[Saying good-bye to John Granville Newberry and Yale. SB SM]
Clockwise from top left: Bill Peck, Clyde Wilson, Brian Heaney, John. Photo: SB SM
Chronology
September, 1966
John moves into #58 Vanderbilt Hall on the Old Campus of Yale, where all freshmen are housed. I moves into #59, across the hall.
We are both sworn in to the United States Navy as Midshipmen on September 14.
John is very quiet. He is a fish out of water. Our classmates are from wealthy suburbs like Scarsdale, NY, Winnetka, IL, Shaker Heights, OH … bastions of wealth and privilege. We’re intimidated by the pomp and circumstance surrounding us. I’m a refugee from a rock and roll band. Suddenly we are two aliens on what is called the Old Campus, where all freshmen live.
We are required to wear jackets and ties to meals. Anti-war sentiment is beginning to run high. We both feel like aliens marching off to drill practice while everyone else is smoking dope and growing their hair long. No wonder we bonded!
John had to fill an language requirement, so took introductory French which was painfully difficult for him. We all had our crosses to bear.
1967
1967 was the Summer of Love, but I think we all knew that the Summer of Love would be followed by the Summer of Something Else. While everyone else was railing against the Establishment, John and I spent the summer on our Navy “cruises,” otherwise known as active duty.
Returning to New Haven in September, we moved into our residential colleges, where we would live for the next three years. Morse College, named for the inventor of the telegraph and designed by renowned Finnish designer Eno Saarinen, was our home for the next 3 years.
Our time at Yale, 1966-1970 was arguably the most tumultuous four-year period of the century. Here a few of the events that we witnessed:
Below is a glimpse of college life At Morse College. This is a Saturday, before a home football game at Yale Bowl. John’s date for the day was Ellen Snyder (red sweater), the sister of my future wife, Laura. Note the ubiquitous cigarettes and the prevalence of long hair, nearly unthinkable when we arrived on campus. At that time we were required to wear coat and ties to all meals and girls were not allowed in dorm rooms. The barriers fell quickly:
(These videos are primitive by today’s standards, so don’t feel compelled to watch in their entirety. They do provide a valuable glimpse into the tenor of the times.)
In March of 1969, John, Bill Peck, and I decided to make an epic road trip for spring break. Bill’s father insisted we take his big hog Plymouth Fury and we set out for Springfield, MO and points beyond. Our plan (so well thought-out) is that we would keep a journal that would later become the source of future income, our creativity–as we knew–being precious:
I still have the journal and it’s available to the highest bidder. Do I hear sixty cents … anyone?
Here are sample entries. Read ’em and weep …
Then we were introduced to the concept of “Dying Blackouts”:
And we made a float trip down the Gasconade River, which generated countless memories, most of which escape me now.
At some point, I won John’s sister Stephanie in a poker game. I never collected, however. I wonder if there’s a statute of limitations?
John and I again went our euphemistically described “summer cruises” with the US Navy, passing up the likes of Woodstock and the moon landing for, in my case, the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of Vietnam. A fringe benefit of being sent to a war zone is that we could purchase low price electronics at the PX. I bought a Super-8 movie camera in anticipation for a film course I was planning to take senior year.
My principal activity in college was theater, something I had never tried in high school, being a devoted jock. I enjoyed being part of the Morse Experimental Theatre (note pretentious spelling) and began recruiting my friends to join, John being one. He was reluctant to take the stage, but helped out a lot backstage. Eventually, he ventured out into the footlights and acquitted himself well.
He is shown above in the role of The Tippler in an original stage adaptation of Antoine de St. Exupery’s The Little Prince. (Truth be told, we were all little princes at that time … tipplers, too.)
Here are a couple songs from the show. The dark-haired fellow at whom John is staring quizzically, is James Naughton, who went on to a very successful career in films and on Broadway. You can hear him currently on the nightly news as the voice over in the Cialis commercials.
This video was based on the concept of “Dying Blackouts,” introduced by John as a ordinary vignette that abruptly ends with violent deaths. I gather it is somewhat of a Springfield/Newberry family tradition. This is my crudely-made interpretation:
John and I were bonded by the fact that we were both in the Naval ROTC program during a period when we (and everyone else around us) was violently opposed to the war in Vietnam. After my experience in the summer of 1969, I resigned from the program, which provided some short-term relief, but carried the risk of making me eligible for the dreaded draft. In hindsight I was a fool, but this was a case of Lady Luck taking care of drunks and fools
From Wikipedia: On December 1, 1969, the Selective Service System of the United States conducted two lotteries to determine the order of call to military service in the Vietnam War for men born from 1944 to 1950. These lotteries occurred during “the draft”—a period of conscription, controlled by the President, from just before World War II to 1973.
I lucked out. My lottery # was 338, meaning I would not have to serve. I won my bet. John must have felt badly for himself, but he was happy for me. That’s the kind of guy he was!
College campuses were grim place in the winter of 1970. Student strikes were happening everywhere. The Black Panthers were fueling the prospect of a racial war. The US invaded Cambodia. But these were the so-called Bright College Years, and we were not about to let them pass us by. We were in Fen Sartorius’s off-campus apartment one bleak Friday night at loose ends. The conversation went something like this:
“Whuddya wanna do?”
“I dunno … there’s nothing to do.”
“This is Mardi Gras weekend in New Orleans.”
“Lotta good that does us.”
“You know, they celebrate Mardi Gras in Quebec City, too.”
“Huh?”
Within minutes five of us were in Fen’s well-worn Volvo, heading north on what proved to be the ultimate road trip of our college career:
Mardi Gras ended and we returned to the last few months to the finish line. Back in reality, things only deteriorated. Kent State happened. The Black Panthers invaded New Haven for the trial of Bobby Seale. Finals were cancelled. John would be going off to sea. That much was certain. For the rest of us the uncertainty was that we had no idea what would be happening next.
No one had a plan, but John knew he would be going into the Navy.