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Schine at Harvard: Boy With the Baton

Copyright by The Harvard CRIMSON, May 7, 1954.

Despite such antics, most people agree that he could be quite socially mature and was remarkably urbane, poised and glib for his age. Almost everybody agrees that he rarely if ever lost control of himself. He was a fastidious dresser, although salesmen at J. Press, where be bought most of his clothes, remember him as "Not our type of dresser; more the 'California' type."

One thing universally said is that he very much appreciated things done for him and always remembered favors. He was very generous with people who had done things for him (though he never extended this to his class fund to which he has never given) and usually remembered them at Christmas with packages of fruit from the Wiggins Tavern in Northampton which is owned by the Schine chain.

Never in Honors

And yet few people genuinely liked him. The only three who could be located are Pete and Charlie of the Crimson Men's Shop, who both remember him as a "really nice fellow," and Tony Vento, the Adams House janitor who served as Schine's valet.

Vento, now an assistant superintendent of PBH, got to know Schine very well and did a lot of work for him, took his clothes to the cleaners, and did odd jobs. They became quite close friends, and Schine visited Vento's house for dinner several times.

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Vento remembers him as a "Great fellow. He was never stuck-up. He spoke well of everybody, and was friendly with everybody. He was a good-living, clean-living boy."

Asked about the present fracas, Vento says, "I don't believe any of the things they're saying about him. I just got a letter from him saying he was having a fine time in the Army. He would never try to got out of the Army, and I'm sure he wants to serve as a private. That's the kind of guy he is."Schine's most famous exploit while with the McCarthy Committee as an unpaid consultant was his trip to Europe with Chief Counsel Roy Cohn to investigate the United States Information Service and the Voice of America. For this trip they were labeled "Junketeering gumshoes" by Theodore Khagan. The two are shown above during their visit to Rome.

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