AT M.I.T. IN CAMBRIDGE

After a  satisfactory childhood and youth, in the fall of 1937 I was sent to M.I.T., to study aeronautical engineering. It was M.I.T. because my secondary school advisors felt that the heavy homework would keep me out of the pool halls, (to borrow a phrase). Aero engineering, because I had enjoyed working with model airplanes as a hobby, and because the profession sounded romantic.

After a first year of basics, one of the aeronautics professors tried to talk me out of  the idea of trying to work in the field. Aero engineering, he said, was a nomadic life, moving from contract to contract, unless one went into teaching, or government service and he wouldn’t recommend that to anybody. But I was stubborn, and this was a time when even people in the Economics Dept., a generation ahead of its subsequent greatness, were talking about subsistence farming. Talk about nearsightedness, with a major War only two years away!  

I had joined a local fraternity, with the distinction of having Richard Feynman as one of its  resident members. I didn’t know in advance that he was there, or even after I  got to live with him that he was a genius, destined to become one of the greatest physicists of this century, a Nobel prize winner, a legendary teacher and unforgetable personality. All I saw was a very sharp young man, who as a sophomore was helping physics seniors, who was pleasant and tolerant of lesser brains, at least of mine, and a great joker. I saw him performing some arcane experiments in our common rooms with simple things, and was careful not to sit too close to him at dinner, because of his gravity-defying manipulations with full glasses of water. I’d like to be able to say that knowing him at school influenced my life, but I really was more impressed by his beautiful and adoring intended, who came to visit him at school, suitably chaperoned by both her mother and father. Dropping his name did help me later on from time to time, when I had to deal with some  excessively self-important scientist.

Pressing on, from the outset, I loaded up on all the liberal arts electives I could (I even played Caesar in my Sophomore English class’s production of Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, against some graduate student’s wife. She embarrassed the hell out of me by cuddling up to me on stage in a very filmy tunic—obviously a set-up job)  I got A’s (or Tech equivalent, H’s) in all these non -engineering courses, against more modest grades in the rest, so I ended up graduating with an honors grade point average, and membership in Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering society.

I believe this rather strange election may have been fortuitous since soon after graduation it became evident that, in a large organization, a literate and articulate so-so engineer had a big advantage, success-wise, over the usual mechanical or electrical whiz with the presentation skills of Grog.  At least at that time.  I think that in today’s high-technology world, this distinction may not be as applicable.

For extra-curricular activities, I was involved in the management of the M.I.T Glee Club, and was its baritone soloist. To drop another name, the 2nd tenor next to me in the Club’s Octet was the kid brother of Dorothy DeLay, who even then was legendary as a teacher of future great musical soloists.

I was in the ROTC and learned to fly Piper Cubs under the Government’s prewar Civilian  Pilot Training.Program. The singing just faded away. The flying, too, as soon as Pearl Harbor day came. (I’d been called up in the preceding August as a non-rated "chairborne" Air Corps type.) I picked up flying again in 1974, and went on to become instrument rated, and to do a lot of recreational flying, That stopped about ten years ago, when I started getting just a tad absent minded (I switched to building and flying radio-controlled models.)

We "Tech" students weren’t just greasy grinds, as the Harvard men liked to tell their dates. We had our moments. For example, there’s this little episode:

Because I had so badly subverted the grade-point average system by loading up in my Freshman and Sophomore years on easy liberal arts subjects, I was elected to Tau Beta Pi in my junior year. (Of course some of the real engineers scored even better)  I was active in managing and singing in the  Glee Club. My management duties included negotiating joint concerts with women’s colleges and schools in the vicinity. We’d usually show up with 40 to 60 men, to more than 100 girls. . That made the balance of voices about right, and the women to men ratio at the formal dances which usually followed just peachy.

Now the only obligation we Tau Beta Pi foot soldiers had was to show up at the induction of new members into the Society. Well, it came to pass that we had such an event on an afternoon in which we had scheduled a joint concert with the Kathryn Gibbs School for Girls in Providence that evening, and it was to be a high point of our performance year. I was to do a little solo in the middle of the program. I couldn’t cover the afternoon event and then drive to Providence in time for the concert. What a dilemma!

It turned out that there was another man with the same problem. He was a Dupont, and had his own light plane, A Stinson Voyager, hangared at Logan Airport . So we both showed up at the Tau Beta Pi induction in formal clothes, patent leather shoes and all, which undoubtedly impressed the inductees. As soon as we could get away gracefully, we made a mad dash to the airport, to find a nice strong wind right down the runway. This made for a stiff cross wind  at the right-angled taxi way, wet with afternoon drizzle.

Well, the Voyager had a very large vertical tail which made for a vicious tendency to weathercock into the wind.  Guess who was dragged by the wing tip, over the wet pavement and through the grass verge, so we could get to the runway and line up for take off?

We made it to the concert just in time for me to walk to the front of the stage for my solo. Our professional conductor glowered fiercely at me, and then laughed with everyone else at the sounds my wet patent leather shoes made. And about the following dance. I squished through one set, and became a wallflower until the event was over.

My rich friend flew home alone. I took the Club’s bus, with my feet on the heater all the way