While I had some outstanding professors, there were a few who exhibited bizarre behaviors … Here are the notable three:
1) all students seeking teaching certification had to take speech. If not successful, there would be no certification. Neither Tom Brokaw nor Barbara Walters would have passed in those days … speech impediments were verboten. Initially, my speech class appeared rather typical … half girls, half guys. Additionally, we had three African fellows. By the end of the semester only the females and the Africans were still enrolled. Rumour had it that our prof had propositioned each of the White guys and they dropped out. My story isn’t quite as exciting. It turned out that I wrote and delivered pretty decent speeches. I carried an A from the beginning to the end of the semester. So, you can imagine my surprise when a great big B appeared on my transcript. Knowing it had to be an error, I went to see Prof. Speech Dude. He told me that there was no mistake. Why, asked I … Are you ready? He said that while all my speeches were As that I didn’t improve. He was compelled to give me the B. While he was not invited back to teach the next semester, that B remains on my transcript today. It wouldn’t have been such a stunning turn of events had I not dug such a huge hole for myself first semester.
2) Then there was time that I had to leave just before the exam in a course. My beloved Uncle Joe had died suddenly and I needed to be home for two days. It wasn’t a big deal with the college nor the prof. When I returned to school, I got in touch with the professor regarding a make up exam. He offered to give it to me at his apartment. I declined. I took it in his office. When I returned at the appointed time to get my grade, I had a choice of grades. With a lascivious look and an equally provocative statement, he told me that I had fallen directly between the A and the B. He offered me my choice. I took the B.
3) When I was ready to graduate with my Masters in English, my department Chair, always a cordial and kind man to
me turned cold and angry when I told him that I had accepted a position at the U of Buffalo. When I inquired why he was so upset with me, he said, “We thought you would stay on at Albany, get the doctorate in English and teach with us.” This was the first of many times in my life that there was an expectation of clairvoyance. I had absolutely no idea … had I, it would have changed virtually everything about my life and career. I believe in angels. I have to think that they moved me … move all of us around … but why?
When I landed in Albany as a Freshman, it was called the the State University of New York College of Education at Albany, then it was the State University College at Albany and then the State University of New York at Albany … had I arrived earlier it would have been the State Normal School, the New York State Normal College and the New York State College for Teachers. Who could afford all those sweatshirts???? What began as a school to educate teachers became a major player as a solid university. Today, I would put my education there against anyone from Harvard, Yale, Brown, et. al. We had amazing professors especially in the English Department. It has been an education that serves me very well. It was always a great financial challenge but well worth it. How these babies today can ever dig themselves out from under their student loans is beyond me. After nine years in college, my loans came due when I started to teach. Granted, I made under ten thousand yearly, and it took ten years at $55.52 monthly, but it was do-able especially since I was not profligate after a quarter century of living under the poverty line. These kids today have student loan payments equivalent to mortgages. There is something very wrong with this system.
All through the years, I have asked myself what I would do as a career given the change in times … no longer is it necessary for girls to pick marriage to someone willing to support them, secretarial, nursing or teaching … they can be whomever they choose. I know the answer after all these years. I would, God willing, be a teacher.
My first marriage ended 45 years ago and those of my vintage understand that memories fade so there are not many really vivid ones to recall. However, there are a few …
1) Jerry was a doc so he had a few shekels to spend on his greatest love … Mercedes … not a lady, an automobile. I swore that he spent more time at the dealership on Main Street in Buffalo than anywhere else. One year, for my birthday, he surprised me with a new car. Independent and, as I realize now, stupid, I insisted that it be returned and that I get what I requested … READY? a new pair of Bass Weegan loafers!!! I still have those loafers today. They are an absolute horror … torn, worn and just ridiculous. I once took them to a shoe repair in Westvale and the gentleman said, “Lady, if these mean so much to you, wrap them up in plastic and put them on a shelf in the closet.” Apparently, they were a bit beyond repair. Do you know what a 1969 Mercedes would fetch today … me neither. And, do you realize that when men begin any sentence with “Lady” that what is to follow is seldom what we wish to hear?
2) In my third year of grad school at UB, and no longer a child-undergrad, I went to a hair salon. Dressed in typical college attire, cut-offs and a University sweatshirt, I may have passed for 18, but that was no excuse for the behavior of the receptionist. She gave me short shrift when I asked a question and kept me on hold far too long waiting for a simple hair cut. I cannot now recall why someone else made my next appointment but when I arrived, again dressed in my college uniform, she couldn’t have been more pleased to see me. I suspect she was not only the receptionist, but also the owner. She told me how my husband’s “girl” had called and how they would take excellent care of me. Now, because I was Mrs. Dr. B., I was pure gold. I never returned to that shop.
It was a Saturday morning … the only day of that week when I had neither 6 a.m. kitchen duty nor an early class. I was in my Freshman year and rather startled to open my door to two students whom I didn’t know. They said they were from the Yearbook and asked if I would very quickly write a piece eulogizing another freshman who had taken a lethal combo of alcohol and pills during the night. I vaguely did know that boy because he either was in a class or worked the kitchen now and again. He was so handsome and eighteen years old. There was some speculation that he was homesick and depressed. Years later, I wondered if he might have been trying unsuccessfully to live a life that wasn’t true to his nature. Today, I would put my last dime on it. Born a few decades later, he might not have felt the need to exit with the whole world waiting for all the wonderful things he might do with his life. We can only wonder how very many young people continue to opt out of life nearly fifty years later.
College was a rather alien concept to my parents. Somehow whenever I left home, time was suspended until I returned. My life went on at school but not so much in their minds. I was in Albany on November 22, 1963. As dorm president, it was my duty to tell my dormmates that the dance they were so looking forward to was cancelled. It was a bear of a decision because of the excitement level and all the work that had gone into it but the absolute only proper decision to make. That entire week was consumed with sadness. Our President … the President whose youth, good looks and charisma fueled our generation to do great things … to go into the Peace Corps … to give politics a second thought … to be the best we could be … our President was dead. we didn’t know it then but he was the first of three of our heroes to take an assassin’s bullet. We crowded around a single black and white television to see Mrs. Kennedy’s bloody pink suit, the swearing in of the abrasive Texan VP as our new President … we cried as the caissons carried our JFK’s body along Pennsylvania Avenue and our young hearts ached as baby JohnJohn saluted the casket … We watched and we felt every emotion that America felt. And, when I made my weekly call to home, my mother asked if I had heard that President Kennedy was dead. I had heard.
Between 1967-69, I did my 2nd & 3rd years of grad school at the University of Buffalo in the Psych Dept. My Department Chair and Professor was Dr. Richard Siggelkow. He was a very good teacher and I liked him very much. My favorite story to tell on the old boy (I thought he was an older gent in those days from my youthful perch) was that whenever one desk became overwhelmed with papers and books that he had another one brought into his office. By the time I was graduated, he had four with a very real need for Number 5. Today, I read his obit in the Buffalo Evening News. He has died at the age of 96 (on May 9, 2014). I have been in Buffalo for 12 years and never once considered that he might still be on terra firma. Oh, the stories I could have told him of the last 45 years! And, what more might I have learned sitting at desk number 27 or 32?
I was never good at math. Thus, Miss Addie was thrilled to see the E on my first college transcript. She ignored my As, Bs, Cs and two Ds and put her full delight in that one grade of “Excellent.” That I was in a very deep hole that would take a summer and another semester to pull out of … that didn’t compute. That E in math was HUGE! While I learned early on that lying would never serve me well, that particular sin of omission was sooo necessary. It was a few decades later that I told her that my university gave out only these grades: A, B, C, D & E. None of us, as students, knew why. Still don’t. But all those years ago this kiddo was very grateful for that E.
I started out working the kitchen in the dorm at U Albany … gathering food, setting tables, serving, clearing, etc. If one ever needs a lesson in humility, that would be it. Having to wear a nylon blue uniform with pad and pencil in apron pocket … made to stand perfectly still and silent … to run and fetch … all for your dormmates as they enjoy their breakfast and dinner. It was the perfect job to teach one to keep the eye on the prize. By the third year, RA (resident assistant) jobs were there, if one was lucky. I was lucky. We had a floor to work … to keep somewhat orderly in terms of helping students where help was needed … and making sure none got themselves in untenable situations. After five years there, I was ready for the next job … mind you, these jobs paid for room & board & tuition (or parts thereof) so each was critical to being able to get the degree necessary for not falling back to waiting tables. So, with that foundation, I was able to secure the job of Dorm Director while working on the next step … the degree allowing the recent table mistress to wander around in the heads of the unsuspecting.
So … being a dorm director in the mid-1960s was a real treat. We were still harbouring ideas of in loco parentis while the outside world was in the midst of all sorts of “revolutions” … the sexual revolution … the civil rights movement … weed abundant and relevant to the times … Viet Nam protests. Timothy Leary came to the Buffalo campus as did the Black Panthers and Dick Gregory. It was moderately amusing to watch White students rallying around a “Get Whitey” speech but equally disturbing as well … to see the former prof, Leary, stoned out of his mind and making virtually no sense while getting a contact high oneself … to live for two years in a dorm apartment located above the U’s recruitment office … where Dow Chemical, supplier of “stuff” for the war a world away was being picketed and threatened with being blown sky high … indeed, it was an education in and of itself! During these years, I felt very responsible for the 125+ girls in my charge … I was far too young to fully understand that I had as much control over their well-being as the mouse does the hawk. But I did my very best. Over and over, I tried to impress upon them the dangers lurking all around them.
One evening, there was quite a commotion at the end of the first floor corridor leading to my apartment. Five girls from two different rooms had barricaded themselves in one of their rooms. The RA had come running for me. We were both puzzled. Once I was able to get the girls out and in the apt., I asked what could possibly have created the need for their bizarre behavior. They said they were being harassed by the other girls. Although I like to imagine that I have a certain colour blindness where people are concerned, it was pretty easy to notice five Black girls in one dorm on a campus of twenty thousand dormies and townees. These were tough kids from NYC but wildly outnumbered and quite possibly very sensitive to being a severe minority for the first time in their young lives. There was no proof, no one was being pointed to as a perpetrator … it was a stand off. The one thing that I clearly recall was asking why they didn’t tell the RA. The answer: “She was like the pO-lice.” Well, why not tell me? says I. The answer: “You is like the Chief of pO-lice.” I was a bit insulted but somehow we all reached detente. We so often think of Blacks as in the minority … and, indeed, they are when overall US stats are considered. But these girls came from a place where they were always a majority … think Harlem … where homes, schools, stores, theaters, etc. are all contained in a circumscribed area. That dorm, that university, took them as far from their comfort zone as a trip to Zimbabwe might have been to their very Caucasian peers.
The girls were just tasting freedom for the first time … so unlike our college students fifty years later … boys, drugs, booze, late hours … FREEDOM … from home, parents, siblings, teachers, clergy, and any all who might draw the chain close to the jugular. From my first monthly meeting in September to the last in June, I begged them to not walk the campus alone at night. Sadly, over and over, I had to deal with a drunk girl who had been grabbed or nearly grabbed as she struggled on the route from a main Street bar back to Schoellkopf at some late hour. Hysterics were always abundant and the campus security force not quite up to the task.
