Three months later, he was at Harvard in a cast. "I called John [P.] Marquand [master of Dudley House] and told him I needed an apartment because of my leg. When I got here, a key was waiting for me."

Having progressed from directionless in high school to highly-motivated in the Marines and academically confident at Riverside. Hamlin "turned to people and a global perspective" at Harvard. "I felt like I had made it, that it was all over," he says. "It wasn't." But he knew "they weren't going to stump me on any exam or catch me off guard," and he proceeded to "cultivate and cash in on contacts and connections." He sums up his philosophy about the University by declaring: "If you want Harvard to take care of you, you have to seek it out. You have to use it. Connections and resources are no good unless they're used."

At Harvard, Hamlin aggressively cultivated both academic and social contacts. As treasurer of the D.U. (one of Harvard's finals clubs), he made a connection that saved his father's life. Hamlin's normally powerful voice lowers to a reverent tone as he tells the story. "My dad had had his right lung removed because of cancer and six unsuccessful operations on his left lung. I was talking with [eardiologist] Dr. Powell at a D.U. club function, and he referred me to Dr. Herman Grillo, the leading bronchial tracheologist.

"I spoke with Dr. Grillo, and he said he'd look at my dad and maybe work on him. My dad flew here from California, and the doctor fixed him up at Mass General. Today, my dad is as healthy as you or I. We're eternally grateful."

Hamlin made contacts of a much less serious nature during a one-year stint in Quincy House and he retains several fond memories. He says his advanced age did not bother him that much, though he was disturbed by what he terms "some immaturity."

"It was upsetting to see people do immature things, like tear down posters, carve on walls, knock down stakes in the Yard, write on tables. I had thought Harvard would be a cut above, but I learned people are just human. It's hard to accept, and a little absurd to be destroving things when the same people 20 years from now will be giving money to Harvard, if their parents aren't already. It's not what I expected. The Marines would never have put up with that crap."

Hamlin, however, is not above a little mischief. Last year, a few of his buddies at the Pi Eta club got drunk and headed over to Quincy House where demonstrators were protesting the showing of Deep Throat in the House dining hall. "We made up a couple of banners and marched into the building chanting. 'Don't miss the boat, see Deep Throat.' We thought the First Amendment issue had precedence," the Government concentrator explains.

Like many undergraduates, Hamlin will also remember the more trivial protests he was involved in. One morning at breakfast, he recalls, a cockroach crawled out from under his scrambled eggs. He was furious, and he asked to speak to the dining ball manager "but I never raised my voice or swore. I know how to do that sort of thing."

The manager complained to the House master, and Hamlin was called into the master's office. "I didn't know what it was all about. I was scared. Then the master said, 'About that cockroach...'" But Hamlin didn't want to squander his upward mobility by making a fuss over a hungry roach. "It was a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. But I was worried, I thought: 'Is my degree in jeopardy? My future?' This master was pretty mad because the manager was outraged. I never got a chance to confront the guy."

He lived off-campus this year with his second wife, Cristi, "a fantastic, sweet, person, almost naive in her honesty," whom he met at Riverside. "People say you can't make long-distance relationships work. We made ours work, with phone calls and letters. I told her, 'I'm not a monk, I'm a Marine.' She told me to be discreet."

Next year he and Cristi will take their dream to its logical extreme. "I hate to seem so money-minded. I've gone through a lot, accomplished a lot, and I want to be financially secure. Where have I been the last nine years except under somebody in control of me?" he asks. "It's really nice to have options." So Hamlin will move into real estate in California, where he says "interest rates will have to go down" to the point where he will be able to cash in on the boom.

He plans to eventually dabble in politics. "I always will be issue-oriented, organizing people. I might get elected to a school board, become mayor of a small town--I'm a country boy--then maybe state rep, national representative, and who knows? If that leads to a senate seat, well..."

He will play it by ear. But he will not allow the chips to fall as they may. Hamlin belongs in the tradition of the self-made. And Harvard has proved an appropriate milieu for a proud ex-Marine. He has dissolved the tension between "We" and "Me" by choosing the latter, without hesitation or prevarication. Yet he maintains a fundamental unselfishness and deep loyalty to those who have helped him on his way.

"There's a good quote from Stairway to Heaven," he says. "I tell it to juvenile delinquents in the hall where I do some counseling: 'There are two paths you can go by/But in the long run, you can always change the one you're on.' I did. I made myself proud of myself. That's why I do volunteer work: I have something to share."

The distance between the Saigon embassy and the paths of the Yard is incalculable. But whether Chuck Hamlin is pushing helicopters off carriers, cramming for an exam, or selling real estate, he is doing it. Bold assertion belongs to a previous time, perhaps, but that hasn't stopped him.