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Duke University Library - Gothic Reading Room

This was the summer of 1947; I was 21. I left the sea and re-enrolled at Duke. I thought that after 4 years and a lot of experience I would find Duke an easier place to live, but it wasn't much. I had begun a pre-med course, and we all understood that we had no chance to get to medical school without absolutely top grades. So I set out for absolutely top grades.

The administration felt like I ought to be able to support myself now, after making a lot of money in the war. Dad told them I had been helping the family with my little income. We compromised on half tuition. Then I made straight A's one semester and got a tuition grant on that basis.

One of the reasons I did so well academically was my roommate, Charlie Keck. I doubt that I would have even stayed at Duke if it hadn't been for Charlie. He was very different from me. A large, athletic boy, he had been a gentleman C at Cornell before the war. His father gave him a hard time, and when Charlie came back to school, he had decided he was going to show the old son of a bitch what he could do. Then he accidentally got assigned to room with Larry Clayton. He knew I was a brain, and he wanted to learn how to get good grades. We had some courses together. I had long since perfected the art of getting good grades. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with learning. It wasn't hard for me to show Charlie how to get good grades, and he finished college a Phi Beta Kappa.

Charlie and I did a good bit of swimming in the gym. We often swam with the team in fact. The coach really hoped that Charlie might go out for the team, but we just enjoyed ourselves there. Charlie loved winter sports and told me about his trap lines outside of Pauling, where his family had a home. He thought nothing of hiking 30 miles in the snow. He was a great tennis player, and he further developed my love of the game.

I had very few friends, and except for Charlie would probably have had less. I actually remember very few of my classmates at Duke. I do remember one boy (man in fact) whom we used to eat with in the dining hall. He had been a second lieutenant on Bataan, which meant that he sat out the war in Japan in a POW camp. He told me they used to break out of the compound periodically to find something to eat, then go back, because there was nowhere else to go. After being liberated the army gave him more or less carte blanch to do anything he wanted to, and he chose to go to school at Duke.

I attended Duke for two full years and the summer between. I always enjoyed the summer session (See SECOND.DAY). That summer I took Analytical Chemistry--Qual and Quan. I got acquainted with Frank Carmatz. Another boy from New Jersey and a strange one. He was in one of the labs. He decided he wanted me for a friend. He was very aggressive, and although obnoxious to me I eventually got to know him well enough to find some redeeming social values. He was something of a megalomaniac; he thought he could do anything, claimed he had a photographic memory. Once I went to a ten cent store with him, and he pilfered something. He didn't need it; he apparently just needed to demonstrate his skill. I never went in a ten cent store with him again. Several months later I heard that Frank had taken refuge in the chapel after being accused of stealing someone's luggage. They sent him home of course, and I never saw him again. He wrote me sending $10 on a debt he owed me, but I didn't return his letter; I should have.

That summer I joined the chapel choir, my first significant choral experience-very enjoyable. Part of the fun was getting acquainted with a young teacher from Lancaster Co Pa. named Ethel Tice. Ethel came down to Duke to polish her teaching skills and in search of adventure. She found me, and we developed an intense relationship. In the fall she went back home, and we corresponded.

I went up to her home for the Christmas holidays that year. As I remember, I drove up with Frank, spent a few days with his folks before going on to Pennsylvania. I remember driving up U.S. 1, when it was a modern, new highway, unlike anything I had seen before.

Frank's parents were quite conventional. Episcopals. I always thought they must have been Jews originally; the name sounds very sephardic. They found him as strange as I did. He was so brash, so bursting with megalomania. I was amazed to find he seemed less confident in the Big Apple than I was.

Ethel's parents were very different. Her mother was fat, good humored, very comfortable to be around. Her daddy was a janitor somewhere, a job he had had for many years. He had taken up smoking when he lost his job in the depression. A definite under achiever, he seemed to have been crushed by the depression as so many men were. With a very modest income they owned a very nice brick house. I'm sure they stretched the dollar about as far as it would go.

I enjoyed my visit with them, remember watching Oklahoma playing in some bowl game, had some torrid scenes with Ethel, went on back to Duke. I suppose she might have welcomed a proposal, but I was in no position to propose that she move to New Orleans, get a job and support me while I went to medical school.

As soon as applications were accepted Charlie and I applied for Duke medical school. I also applied at L.S.U. and maybe some other schools, as did he. He was one of the first ones called at Duke. Meanwhile I was accepted at L.S.U. and sent them my 50 dollars to hold my place.

Duke called me later, but it was too late. I used to think I might have had a better chance of getting through at Duke, since they had a much smaller class and kept most of them. In contrast L.S.U. began with a large class and many of us dropped out. However it's really doubtful I would have finished at Duke; I didn't really want to be a doctor, the way you must need to.

Very few of my teachers remain in memory. I remember old Dr. Rose, who taught Greek mythology. I took this near the end of my time at Duke when I was just collecting hours for graduation. We went through all the major Greek myths. It involved a lot of material. He wanted us to memorize it and give it back to him on a quiz. This was easy to do for someone with a facile memory. That in fact is one of the secrets of getting grades. You had to learn how to learn stuff just long enough to give it back on the exams. Most of it didn't clutter up my mind very long after the test.

One night several of us in Dr. Rose's class happened to be together, and one of the group, with more nerve than most of us, suggested we go see Dr. Rose. So we just dropped in on him. He seemed glad to see us. That's was the only time I can remember ever having a social relationship with any of my college professors. He seemed like something of a misfit as a social being, and hence not in the least threatening to anybody.

Years later, when I was wondering how I could gracefully retire from the parish ministry, it came to me that maybe I could go study Greek with Dr. Rose. That's just one of a multitude of ideas I didn't pursue.

Dr. Manchester was the freshman dean and a history teacher. He was about as much of a stuffed shirt as most deans. For another elective I decided that I would like to take his course in The Portuguese Empire and the Rise of Brazil. It was a graduate course requiring special permission to register for, so I went to see him. "Well", he said, he had found that students majoring in Science often didn't do very well in his courses." I was miles ahead of him on that one. I said, "Dr. Manchester, I understand what you're saying, and that's exactly why I want to take your course." (I've always been disposed and rather adept at playing along with the folly of foolish people.) Needless to say he let me take the course.

It turned out he was an excellent history teacher. He had the ability to dramatize the material in such a way that it came alive. He did a masterful job on the story of Columbus. I learned a good bit about Brazil, my primary interest.

On one occasion I had another chance to cross swords with him. It happened that he was using a map of East Africa to describe the history of the early European conquests there. One of the important colonies was a place called Sofala. Well he mislocated Sofala about 1000 miles. I corrected him, but of course there was no way he could be wrong. I didn't push the matter.

He was man enough to acknowledge the error at his next lecture and to comment that some of the students in the class were being very alert. The main reason I knew the location of Sofala was that I had been there during the war; at that time it was called Mombasa.

My last semester at Duke was rough. The frenzied quest for grades was in abeyance. I had a very unsatisfactory social life, although I did attend the dances at the Durham YWCA now and then. In desperation I bought a car, a 1946 Ford Coupe. A very light car with a powerful engine, it would go, but had some wear and tear. I used to drive long distances on weekends; just drive somewhere and pretty generally turn around and come back. I went to Wilmington one weekend, to Asheville once. The car got me through those last months. Finally the semester came to an end.

I still needed three hours to complete my requirements--3 hours of anything. I decided to take a course at Chapel Hill. I continued to live at Duke that summer, driving to Chapel Hill 3 times a week for my course in South American history or some such. I have very little recollection of that. About all I remember is one impression I had about the two schools.

Duke was 15 years old when I started there. UNC was more like 150. At Duke tradition was emphasized to the point of idolatry. It was almost like the faculty was watching the ivy grow. At UNC nobody seemed to give a hang about tradition. UNC was a more liberal and progressive place than Duke. Another strange thing about Duke is that it seems like everybody in North Carolina despises it. I know that's an exaggeration, but it contains an element of truth. I think that somehow Duke hooks into most southerners' xenophobia.

Duke is a strange place, a foreign place actually, superimposed on the tobacco hills. And the surrounding people have largely resented its presence. Of course it helps when they go to the Final Four. Nobody wants to kick success. Another important factor is that only a minority of the students at Duke are from the local area.

I never attended a commencement. They sent me a diploma through the mail. I've never felt very close to Duke, except for a sentimental attachment to the basketball team. Never sent them a contribution and doubt that I ever will. I felt like they really did nothing for me. It wasn't their fault, but that's just how things worked out. When people have a happy experience at a school, they may tend to develop a sense of loyalty, but such was not my case. In retrospect I can see that the experiences at Duke shaped my life and helped me to become the person I am. I like myself a lot more now than I did during those years.

My next academic experience was no happier, much less happy in fact. The year at L.S.U. was probably the loneliest of my life. I got through the first year and started the second, but soon ran out of money and spirit simultaneously and gave it up. I know my parents were grieved, but they didn't and couldn't understand my situation. Looking back from the perspective of fifty years, I feel like I probably did the right thing.

I suppose an aid and accomplice to my dropping out of medical school was Gloria. She was a nurse who I at first thought to be about my age. She turned out to be almost ten years older. But she was terribly naive, and I made a conquest of her. She had a little boy and a shrewish mother, with whom she lived. She had had a brief, unhappy marriage, the only lasting consequence of which was her son. We soon became lovers. I treated her badly because she wanted to spend her life with me, but I never had any such intention. However I let it drag on for a long time.

Gloria was so naive. Her mother had convinced her that all public food was unsanitary and that she must only eat at home. I remember the first time I took her to an eating establishment, it was terribly hard for her to violate that taboo. Her mother was Irish, black Irish. Gloria was a good girl, but dependent. I suppose with my encouragement she transferred her dependency from her mother to me.

Without Gloria I might have stuck it out at medical school a bit longer. But I'm convinced I wasn't cut out to be a doctor. My mechanical aptitude is simply too low. Take anatomy for example. Hand a piece of a lung to a medical student, and he will soon orient it, be able to tell you whether it's a right or a left, upper or lower lobe, etc. I just couldn't do that sort of thing, no sense of geometry or of spatial relationships. I was always musical, not graphic.

When I dropped out of medical school--in November of 1950, I was pretty disoriented. I had no idea whatsoever as to what to do. In addition I was eligible for the draft. For the next year I simply marked time. I knew I would be called, just didn't know when. I got a job driving a yellow cab, the hardest job I've ever had. We worked long hours, and I rested most of the time when I wasn't working. I finally gave it up.

Then I got a little job at the library, shelving books. That was more my style (I've always loved libraries). On the whole it was a very dead period for me. The future was simply in a state of suspension. Working enough to live, marking time.

One creative thing I did was join Gus Wright's choral group, which he called the Cesar Franck Choral Society. He worked with me to make me into a bass soloist. I had been singing at St. Paul Episcopal Church for some time. Gus had the St. Patrick choir, and he got me $15 a month as bass soloist. We gave one or two concerts. I remember when we sang Panis Angelicus, at one of the churches. In the parish house later I noticed him consuming enormous amounts of food. He was in a very excited state--well up in his 80's, but as alive as a teenager.

He had gone to France with Sousa and spent 50 years over there, working as organist at the English Church. His hands were monstrously thick; he had arthritis pretty bad, but could still play after a fashion. I was very interested in music at that time, enjoyed singing. One of the members of our groups had written an opera called Thou Art the Man. That's a quote from scripture, what the prophet Nathan said to King David when he accused him of the murder of Uriah, husband of Bathsheba. We worked on that a bit, but never achieved production.

I also did some instrumental work. I started with a clarinet and practiced with it for a while, then decided an oboe might be worth more, so I got one of them. I enjoyed working with both those instruments. I had some idea that I might be able to get into the navy band, rather than have to go to sea. It didn't work out, but it was a good idea. Unfortunately I never resumed my instrumental work after serving in the navy.

The Korean War was in progress at this time, and it became more and more obvious that I would be called. I decided to join the navy--mainly in order to avoid the army. I went to the Custom House (where my grandfather had worked 50 years before) to enlist. The enlistment officer was big enough to evaluate my situation and point me toward the naval reserve. That didn't keep me out of service, but it meant that I had to serve only two years instead of the four that a regular enlistment would have taken.

I joined the reserve and found myself going to meeting every week. We drilled, took classes, generally fooled around purportedly training for military activities. We were supposed to do two weeks active training each year, and I served one such tour--on a small ship in the Tchefuncta River. We had liberty at Madisonville; I don't remember what happened, but only the new sensation of being a gob on liberty.