Former Harvard classmates of Massachusetts Governor William F. Weld '66 say they never doubted the extroverted Adams House resident would make a name for himself.

But most thought he would do this behind a lectern, not in the State House.

I remember the sense we all shared that Bill Weld was destined to be a leading player someday or the other, " says Mitchell L. Adams '66, a fellow Adams House resident. "His performance was so impressive in everything he did and his marks were so good that we knew he was destined to accomplish a lot.

What distinguished Weld as an undergraduate was his intelligence and keen wit, say friends who knew the 48-year-old Republican governor during his Harvard years.

Not only did Weld, a classics concentrator, excel in academics, he also participated in a myriad of extracurricular and social campus activities.

And unlike his leading Democratic gubernatorial opponents, who also attended Harvard, the governor chose to delay his entrance into the political arena until after college, choosing instead to pursue his intel- lectual and artistic interests at Harvard.

Friends remember that Weld seemed to breezethrough all his classes, enabling him to devotehis free time to many other interests.

"I remember that he got A's in Greek classeswhich I could never get A's in. He just sailedthrough the difficult classes always making A's"says Robert T. Bledsoe '66, another Adams Houseresident.

The governor had an impressive academic recordat Harvard. He was one of only 45 students in hisclass to graduate summa cum laude, he was a PhiBeta Kappa member, he received a Detur Prize and aJohn Harvard Scholarship and he presented theLatin Oration at the 1966 Commencement ceremonies.

When it came time for Weld to choose anupperclass house, friends say they did not expectWeld--whose prestigious family name adorns afirst-year dormitory and a boathouse--to choosethe artistic and diverse Adams House.

But Weld, educated at Middlesex school, choseto reside in Adams which the 1966 yearbookdescribed as a house "with an image that rangesfrom the lascivious to the simplylaissez-faire...Adams expresses its charismathrough music, drama, scorpion--almost every formof creative activity including the creation of agood time."

Friends of Weld say Adams House had alwaysearned the reputation for being an exciting andeventful house.

"Adams was like a Renaissance Florentineacademy," former resident James E. Maraniss '66says. "It was a place where you were anintellectual and an aesthete. However, there wasalso a slight aura of decadence there."

The house dining hall was a popular reunionplace where Weld and his friends would discuss avariety of social and cultural issues, thegovernor's classmates say.

"We used to argue about a lot of differentsubjects. No topic was taboo...that was the justthe spirit of Adams House," Douglas M. Cameron '66says. "In our discussions, the more ideas peoplehad, the better."

"We used to have such intense conversationsthat people used to pull napkins out of thecontainer and draw their arguments on them,"Cameron adds.