In June of 1972, more than 30 years after we had all been classmates at Queens College, four couples met again at the wedding of Alice and Bob Smuts’ son in Connecticut. We were all (except one) alumni of the graduating classes of ’41 or ’42. We were all children of the Great Depression and of World War II. I had a somewhat longer connection with the college than the others because I taught English here during the war years, taking the place of one of my teachers who had been called into the service. The job came with the stipulation that when (and if) the teacher returned, I would give the job back. And I did.
A few years later we all came out of our basement apartments or Quonset huts or one room with the in-laws and settled for a time on Long Island, where we planted gardens, raised little children, and occasionally ran into each other at parties. Now we were meeting again under different circumstances, 30 years older and no longer surprised by prosperity.
In the interim we had all moved. Alice and Bob lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Bob was official speechwriter to Henry Ford II and Alice was studying for her doctorate at the University of Michigan; Peg and Dave Starr lived in Springfield, MA, where David, the senior editor of Newhouse Newspapers, published three of them and Peg was becoming a world-class horticulturalist, birder, and chair of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra; Ruth and Jack Hexter were in New Haven where Jack was Sterling Professor of History at Yale (later they moved to St. Louis, where Jack founded the Center for the History of Freedom at Washington University); my husband, Philip Landau, was nearing the height of a 35-year career running the best hotel in New York, the Sherry-Netherland on Fifth Avenue, and I was getting a third master’s degree in library science and starting to publish short stories in various periodicals. Some time afterwards we moved to Manhattan.
Of the four marriages three were QC love affairs; Alice (Boardman) to Bob Smuts, Peggy (Giffen) to Dave Starr, and Ruth (Mullin) to Jack Hexter. The only off-campus romance was mine with Philip Landau. Phil had graduated from high school before Queens College was established and went on to NYU. He always carried his “outsider” status a little uneasily, but we did what we could to make him feel comfortable.
The reputation of Queens College as a center of love and romance (aided and abetted by the presence of the long-lamented apple orchard) has been remarked upon, most recently in Q magazine (Spring 2007); what was not noted were the number of marriages between students and faculty, of which the Hexters’ was one. There were three such marriages that I knew of personally and there were others as well. Such campus liaisons would be scandalous in these politically correct times, but with a campus teeming with eligible (and brilliant) young professors and a student ratio of 84 men to 123 beautiful (and brilliant) young women, what else could the administration have expected? If anybody was playing Cupid, it must have been President Paul Klapper, who handpicked that faculty!
Ruth and I took Jack Hexter’s European History course in a basement classroom that was so overheated by the steam pipes that ran through the ceiling that invariably Ruth fell fast asleep in class. I once reproached Jack by pointing out that although I had always managed to stay awake in his class he had married Ruth, not me. “Well,” said Jack, “I gave you an A.” On another occasion I asked Jack how his QC students compared with his students at Yale. “The best students I have ever had,” he said seriously, “were at Queens College.”
We founded the Golden Oldies at the reception for that eventful wedding and had our first official reunion two months later at the Sherry-Netherland. After that we met at a different couple’s home in a different part of the country every year for the next 20 years. We had 11 children among us; we never invited any of those over-achievers. Golden Oldies was strictly for grownups. Ruth and Jack, counting multiple marriages, adoptions, and just plain fecundity, had 19 grandchildren. Once, at one of the Hexter weddings, they were photographed at the center of all 19; there were so many national origins and shades of color that Jack framed the photograph with a legend beneath it: “The World’s Greatest Gene Pool.”
In my memory those reunions seem to run together. We talked a lot and gossiped a lot and laughed our heads off. We had an official song, “Golden Oldies, Olden Goldies, hearts beat true” (I will spare you the rest of the words) and matching T-shirts (see photograph). We ate wonderful food (competitive cooks, the whole lot of us), we played a wild game called “Fictionary” that is something like Quidditch with dictionaries. Bob always won and Phil wrote the most hilarious definitions; we counted migrating hawks one year in Longmeadow, MA, we had an equal opportunity, gender-free wet T-shirt contest in the Smuts’ pool (I can’t remember who won that one), and at one memorable reunion at the Starrs’ Vineyard retreat we presented Phil with an official Queens College graduation, complete with cap and gown, a diploma conferring upon him the honorary degree of Master of Friendship (handmade by Alice), and a commencement address by noted historian Professor Jack Hexter of Queens College, Yale, and Washington University. Phil loved that diploma. He kept it in the top drawer of his dresser where he saw it every morning while searching for clean socks. At last, he was equal to the rest of us!
Alas, Jack, Ruth, Phil, and Bob are no longer with us. Wherever they may be, I like to think of them together, playing, no doubt, a cutthroat game of Fictionary, laughing their heads off, waiting for the rest of us to arrive. |
QUEENS COLLEGE – THE WAR YEARS
Marian J. S. Dale ’48
“Memory, memory, what do you want of me?”
Paul Verlaine, Nevermore
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”—January 1944, entering as freshmen during one of the coldest winters in my memory. We trudged through snowy paths from one building to the next to get shelter from the wind, catch our breath, and then proceed to the building we needed. The campus was the coldest place on earth with its low buildings on hilly terrain exposed to wind, rain, snow, anything that came along. Later, we waited for the bus at the end of the day, shivering, with red noses, numb fingers. It was the coldest place on earth.
My picture of college life came from the movies and magazines: Dances, football games, and romance. There was little or none of that during those years. Young men were in the service. The college did not have a football team. Were we in college or just an extension of high school? All too briefly a special army training unit was on campus, nice young men in uniform. We had a few dances, then the units were taken away and with them potential romance.
Marriage was a status symbol. The girls with wedding rings were admired. This was proof of desirability, adulthood. They were married women not quite out of their teen years. I met a girl that I had not seen in a while. She told me that she was married and had a “young ’un.” Then, defiantly, she said “I don’t miss college at all. I just don’t miss it.”
Contraception was not discussed in our college health classes. All the teacher could say was that “It exists.” Was the prohibition by law or social attitudes?
As for fashions, we were city kids from homes of varying income levels. We wore what was warm and affordable. There were few fashion plates.
The department stores opened “college shops” every fall with college salespersons (usually tall, blond, private college) to “advise” you what to wear. Special fashions were “collegiate,” such as plaid skirts, cashmere sweaters, and camel hair coats. Compare all that with today’s torn jeans.
Music came from the radio and the movies. “As Time Goes By,” we all know where that came from. Other songs, “Wrong” from Now Voyager, “The Last Time I Saw Paris,” “I’ll Be Seeing You,” nostalgic, emotional, have not lost their charm, and are still played today.
Cigarettes were sophisticated, glamorous, and, best of all, adult. They were part of a movie script, and the movies provided our role models. There was Paul Henreid lighting two cigarettes, one for him and one for Bette Davis. In To Have and Have Not, Lauren Bacall’s provocative use of a match and cigarette made us want to smolder, just as she did. Incredibly, opera stars and famous athletes endorsed cigarettes . . . all of this of course before the Surgeon General’s warning. Sadly, too many of our friends became habitual smokers and are gone.
There were service clubs, “canteens,” to entertain GIs and we were anxious to be “hostesses” in these clubs. After all, there were plenty of men to ask us to dance. If we had shaky egos about our attractiveness, these clubs gave us a strong boost.
There were staggering death tolls. The telegram that was dreaded. One came to our house. A cousin left Europe just prior to the Nazi invasion. As a non-citizen he did not have to join up. He felt obligated to the United States. He was killed on an obscure island in the South Pacific. Disbelief on my part. Maybe it was a mistake. He was hiding in a cave maybe. He will be found! It was no mistake. He was gone.
The war ended! The GI’s returned to campus. They were older than the rest of us and wore their beat-up service jackets—badges of honor. They looked dashing, hardened, and serious about their work.
The service clubs closed. Queens College was restored to a balanced male/female student body. Despite colossal losses this was the Good War. There would never be another.
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