“Finally, in a ‘get even mode,’ I recall moving our RA’s entire room outside between the four dorms. We took his carpet and put it on the ground, set up all his furniture on the rug, turned on a light, and even turned on his radio. What a treat to see his reaction!
my 25th reunion, staying in a dorm room with my wife, and not having to put wrap a towel on the door knob.”
“And of course, who could forget taking tires and placing them on the Sagehen flagpole as a salute to our ‘frenemies.’ This was accomplished despite my position on the Student Court to provide ‘justice’ to students who violated the student code.”
RBBARTLETT01@GMAIL.COM
James Cameron reports that his fondest memory was playing on the CMC
baseball team and spending a summer with the team in the Netherlands, where each attendee lived with a Dutch family. “My family lived in Eindhoven. The head of the household worked at a factory not far from his home. Each weekday afternoon and weekend we would drive to a local baseball field to teach the local youth how to play baseball. On workdays, I would borrow the family bicycle and ride for hours crossing a totally flat land or watch the World Cup soccer tournament on TV being played in England. This got me interested in soccer, and later in life, I became a certified U.S. soccer referee. At summers end, the baseball team traveled to Amsterdam, where we played and won a multi-team tournament against a U.S. military team based in Germany. We then returned to the United States and to CMC with a fond memory that stays with me to this day.” John Andron briefly added this memory, “Oddly enough, the first thing
that came to my mind were the girls. There were so many, and they were so much fun.” On the topic of memorable professors, Roger Nelson listed Orme Phelps with his corn cob pipe and frequent comment, “doncha see?” An archetypal, straight-shooting Oklahoman, he put 20 essay questions on the board the first day of class. He pointed to them and said, “I will pick some of these for the mid-term and some for the final. I see that some of you are wondering why I would give you the questions in advance. The answer is simple. If you can write knowledgeably and answer these questions, I will have done my job as a teacher and you will have done yours as a student.” “I chose CMC over Occidental and UC Santa Barbara,” wrote John Ahorn, “because I was kind of pre-law/international relations. By the end of my freshman year, I changed my major to theatre. I had a personal interview with George C.S. Benson over the fact that CMC had no major in that field. I pointed out that we could pursue courses at any of the four northern colleges. We finally agreed on a literature major with a theatre minor. All of this was due to Jesse Swan, who taught at both Scripps and CMC. He changed my life. “I am now a retired member of SAG-AFTRA and Actor’s Equity. I also teach literature at Santa Monica Emeritus College for seniors over 55 (Shakespeare, the American Novel, as well as a History of Comedy class). I still evoke Ricardo Quinones (who of that era does not?), Durward Pointer (great seminar on Arthurian myth), and Ladell Payne as mentors. I have close friendships from those salad days of the mid-late ‘60s, including Ray Drummond, from whom I got a roommate’s lesson in jazz, and two actors from Pomona College, Randy Craig, and Walker (Time) Ryan. “I became very liberalized while at CMC, enjoying the artists, poets, writers, light shows, and the thrill of new learning with my classmates. There were trips to Mt. Baldy in the snow, Stinky’s and the Midway Inn, a place where I spent so much time carousing. Fond memories abound. As I turn 75 this year, I salute CMC as it does the same.” John Carl added this note, “Harold Rood’s courses on international relations taught me to ‘think critically,’ which has been a blessing throughout my life, both professionally and personally. My favorite memory of CMC was attending
ROBIN BARTLETT CLASS LIAISON ’66, ’67, ’68
1969
Gene Hewett proudly remembers, “Before the end of my senior year, several of my poems, including ‘Notes from an Angry Black Man,’ ‘Dark Shades,’ and ‘Who Am I?’, as well as a short story titled ‘Soul Set Number 5,’ were published in The Collegian.”
ROB BLY ’69 ROB.BLY@GMAIL.COM
1970
Glenn Waring remembers, “I recall the entire suite’s effort to get a certain student’s senior thesis in on time. We had guys writing, re-writing, and typing. Happily, on the stroke of 5 p.m., the senior raced down the quad and caught Orme Phelps just as he was leaving. Phelps said, ‘Hello, Mr. X. I didn’t expect to see you today.’ Ta-da! Twenty years later, I was associated with a fellow student from the class of 1970, but I’d never met him at CMC. He noticed my writing style matched his and gave me a call. Ha! In those years CMC students ground out eight pages an hour 24/7, we calculated—I hadn’t realized we had style!” Neil Yeager remembers, “Water fights in Green Hall. This was, of course, when Green Hall was still a concrete pillbox and virtually indestructible, instead of being the dolled-up place it is now. In those days, the floors were cement (uncarpeted), and if you lived on the second floor, you could pump water into the room below through cracks in the floor, effectively making it ‘rain’ and requiring the occupants to exhaust their week’s supply of towels. This was done with the use of surgical tubing filled with water from the nozzle-like shower heads we had in those days. Surgical tubing and a dog dish were also useful in making three-person slingshots to lob water balloons over the dorm roof, mortar-style, onto Parents Field during intramurals. Ah, many were the times when waterfalls ran off of the second floor!” Bob Zobel recalls, “I remember a bar—something of a dive—that was about
five minutes from campus called The Midway. The Midway had 75-cent pitcher nights (yes, 75 cents!). We would sit in a large group around a couple of tables, and whenever we were out of beer, we would pass an ashtray around the table so people would throw in quarters. We bought as much beer as we had money in the ashtray.” John Flegel writes in, “I am happy to add a few notes. These are some of the
entries I made to our class of 1970 50th Reunion book. (Unfortunately, with COVID, we never had a reunion.) “I attended CMC, then a men’s college between 1966 and 1970. During my freshman year, my roommate and I opened a poster shop in downtown Claremont, selling black light posters advertising many of the popular rock ‘n’ roll groups at the time. Other students invested in the store, and though it never made money, we were able to pay the rent and have fun selling posters. During my sophomore year, along with Walt Brown and Jon Duncan, I organized a ‘gimmick’ car rally which we advertised as the BFD rally. “During our junior year, Richard Landers and I spent our year in Vienna, Austria as students at the University of Vienna under the auspices of the Institution of European Studies (now just IES.) It was a most memorable experience. “My favorite professors at CMC were Martin Diamond and Harry Jaffa. I was in Professor Jaffa’s freshman Political Science class, and then again as a senior, I took a course he offered, the Politics of Shakespeare. There were only three other students in the class. I took a class from Professor Diamond as
Claremont McKenna College 93.