I thanked him for saving my bacon.

A guy from Kentucky played basketball and other games with us. He was very accurate with a shot that he threw up with both hands from right next to his right ear.

When I was a freshman a guy from Texas, whom everyone naturally called Tex, sometimes ordered a medium-sized pizza delivered to the game room. He had no trouble finishing it by himself. I may have seen someone do something similar later, but at the time this astounded me.

I remember the guys who lived in 312 (next to Dave Zuk and Paul Stoner) during my freshman year. I already mentioned the one named Raphe (short for Raphael), who got a 4.0 in the first semester. His roommate was, if memory serves, very interested in trains, both real ones and models.

It surprises me that I have no recollection at all of the guys who lived in 313, the room next to the one that I lived in.

I remember a guy whose first name was Leonard. Everyone called him Filthy Leonard or Crazy Filth. I can picture him pretty clearly, but I have no solid memories. I have no recollection at all of how he got his nickname. These things just seemed to happen in the dorm.

FtL_FL

My last entry requires understanding of spring break in the sixties. Almost all universities scheduled a break from the classes for the same week. Students from all over the country gathered in places like Fort Lauderdale. U-M had no such break. To compensate our classes ended earlier than almost anyone else’s.

Occasionally people from U-M would try to participate in the fun anyway. None of my many close friends had a or car even access to a car. A guy whom I did not know very well and who lived on the second floor of AR evidently did. He got together three or four of his friends (no AR residents) to undertake the trip over a long weekend. Google maps indicates that it is a 1,348 miles from Ann Arbor to Fort Lauderdale. They drove in shifts, stopped only for food and gas, and made it in less than 24 hours. They evidently had a great time and returned to Ann Arbor the following Monday evening. I don’t know any specifics.

FtL_Traffic

The guy with the car enjoyed himself so much in Fort Lauderdale that he tried to assemble a group to go back with him the next weekend. There were no takers. So, he decided to make the trip by himself. He left on Thursday evening and returned to AR late on Monday.

When he reentered AR he did not immediately collapse of exhaustion, and he did not regale his fellow students with tales of fun and mischief in Florida. Instead, he stayed up all night and studied for a test scheduled for Tuesday. He kept his eyes open until just an hour or two before the test. Then he more or less passed out and slept for many hours.

1967-1969 Part 2: U-M Debate

Debate in the middle years. Continue reading

A primer explaining the format and other details of intercollegiate debate can be found here.

Fall 1967: When I returned to school after the summer of 1967, I discovered some very important changes in the debate program at U-M. Dr. Colburn was still the Director of Forensics, and Jeff Sampson was still coaching. Juddi (pronounced “Judy”) Tappan, a high school coach from Belleville, had been added to the staff. My recollection is that in her last year at Belleville two girls from her team had won the state championship.

Juddi

Juddi’s assignment at U-M that year was to coach the novices. She had a very good crop. I think that both of those girls from Belleville came to U-M. One might have participated in debate for a short while, but by the time that the tournament season started, neither was involved. The four principal players were Bill Davey, an exceptionally smart guy1 from Albion, MI, Ann Stueve from Kentucky, Jim Fellows, whom I never got to know very well, and Alexa Canady from Lansing. All four of them were almost certainly better debaters than I was when I first set foot in the Frieze Building a year earlier. They all definitely had more experience than I did.

I think that there was one other coach, but he spent little time with any debaters and none with me.

Expo67

For me the debate season began bizarrely. Jeff Sampson escorted me and either Bob Hirshon or Lee Hess to Expo ’67 in Montreal to debate against two guys from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh about abortion. The whole debate only lasted for a little over thirty minutes and was attended by the coach/escorts of both teams and three ladies who had years earlier passed the age for which family planning is much of an issue. The guys from Duquesne had done quite a bit of research and presented a lot of serious arguments. We mostly told jokes.

Surely this was an appropriate metaphor for the age: four young guys debating about the circumstances in which women should be allowed to have abortions. Moreover, two of us were not even taking it seriously.

I don’t remember that we took an airplane to Montreal, but neither do I recall a long car trip with a border crossing. I retain a rather vivid memory of a rude cab driver who pretended that he did not understand English. If we had a car, why would we take a cab? Maybe parking was an issue.

This trip was undeniably a waste of time and money; perhaps some other organization paid for it. The plus side was that we did have time to wander around the Expo for a day or so. My strongest memory of the fair itself is eating a reindeer sandwich at one of the Scandinavian pavilions. It tasted a little funny, but it was not awful.

Magika

I also remember that we attended a performance of Laterna Magika, a multi-media theater troop from Prague, which at the time was on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Jeff chided me for trying to figure out what message was being conveyed.

Years later my wife Sue told me that she was also in Montreal during that period, had heard about the debate in which we participated, and almost went to it. This was five years before I even met her. So, this was almost a great story.

I considered the national debate resolution for that year, “that the federal government should guarantee a minimum annual cash income to all citizens”, uninspired. I cannot remember much about the individual arguments. Of course, debaters argued whether the states were “closer to the people” or whether in-kind payments were better than cash, but I cannot imagine that there would be enough meat there for a year’s worth of debates.

I think that I had three partners during the year:

Right_Guard
  • I remember debating with Larry Rogers, a junior, at the tournament at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle (UICC). I remember that he performed brilliantly in one debate, but overall we did not do well together, and I did not enjoy the experience at all. I also remember that one morning he took what he called “a Polish shower” with Right Guard before he dressed for the debates that day. By the way, all the male debaters wore suits Larry quit the team before the end of the year.
  • I am sure that I debated in at least one tournament with Lee Hess, another junior, who was my partner during the whirlwind spring 1967 season. I have a vague recollection that we debated together at Ohio State, but details have escaped from my memory. Lee had a motorcycle. I think that he might have had an accident with it that semester.
  • My third partner was Gary Black, a senior. I think that we did well together at one tournament, but I don’t remember the details. The main thing that sticks out in my mind is that I did “outsides” on the affirmative, which meant that I delivered the first affirmative constructive and the second affirmative rebuttal. Usually, this is only done when one debater is much better than the other, but my speaker ratings were generally equal to or better than Gary’s. He designed the affirmative case; I could not have defended it with much enthusiasm.

I might have debated with Bob Hirshon at one unmemorable tournament.

Spring 1988: Just before finals for the fall semester Jeff took me, Lee, and Gary aside, and had us write down on a sheet of paper the name of the other member of the trio that we would prefer to debate with. They both chose me. Although I chose Lee, Jeff decided to pair me with Gary for the important tournaments in the second semester (January-March 1968).

Here is what I remember of that time.

  • Both Lee and Bob quit debating before the semester began.
  • Gary and I had a practice debate against Bill and Ann in which we performed badly. Juddi remarked that it was a classic case of the novices showing up the varsity. I was too arrogant to get upset by this.
  • Gary and I made the elimination rounds at a few tournaments, but we did not have any exceptionally good performances.
  • We went 2-6 at Northwestern, which was an improvement over what I had done as a freshman.
  • Gary and I flew unaccompanied to a tournament at Loyola of Baltimore. The field was weak. I think that we qualified for the elim rounds, but then we lost. I lost my overcoat on this trip. Another passenger evidently took mine from the overhead rack by mistake when the plane stopped in Pittsburgh.
Keep_It_Down
  • Throughout the year ballots from several judges remarked that I should tone it down. I would start out at a reasonable volume, but after a while I got excited and started shouting. I worked on this.
  • Jeff did not work with Gary and me as much as he had helped Lee and me the previous year.
  • At the District 5 qualifying tournament for the NDT Gary and I were 4-4 with twelve ballots out of twenty-four, exactly average and exactly the same as Lee and I did the previous year.
  • Both freshman teams did quite well throughout the year. I don’t remember the details.
I think that this is a recent picture of Gary Black.
I think that this is a recent picture of Gary Black.

Jim Fellows decided that he did not want to debate any more.

  • My roommate in Allen Rumsey House, Charlie Delos, remarked that if he looked like Gary, he would kill himself.

  • Riot

    The summer of 1968 was definitely unique. Assassinations led to destructive and bloody riots. The suburbs of KC, where I was, were not affected, but Detroit, one of the centers of the protest, is less than an hour from Ann Arbor. The police also rioted outside of the Democratic Party’s national convention in Chicago. Then Nixon disclosed the existence of his secret plan to end the War in Vietnam.

    I had my first real job in the actuarial department of the insurance company that my dad worked for. My summer adventures are described here.

    Fall 1968: Jeff Sampson moved on. Juddi made all the decisions about partnerships. She also did whatever coaching was done.

    The team had one very talented freshman, Mike Hartmann. He had a pretty good partner, Dean Mellor.

    After the election the "executive" was this guy.
    After the election the “executive” was this guy.

    The resolution was “that executive control of United States foreign policy should be significantly curtailed.”

    I was paired with Alexa. We ran a case that banned deployment of troops to fight without a congressional declaration of war. I was first negative and second affirmative. Bill and Ann were the other varsity team.

    Here is what I remember of the first semester.

    • I enjoyed debating with Alexa. I had never had a female partner before. She was a talented debater and a good partner, but the thing that really impressed me was that she carried her own evidence boxes.
    • A small percentage of varsity debaters were female. Black debaters were very rare. Alexa was the only Black female debater whom I ever saw at a varsity tournament in my four years as an undergraduate debater. This could not have been easy for her.
    Feed
    • In one round we faced a good team that presented a a plan to use American food to feed starving people around the world. I had heard of this and done a little research, but I had never discussed it with Alexa. I decided to argue topicality and to present a counterplan that included all aspects of the affirmative plan, but no reduction in executive control. Alexa did not know what to argue in the second negative, but she soldiered on and did not complain, even when we ended up losing the round.
    • Our best tournament was Ohio State. We made it to the semifinals, which qualified us for the Tournament of Champions. We might have been the first U-M team ever to accomplish this.
    • For some reason Juddi drove us to Oshkosh, WI, to a second-rate six-round tournament at the state university there. In the first round we debated a really obnoxious team from Ripon College on our affirmative. The second round was allegedly power-matched, but we were scheduled to meet the same team on the same side! I immediately complained to the staff. I was told that we should just switch sides. I really did not want to debate that team again, but we had no choice. The teams that we faced after that were a little better, but I was depressed after the last round. Then they announced the results. I was astounded when they announced that Alexa was the second-place speaker. I never had lower points than she did, and, sure enough, I won the award for top speaker, which, as I recall was a hearty handclasp. Alexa and I had won all six debates and qualified for the quarterfinals, where we were quickly eliminated on a 2-1 decision that no one in the audience could believe.
    • Juddi smoked. She expected one of the males to light her cigarettes for her.
    • We stopped for gas once when Juddi was driving her own car. She purchased $.50 worth of regular.
    • Juddi wore a LOT of makeup. Alexa, who roomed with her on trips, said that it was frightening to see her when she first got out of bed. One of the other grad students said that Juddi always looked like a million dollars, but you had to suspect that at least half of it was counterfeit.
    • Before final exams both Ann and Alexa quit the team. So, Bill and I were the only varsity debaters left.
    We could not take the shortcut through Ontario because of the stop in Oberlin.
    We could not take the shortcut through Ontario because of the stop in Oberlin.

    Spring 1969: The first tournaments that Bill and I attended together were at Harvard and Dartmouth in January. Juddi made the arrangements. We drove to Oberlin College in Ohio to pick up their team, Roger Conner2 and Mark Arnold, and their coach, Dan Rohrer. We then proceeded to Buffalo to pick up a team from Canisius College. I never heard of teams car-pooling to debate tournaments, and this was uncomfortable, at least for me. Mark Arnold disliked me intensely. Also, the Oberlin and Canisius teams had much better records than we did.

    We definitely attended the tournament at Northwestern. I think that we were 4-4, which continued my trend of improvement over the previous year with three different partners.

    The only other tournament that semester that I clearly recall was the very long drive to Minneapolis to attend a tournament at St. Thomas College, now known as St. Thomas University. I think that this was the first time that Jimmie Trent, a famous debate coach and a professor in the speech department at Wayne State, accompanied us. We attended a peculiar set of tournaments for the next year and a half. It was not until considerably later that I began to suspect that Juddi tried to schedule tournaments that she was reasonably certain that she and Jimmie would not run into anyone from Wayne State.

    Jimmie definitely was very knowledgeable about debate, and he was also great fun to be with on tournaments. He specialized in my favorite kind of humor, the shaggy dog story, which was ideal for a long drive. His presence almost counterbalanced having to deal with Juddi. At some point they got married, but, as far as I could tell, that did not change the political implications of a Wayne State speech professor helping U-M debaters.

    The tournament at St. Tom’s was at best second-rate. It did not even supply standard ballots for the judges. They had to fill in these yellow cards that rated speakers on a twenty-point scale instead of the thirty point version. There was also very little space for the judge to express the reasoning, if any, behind the decision.

    When we were on the St. Tom's campus, all this was covered with several feet of snow.
    When we were on the St. Tom’s campus, all this was covered with several feet of snow.

    The three feet of snow on the ground made traipsing between buildings carrying our evidence a real pain and led everyone to question the motivation for the trip.

    Bill and I went 7-1 in the prelims. That made us the top seed in the elimination rounds, which, as I recall, began with quarterfinals. Almost all tournaments used seeded brackets for the elimination rounds, but not this one. Instead, for some reason, they drew the pairings at random. In the quarterfinals we ended up debating against a team from Augustana College in Illinois that we had already defeated on our negative. We were “locked in” on the affirmative because tournaments generally guarantee that no team will debate another team twice on the same side.

    This was the worst possible draw for us. I had a much better record on the negative throughout my career, especially with Bill. It was a tough round. I will always think that I won this round with a joke. I started my last affirmative rebuttal with this remark: “I have been wondering why Mr. ______ (the second negative) wore galoshes to the debate. Now that I see all the snow that they tried to bury the plan under, I understand. Let’s start digging.”

    Everybody in the audience laughed. We won the room and two of the three judges.

    In the semifinals we faced the team that gave us our only loss in the prelims. However, this time we were locked in on the negative and won easily.

    In the finals we faced two guys from Iowa whom I had debated several times over the years. We were locked in on the affirmative. As it turned out, in the elimination rounds we faced the second, third, and fourth seeds, in that order. All were teams that we had already debated.

    At this point in the year we had a pretty strong non-intervention case, but we also had a food case that we had pulled out (successfully) a few times that year. The northern plains was a very conservative part of the debate world, and so we decided to stick with the non-intervention case.

    Just before the debate started, they introduced the five judges. Two were debate coaches with whom both teams knew pretty well. Three of them were local luminaries. Of course, we did not get to interview them, and so we had no way of know how familiar they were with debates at this level.

    Debate coaches have a lot of practice at following arguments. The best tactics for dealing with inexperienced judges are not at all as clear as they are for dealing with debate coaches. The thought occurred to me that we should perhaps run the food case. Any yokel can relate to starving millions. However, it was only a flickering thought; we went with our original plan.

    The trip back to Ann Arbor seemed longer.
    The trip back to Ann Arbor seemed longer.

    We won both debate coaches, but lost the three civilians. I will always think that if we had used the food case, we would have won the outsiders and maybe lost the coaches. I had plenty of time to think about this on the long drive home. Winning this (or any) tournament would have been a feather in our cap. Finishing second in such a sorry gathering made us just an “also ran”.

    Bill and I went 4-4 at the district qualifier in March. We only won eleven ballots. So, I appeared to be regressing a little.


    Moon

    During the summer I worked in a the actuarial department of Kansas City Life, not my dad’s employer. Two other guys, Todd and Tom worked there. One day someone asked if they had gone to lunch, and I was able to use a line I had been saving for weeks: “Tom and Todd wait for no man.”

    Man also landed on the moon.

    Fall 1969: I learned that two strong additions had been made to the debate staff, Roger Conner1, who had an exemplary record debating at Oberlin, and Cheryn Heinen, a very good debater from another strong debate school, Butler. Roger and Cheryn could probably have been a big help, but they were seldom allowed to go to big tournaments, and neither planned a career as a debate coach. Because the program had very few debaters, we hardly ever had practice rounds, and when we did, Juddi ran them.

    Since Bill and I were the only debaters on the team with experience at the varsity level, I had assumed that we would be paired up from day 1. Partner-switching is uncommon at most schools.

    I was therefore unpleasantly surprised and disgruntled to find myself paired with Dean Mellor at the beginning of the year. Bill and Mike must have also been debating together.

    Cheryn did not work with us much. Still, the most memorable event of the semester occurred when she was driving us in a car from the university’s motor pool westbound on I-94. There were three other debaters in the car. One was certainly Bill. The other two must have been Dean and Mike.

    The car was proceeding at the speed limit when all of a sudden the front hood came unlatched and was flung backwards by air pressure into the windshield. It also made a dent of at least six inches in the roof of the passenger compartment, but it remained attached to the hinges. The glass on the windshield shattered, but it stayed together. This video is what it felt like from the inside. However, we were going much faster, and both the windshield and hood were obviously beyond repair.

    Cheryn screamed in terror, but she quickly regained composure. We were very fortunate to be quite close to an exit. Bill and I rolled down windows and gave Cheryn driving instructions to get the car onto the exit ramp and then into a service station.

    Cheryn called the university and reported the problem. The people at the motor pool insisted that one of us had opened the hood for some reason and failed to latch it. We all insisted that no such event had occurred. After a few hours someone brought us a different car to use, and we continued on to the tournament without further incident.

    MIC

    The resolution for 1969-70 was that the federal government should grant annually a specific percentage of its income tax revenue to the state governments. I think that we ran the same case all year. It called for granting 50 percent of the income tax revenue to the states through existing grant-in-aid programs. We claimed that Congress would never finance the programs to that extent because of the power of the Military-Industrial Complex.

    I do not remember details from too many tournament. I remember attending the Ohio State with Dean. We had been doing pretty well for the first seven rounds. In the eighth round, however, Dean got all flustered in the 1AR, and totally made a mess of things. His speech was so bad that there was no chance of winning after that. It was too bad, because we would have qualified for the elimination rounds if we had won.

    DJT likes his steaks the same way.
    DJT likes his steaks the same way.

    I am not sure where we were, but at one tournament Juddi arranged for us to eat supper with the debaters from Emory University in Atlanta. She liked their southern charm. At dinner she ordered a steak well done. The waiter brought it. Juddi cut it and sent it back for more cooking. She judged that the substitute was sufficiently dead. She smothered it in red sauce. Before she could take a bite one of the Emory debaters asked her very politely why she didn’t just order a piece of bread and cover it with ketchup.

    By the middle of November Juddi had changed the pairings so that I was again with Bill. On Thursday November 22 we drove to Chicago for a tournament at UICC. It was a fairly important tournament for us, but it meant that we would miss the last game of the football season.

    Students at U-M were allotted one reduced-price season ticket on the south and west sides of Michigan stadium. I had a superb ticket on the 50-yard line. How I managed to get such a good seat is described here. On this occasion I gave my seat away to someone. I don’t remember who received it.

    We only got to read about it.
    We only got to read about it.

    We missed the best game in the storied history of Michigan football. Ohio State was rated #1 in both polls. Michigan was 7-2. OSU had never been behind at any point in any of their previous games. Nevertheless, Michigan prevailed 24-12 that Saturday and won a ticket to the Rose Bowl for the only time in my undergraduate career.

    Meanwhile, Bill and I had our worst tournament ever. For me the worst aspect was our loss to my old friend and high school debate partner, John Williams, who represented UMKC. I was more depressed about this than about any previous result. Still, I only had one semester left, and I resolved to make the most of it.


    Where are my U-M debate partners in 2020?

    On Twitter I follow Bill Black, who is rather famous for finding fraudulent activity in corporate and political America. He currently teaches law and economics at UMKC. His Wikipedia page is here.

    I have not been in touch with Gary Black. I was quite surprised to find this web page on the Internet. I am not positive that this is the Gary Black that I knew, but the age and colleges match. I wonder what Charlie Delos would think of Gary’s new career.

    Alexa Canady is a famous neurosurgeon who is now retired and living in Pensacola, FL. I emailed her because I noticed that she was a member of the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL). She responded to the email, but we have not had any further correspondence. Her Wikipedia page is here.

    I have seen Bill Davey twice since I graduated in 1970. When I came to Ann Arbor after being discharged from the army, he let me crash in his apartment for a week or so. I also saw him at a debate tournament at Georgetown in the mid-seventies. He was then clerking for Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. Later Bill was a big player in the development of the World Trade Organization. He is now retired from his teaching position at the University of Illinois. His biographical information is here.

    Mike Hartmann is an attorney at the international law firm, Miller-Canfield. He was the CEO from 2007 to 2013. His bio page is here. I have been in touch with him by email.

    Lee Hess is the Chairman of Cairngorm Capital and lives in Columbus, OH. I have communicated with him by email a few times. His bio page at his company is here.

    Bob Hirshon is a professor at the U-M Law School.

    I have not been in touch with Dean Mellor. Apparently he is doing something in sales in the L.A. area. His LinkedIn profile is here.

    I have not been in touch with Larry Rogers.


    Roger
    Roger Conner.

    1. Bill was a Presidential Scholar in his senior year of high school (1967), which indicates that he had one of the two highest scores in the state of Michigan on the National Merit exams.

    2. I asked Roger why Mark Arnold hated me. He told me that I was right about that, but he did not know why. Roger was an interesting guy. He sold bibles in his youth. He tried to teach us to yodel, which he insisted was the best way to prepare for debates. He spent thirty years as lobbyist, mostly on immigration issues. I almost went to see him when he was leading a seminar in Hartford. In 2020 he is an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt.

    1970 Part 1: January-May: My Last Semester at U-M

    1970 January-May in Ann Arbor, MI Continue reading

    LotteryOn December 1, 1969, the first draft lottery was held. #154 was assigned to my birth date, August 17. In 1970 they started drafting with #1. No one predicted that 154 was a safe number. As it turned out, the lowest safe number was 196. Bill Clinton got 311, and George W. Bush got 327.

    I thoroughly enjoyed my first four years at the University of Michigan. I lived in the dorm all four years. It suited me perfectly. No worries about rent or food, clean linen, and a floating bridge game in the lobby, which was right next door to my room. As much as I appreciated this arrangement, by New Year’s Day of 1970 I was very tired of anything to do with actual classes.

    Instead, in my last semester I planned to spend a LOT of time on debate. This was my last chance to qualify for the National Debate Tournament. This adventure is described in 1970 Part 2. Compared to debate and research for debate, sitting in the classroom and preparing for classes seemed excruciatingly boring.

    Allen Rumsey House was new in 1937. my room 1968-70 was the corner room on the ground floor.

    Allen Rumsey House was new in 1937. My room 1968-70 was the corner room on the ground floor.

    To give myself more time for debate, I resigned as president of Allen Rumsey House (a dorm of just over 100 guys in West Quad) so that someone who was returning the next year could get some experience. I resumed editing (which meant writing, mimeographing, and distributing) Rumsey Rumors, the newsletter published occasionally for residents.

    I had thoroughly researched the school’s catalog for the second semester to construct the easiest schedule that would allow me to graduate in May. I was only three credits short of the required total, and I had met all the requirements except for one, which I planned to fill with an introductory course in social anthropology. I don’t remember exactly why I selected this course, but it met my own main requirement (no papers). Moreover, a sophomore who was a friend of mine was also taking it, and he was a skilled note-taker.

    I was pretty sure that ten of my credits would not count for graduation. The catalog said that one could only have forty credits in one’s major. I had fifty in math. So, I calculated that I needed thirteen non-math credits in the last semester. As a four-year debater, I was allowed to take a three-credit individual study in speech communication. That would require little or no work. So, I needed two more classes.

    My first choice was a 400-level Russian literature in English. I had read a few Russian novels, and I really liked them. I was worried that papers might be required, but someone who had taken the class assured me that there were no papers.

    For my last class I picked introductory linguistics. How hard could it be? I had taken twelve semesters of Latin and Greek in high school and nine semesters of Latin, Greek, and Russian at U-M. I also took a language theory class in the Communication Sciences department, but it was mostly computer-oriented.

    At the first linguistics lecture the makeup of the class startled me. It was about 70 percent females, most of whom were packed tightly in the first few rows of the auditorium. Furthermore, most of the guys were in small groups spread around the rest of the room, and they all seemed pretty big. What really struck me was the prominence of their jawbones.

    Almost everyone fell into these two categories. No one looked like me. I was probably the oldest and certainly the skinniest (perhaps 140 pounds) of all the male students.

    When the lecturer appeared, I understood the female part. He was good-looking and very personable. He began his presentation by explaining how the class would work: students would be allowed to assign their own grades! There would be no tests, and the only homework would be a workbook that we would be required to fill out and submit. That explained all the athletes; I knew for certain that the athletes had a formidable underground network for locating “gut” classes. This one must have been close to the top of the list.

    That was the last linguistics lecture that I attended. I could hardly believe how lucky I had been to find this class.

    A small fraction of the reading list.

    A small fraction of the reading list.

    The lecturer at the first Russian lit class distributed the reading list, which consisted of at least six heavyweight tomes, none of which I had already read. I also learned that there would be both lectures and discussion groups led by graduate students. I never attended any of the latter.

    I attended the lectures in the anthro and Russian classes for the first five or six weeks whenever I was in town. After that I took the midterm exams, but I never even picked up my results.

    Meanwhile I had been attending debate tournaments, which took up a LOT of time. I also spent a lot of time in the library researching for debate. I also played bridge in the dorm, but I was not serious about it. A few of us played in the club game at the Union once or twice. I was quite serious about intramural basketball. I played on our team in the “B” division. I did not contribute much, but we did win the tournament. We also won in B volleyball. I was the captain of that team. Allen Rumsey House, the oldest and smallest of all the dorms, won the overall intramural dorm championship with the highest total score ever recorded.

    At some point in February I quit going to classes altogether. I judged that I could pass my two real classes by cramming for the finals. This was undoubtedly hubris. I had no plan B.

    1970 was, of course, a very tumultuous year at every college. Young people were fed up with a stupid war in Asia in which they were supposed to do the heavy lifting. At U-M this discontent was joined by a separate issue called the Black Action Movement, which challenged the university to come up with a solution to the extremely low percentage of black people enrolled at U-M. This movement was championed by my debate partner during the first semester of my junior year, Alexa Canady, who quit debate and focused her attention on pre-med studies and editorials for the Michigan Daily. BAM called for everyone to go on strike, which fit in perfectly with my plan.

    BAM Rally

    BAM Rally

    I participated in one of the marches that BAM called for. I marched with them, mostly as a lark. I was accompanied by my outside agitator friend, Dave Bartlebaugh, better known as “The Ball”. He didn’t even go to U-M, and he didn’t care at all about the Black Action Movement, but he was a great agitator. He kept shouting “Free Huey! Free Bobby! Free all political prisoners!” He banged on trashcans as we passed them. I had trouble suppressing my giggles. I did join in the “Open it up or SHUT IT DOWN!” chants. It was a great time.

    BalThe Ball was a real character. During my junior year (1968-1969) he started hanging around in the lounge of Allen Rumsey House. He lived in an apartment off-campus, he already knew some of the guys in our dorm, and he liked the fact that some kind of nonsense was always going on. A the end of the 1970 spring semester he had successfully avoided the draft by failing the physical due to high blood pressure. I guess that he had somewhat high blood pressure anyway, but he augmented it during the week leading up to each physical exam through a regimen that included, among other things, a lot of coffee. According to this website he has been in the music business for the last five decades.

    The BAM strike actually did some good. The university subsequently worked hard to help students from Detroit public schools to meet the school’s entrance requirements, which even for in-state students were pretty rigorous. When I returned to Ann Arbor in 1974 there were obviously more minority students.

    A point system for admission to the college of Literature, Science and the Arts that aided minorities was also implemented. In 2003 it was declared unconstitutional by a 6-3 vote of the U.S. Supreme Court.

    I spent the weeks before finals speed-reading difficult Russian novels and memorizing my friend’s notes. I liked most of the novels, but I had zero experience in how to prepare for a test in a college-level literature class. I had not taken even one class in the English department. I was supposed to take the Great Books class in my freshman year, but by the time that I got to Ann Arbor the class was closed. Because I had passed the Advanced Placement test in high school I was excused from the university’s English requirement.

    The anthro test went about as expected. I thought that I did OK. The Russian lit class was another story. As I approached the room in which the test was held I was greatly concerned to see a large number of students handing in what appeared to be papers. I never did discover whether these were assigned in contravention of the information at the first class. They might have been extra-credit assignments from the leaders of recitation groups.

    The test itself seemed to go pretty well. It required several short essays. I was able to write something reasonably sensible for each one. Keep in mind that my goal was just to pass, and at Michigan a D would suffice.

    After the tests I started doing the exercises in my linguistics workbook. It took a couple of days. I went to my teacher’s office in the evening and slid it under his door the day before grades were due. I lacked the audacity to assign myself a grade.

    As always, I did not pick up my exams. I could only guess how well I actually did. My grades were mailed to my parents’ house in Kansas City a few weeks later.

    Exams were over by the end of April. I stayed in Ann Arbor for a few weeks. Bill Davey and his roommate let me stay in their apartment. I think that I slept on the floor.

    I was busy with two thingsthe actuarial exams and the Junior College National Forensics Tournament, which U-M hosted in 1970. I took part 2 of the former and judged an astounding twenty-four rounds in the latter. I supplemented my income from judging with the proceeds from the sale of all my remaining textbooks to one of the bookstores. This is what I lived on.

    UI was in Ann Arbor for the graduation ceremony. Even thought the speaker was U Thant, Secretary General of the United Nations, I did not go. I was too afraid that they might not read my name.

    I had passed part 1 (calculus) of the actuarial exams in my junior year. Part 2 covered probability and statistics. In both of these areas U-M offered courses tailored to the exams. I took both classes in the first semester and received a B in each. I also sat for the part 2 exam in November, but I did not pass, which surprised me a little. I had not studied much, and I was distracted by debate, but I was reasonably familiar with all the material. The grading for these exams was designed to penalize guessing, and I did my share.

    In May I devoted not a single minute to studying for the exam. At some point it occurred to me that I should avoid guessing. My strategy was to work carefully on the probability questions and to answer only those statistics question that I was certain of. In the end I skipped 100 percent of the statistics questions. This meant that my best possible score was probably around 50 percent. For one of the few times in my life I was pretty certain that I had failed a test.

    I had already decided that I would just go home and wait to get drafted. That’s what I did.