On the way to Lowell, I spent a term at the Claverly Senior House, into whose small courtyard on Saturday nights spilled revelers from the Pudding. They upset one roommate who used the dark space to watch the stars through a telescope whose lens he had ground himself. Another roommate invented and built a portable podium for the Glee Club.

The Apathy League was organized; nobody came to the meetings. Robert Frost "said" his poems in Sanders Theatre, and Mrs. Roosevelt told us about the United Nations. The Lowell House Musical Society produced Handel's opera, Acis and Galatea as well as Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell. A vigorous Brattle Theatre Company presented many plays.

The 'Other' College

Women could not participate in Harvard's extracurricular activities, nor use the new Lamont Library. Their access to Widener was restricted, but co-education prevailed in fact. We were occasionally invited to Radcliffe for social events called Jolly-Ups, which some 'Cliffies claimed stood for Jollier Upstairs, without men.

Many were pleased to attend classes at Harvard, but proud of Radcliffe's independence. In the Yard, you could invite a woman (a girl, they were called) to your room in the afternoon: one girl required two chaperones, two couples required one chaperone and three couples were on their own. Sergeant Toomey of the Yard Cops enforced these "parietal rules," picked up Bursar's Cards and was particularly active in November, 1949, when the visitors from Princeton raised a riot.

Joan McPartlin, who was appointed The Crimson's first Radcliffe correspondent, started the path to the eventual election of the first women editors.

Beyond the Yard

My G.I. Bill ran out during the junior year, and I worked for the Boston Herald as the Harvard stringer.

One busy day, I covered the appearance of Jane Russell at a demonstration by a student committee that the Leverett House Dining Hall was geometrically a trapezium. Miss (sic) Russell declined to have her measurements taken by student anthropologists and sociologists with a caliper that looked like ice tongs. I treasure her picture signed: "To Hoag, with love. Jane."

Later that night, I reported to the rewriteman at the Herald that some MIT guys had parked a steamroller in front of the President's house on Quincy Street. A smallish steamroller.

Popular restaurants, aside from Jim Cronin's beer hall, included the Wursthaus, The Armpit, The Oxford Grille and Hayes-Bickford. Some of the older students organized permanent seminars in Salzburg where the intellectuals of Europe could meet those of the U.S. Some married students, who made up about one percent of the class, lived in Quonset huts.

Father Feeney of St. Paul's Church was stripped of his priestly functions for doctrinal violations, but stayed in tumultuous charge for quite a while.

The Mark Calculator Series was in development in the Computation Laboratory. When, together with the Graduate Center, the World Tree was inaugurated in 1949, somebody wrote: "Of all the work of Walter Gropius, this cosmic hat rack is the dopius."

A World Encroaching

The Cold War was ubiquitous. We were testing our briefly-Communist exclusive atom bomb in Bikini. The Soviets took over Eastern Europe and Communists tried to take France, Greece and the Dardanelles. Containment began. Some of us heard the announcement of the Marshall Plan at Commencement in 1947. Supporters of an accommodation with Stalin collided with opponents in many student organizations.

The Government began to investigate security risks. Would my own career be threatened by having read the Communist Manifesto in Gov. 1? F.O. Matthiessen, an icon to those of us concentrating in American history and lit, spoke on behalf of Henry A. Wallace, the accommodationist third-party candidate at the Progressive Party Convention in 1948. Wallace had attracted many supporters at Harvard. In early 1950, widely attacked in the press, Matthiessen jumped to his death from a hotel window.

On June 25, 1950, shortly after Commencement, the North Koreans invaded the South. The next year, around Commencement time, on June 3, 1951, Lt. Douglas H.T. Bradlee, the big, red-haired lineman, died while fighting with the 1st Marine Division.