“The comment was worth everything,” Limpert says. “‘You have taken a very small subject and handled it very well.’”

An avid writer in college, Limpert was elected president of the Lampoon­—a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine—in 1954.

“I can’t say the things that I wrote for the Lampoon are hilarious,” Limpert says. “I was amused, let’s put it that way. In those days if the writer is amused that was quite sufficient.” (Some things never change.)

The Lampoon is “much more professional I think today than it was when I was there,” Limpert says. “We thought of ourselves as gifted amateurs. I’m not sure we were, but we thought of ourselves that way.”

Limpert also says that the Harvard campus was a more urbane place when he was a student 50 years ago.

“Those were very gentle days. We didn’t have the experiences of the ’60s to guide us. We were a very sedate group,” he says, adding that he feels “badly that there is a lack of what I will call urbanity to Harvard today.”

In addition, Limpert laments the loss of what he calls “New England and Boston influence” on Harvard life. While he considers some aspects of Puritan sensibility “laughable,” Limpert says that its values promoted the ideal of a serious, earnest life.

“I really do feel very strongly that some of that Puritan influence was very valuable,” he says. “Don’t forget that Harvard started as a place to train ministers and it’s gotten about as far away from that as you can possibly get.”

And Harvard, to the Brooklyn-born Limpert, also offered a reprieve from the unbridled materialism of New York City. He says he remembers Boston as a place where intellect was privileged above all else.

“New York was always a place where the making of money was the most important thing in the world,” Limpert says. “Contrast that with the Boston of [the 1950s], where the most important thing was the life of the mind. In Boston they ask, ‘What do you know?’ In New York, they ask, ‘How much are you worth?’”

Nonetheless, Limpert would choose to return to New York after his four years at Harvard were finished.

MOMA-MIA!

As Commencement loomed, Limpert began mulling over his career options. John H. Updike ’54, his predecessor as Lampoon president, encouraged his literary pursuits.

“He said to me, ‘What are you thinking of doing when you get out of college? Aren’t you going to write?’” Limpert recalls. “I say, ‘John, anything I can think of to say about life I can say in three sentences.’ He said, ‘Well, then write those three sentences.’”

Limpert decided to stick with writing, though not in the style he had cultivated at Harvard. He started to work at a public information office for the U.S. Army, where he developed a crisp, clean form learned from the news reporters on assignment there.