John Braund

MM:  Today is July 15^th, 2016, and I’m speaking with John Braund, class of ’53. Today we’re going to focus on his time as an undergraduate and perhaps just after graduation, and we’ll be doing a second interview to follow-up on his time here as staff and administrator.

So, first, tell me a little bit about your personal background, where you’re from originally, and your family.

JCB:  I’m from Rochester. Lived in the northern part of the city. Went to John Marshall High School. [1] It was a—it was a good school. Participated in a lot of things in sports and music. Played the band, the orchestra, sang in the choir, played soccer, baseball. Enjoyed high school. It was a good neighborhood, good area to grow up in.

My family, I have an older sister. Four years older who is graduating from the U of R at the time. She had just graduated when I started. [2] A younger sister, five years younger. There were ten from our class at John Marshall that came to the U of R. Five females and five males. We all finished, though I think the first—the first semester there was consternation back at Marshall because a few of us had received a little note that said, “You’re on warning.”

We were not covering ourselves with splendor, but it was a shift in venue. I wasn’t really prepared for the kind of discipline study. I also lived at home for three years. If I took the bus every day, it was three buses to get here. Briton Road bus from Northern Rochester to either Lake or Dewey, and then up the main street, get the Plymouth Avenue bus. It meant for a lot of time coming to and fro. If I had an early class, it was a challenge.

Arthur May [3] picked up on that a few times, coming in. Somehow he had it that I lived in Irondequoit, but it wasn’t.

MM:  Do you remember which class you took with Arthur May? Did you take more than one?

JCB:  Oh yes. I had his first-year class in western civilization. I also believe I had Russian history and Chinese history. There were other history courses that I took, but that in particular.

His Russian and Chinese I took in my—I think my senior year. He had others in the department participating in it. I remember Dexter Perkins [4] spoke with us a few times. Dick Wade. [5] It was a great department.

I was the first generation in my—to back up a little, I was the first generation in my family to come to college. As I say, my sister preceded me, and for me set a bad example, because she was very good. She graduated cum laude. All through school I had never been quite the superb student that she was. I was a male. I got into little things here and there.

We were both singers. We had both studied voice in high school. We had both established pretty good reputations, but it was—it was fortunate that I was a male because I—otherwise I would’ve been just, apparently, a clone of hers and I didn’t want to be that.

MM:  She went, of course, to the Prince Street [6] campus in the college for women.

JCB:  She did, and she lived at home. I guess when it comes to why I came here, I really didn’t have much choice. My family were supportive of—my father in particular—going to college, but not with a lot of frills. I would’ve liked—I wanted to look into going to a place called Hiram College, [7] which is out in Ohio, partly because they had a program that fascinated me. It was one course at the time, intensely, at a time. You took six or eight courses during the course of the year, but it was one at a time. [8] I thought that was an interesting way to do it, but my going out of town was just not in the cards. University is good enough for your sister, it’s good enough for you.

There was—there was no way of living on campus. We were modest means, but not poverty. It was—living on campus was not a choice. That made for challenges, because I did have a pretty heavy load my first year. Arthur May’s class and I remember government class. One of the semesters was with Bill Diez. [9] Those were heavy, heavy duty classes. A lot of reading. A lot of things to produce.

I had freshman English. You had to write essay every week. I had physics. It was the one physics course. It was for math and science people. It was challenging. I had some math. It was on the—it was math 1.2, but it was challenging enough, especially when you got into analytic geometry. I had a lot of balls to keep in the air, and it was challenging with the transportation morning and night.

I stayed on campus to study. I did a lot of time in the—the reserve reading room, or in the main room upstairs. If I got home, I couldn’t do college work while—we lived in a small house, and there was just no way I could do it until everybody went to bed. Of course, if I did that, that was very late before I got to sleep, then I’d have to get up early to get the bus to come back.

But it was a good experience. As I say, challenging. I wasn’t the brightest bulb in the socket in the class, but I learned a lot. I came along. My first semester I didn’t do all that well. I was afraid of flunking physics. It was tough. George Collins [10] taught it. It was a good class, but it was tough. I think the—probably one of the highlights of my academic life was when I got a B plus in the last hourly quiz the second semester. I felt that I had the world by the tail. That was—

MM:  So--You certainly—I mean your grades may not have been great in the first year, but you certainly did come along, because you were elected to a Keidaean, [11] the honorary society, which is based on grades, but also on extra-curricular work, which you were doing. And in your application to come here, you talk about the extra-curricular activities you’ve been doing in high school. How did that go from what you had been doing in high school, and translate to what you had opportunities to do here at the University?

JCB:  Well, it was a natural transition. When I got here, there was a Men’s Glee Club. The men’s Glee Club had a pretty good reputation over the course of years, but the year I came was also the first year that Paul Warren Allen [12] became the conductor. He had been my junior choir director at Marshall High School when I was in the eighth grade. He later left there and went to Charlotte High. He knew me. He was an Eastman product. He was a singer. Every rehearsal was a voice lesson.

He had some favorite phrases, some of them not for reference outside the rehearsal hall, about “Come on, sing like men.” We were fortunate. We had about at least five basses that could rumble on a low F. We had five or six tenors who could ping on a high A. At times we really sounded like a small version of the Russian Army Chorus. [13] And he--we had a good four years. It was a good Glee Club.

And I-I like playing soccer. In those days, freshmen could not play varsity soccer. [14] They were freshmen teams, freshmen coaches, freshmen schedules. My soccer coach also happened to be my first semester English teacher, Geoffrey Wagner. [15] An interesting guy. He was—he had come from Oxford. I think he had played soccer there, and he was a very, very good soccer coach. Probably the best coaching I ever had. [16]

An English teacher, it was strange. He—he was a-a sometime author. He wrote novels. I would describe them as the Penny Dreadful type, but he was—he was a fascinating guy. Having him both as a soccer coach and an English teacher was an interesting experience. I gravitated to music and sports, and that was a natural.

MM:  Describe, if you would, some of the other musical activities that you took part in, besides the Glee Club. You also, I think, sang for the Boar’s Head?

JCB:  Oh yes. It turns out the Glee Club was always the singing waiters for the Boar’s Head dinner. Of course we had to learn the Boar’s Head carol, part of it, in Latin. They needed someone that could sing the lead part, you know lead—you know, [singing] “the boar’s head in hand bear I, with garlands gay and rosemary.” [17]

Well, somebody in the Glee Club heard me, “Okay, you’re the guy.” For four years I was the lead singer for the Boar’s Head. [18]

MM:  Where did the Boar’s Head take place in those days?

JCB:  It took place in Todd Union, in the West Room. It was a splendid occasion. [19] Candlelight, tables we set up in parallel rows the length of the—there was a head table at the end. Faculty members were there at each table. They did their standing roasts and they did the carving. In the center were the little logs, nuts, apples, cigars, and they actually served ale. I never drank much of it. I think I drank very little in college, but it was there, and it was a splendid thing.

We also had, as I recall, a woodwind quintet of sorts from Eastman School sitting at a raised platform. They were wonderful. Their music just permeated the place with all of the appropriate medieval type musical sounds.

MM:  One of the Boar’s Head dinners that you—or several of them would have involved perhaps the president at the head table.

JCB:  Oh yes [laughs]. When President de Kiewiet [20] came, he-he came—in fact, the Glee Club sang at his inauguration in Eastman Theater, but I was rather awesome. He had a stern look. He was not a formidable man, but he had a very stern look. When he was sitting at the head table, and I hear this non-scholarly type of—intoning this—looking straight at him. It was a—let’s say it was a moment of anxiousness. It was good. It worked.

MM:  Can you talk about the inauguration and singing for that? I think that’s not something that many students nowadays would actually have that opportunity for.

JCB:  I don’t think so. The Glee Club was good. They engaged in the Glee Club. We were sitting on risers toward the rear of the Eastman Theater stage. One thing I remember is rather quite humorous. As we were sitting in the rear, and all of the men in the platform, the trustees, the faculty sitting in front of us all had their mortarboards removed for the ceremony.

Well, in the midst of President de Kiewiet ’s inaugural address, a bat started swooping across the stage at the Eastman. It was in front of Glee Club, but over the heads of the faculty. The first time the bat swooped, everybody kinda looked askance, and all the men put their mortarboards back on. It came from the side he had gone to and swooped back again, and all the heads turned. It was like the wheat in Kansas in a windstorm. The bat went back and forth several times, and the heads were just going back and forth. [21]

And President de Kiewiet never knew it, but it was—the Glee Club was—well, post-adolescent males can be a little irreverent. We did have some-some snickering moments back there.

MM:  You started out, and you thought you were going to go into industrial relations I think you said.

JCB:  Yeah.

MM:  So how did you come to that, and how did you end up with a degree in economics?

JCB:  Industrial relations looked kind of like a noble pursuit. Industry was big. My father was—had been working at Kodak. [22] He worked there for over 40 years.

MM:  What did he do there?

JCB:  He was--he first was in the printing department, a supervisor there. Then he went to what the paper box, and that was the division that made all of the containers that Kodak products were in. So he had to—he was involved in buying materials and some of—some of the work scoring and them being outsourced. He had to buy labels from other places. So he was involved both inside and outside. He-he—I remember going to various vendors around town. He’d take the bus from Kodak Park and go.

But my aunt was the first head x-ray technician at Kodak. She actually worked with Albert Chapman and Thomas Hargrave. When she retired in ’52, she got personal, handwritten notes from both Albert Chapman [23] and Thomas Hargrave. [24] The medical department there was a family affair. My uncle worked there over 40 years. I had cousins that worked there. I worked there three summers while I was in college. I was in the Boy Scout Troop there.

I determined that I liked working with people more than machines and things. So I thought well, industrial relations sounds promising. And this was a—economics was a-a base, you know, for industry. I became—while I was in school I was invited to become part of a program—I’m trying to think of the name of it. The industrial management council [25] or something. They used to meet on—some various business people have met. My senior year, I think I met with several of them, so I had some good contacts. And that’s what I was looking to do.

I had psychology, two or three courses in that. I did take George Pearse’s [26] engineering machine shop course. Along with my voice at Eastman. It was a checkered career, but economics was-was the—kind of the-the focus. Mainly because of Alan Gleason. [27] Alan Gleason who was the son of Harold Gleason. George Eastman’s organist and the head of the organ at Eastman, [28] was an absolutely wonderful man. I enjoyed—and I took two or three courses with him.

He also—he set an example that still sticks with me today. When I—before I graduated, I knew that military was not an option. The Korean War was on all the time I was in school. Fighting the battle of student deferment was a regular. I knew I was gonna have to go, and I opted to try to be admitted for the Coast Guard OCS program. [29] Alan Gleason, I asked him if he would write me a letter, and he did.

It was before I got my word that I was accepted, but it was—school was ending. He just handed me letter one day. He said, “Here, I thought you might like to have a copy of this.” It humbled me, what he had said. I thought, “Hmm. I’ve got something to live up to.” Jump ahead 50 years or more, and I am now an admissions partner for the US Coast Guard Academy. [30] I interview candidates. If a candidate that I have interviewed and made a recommendation for gets an appointment, I offer them a copy of the letter that I’ve written. It has helped to make for a lot of good connections.  But I’m--it was just paying forward what Alan Gleason did for me.

MM:  Could you talk more about the—I’m actually going to jump back to the mechanics workshop. The mechanical workshop that you referenced with Pearse.

JCB:  Yeah.

MM:  Can you talk a little bit more about him? Because I think sometimes we’re interested in knowing about people who we have otherwise no connection to. You actually knew them. A little bit more about Mr. Pearse.

JCB:  Anyone who was an engineer knew George Pearse. There weren’t all that many engineers, but if you were part of the engine house, as it was called, you took his machine shop course. And George was a very special guy. He was superb machinist. The machines they had there were up-to-date versions of milling machines, drill press, lathes, all the different kinds of cutting and shaping things for different sizes and grades of steel and other metals.

And George, George was an excellent teacher. He helped everybody get a touch. Cuz when you’re—when you’ve got to grind your own cutters for the lathe or for the milling machine, it’s an art form to do it. And George was very good at that. One of the humorous things with George, early on in the class, we had to learn to use calipers to get inside and outside dimensions. He said you know—he-he would make us measure the same thing four and five times. And try to get it as accurately as you can. Lo and behold, if we did it four or five times, we got four or five different readings. Not big, but different.

He-he just said “it takes a sensitivity.” He cracked the class up one time. He said, “well, you know,” he said, “Every once in a while, there’s someone that just doesn’t have that touch.” “And young man last year, I said, “Do you have a girlfriend?” “No.” “Get yourself a girlfriend.” “Okay.” “Well, he says it’s in the—he-he got himself a girlfriend. About a month later, he come in and his sense of touch was so much better.” It cracked the class up.

MM:  [Laughter] Tell me, also, then about Bill Diez, as well, Professor Diez.

JCB:  Bill Diez was elegant, wonderful disposition. A genuine gentleman. I came here, the academic world, I was not intellectual. I came here, this whole world was-was something new for me to get used to. I was not used to the scholarly environment and people in it. I was further intimidated because some of my fraternity brothers and others in the class had been to prep schools. [31] They knew the ropes much better.

Bill Diez was always impeccably dressed. Not in a posh, but coat and tie. He always referred to people in the class as “Mr.” He’d say “Mr. Braund, what do you think about this?” I’m thinking wow, this is—he’s really—what is this with-with mister? Why not just say, “John, what do you think?”

What he was doing, it was just a natural thing. He was giving you an image to live up to. And I learned a lot about style from people like Bill Diez. He gave us some big assignments. His reading assignments were challenging. But even more than that, I learned something about living in this world. How you deal with people in an intelligent fashion. How do you have an intelligent conversation? Bill was that kind of an example that was—it was more than just what you got in government or politics or anything else. It was that personal example that he set.

Later on, when I came back here to work, he became a good friend, and we used to have—we used to have lunch together. That was a—that was a wonderful connection.

MM:  Did-did you as students have dinner at faculty houses, or have your classes at their homes?

JCB:  Very little of that. My--in the first year, Arthur May used to invite students who got a “B” or better in his episodic hourly quizzes. He would designate them as members of his Morey club. He would invite them to his home. Where his wife, Hilda, was hostess extraordinaire. [32] Just a wonderful, friendly lady. You’d have some cookies and refreshments, but just relaxed, eye-level conversation. It was fun. There was nothing intimidating about it.

I never—I think it was probably the second semester before I qualified for the Morey club. [33] I do remember going to his home on a couple of occasions. I was improving. It was, again, it was a lifestyle that I hadn’t really seen before. It was—it was a connecting link. You realize that faculty are human. Faculty, you can learn a lot from them, beside what’s in the classroom. Other than that, it wasn’t until my senior year that the Keidaeans went to the home of Dean Wilder. [34] Or, as we fondly referred to him, as “Pinky.”

That was a great experience. I got to know members of my class much better. It was a small group. We’d have—it was in the fall semester. We’d have donuts and cider or something, you know, there. But it was the connections, the network connections that we were able to establish. I got to know some of my classmates who I considered all of them above me in the intellectual level. They were great. I got to know them better. And what was good, the dean and H. Pearce Atkins who was the assistant dean was there. [35] On occasion there were some others. This was the period before—in preparation for the women coming to the campus. [36]

We graduated in ’53. The women actually got here in ’55. They were asking us our opinions. There was nothing patronizing about it. They were saying, “What do you think about this?” “What do we need to pay attention to?” They were looking for input from us live natives, at that point, as to what things were going to be necessary, or might be useful to—so we—I think they were actually looking to pick our brains, and to learn something from us. It was—it was—it was good being a part of that, because you just felt no big deal, it’s not a power thing or anything. You just felt, hey, they’re asking us something—we are becoming a significant part of something. I thought that was good.

Some of those relationships continued for a long time with—especially with people like Bill Kriegsman, [37] Paul Brady, [38] Jules Cohen. [39] I had a lot of continuing connections with them. [40]

MM:  Did—I’m not sure how strong the student government was at that time. Did the Keidaeans supplement the administration talking to student government? Or substitute for that? Did you have a sense of that at the time? You may not—

JCB:  I never saw the Keidaeans as any kind of a competitive role to student government. Student government had a job to do. There were organizations to manage. There were issues relating to residence halls, to academic programs, to activities. Because the student government was involved in using the funds collected for activities. There was—there was a governing factor to them.

The Keidaeans were never part of a governing—it was kind of like a kitchen cabinet. That’s the sense that I had from it. And it was a good feeling. Say hey, that’s just—I’m lucky to be here, but I’m glad I am. [41]

MM:  So, when you would—because you lived at home, you used your fraternity as a base.

JCB:  Oh yes.

MM:  Let’s talk about the Alpha Delta Phis. Why did you choose to go into Alpha Delta Phi instead of a different fraternity? I know there’s lots to tell about them, but let’s start.

JCB:  Well, it was sort of like I was destined. Just as I was destined to come here. I’ll back up just a little, because it all starts at John Marshall High School. I wasn’t—I wanted to go to college, but I-I was procrastinating. I wasn’t on the ball. Admissions was not the systematic game it is now. I had an application for the U of R and I think I had filled it out, but my American history teacher, Tafton Boulls [42] who was the classmate of Chuck Dalton’s [43] and John Ferner’s [44] , they were the ones that actually started the Sigma Chi here. [45] They always used to call me “Browned.” “Hey Browned, what are you doing?”

He cornered me one day, I think it was April of my senior year. He says, “Where are you going next year?” I said, “Well, I’m not sure. I have to—he says, “Have you thought about the U of R?” “Yeah, I have an application.” “You done anything with it?” “Not yet.” He sort of—he was a tall man. He sort of grabbed me by the ear, took me down the hallway to the main office, in which there was, I guess, the English would call it a “Tardis,” a telephone booth. He took a dime out of his own pocket and called on the phone.

“Hey Chuck,” Chuck Dalton, the director of admissions, “I got a young man here I think you ought to talk to.” He had a conversation with Chuck and back and forth with me. He says, “Can you be up there Saturday?” “Yeah.” “Okay. You got a date. Saturday at 10:00.” I went up, took my application with me. I had already taken the college boards, Chuck had my scores. He looked at the application, we chatted. He says, “Yeah, I don’t see any problem.” I was admitted. He even helped me work out my first year’s course schedule.

Jump forward, I get to campus, I—in the fall they had fraternity rushing and I was not intending to join a fraternity. I-I’d had enough on my plate. But hey, they had some cider and donuts and some stuff at these places, so I went to a few. I went to Alpha Delt, I went to Psi U. [46] I went to Theta Delt [47] and maybe Sigma Chi. I made the rounds.

Well, in Alpha Delt there was a senior named Don Barry [48] whose mother was the—I guess the equivalent of a vice principal at Marshall. She was the girl’s advisor. [49] She was one of the upper level administrators at Marshall. She had told Don—says, “John is up there. Get him for Delta.” Because the whole Barry family was related. His brother was an Alpha. His father was an Alpha Delt. They used to sing Alpha Delt songs at their family campouts, you know?

She tasked her son with getting me for a fraternity. Don was a very, very persuasive guy. He was a good man. He was a geology major, but a classy man. He-he persuaded me. I was—money was a—was a challenge, but there was a—a side event here that made it possible for me to join. I had been recruited by Marlowe J. Smith who was the conductor of the Rochester inter-high choir, and a choir master at Lake Avenue Baptist Church, one of the strong choirs in town. He recruited me to sing in his choir. [50]

Many of the people who in the choir who were former inter-high choir—it was a good choir. Very, very good choir. He recruited me, and it was pay—he insisted, it’s a paying job. I got $5.00 a week. Well, I was wondering how much—fraternity—it was enough to pay my tuition and books and everything else. Don Barry worked, he says “you’re getting $5.00 a week for the church choir? Add that up, that’ll pay your fraternity dues.” It was the church choir that made me able to join the fraternity.

MM:  Do you remember how much the fraternity dues were?

JCB:  Well, if you--$5.00 a week covered my fraternity dues, I think, for the course of a semester.

MM:  What did you get for that? Did—so you—did you bring your own lunch? Or did you eat at the fraternity house?

JCB:  Oh, well if you ate, that was your own thing. They did have—oh, Mrs. Grimm, that’s another story. They had lunches, they had dinners. If you ate there, yeah, there was a—you paid the fee to—whatever it was. We had a brother steward who took care of all of that. It was also a base—I could brown bag it. It was interesting because my freshman year particularly, there were still what I would call some leftover World War II vets. Older guys who were seniors in the house who were married. They would come. They brown bagged it.

So I would usually eat my brown bag lunch, with them, in the house. The fraternity turned out to be a very essential home away from home. When I came to campus that was a place I could always retreat to--if needed. I could leave some clothes there, I could—if I had to—I’d have to carry stuff around campus with me all day. I could leave it there in the house. And at times, if there was something going on, either a late Quilting Club rehearsal or something, that’s another musical element. That’s another story, too.

I could stay overnight. There are times I could also use—Don Barry let me use his study room at times. I could go up there and—in a quiet place, comfortable chair, and I could study. It was—living at home, the fraternity was a wonderful oasis for me on campus, and enabled me to do the things, to participate in the Glee Club, play soccer and to-to be a part of things. Because if it was just a case of me coming to campus and doing all those things, it—it also gave me a cadre of friends that I could trust. Yeah, that was—that was an important part of my connection with the campus.

MM:  Let’s talk about Mrs. Grimm.

JCB:  Oh, Mrs. Grimm. Mrs. Grimm was a widowed lady. Her husband had died a few years before. She started at the Alpha Delt house the year I was a freshman. She had just been engaged. She had—the fraternity was in need of somebody. In those days, the fraternities had cooks. No house mothers, no official—but they-they engaged cooks who were—who were wonderful people, as well as just a cook.

I remember Psi U had a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Gordon. They were just wonderful people. Their official duties was to cook meals, but their presence helped keep a civilizing aura in the house. Mrs. Grimm was very special. She had raised five sons, and she was, at the time, running a photography store—they sold cameras and films and things—in the lower level of their house, in Redding, Pennsylvania.

But she had raised five sons. She knew all of the Pennsylvania Dutch recipes, and she had two sons in Rochester. Both of them were working at Kodak, and they said “Well, what good”—she was 58. I said “What can we—what can she do? Probably a fraternity house might be good. She—she’s raised five sons. She-she understands that climate.” [51]

They met with the leaders of Alpha Delt who were pretty classy themselves. I’m thinking there’s Karl Bastress, [52] Tom Mapp, [53] Bob Madden. [54] These were really classy guys. [55]  All good students. Karl played soccer, [56] Bob Madden was a football player, but they were all good—and they hired her. And it was--the house was desperately in need of someone.

They had had someone that just didn’t work out. All I heard was—she was known as “Bloody Mary.” She lived in the house, and apparently she had one or more offspring that were sometimes running around. She’d put up laundry lines in parts of the room where she might’ve been living. She was just not that connective, and she also—apparently she couldn’t cook very well. She didn’t manage it.

Well, Mrs. Grimm came in, very quiet, demure lady. But right off the bat she-she was captivating. She had a room in the corner of the house, a big overhead light. She never put the overhead lights on. She always had floor lamps or a lamp on a table to give it a homey atmosphere.

And guys found out they could come in. They could talk with her. She never divulged anything. Guys—their girlfriends would come in and talk with her. She was just kind of a mother confessor for all kinds of people. It got to the point she would have a box of those little sugary mint things, Fanny Farmer used to have them in various colors with little ridges in them. [57]

I, like many others, pop in, “Oh, Mrs. G, just thought I’d have a mint.” We’d sit down and we’d have a mint. You talk with her. Guys were in the ROTC, she would sew on some of their stripes on their uniforms and things. She never pushed herself—she always did the cooking. She was stern in the kitchen. Freshmen, the pledges were waiters. We wore white coats. She was starting to do this, but she always had a twinkle in her eye.

Guys insisted that—started having a big dance or something, “Mrs. G., you gotta”—“Well, I don’t have anything to wear.” Well, the guys took her out with them. They bought her a red taffeta dress. She had this nice crop of gray hair. “Oh, I couldn’t wear”—they insisted. She wore that, she was elegant. At the time, they went and brought here, coming out. “Mrs. Grimm, you’re coming out with us.”

One thing led to another, they also bought her tickets, a subscription to the RPO, and there was always a couple of guys that would take her down to the RPO concerts. She went to Glee Club performances. She went to a lot of campus things, but the guy—she never pushed her way in. The guys always said, “Mrs. G., you’re coming.” They took her. It was her presence in house. She was just a very gracious lady.

There wasn’t a guy in the house that wasn’t, at one time or another, mildly embarrassed, because guys have a tendency to—especially post-adolescent males, tell off-color stories or use language that isn’t necessarily for polite company. Not a guy in the house wasn’t, at one time or another, maybe more, embarrassed. “Oh my god. Mrs. G. is standing right there.” She had a straight channel through her ears. In one side, out the other. She never chastised anybody. It was just her presence. The guys respected that.

It was kind of like—well, I don’t wanna say oil on water. It was just her presence that kept an aura in the house that was very civilized, that would be a lot different among just a bunch of post-adolescent males, whether or not they-they might have scholarly and noble instincts

MM:  So you talked a little bit about dances. What kind of dances were there, and how often? Were they every weekend? Where did they take place?

JCB:  They weren’t every weekend, but episodically throughout the semester. There were oh, various homecoming weekend, this weekend or that weekend. Some of them, the big ones, were formal. Girls would come in long dresses. Each house had a live band. Rochester had a-a—an array of good bands. Jack End who has been such a big force at the University. Jazz. I know he has done a lot of oral history interviews. Jack End [58] had a band. Syl Avelly. [59] I’m trying to think of there was a-a blind pianist and I’m trying to think of his name, but there were a whole bunch of bands.

They would—one of those—a variety of these would be in each house. People would be dancing, and people would go from one house to another. You go back and forth. You dance at one place, go up to the other. Then the Alpha Delt house, frequently such weekends we had—we did a lot of singing. There were a lot of good songs the Alpha Delts had. While I was in—we had about 25 percent of the men’s Glee Club in there. The singing was good. [60]

After a dance, everybody would be down in the basement, the guys, gals, sitting on the floor. Some guys would do a little improv skit here and try to be funny. People sang songs. There’s a lot of—a lot of camaraderie that way.

MM:  Did the—were these—were your dates mostly from the Prince Street campus, or anywhere in Rochester? Were they high school sweethearts?

JCB:  Yes.

MM:  Yes to all of those.

JCB:  Several came over from Prince Street. Nurses from the nursing program. High school sweetheart, yeah. My date was always some—my current wife. Well, my first date was a former girlfriend from high school, but then I guess at the end of my freshman year, early in my sophomore year I started dating Nan, now my wife. She would come up. She worked at Kodak.

We had a lot of—the girls came from-from all over. There were—there were some that would come in and they’d talk to Mrs. Grimm. I think they would lay it on her if their date was, what they call, a load.

[Laughing]

JCB:  It was—yeah, Mrs. Grimm’s presence, all of good women knew her. She lived in the corner room in that wing, and her bathroom and a lounge area outside on the other side of that. That was known as the pansy suite. That was for-for the women.

MM:  Oh, so in fact that would be a resting area for the women when they came in, if they had to change or freshen up or things like that.

JCB:  Oh, they could change, they could put makeup on, they could do whatever women do when-when they go to those places.

MM:  Can you—was it—was there much hazing in the fraternities, in Alpha Delta or other—or others?

JCB:  There was what they call pledge week, or hell week. Yeah, it would be called hazing now, but it—I don’t recall any cases where someone was taken out and forced to drink alcohol or that sort of thing. It was more of a psychological—now there were times when people would be taken out in a car and dropped off someplace, and they’d have to get back on their own. [61]

In those days, you could do that. Even in my traveling to and from home to the University, it was a long trek, I could take the bus or I could hitchhike. I did a lot of hitchhiking both from home and between the River Campus my senior year to get over to Eastman School for my lessons. I got rides in everything from a concrete mixer to a hearse. Everything in between. Males could do that. You were safe in the city.

I’m trying to think where we—

MM:  We were talking about hazing.

JCB:  Hazing. Ours was, as I say more psychological. We were told, in the course of this hell week, we were not supposed to speak to women in public. We were put on our honor. A thing of reality. We were given tasks that we had to—we had to build—construct or have built—a fraternity paddle. It was never used on anybody, but we had to get a paddle and decorate it appropriately carved with letters and everything in it. I went to a lumber company and somehow I got somebody to cut the thing. We’re given other tasks to—we had to get some stuff and bring it back to the house. I forget what some were.

There were some, however, who were tasked with getting an item of personal appeal from the headliner at the Embassy Theatre. This was the burlesque house. [62] Rose la Rose and some others. Judge Michael Telesca, [63] I can tell you very funny stories about his task, and, in fact, how he met—he not only met Rose la Rose, her mother was Italian, didn’t speak much English. She was backstage while Mike was there try—and they started speaking. She loved Mike. They invited him up to her party. He wasn’t supposed to be speaking to women.

Yeah, it was—then, on the—on the night that we were initiated, we didn’t know when initiation was coming. But we were told, at the beginning, we had to have ready a tuxedo, and, on this given day, we were said—“Okay, tonight at 6:00”—now this was January—“You will appear at a given place in your tuxedo.” Okay, you need an overcoat over it? Yeah, okay.

“You will appear at a given place, blindfolded. You will not talk to anyone.” Except the brother who will—they had a—the password, something so you know who it was. My position was at the second pump at a gas station at the corner of Elmwood and Clinton. That’s a January night. It was cold. I had an overcoat. I did not have a hat. My collar was up, but there I am in a tuxedo, a black tie and a blindfold. I’m just standing there at the pump, and people, “Can I help you?” I didn’t speak. You even hear a lot of tee-hee, “What the heck is this?”

One of our brothers, Bob Klinkroth [64] was assigned a post right outside of what was then known as the State Hospital on South Avenue. [65] Here he was, standing outside there in a tuxedo on a winter night blindfolded, wouldn’t speak to anybody coming up to him. A policeman came up to him. He didn’t know it was a cop. He was blindfolded. He wouldn’t speak to him.

Well, the policeman identified himself and took him inside—he thought he was someone who had maybe escaped from the—from the hospital and took him inside. They were trying to grill him there. He was trying to be very honorable, not speak to anyone. Finally, one of the brothers came to pick him up. They had to go inside and clarify things with the police in the state hospital. But then we came back to the house, and we were initiated. It was a splendid event.

At that point, alumni came. There was a dinner at the house that followed the initiation. The alumni were in tuxedos also. Allen Kappleman [66] was the speaker. And I don’t recall all that he said, but I got to know him very, very well later on. All I could remember is he reeked of character. Speaking. There was an influence. People in the house, those that went before you were the real thing. They had character. They were well educated. Alpha Delts had a literary background. [67] You’d be taken task if you used improper English.

Bert Van Horn [68] used to say, “Johnny, I think you got a couple of dangling participles there.”

MM:  So how did the—it had—I’m gonna stick with initiations, only because it was the—the initiation into the Keidaeans. How did that compare? What happened when you were imitated into the Keidaeans, if that’s something you can divulge.

JCB:  Oh yeah, there was—it was mysterious. We were—we each received a written invitation to which we were required to respond. I’m not sure of all of the steps, but I know the initiation took place in the dark of night. The shore of Canandaigua Lake. I believe it was the summer home of the Hoffmeisters. Ed and Ruth Hoffmeister. [69]

There was a bonfire. Big, tall sticks of wood. A bonfire. George Chester Curtiss was there. [70] Dean Wilder. I think Pearce Atkins. George Chester Curtiss, he was a very dramatic. He intoned something of almost like an Indian incantation, and he moved—but it was—as I say it was a dark night. And we were initiated—I’ll say there was nothing hazardous or anything. No hazing.

But it was--it had enough mystery to it that hey, this is a different thing. The people you were there with, they were significant figures on campus. That initiation was memorable.

MM:  Can you talk a little bit about the Hoffmeisters?

JCB:  Ed Hoffmeister was Dean at the College of Arts and Science at that point. [71] He’s a very distinguished geology professor. I didn’t know his wife Ruth, then. I got to know both of them much better later on in alumni relations. Each college had its own dean. I think may have been Janet Clark [72] on the Prince Street campus, and Lester Olgway, “Pinky” Wilder on the men’s campus.

John Hoffmeister, or J. Edward Hoffmeister was the Dean of the College of Arts and Science. The two together. Didn’t—didn’t know much about him at that point. Later on, it was after he retired and he went to University of Miami and did some very distinguished work on the coral base of around Florida and I know his work was highly regarded, both at the University and throughout the nation in what he was—what he got to know about the-the undergirding of Florida and the reefs around it.

And Ruth was a—Ruth was a member of, I believe, our River Campus Alumni Board. She was also a woman, I found out later in talking with her—in fact I believe I did an interview with her—she mentioned how she was tasked by some of the outstanding alumni women, graduates of the University, to go to the office of, I believe it was Carl Hallower. Bausch and Lomb head who was chairman of the board of trustees. Make a case to get women on the board. [73]

She was tasked by these ladies to go down there, and she did. Apparently she made a good case, because I think Marion Fry [74] was then appointed and later came Hawks. I did an interview with her, too. Marion Hawks. [75]

MM:  Marion, too. Is another Marion.

JCB:  Yeah. There were some outstanding ladies. Ruth Hoffmeister was involved in that. She also achieved some notoriety of sorts in Florida when Ed was ill. They were living in a residence down there that enabled—it was a nice residence on the little lake. There was extended care if they needed it. Ed had failed quite a bit. I visited Ruth there a couple of times and talked with her. She would—if Florida had a law that related to requiring forced feeding if someone was—

She was looking to get that law changed, because she and Ed had talked about his failing situation. He said, “I do not want to be sustained on tube feeding.” It was very clear, rational decision. Cuz I remember him speaking of that, even when I visited him when he was infirm. Ruth took this to the state legislature. There were people that just fought that. There was a headline in the South Florida newspaper on one occasion that says ‘Woman Wants to Starve Her Husband,’ because she was fighting to have that feeding tube removed. [76]

She was a gutsy lady, and a classy lady. They were both significant figures in the University.

MM:  Let’s circle back now to the reference that you made to getting to the Eastman School for classes. And how is it that U of R undergraduate ended up at the Eastman School, actually taking classes? And then what came of that?

JCB:  The only class I took at Eastman was really voice class with Nicholas Konraty. Artist faculty. [77] I was fortunate. I had done a lot of solo singing with the Men’s Glee Club. Mike Gallagher, [78] the baritone that we used—we did a couple of operatic duets. Paul Allen [79] really engaged us to do some heavy-duty solos during the course of the Glee Club performance.

But I guess Paul Allen and others were encouraging. “Why don’t you see if you can study at Eastman?” So, by the time I was ready—going into my senior year, I had had basically most of my courses that I needed. I had things scheduled for this next year that was okay. It gave me an opening for--if I wanted to do that.

I went over to Eastman, and I auditioned with Allen McHose. [80] Very interesting audition. Allen always had a little cigar in his mouth. He often didn’t smoke it, he was just kinda chewing it. He sat there with a cigar in his mouth, and he’s playing for me while I sang. “Yeah, I think we can manage it.”

I’m not a bold person. Going over to Eastman, when I met with him and Arthur Larson [81] was there and others. “Well, what makes you think you’re good enough to study here?” I didn’t think, I just wanted to study. I said to him, I said “if it’s possible, might I be able to work with Nicholas Konraty?” He took the cigar out, “Why do you wanna do that? He’s a bass baritone, you’re a tenor?” I said “well, my voice teacher in high school, Harold Singleton, said, ‘“if you ever get a chance to go to Eastman, see if you can work with Nicholas Konraty.”’

Singleton was, himself, a tenor. He had been part of a group that Nick Konraty ran an operatic program. It was called Eastman Rochester opera or something. [82] Where he would bring in lead singers from the Metropolitan and others to do the lead roles. He had a lot of people around town—Rochester had a very strong public school music program. A lot of Eastman grads around. Harold Singleton [83] was one of these that did a couple Mario roles, and the chorus—they all did it because they loved it. It was volunteer. And it was a very strong program. Harold Singleton was a part of that, and so he knew Nick. He suggested that.

Well, McHose didn’t commit himself at that point, but later-later I got a note ‘yeah, you can study with Nicholas Konraty,’ and that was fortunate. Because the—being a part of an earnest faculty studio at Eastman is some—is an educational experience unlike anything else. First part of the lesson, you’re there with your teacher. He’s putting you through all kinds of paces, warmups, bits of things here.

The second part, usually an accompanist came in and play.  And you would, you’re working with the music. When you’re in the studio with your teacher, you’re naked as a jaybird. You open your mouth and ugh. You’re aware of whether you’re doing it right or not. And your teacher is there to guide you, to listen. And the thing I realized, first time I met him, we sat down and we talked. He had a notepad. He said, “What have you done? What are you looking to do?” He had me sing for him. He says, “I think we need to work on this and this, particularly working at the F sharp break in the head voice.”

Okay, I didn’t think any more of it. He made those notes. But all during the course of the year, I was on the River Campus. I was playing soccer, I was Quilting Club [84] and doing a bunch of other things. I really didn’t—there were practice rooms in lower Strong, and I used to go over there to vocalize and practice, but not as often as I really should have.

I’d be going on the bus or hitchhiking to Eastman, and I’d be feeling pretty crummy. I didn’t do well. I’m gonna face Nicky and it ain’t gonna be as good as I wished. Invariably, when I left his studio, I’d be walking on air. He had a way of looking to see what you’re doing right, of encouraging you.  “OK, you didn’t do this, but work on that. Get that.”

The last lesson of the year, he sat down and he pulled out that notepad that he had made the first time. He said, “Here’s what we looked at, this is what we’ve been trying to do.” He says, “I think we have accomplished it.” He says, “Other people can work with you on repertoire and other things, and I think in your production, your projection, your head voice, I think we have made good progress. You have accomplished that.” Once again, I—but he was a marvelous man.

He also told me stories. He had been raised in Moscow, the son of a conductor. He had graduated from the academy of economics, just as World War I was breaking out. He wanted to go to law school, but there was no way he was gonna do that, so he was conscripted for the Russian army. He was, I believe, an artillery officer down in the Austrian front.

World War I was not good down there for the Russians, and he came back to the revolution had taken place. There was no way he was going to go to law school. Because his father had been a conductor, he had a complete musical education and a good voice. He started singing and then realized that the Bolsheviks [85] were putting all the foreign army people on the front against the white Russians [86] with machine guns at their backs. He just got out.

He went to Constantinople, then Italy, up to France where he met his wife who had escaped from Petrograd. Her father had been a career army officer under the czar. She was a singer, dancer, wonderful artist they met. Nicky also, he told me on one occasion that he had sung—I’m trying to think of the man’s name who was the conductor [87] of the Don Cossack Chorus that had traveled around the US. They were émigrés from then the Soviet Union.

He had sung with him in the boys’ choir in the assumption cathedral in the Kremlin for the Czar. Later on I was able to tell—relate to Lola some of it, and she never knew any of this about singing for the Czar or anything of that nature. Nicholas Konraty was a rare man. He included me with all of the stuff his Eastman students, other people at Eastman. He’s the one that encouraged me to go up and audition with Leonard Treash. [88] Got a role in the opera department.

And after that Woodbury [89] hooked me up to do another one. It’s a little people there that really gave me a lot of encouragement. I was fortunate because there weren’t many tenors around. Tenors at that time were—I’m also an AB negative at the blood bank—so it’s sort of [laughter]. Tenors were in short—I had opportunities that I might not’ve otherwise had. It took me beyond my comfort zone frequently, but it was challenges that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

MM:  So, what opera did you audition for with Leonard Treash, and how did you work that into your undergraduate schedule?

JCB:  It was challenging. I auditioned for the role of Gastone in Traviata. [90] It’s not a big role, but there’s some significant parts. I introduce Alfredo to Violeta, and there are some other places, a cardplaying scene that’s very dramatic and have to be timed right.

Then when that finished, Ward Woodbury hit me up, they were going to be doing Street Scene. Kurt Wiell’s Street Scene [91] in the spring for Howard Hanson’s [92]  American Festival. He says we need another tenor. If you sing it, an opera, you do need to—you have coaches. Usually it’s a high-level pianist who can play that reduced score from the operative—just to work with you through the particular parts of your own role and how it works in with others. [93]

I worked in the coaching for La Traviata. They worked with me at Eastman to—usually it was I do some of that on the day I came over for my lesson. Ward Woodbury said we’ll—when he asked me to do that second role—cuz I wasn’t ready to do it. I had a lot of stuff coming up my senior year, second semester. Papers and everything else, but he—Ward was a persuasive guy, and he says “Well, we’ll do your coaching the same day you’re over here for your lessons.” It worked out, and it was—it worked out.

So my undergraduate years were fine. I was River Campus soccer player that sang roles at Eastman.

MM:  Also sang roles in the Quilting Club productions.

JCB:  Yes, I never had any big-big roles in Quilting Club, but I was always a part of it. I could do a variety of things when it—Quilting Club music was very good. It was challenging. The people that wrote the music, and Jack End was usually involved in orchestrating it and conducting it. So, I-I did some singing roles. I did some act—I remember whether it was “Here in Primitive Wilderness” or—funny, I was—I was an Indian.

MM:  That would probably be “Here in Primitive Wilderness.” [94]

JCB:  Yeah. And I wore something like a loincloth. The rest of me was all brown pancake makeup. And putting that stuff on was one challenge. Getting it off was something else. We had something like two dress rehearsals. [95] One of them was public dress rehearsal, and then two or three performances. And I remember it was at least a couple of weeks or more that the brown stuff was still coming out of my pores when I was taking a shower.

But Quilting Club was a monumental effort. Everybody, the guys that wrote it, the guys that directed it, the guys that did all the technical stuff, and people were involved. Everybody worked hard at it.  And it was—but, they had fun. Part of the fun was they were always—there was always burlesque of you could say things about the dean, about the president, or anything else. It was—it was a good, honest burlesque show. They were very, very well attended. People did come to see Quilting Club. The curtain was a large patchwork quilt that covered the whole proscenium arch. It was a to-come-for event.

MM:  It also—I know for the women’s group, for Kaleidoscope, that was—the ticket sales were used as a fund raiser for something. Was that also the case with Quilting Club? Do you remember?

JCB:  I don’t remember any fund-raising efforts with—I do remember that there were a lot of trustees and others that came to the shows. There was one-one show, I think it was maybe my junior year, where there was a lot—let’s say more than the usual amount of profanity and let’s say impolite language. There was one particular—I can’t think who it was, but a trustee who was noted as being I don’t want to say a prig, but known, was noted as being very prim and proper. He got up and walked out.

Everyone understand ‘hey, it’s Quilting Club.’ Anything goes, sort of, but there-there was also taste. The thing is, a lot of the lines were very clever. The writing was extremely clever. And the music was clever. It was well-performed. Pete Peirce [96] and Jerry Freiert [97] were quintessential female impersonators. They were great. There was just a lot of—it was a lot of fun, and a lot of let’s say academic backsliding during the time of preparation. Everybody got behind in their schoolwork.

MM:  So, you talked about the fact that the-the Keidaeans were consulted because a decision had been made to merge the campuses. You were also here—I’m going for sort of the momentous things that happened while you were here. You were a student at the end of your freshman year, beginning of sophomore year for the University Centennial. Do you remember some of the events around that?

JCB:  I remember some big events. I went to one of the events at the Eastman Theater. But that was—I’m not sure if the Glee Club sang in any of those things or not. They were—there was some pretty big events with a lot of civic people and University notables taking part. I do remember the centennial ode that was written and performed, and Leonard Treash was the narrator for that in the stentorian—“Rush Rhees” said, “Alan Valentine” said. [98]

MM:  The music was written by Howard Hanson.

JCB:  Yes.

MM:  The text was by John Rothwell Slater. [99]

JCB:  Yes.

MM:  Do you remember enjoying the music?

JCB:  It wasn’t something I went away whistling, but it-it-it was good. Everything about the centennial was good quality. [100] I do know they—there is a recording of the whole thing. Other than that, I don’t really remember a lot about it. That was a thing that was taking place at a level of the University that I was not really a part of.

MM:  There were conferences as part of the centennial year, and one of them included Ralph Bunche and Elenore Roosevelt. Do you remember attending that?

JCB:  I do remember them being here. I believe I heard Elenore Roosevelt, but I-I-I did not participate in a lot of—I was busy otherwise.

MM:  It would’ve been probably on a Friday/Saturday. It was a multi-day thing, and if you were, essentially commuting into school, perhaps you didn’t come on a Saturday.

JCB:  I—yeah, that was not something that was high on my list. But I knew it was going on and I was—I was proud of the place, but I-I didn’t—I wasn’t a part of that.

MM:  Were there other events that you were a part of? Or conferences that—special visitors that you remember going to see?

JCB:  I don’t—I don’t recall. I do remember Cornelis de Kiewiet ’s inauguration. That was probably the big event that I recall.

MM:  Do you remember seeing him on campus? Was he always—he was desperately busy.

JCB:  I never saw much of him. At that time, the administrative offices for the University were on Prince Street. [101] So he wasn’t around. I remember when I was a freshman, Alan Valentine was the president, but he was gone much of the time on a UN assignment. [102] Donald Gilbert was the provost standing in place of. [103] I do remember after Valentine’s allegedly returned, I swore that I saw him walking in front of Todd Union one day.

I related that to some fraternity brothers and they—‘no, you didn’t see him. That couldn’t have been him.’ They—he was not—the administrative people were not visible on the—

MM:  On the men’s campus.

JCB:  On the men’s campus.

MM:  Did you go over to Prince Street very much? Did you go to the Memorial Art Gallery?

JCB:  I don’t remember going to the gallery. I do remember going to Prince Street to take in the Kaleidoscope shows. I thought it would be fascinating to take a class on Prince Street. So I believe it was Shirley Spragg’s [104] industrial psychology that I took over there. Ah-ha, there’s gonna be women in the class. Ha-ha, it was—it wasn’t what I was looking for.

Women can—it was in the morning. Women in their own place were not particularly nicely adorned. Most of them came to class in what was then the World War II navy dungarees, rolled up. They weren’t like jeans. They were baggy dungarees rolled up. They probably had a sweatshirt on. Many of them had rags in their hair, their hair curly. They come into class like this.

I had some interesting conversations with some of them, but it was—it was not the-the kind of experience I was hoping for.

MM:  And, of course, were well turned out for those morning classes? Were you well turned out for those morning classes, hoping that they would also be not wearing dungarees?

JCB:  Well, I think I was wearing—if you’re talking about my attire—

MM:  Yes.

JCB:  I was wearing usual stuff. On the campus, we often would wear sweaters, open neck shirts with sweaters or something. It wasn’t unusual to see guys in class in a coat and tie, depending on if—eating dinner anywhere on campus, fraternity house or Todd Union, you wore a coat and tie. So guys were generally—well, there were a few that let’s say were challenged with color combinations. Wear some outlandish stuff.

A couple of times, I remember, on campus, I had a pair of red knit suspenders. I wore that with a—kind of a bright yellow shirt that I had. It was kind of glaucous, I look at it now.  But hey, I was expressing myself.

MM:  Senior year you actually did live on campus.

JCB:  I lived on campus. I applied for and got a job as what was called a dorm proctor. The predecessor of RAs. Essentially we were there to try to—as they say in the military, keep good order and discipline. It was—it was not a bad job. It was challenging at times. My senior year there were some particular pranks that were perpetrated. There was a lot of firecrackers and the little explosive things all during my senior—for whatever reason, I don’t know. People would—if you’re walking along and somebody’s smoking, they take the cigarette out and they throw it down, you don’t think anything of it.

But There were enough firecrackers going off that if somebody did that, you jump, you know, cuz it might explode. There were a couple of instances—I lived in Crosby. [105] I was on the—it wasn’t the ground level, it was the level above the ground level in the back of Crosby. I remember there was—among the firecrackers, these little things that people would get. Strings of them, they go like a little light machine gun. There were also things called cherry bombs. They looked about the size of a big cherry, and the fuse was a long stem.

They were—they had more impact. They were more explosive. You throw one of those in, that’s a pretty loud bang. There were a couple of instances where someone wanted to harass someone in the dorm, and they would go a floor or two above. Measure with a string, a little weight on it, measure down to see just how much string it took to dangle something outside the window. Then tie a cherry bomb on it, light the fuse and drop it. At the moment it got down there, outside the window, it would explode. I don’t think there were any windows broken, but it was very distressing.

Some of the engineers started to make little cannons. They had access to steel and that, and they made—take a piece of rolled steel, drill a hole in it, and then drill a hole in the top for a fuse. They could make a big boom with that. Now, the Psi Us were notorious for their cannon. They used to have a cannon that they would shoot off in the end zone when the football team scored. The D Us [106]  had bells. [107] They-they acquired bells, sometimes in less than noble fashion from various places. But they had railroad bells, they had all kind. They would often be in the end zone of scoring, a big bong.

Those were—but there was one occasion—back up a little bit. One of the things that some low-level pranksters were engaged in when I was a dorm proctor, they would take a wad of chewing gum and stuff it into the keyhole of somebody’s door so they couldn’t get their key in. There were—there were locksmiths engaged at various times to free up the lock that was—there were occasions when someone would take a wastebasket and put about two-thirds a load of water in it. Tip it against a door and knock on a door, and a person opens you know and they get—these were the kinds of male pranks.

There was one that was a little more on a hazardous type—in fact, I was fortunate that I got away unscathed. I noticed they were digging trenches behind Crosby for the construction of Lovejoy and—

MM:  Hoeing [108] ?

JCB:  Hoeing. There were trenches, there were piles of dirt and everything back there. I came in the room one night, and before I turned the light on, I looked out, there was someone out there in the back messing around at one of those little piles of dirt. Someone lit a match. And okay, people are setting off firecrackers. I saw this little fuse burning along the ground heading toward that pile of dirt, then that fuse went out. I thought what the heck was going on?

So, being a responsible person, I went out and I started looking. I heard this voice from the window said, “Better not touch it, John.” I said, “What is it?” I says, “You come out here. Take care of it.”

Oh, he came out, and what it was, he had planted in there, it was a little jar with some black stuff in it. Well, I had messed around like boys do. You get a bullet from someone, you pull the head out and you put the powder in, you light it, it goes fft. Exciting.

But I--this jar, black stuff, it didn’t look like gunpowder. It was a little more crystally than I—there was a little label on it, but I couldn’t read it. It was a chemical.

I picked it up and fortunately the fuse had gone out. And I knew who the guy was, so I brought it back and I put it in my room. Hmm. I wonder. I just took a little pinch of the stuff, put it—we had these big, thick ashtrays in there. I put it in there. It was—I mean with a little pinch of that stuff—it was a-a big flash. Oh, this is a lot more than ordinary gunpowder.

So, next day I put said jar in my topcoat pocket and I walked over to Morey Hall [109] and asked Dean Wilder if I could see him. I said this thing was—again, it was a year where people were setting off a lot of explosive stuff. Minor stuff. I put that—he said, “Do you know what it is?” I said, “No, I have no idea.”

Well, he said, “Let’s find out.” So he and I walked over to chemistry building and Dr. Line’s office. [110] Lab. And Willard Line looked at it, and he saw the-the smudgy chemical notation. It wasn’t complete but he said, “From its looks and what I see,” he said, “that’s very dangerous stuff.” He said, “you’re probably very fortunate that you didn’t drop it, or you didn’t fall with it.” He said, “The only thing that I think we can do with this is to lower it in the river.”

Willard Line and I walked out the chemistry lab under the Elmwood Avenue bridge. He had made a sling out of some heavy-duty string, and we just—the river, at that time, it was spring. The river was flowing pretty good. We simply lowered that jar into the river. I’m not sure if it exploded on the rock, but he said—he says “If that’s what I think it is,” he said, “you were very fortunate you didn’t drop it. Or that you didn’t bang it in some way.”

I kind of broke into a cold sweat. But, the young man was summarily dismissed from the dorm and the school. Not permanently. He came back a year or two later. I had graduated. I had known him. I knew his name. several years later, maybe in the late 70s or early 80s, I was out in the Denver area with alumni, and this event, and he-he was there. He said, “Hey John, good to see you.” He said, “Remember, I’m the guy you got thrown out of Crosby Dorm.” We had a good reconnection. It was an adventurous year.

There was one occasion when there was a graduate assistant in math who was kind of like a faculty advisor. He was, let’s say, the head proctor in Crosby. We had—I think there was a proctor on each floor. And he was the major domo. He was a strange guy. In the middle of winter, if he didn’t like what people were doing or they weren’t paying attention in class, he’d make them stand up, and he’d open the window and continue with his lecture while they’re standing up with the window open. So, he was not a popular guy.

On one occasion, someone taped a—I think it was a five-inch fire cracker to the outside of his door. Lit the fuse and knocked. And just about—he was just about the open the door when this huge boom. You know, the others—the whole door was blackened. It didn’t blow it up or anything, but the whole door was black. I guess he just stood there.

On another occasion, he was unwise, outside at the end of Crosby there was a parking area across from the Palestra. [111] And he was sufficiently unwise to park his car with the rear bumper over one of the heavy sewer grates. Someone took a chain, connected his bumper with the sewer grate. When he drove off with his clunky—it had a lock on it. He couldn’t. He had to get—it was a—then they-they—yeah, there-there—there were some pranks of that nature that were not-not noble.

MM:   So, he was an unpopular proctor, or head proctor, and I’m not sure whether the timing is exactly the same, but Robert Metzdorf also was—had been a proctor, a head proctor. Did you know Metzdorf at all? [112]

JCB:  I did not know Bob Metzdorf at that time. I got to know him later. I know the story, when he identified that big rock that came out of the hole that they were digging to build the addition on the library. [113] He left this huge rock down there. They didn’t know how to get hold of it. They were going to have to drill it and blow it up or something. He said, “Look at that.” He says, “We should not let that get away from us.”

MM:  And it wasn’t going anywhere.

JCB:  That became the big rock in front of the Hoban Hilton. [114]

MM:  They look—go ahead.

JCB:  No, I was just—a commemorative thing. Bob, I got to know Bob later on, at alumni roles. He was a wonderful guy.

MM:  We’ll come back to him the next talk. So, I wanted to talk about freshman orientation, which I think you were involved at least one year.

JCB:  That is a—that’s a good subject. At that time, probably one-third, at least one-third of the students in the men’s or the women’s class came from Rochester. Many of them lived at home and they commuted. Freshmen, I know the women had their freshmen camp down in the 4-H camp in the Bristol Hills. [115] I don’t know much about their orientation, but the men were required, if you lived at home, you were still required to live on campus for a week in the dorm. We were assigned a dorm. And that’s where it so happened that Harvey Howland [116] and I were assigned to the same room. Harvey and I became lifelong friends.

But during the course of that week there was a lot of effort to mold you into—have some kind of a class identity. An identity for the University. Chuck—oh, was it two Psi Us, I can still see him now. The blonde—I’ll think of their names in a moment. They were—they were both cheerleaders. I remember they wore the R sweaters. They-they did a lot with us. They taught us a lot of the songs. They were jumping around and told us—Frank Zahniser [117] and Chuck—ooh, he later became an insurance executive, wonderful guy.

But they taught us the songs, they taught us the cheers. During the course of that week, we also had a variety of I don’t—I remember we had to go and have a physical with Dr. McAmmond. [118] We had a voice or a speech test, as it were, just to make sure you could—you could speak and you didn’t have impediments and that with Lisa Rauschenbusch. [119]

I remember—Lisa was a wonderful lady, but she was tall and I appeared at her office and she was—she was doing something. She just indicated okay, sit down. So, I sat down and she finished what she was doing. She lifted her head and in this big baritone voice, “Yes?” And it almost bowled me over. She was a wonderful lady. She did a wonderful job with Stagers.

But we--I guess there were some other kinds of test that we had to—we were—they were looking at us and trying to get a—you know, a map of who we were. Talents, our impediments or things of that nature. We were also—we learned all of the traditions. You had to wear your beanie. [120] And you learned that if you didn’t win the flag race on the—they had a greased pole, you were not supposed to be walking on the quadrangle the first semester. You were supposed to use the tunnels. [121]

A lot of people kind of did it. Nobody really enforced it, except the sophomore organization Chi Ro. I’m hesitant—they-they sometimes appeared in the still of the night with people you know, looking all too much like the Ku Klux Klan with hoods, and they would abduct people who—the ones who were blatantly disregarding the appointed customs. They might haul them off or several blocks away and release them and let them find their way back or something. But they--or they did other kinds of hor—nothing really dangerous. Their job was, I saw, kind of harassment if you—if you were a blatant disregarder of appropriate customs.

MM:  It was really sort of to-to—I don’t wanna say enforce, but to inculcate traditions and to-to try to-to bring you into the family.

JCB:  Yeah, that-that was part of it.

MM:  In a—in a perhaps rough way.

JCB:  But there was encouragement also to go to games, football games, basketball games. Cheers. I diverge for just a moment with the basketball games. Later on, when I was working with the class of ’44, very creative bunch of guys who took—I was in the alumni office, and they took great pride in doing whatever they could to embarrass me in public at a weak moment. But I believe that Carleton Gajdusek, our Nobel Prize winner was a member of that class. [122] And, in the course of World War II, there were blackouts all over. I know, I was a junior air raid warden. I worked around the neighborhood with my neighbor who had on a white helmet and everything. But we were making sure that there were no lights showing, and houses going around.

But on campus they had blackouts. There were curtains that had to be put over tightly around all windows. They told a story of Carleton Gajdusek, he-he just wanted to study all the time. There were times that he would build himself a tent structure in blankets on his bed. And he would sit in there with candlelight reading. They encouraged him. They said “hey, you ought to come to a basketball game.” “Oh, what do I want to go there for?”

They did get him to come to a basketball game. I think it was Jack Keil [123] who said he sat there, he had a chemistry book on one knee, he had a math book on the other at the basketball game.

MM:  Were the—were the games ever held at night? Were they usually during the day?

JCB:  Oh, they were—they were—they were evening.

MM:  They were evening?

JCB:  Yeah. Yeah.

MM:  So he was able to study at night and not be under a tent.

JCB:  Yeah. Well, it-it—that—the basketball game thing had nothing to do with the blackouts. It was just that even when he came to something like that, he—

MM:  He was studying.

JCB:  He would have a math book on one leg and a chemistry on the other, and he’d be—

MM:  Talk—obviously you did attend these games. Talk a little bit more about sports, if you would, and the coaches and what it was like—did you—did you—you did play for the varsity after your freshman year?

JCB:  Yes. Yes I—I played—I think I didn’t play in the first game of my sophomore year, but the next week in scrimmage I had a couple of what I might call fortuitous moments. I did—made a couple of spectacular plays, and the coach said ah-ha. So I started the next game. I started every game from there on. But I played soccer. I had played baseball in high school. In the spring there was too much going—I didn’t really wanna take that on. I was a pretty busy schedule. I talked to Lou Alexander [124] and I said “look, if—I was a catcher. If you need somebody to warm up a pitcher or something, okay.”

There are various occasion I—he issued me a uniform and stuff. I’d go and practice. I think that’s only maybe my first year. He’d say—“okay, go throw to that soccer player over there.” So I did a little of that. But I went to the games. As you know, our class had the stalwarts of the first undefeated football team. [125] There was a lot of pride. Those guys were really good.

But I had friends that were involved in-in a lot of sports. In track and tennis and other things. That was—that was a—it was never really a rah-rah place, but there were—there was a lot of attendance. People did go to games. And I remember, before the football games, they’d have rousers. Sometimes there was even a parade downtown you know, leading back up to campus on a Friday night. Then they had the big bonfires behind the library. The rousers. They-they were—they were great fun.

I remember they used to have—you’d—where the—probably about where the student health building is now, you’d be back there, bonfire. But the back of the library had the lights with the block R on there. That was a lot of—lot of fun.

MM:  I’ve seen the photograph of the block R and the lights. I’ve always wished we could—we could still do something like that. I think that’s an iconic image.

JCB:  Yeah, I think that was fun.

MM:  So were you ever injured playing sports?

JCB:  My junior year, in scrimmage one year, an awkward freshman cracked into my leg and my foot went this way and I went that. I guess they called it a sprung ankle mortise, where the bones come apart. Yeah, it was rather painful. I got taken over to Strong. And I was in the emergency room over there. Doc Campbell, the coach, came over, just about the time the doctor was in there to tell me what it was and what they were gonna do. They were gonna put a cast on it.

Doc, with his very avuncular style, put his hand on the doctor’s shoulder and says “Now, isn’t there something else you can do? We need him to play in the game against Colgate on Saturday.” Doctor just looked at us. “I don’t know what you guys”—kind of walked off. He came back later and was rather stern. “You’re gonna have a cast, and you’re gonna be walking with crutches for a while.”

Yeah, that knocked me out for the rest of—at least half of a season. But I was on a sideline with crutches. A byproduct was that is probably about two days after I got the cast on, it was still awkward, it was heavy. And I hadn’t really learned to navigate with crutches yet. That’s a challenge.

Fortunately, my dad let me drive the car from home. It was on my left leg, I could use the clutch. I couldn’t put the gas pedal or the brake, but I could put the clutch in. It was a stick shift. So I drove to the campus. I brought my gear. I parked myself at the Alpha Delt house. And you know, if I had to go to class, I’d walk over. Well, I think it was probably only the second day I was on crutches, I had a class with Arthur May on the fifth floor of Morey. No elevators in Morey.

I thought “well, I gotta tough it out.” I just had a spiral notebook under my hand and my crutches. I walked from the house over to the back of Morey. Five flights of stairs up. I wanted to get there in time, but I didn’t time it right. I was just a couple minutes late for Arthur’s class.

Well, you just didn’t like going into Arthur May’s classes late. I thought well, I did reflect a certain amount of virtue, I thought. You know there might be some secondary gain from this. I eased myself quietly into the room, hobbled sideways down the side of the room, he was talking. Eased myself into a seat near the rear. Just as I got seated he lifted his head and he says, “Well, we’d like to educate the Alpha Delts around here too, if they’d only get here on time.” That was Arthur.

MM:  Talk a little bit more about him.

JCB:  Arthur was—he was what you call a three-three-way guy. He was a teacher. He was a ham and he was a scholar. He was just an inveterate ham. He was an entertainer. As entertainment was always high-class. You started a lecture, you always knew where you were. He had a chart up there that told exactly what the points were that you’re gonna be covering.  And he-you knew where you were in the course of that.

He had always his charts or maps. The old sea dog in me. His maps there, and he would use those appropriately. If you walked into his class late, there was often a retort that put you down, put you in your place. He did not like people interrupting. If someone was just blatantly stupid and noisy, you know he--he could lay them out very nicely. If someone tried to come in and—you just couldn’t get away with not being recognized, even if you were polite and everything else. He would still take you to task.

But there was one occasion, and I am hopeful this will work for this occasion. It was in Morey 327 or 328, end room on Morey Hall where he often taught. And in the course of his lecture—it was in western civilization, and he was at the point in the course, at that point, that where we were roughly getting from BC to AD. My classmate and fraternity brother Bill Columbe [126] was kind of in the third row. Bill Columbe was sound asleep. Arthur noted this, and he just kept on with his lecture, but at the exact point in his lecture, he simply didn’t change any words, but his dramatic emphasis was significantly different.

He just, at the appropriate moment, he leaned forward and said, “Jesus Christ, Mr. Columbe was probably the most significant single influence of anyone in our western civilization.” Well, at that point Bill Columbe was awake, disoriented because he had really been asleep, and his eyes were—there was—there were a few minutes of bedlam. Arthur just went on with his—he didn’t miss a beat. He didn’t change a word of his lecture. He just—with the particular dramatic effect.

MM:  He was—I mean he—and he had, in fact, enjoyed doing drama, as well. You said he was a ham, but there was performances that were faculty performances, is that right? [127]

JCB:  Oh yes, he—he was a participant in the campus life. He was a judge for the inter-fraternity song contest. Fraternities, every spring, would have a-a-a contest. Each fraternity provided its own little chorus. They would sing something on the steps of their fraternity houses. And Arthur, with some others, would go along, and they would judge it. There was a prize given, so there was a certain amount of pride.

Some were admittedly not particularly good musical ensembles, and they did it with heart. The Alpha Delts often won, because, as I said, we had 25 percent of the Men’s Glee Club. And we sang very well. He was also an entertainer. They used to have smokers in Todd Union. It was a male thing. Speed Speedle [128] would do his “Rex the Piddlin’ Pup” act. Arthur May was a speaker on various occasions.

He--I think I’ve related this story to you, when, on one occasion, he said “I am often amused as I leave my office on the fourth floor of Morey Hall. It was a men’s campus at that time, and there were few women’s rooms around. As I look across the way I see two doors with gold lettering. One says “gentlemen”; the other, “faculty.” Of course, everybody cracks up.

He was also a very honest grader. If you were taking a class with Arthur and you wrote a paper or you took an exam with him, he didn’t have TAs correcting them. You got your paper back or your exam, Arthur’s handwriting on the top sheet. He usually had three, four or five criteria that he would be—he would list them, and list a grade for you for each one. Whether originality of resources, correct use of the language, analytical style. Did you make your case?

All of these things were really—but when you got a grade back from Arthur it was an hon—you knew that he had done it, and—he was—he was an amazing man.

MM:  So, I think we’ll start to move towards concluding this interview a little bit.

JCB:   OK

MM:  Because we know we’re gonna have another-another shot at the next portion of your life with the University. Are there—did you feel, when you graduated, that you were well-prepared for what you were gonna do? Now you went into the coast guard, but did—were there regret—regrets about what you took? Is there something you would’ve done different academically? Did you feel prepared? Did we do a good job for you?

JCB:  Oh, I think the University did a great job. If there was any shortcoming, it was in my own lack of skills, especially early on, in time management. I-I just had a lot to learn in that. It was a whole new atmosphere, and I did not have a sense of personal discipline time management. Traveling on the buses to and from interfered with that a lot, but any of my shortcomings in less than superb academic performance—and I know it was my own—of my own doing. I did not work.

I learned more about that later when I was an academic advisor and working with other students how-how time management is very, very important in getting things done. I do remember that when we graduated, it was the first outdoor graduation. It was on Flower Stadium. It was a beautiful day. There was no building up on the hillside. Grass is growing. I sat out there with my class, and the entire University had a—the medical school was there, the Eastman school, everybody was getting their degrees at the same time.

I sat there—I was very happy that I had completed everything, that I was—I was graduating. Because I looked up at the grasses on the field, and I looked around, and I secretly said to myself “I hope nobody’s watching.” I says, “because I think I had just perpetrated fraud. They’re going to give me a piece of paper and say I have a degree, people are going to think I am educated. I don’t know squat.”

That was my own personal sense. I did find later, in the Coast Guard and—I had been prepared. I was able to do things—one of the first things I had to do when I got on my second ship was completely rewrite the ship’s organization book. Which had to do with what everybody was gonna do under everything. And I had to rewrite that.

I found hey, I could do it. I did a decent job. I also, through the luck of it—when I was in the Coast Guard, I was assigned, as a junior officer, three times, as a summary court. It’s a challenging job. It’s the lowest level of courts marshal. And in that, one officer is assigned. In that assignment you’ve got to live with the UCMJ-- the uniform code of military justice--in this big forum you’ve got. You’ve got to be the investigating officer. You’ve got to interview witnesses, the accused, the accuser.

You are the prosecuting attorney, the defense council, the judge and jury all wrapped up into one. What you do in your conclusions on this, you’re outside the command, because the commanding officer has assigned you to this job because he thinks it may call for a punishment greater than he is able to give under the command.

And then, what you do has to be put down very precisely. Then it is subject to review by the district legal officer, a real hard-nosed lawyer. Each time it happened to me, my stuff was all approved the first time. So I was able to handle that kind of stuff. I was able to handle the mechanics of a gunnery on my first ship. The mounts, the trajectories of things. I was able to manage that, because physics had helped a lot with that.

So, I think I’ve always felt the University did its best. Any preparation that I didn’t have was my own shortcoming.

MM:  Well, we not only gave you one piece of paper, we gave you a second one later on. [129]

JCB:  Oh yes.

MM:  And I think we’ll talk about that when we have our next interview.

JCB:  Okay.

MM:  Is there anything else you’d like to add to this one that you think we’ve left out?

JCB:  No, it’s just that as I’ve been thinking about this, and as I think, going forward, I found that the University is not an entity the way people think of it. Before I came here, the University was a place. It’s up on the river. Okay, there was another place on Prince Street where my sister had gone, but it was a place.

Later on I find that the University is a very hard to define universe. I often, even when I was working here, I found that people would say the University did this, or the University—the University doesn’t do anything. People at the University do. The administration will sometimes do things. Faculty will act another way. Students will act—but the University becomes more and more a very hard to grasp universe.

It attracts a lot of good people.  But, fortunately, the University, I’ve found, is something that it can absorb a lot. You find some people around the University—whether they’re students or administrators or—you just don’t have a lot of respect for, but the University will survive them.

Fortunately, there are enough good people around—I’ve found that the people I was fortunate enough to be connected with here, so many of the faculty, my teacher and Ward Woodbury at Eastman School, Doc Campbell, the coach. Doc was not a great coach, but Doc was a great man. The team enjoyed playing for him. It’s a whole different bag than the program now.

I felt very fortunate that there was a climate here, and an array of individuals who were of staunch character. They had an honor system in class. You didn’t have people watching over you on exams. There wasn’t any—that I could see, cheating going on. Later on, I saw a lot of it. But, at that time, there was an element of character, and it reflected the time. We were just—after World War II, the nation had a sense of character, an identity.

It’s a lot different now. No, I think I am more and more impressed that the University is hard to get your hand around. But it--there’s a lot of wonderful forces going on.

MM:  All right. I think we’ll end on that note, then. I’ll turn things off, and we will reconvene perhaps in just a few weeks.

JCB:  Thank you.

MM:  All right. My name is Melissa Mead, and this is November 18, 2016. I’m speaking with John Braund. This is the second of two interviews. In the first interview we discussed his life as an undergraduate and in this interview we’re going to discuss everything that came after.

JCB:  Wow.

MM:  Or a good portion thereof.

So, you graduated from the University in 1953. What did you do then?

JCB:  Yes. When I graduated, military was not an option. If I didn’t choose, I would be chosen. So during my last semester, I competed in a very small program for OCS at the Coast Guard Academy. I passed muster, I went to OCS at the Coast Guard Academy, and I became a Coast Guard deck officer, North Atlantic. I didn’t know a thing about weather patrol when I went in, but I found out soon afterwards. We were in godforsaken spots of north Atlantic. NATO [130] weather stations, sending up weather balloons every six hours.

I was made gunnery officer. We had about 12 officers on the ship. We operated under DESLANT [131] destroyers Atlantic operation orders. We did our training at Navy destroyer bases. Spent about eight months on that ship. Went through two underway training periods with the Navy.

Then I was transferred to a smaller ship down in the Gulf of Mexico, Brownsville, Texas. And as cosmic forces of Coast Guard personnel matters would have it, even as an experienced ensign, which I was at that point, I was suddenly made executive officer on the ship when I walked onboard. The captain said “you’re gonna run the ship and if you don’t—I don’t like it, I’ll tell you.” Wow.

But it was a good experience. I was navigator. I was executive officer. Navigation was all—off-shore was all celestial, star sights every morning, every evening. That was on law enforcement, search and rescue. And we did both all over the Gulf of Mexico. Mostly around the Yucatan Peninsula, which was where our chief patrol area was. Because that’s—at that time, that’s where a huge part of the US shrimp fleet was.

And we towed—we towed shrimp boats sometimes, as many as 500 miles back to Port Isobel. [132] When I was—my last seven months I was assigned in Cleveland. And because I was a few numbers higher than a classmate than mine at OCS, I became senior search and rescue controller for the Great Lakes area. That was a great experience. Got involved in a couple of big cases that were fascinating. Then I served my time and got out. 

MM:  Was there anything that you could look back in terms of what you learned at the University that prepared you to be as successful as you were and, in fact, continue to be in the Coast Guard?

JCB:  I think what I learned here was very much how to do some research. How to put together a report. I had to write a lot of reports. I had to actually write out a lot of stipulations in a contract before we went to dry dock. One of my first jobs on the second shift was to rewrite the whole ship’s organization book, which told where everybody was under every kind of circumstance, operation.

I think it also served me well. I happened to serve as a summary court on three different occasions. That’s the lowest level of court’s martial. It’s one officer. You have to go very heavily by the uniform code of military justice. The reporting that you have to do on that takes a lot of precision, a lot of care.

All three times, my reports that were carefully reviewed by the district legal officer, they all came back approved the first time. Captain said he’d never seen that before. I think the U of R was very helpful.

Also, just the math and the physics that I had. Celestial navigation was really a problem in spherical trigonometry. There were a lot of things that I think U of R prepared me for. The things that surprised me that were several times I was taken well beyond my comfort zone. I think U of R gave me a good basis. I had a grasp of circumstances, and I think it was very helpful.

MM:  So you do your stint in the service, and what happens next?

JCB:  Well, we got out. We had, at that time, our first son had been very severely handicapped. He was born with hydrocephalous. That’s why I got my shore job assignment. And he was still with us, but my wife was pregnant. We were having—we were expecting our second son within two months of the time I got out. So I had to look for a job. Had a place to live, which put options for career search on hold.

But-it-it worked out. It worked out well. Our-our first son died two months after our next son was born. And I started at Eastman Kodak. I had originally intended to go into industrial relations. That’s what I was—my family’s background was—in Rochester, everybody’s at Kodak. And I thought industrial relations, works with people rather than things. And I was at another former army officer and I were put on a special training program in paper manufacturing.

And it was—if I had wanted—and it as probably a decent career. It wasn’t fun at the time. We were doing all kinds of productive stuff on the paper machines. Learning the paper-making trade right from the ground up. And they treated me okay, but I just had—I found that I did not do well. I did not feel good in the industrial climate. The-the overall mentality, to make people as regular as machines.

I had particularly liked—in the Coast Guard, I had particularly liked operations. I liked being out, making things run. I had freedom to make decisions. What I was—certainly had orders to follow. Clearly. But I just did not feel comfortable in the climate. Ward Taylor who had been the placement officer at U of R, I had known him when I was an undergrad, he called me up one day and he said “John, we have an opening at the University. It’s brand new. I’m wondering if you might be interested.” [133]

It was to set up a advising program and a counseling program, really, in University School. [134] Which was then a—the University’s major connection with the broad community. So I came up, I interviewed with Howard Anderson [135] and Arthur Assum [136] who was an assistant dean. And I was given the job. I saw what needed to be done. I had to help people know which courses to take, how to work toward their degrees.

I had—I ended up evaluating transcripts from all kinds of institutions from other colleges, from high schools. People with European and Canadian backgrounds, German Gymnasium, [137] British, A schools, Canada’s great 13. And I-- Evaluating transcripts, trying to place the person in the appropriate setting here, cuz they were starting after the beginning was a challenge. It worked out well. I had a few faculty members who were very helpful.

Norman Gunderson, [138] for instance, as a math teacher. A super good math teacher. If I had someone who had—curious mathematics background. I could just send him to Norm. He could talk to them and figure out where they fit, what would be the most appropriate course for them to get into here. But I also got involved in that job in a lot of counseling. It’s why I did my graduate work in counseling and testing, and set up a kind of a singular kind of program with dean Fullagar [139] and the new College of Education at that point. I take some extra psychopathology and other things.

But I had some students that had very—I would say serious emotional problems that I didn’t try to do more than I could, but I did have a good relationship with the psychiatric department medical school. I remember one evening I had to call one of the psychiatrists, and he was great. It was a young lady that was in the office had left home very angry. Particular at her father. He said, “Is she in the office now?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Hard to talk?” I said, “Yes.” “Let me ask you some questions, you can answer yes or no.”

And it was a very helpful exchange. He said, “If you can—is she willing to come over to the emergency this evening?” He said, “Can you get her over there safely?” I said—I talked with her, I says, “yeah.” So she went over there. She had some severe problems. They took—they took—but they took care of her.

And there were other—other students that had all kinds of conflicts, I found, with parents. That’s another whole story. But it was—I did a lot of counseling, I did a lot of advising. And University School was a-a tremendous asset for the University. It-it was a place where non-traditional students could come and do what they were looking to do. Some were just beginning college. They could take courses, no admission requirements. They could take courses and they could earn credits. They could not be admitted into a degree program until they had completed at least half of the degree program, organized appropriately with at least a “C” average or better.

There was that starting factor, but there were people that came in fresh out of high school. There were people that had tried college, didn’t work out, they came back. There were women who had done some college, raised a family, came back. There was a lot of hesitation, especially on the part of older people, as to whether they could do it. So talking with them and helping them to feel comfortable, at least in trying it.

It was also a place where people with particular achieved objectives, who were good at what they did, were-- might be sent by an employer or an agency to take some specialized program in some of the resources here at the University. One of those was—one of my early advisees--was my chief corpsman in the Navy, the first enlisted man the Navy ever sent to college on a full-time basis. He had been in the original crew of the Nautilus. [140] He was one of Admiral Rickover’s handpicked types. [141] He and everybody else in that crew went through the entire nuclear propulsion engineering program.

And, they sent him here because we had the atomic energy agency here doing early research in radiation, both from fissionable materials and microwaves and things. [142] And he was taking graduate courses in radiation biology and health physics for his bachelor’s degree.

There were others that I had the pleasure—a couple of ladies in particular who would come in after have raising part of a family. Both of them did splendidly. I was able to recommend them for Phi Beta Kappa. They made it. So it was—it was a tremendously enriching, kind of a challenging. Where some students that came in that were real challenges. And sometimes, with parents who were real challenges.

I learned a tremendous amount about what education was and wasn’t. Because even at this wonderful place, there was still a lot of academic snobbishness. People said, “Well, these people aren’t the same. They haven’t been admitted, they haven’t gone through big trial period, been approved.” By the time they finish half of a degree program successfully, they were—they were—and it also was—University School was the repository for the professional programs that later became the roots of the professional schools. education, engineering, and business. [143]

There were a lot of—there was a lot of good connections in the education area with the local schools. Teachers could come here and take courses to fulfil their advanced requirements for certifications. Students at the U of R who were majoring in something in arts and sciences wanted to become high school teachers. They could work in their student teaching programs through that. There were a lot of people in Kodak and Xerox was in its formative stages at that point, Bausch and Lomb, who came here taking courses to enhance their work programs, as well as to earn a degree.

Nurses who were RNs, a lot of clinical experience came and enrolled in the University—in University School for the general studies program, because they could take what they needed in biology, psychology, all the other things, to get a degree. Which would give them the credentials, and for leadership in the nursing.

The curious thing was that many of them found that trying to work through a standard nursing program at a nursing school, even, alas, at our own medical center, older nurses were toughest on them of anybody. “Well, I did it this way, so you gotta do”—and, you know, they weren’t ready for that. They could come. They could get their educational enrichment. They had their clinical background and they could pursue that on-site.

There were people that changed career programs. I remember one in particular, the principal trombonist in the Philharmonic wanted to become an engineer. And he was still principal trombone in the philharmonic, but he came and worked through courses in chemistry and physics, math and he ended up making a connection with College of Engineering.  And he--he got his degree. Another one was an Eastman school graduate, a flutist, who had played in the Marine band for four years. He wanted to become a doctor.

He came back, was able to take courses in University School and fulfil pre-med requirements and he was happily accepted at a medical school. There’s a lot of changing of careers, and a chance to explore. It gave the University a tremendously good connection with the community.

This was in the days before MCC, so that a lot of the people who would now go to MCC were coming here. [144] And it was—it was a good—it was a good connection.

MM:  Who taught those courses? Was it full faculty, or assistants?

JCB:  In some cases it was regular faculty at the U of R who took on an extra load voluntarily because they enjoyed working with those students. In other cases, it were—it was people in what I would call the outside world who had developed a degree of expertise. We had physicists from Kodak who were teaching courses. We had one, actually, a high school physics teacher and a high school guidance counselor, Hyde Kaplan [145] I think it was from Franklin High School who was a tremendously good physics teacher.

Jim Wishhart [146] who had been graduated from here and he got his PhD, I think, from Princeton in geology, who had been part of the original exploration group that discovered a huge iron ore deposits in Northern Canada. [147] He was a teacher. He was, at that point, a vice principal or principal in the local high school. He taught geology, and he was a master teacher.

There were others that-they taught because they enjoyed it and they were good at what they did. It was—it was a good-good connection.

MM:  Where were your offices?

JCB:  My first offices was in then called Taylor Hall. [148] We shared University School, the dean was there, the assistant dean, the registrar’s office. The other part of Taylor was the computing center. At that time, it was a very large room with long banks of machines on a raised floor, because they had to put all the cables underneath there. And it was the only place in the University that was air conditioned, because they had to get the heat where they—the big long rolls of spinning reels and machines that were sorting cards.

We then moved, after the administration building was built, we then moved over to the administration building. That was where I spent the rest of my days in University School.

MM:  So you make a switch in 1964, and you go back—you go to the other side, you move to the Eastman School of Music.

JCB:  Yes.

MM:  And how did that start? And you were registrar over there.

JCB:  I was registrar. Eastman School was a curious entity at that. It was extremely good music school. It was in the end of Howard Hanson’s tenure there. [149] And Allen McHose, who was the associate director, very creative guy, he recognized that the Eastman School needed—he thought someone--needed someone to work with the male students there. In a counseling and advising way.

He didn’t feel that the dean of students—at that point was a woman who was pretty, I would say, conservative in her outlook. [150] She did not really have a connection with the males, and really not a good connection with the females either--but. He thought it would be good with my background, and my musical background, because I had sung opera at Eastman and was still doing some oratorio things on this campus--that I would have some credibility at the music school.

He said, “Before you—before we get you into the counseling thing, you gotta straighten out the registrar’s office.” The registrar’s office, at that point, looked like something out of Dickens. Large journals with screw-top binders. And to work on a record, you had to take the screws out, take the—pull out the record, work on it. Put it back in. It was—and the registration was all hand processed.

At this time, there was what they called a mechanized operation in use on the River Campus. It was an IBM system with punch card sorting, but it was much faster. You could register, get all the information on the cards, sort them out whatever—and from that data you could print the materials that would then go on their record cards. And they could all be filed in whatever order they wanted them. By class, by name, whatever.

So it was my job to straighten that out. Well, in the first year I-I redesigned the whole record keeping system at Eastman. I—with Allen McHose’s support, I vested three places that were research universities that had professional music schools to see how they dealt with the relationship and the recordkeeping and people with—at the rest of the institution. Because we had—there were some people, not a lot, but there were still some people on River Campus, like I had, who wanted to take courses. And there were people at Eastman that wanted to take courses in something other than music.

So I visited Indiana University, University of Michigan, and Boston University. I talked with their registrars. I talked with their music school deans. At the end of the first year I had a-a new card designed for Eastman, and the system set up so we could work with the same system that was on the River Camp—I worked very closely with Ken Varner [151] on—at the registrar here. Worked—very good relationship with Ken. We worked it out.

So by the end of the first year we had a new system in place. Now the problem was, what about the older records? At that point, the only way of preserving them was really on some kind of a microfiche kinda thing. And it--a reel of microfiche images is not very easy to work with if someone wants to come up and get a transcript of their work and send it on.

So, I worked out a system where we could use the same IBM punch card process, but there was a system where we got punch cards with-- that had film slots in them. And we were able to micro—photograph the records--both sides--get them into the little opening on that card, and those cards could then be sorted in any way, by class, by instrument, by alphabetically, whatever. So if the person then wanted to get a record sent of a transcript, they could be sorted out, put in the machine, take a photograph and you’ve got it.

One of the problems was we had, at that time, a lot of nuns from the Sisters of St. Joseph at Nazareth. [152] Very good musical backgrounds, and they were becoming music teachers and educators. And some of them were just continuing to take music in their specialty. Some wanted to go on with degrees and become leaders in institution in the music area.

The problem was they were all listed as Sister Martha, Sister Mary, Margaret, whatever. And tt’s hard to sort that out. So what I had to do was very artfully contact all of the current registrants, and even reach out to some who had graduated, and ask them if they could kindly supply their family names. And a couple came up to the office and said, “Well, we gave up our family names when we took our vows.” I said, “I know.” I said, “You are an organ major. And your name is Sister Mary Margaret. If you want to do graduate work at St. Louis University in organ, and you want a record sent there, we’ve got a lot of Sisters called Mary Margaret. How are we gonna get the right?” “Oh.”

So, it was an adventure, but I think we managed to do that. So, the record, in the two years that I was there, I did change the record keeping system, both for the current students and the older ones. And it worked for—I think continued for about ten years until technology took ten steps ahead and had to be changed further.

MM:  So, at this time, you’re still busy doing extra—what you would call extra-curricular things. You’re singing and participating in the life of the University as a graduate. You’re playing soccer. Do you wanna talk about—let’s talk about the music, first. Because the music always seems to permeate everything.

JCB:  When I came back to work at the University after being out, it was about five years I came back. And at that point, Ward Woodbury, who had been my opera conductor at Eastman, was director of the program on the River Campus. And he was—he was a genius in the way he was able to set up a huge program and manage it very well. He took over a men’s Glee Club that had had a marvelous heritage, but he—and a Women’s Glee Club [153] that was—its heritage on the Price Street Campus had some good people and they did some good music, but it was up and down, depending on who was directing.

He combined—he-he took over both the men’s and women’s Glee Clubs. He began the University Symphony Orchestra. He began a concert band. He got someone else to conduct that. He began a chapel choir; which chapel was then held in the Strong Auditorium. [154] And he started a performance program on the River Campus that was extremely good. He started having weekends here. He had a Mozart weekend, he had a Bach weekend. He had a Stravinsky weekend in which he engaged both the men’s and women’s Glee Clubs, made them into a chorus.

He had the University Orchestra. [155] For some programs he even engaged members of the Rochester Philharmonic to play as the orchestral accompaniment. He had to be artful, because when you—when you had members of the Philharmonic, he couldn’t charge ticket prices because of union regulations.

So what he did was plan his year carefully in advance. He would plan moneymaking events where he could sell tickets for parents’ weekend and or other things. We did the Berlioz Requiem [156] on the Palestra on parents’ weekend. Huge audience, huge chorus.

But on the weekends where he had engaged Philharmonic, he had top people, but he just balanced out the—he was always short on money, but he managed to do it carefully. What amazed me, he did it—he was a single person running that office. He had one-one administrative assistant. And for a time he had a graduate assistant, maybe somebody from Eastman or somebody to help him in that. He did it all.

Well, walking across campus, not long after I began, I ran into Ward Woodbury. And he said, “Oh, what are you doing here?” I said I was working. A week later he called me up and he said, “We’re going to be doing a performance of The Messiah in December. He says, “We’ll have Men’s and Women’s Glee Clubs.” He said, “We’re gonna do two performances. I wanna do one with student soloists. I wanna do one with Eastman alumni as soloists. Would you?” “Sure.”

I had a chance at that time to work with Pat Berlin who had sung at the Met. [157] Eileen Ewers [158]  who was the chief soprano at Eastman when I was there. Sam Jones, [159] who was a notable conductor and wonderful baritone. From that point on, he engaged me to do a lot of oratorio work. We did The Messiah, [160] the Orff Carmina Burana. [161] I’m trying to think. Mozart Requiem. [162] We did a lot of—he engaged me, and I was—and of course the Berlioz Requiem.

I did some very, very challenging work from the tenor repertoire in oratorios here on the campus.

MM:  And you also did lighter things, shall we say, with the University Women’s Club. [163]

JCB:  Oh the University Women’s Club was a vital program. Wives of some of the faculty had a lot of pizazz and they really ran a wonderful program. And they-they had a show that they put on for several years. It was primarily inspired and run by Janice Roberts, the wife of Arthur Roberts, [164] a physics professor. It turns out that Arthur Roberts was a prominent, high-energy physicist who used to travel to and from Brookhaven on a frequent basis.

But he had a master’s in music before he ever started into physics. He used to compose music on the plane to and from Brookhaven. Janice put together these shows, and I don’t know she had some help from someone in putting together the dialogue. They were all on the order of Quilting Club. They were burlesques on the University. Burlesques on some of the faculty rules and fundraising efforts and all—but they were wonderful. They were thoughtful. They were not mean, but they were very artful.

Arthur Roberts would come to the rehearsals with very nicely written manuscript. He would say “well, let’s hear how it sounds on the piano.” He hadn’t played it, but he had manuscript that was beautiful—you work from manuscript, it’s always a challenge. This was manuscript that was as easy to work from as I’ve ever seen.

He put together some shows that were tremendous. I remember one where we had five singers. I was probably the least musically—there was Masako Toribara, the voice teacher at Eastman. [165] Old Frank Hetherington had been an Eastman graduate in trumpet. [166] There were a whole bunch of other people. Really, really good musicians.

This one piece was in the style of Handel. It had runs that were incredibly—we had a hard time learning it. And it was really very well—he had one that-that was really a spoof on the academic elements in which there was a sextet comprised of three duets. Btu from the departments of physics, physical education and philosophy. Each one of these little bits where people were doing a duet with all-all of this. And then it came together into a sextet.

It was absolutely incredibly good. Those shows were—they were well-attended. They did, sometimes, it was a couple performances in Strong Auditorium. We did them in other venues. That was another—I also, as an undergraduate, I had been the lead singer in the Boar’s Head dinner procession. So, I got involved in Boar’s Head dinner programs. Not with the waiter’s chorus, but leading the carols and everything afterwards. There was just a lot of involvement.

MM:  And what brought you back over to the River Campus from Eastman? You set their house in order and you said, “I’m done,” or—?

JCB:  Well, I have to be artful in this. That was a time during Walter Hendl’s regime there, and there were parts of the administrative elements that I simply did not feel comfortable with. [167] I-I had done a good job—I had a wonderful experience with students. I was a little embarrassed, because a couple times in the hallway, people would say, “When are you gonna become dean?”

And I—[groans].  So anyway, Harm Potter was looking for someone in the alumni office with them. I made a switch and came into alumni relations. [168] I sort of had a running start in that, because when I graduated, there was a—our class was—it was suggested we organize some kind of a class committee to help keep track of the class, and to work on reunions, going down the line. It appeared that I was the only one in the—among the active bunch—okay, Braund is probably be-be staying in Rochester. Make him president.

So, even—after I got out of the Coast Guard and I was at Kodak, Martin Morey who was, at that time, in charge of the fundraising that was there. [169] He worked very closely and very well with Harmon Potter. He had a system going where he had class representatives—this was in the local area and in some major outlying areas. Most of the alumni really lived in this area. A lot of them were out, but pre-Potter.

So he asked if I would be a representative for our class. He gave me a whole bunch of cards, and make calls on classmates to see if they could contribute to the annual fund. It wasn’t the idea to hit them hard, but just get participation. And I did, and it was interesting. At that point, I made contact with classmates Ed Ackley, [170] Warren Bastian, [171] and that’s what, I think, got them involved early on. They later became very serious donors. That’s what got involved.

After a couple of years of that it worked out well. We had a big participation. He asked if I would serve as a chairman for the decade of the 50s. I had to recruit representatives from other classes in the 50s to do the same thing I had been doing. It was a personal network, and it was pretty widespread. I had been doing that, and alumni was not a foreign field to me.

MM:  That was all volunteer.

JCB:  That was all volunteer.

MM:  At that point.

JCB:  Oh, yes, yes.

MM:  So when you moved into alumni relations at that point, we started one of the big capital campaigns in—just around that time, ’65, ’66 I think.

JCB:  I came in in—

MM:  ’66.

JCB:  - ’66. Yeah. Yeah, I-I forget when all of the campaigns were run. They were successive.

MM:  But that campaign was one where they were raising the money to put the addition on the library to build Hutchinson Hall, even though that wouldn’t happen for another, really, five or six years. And the early stages of planning, in fact, for Wilson Commons. [172] Joe Wilson [173] was the head of that campaign. Do you have—we’ll get to the fact that you—that you worked and have known a large number of the presidents of the University. Can you talk a little bit about—well I always ask people about Joe Wilson. Did you know Joe Wilson at all?

JCB:  No.

MM:  No.

JCB:  Pardon me?

MM:  Did you know Joe Wilson?

JCB:  I knew Joe—I had met Joe Wilson. I had had a few conversations with him. One of the things that I felt very proud about, I was sorry, you know his premature death was a shock to everyone. I had one exchange of correspondence with him, US mail at that time. Dear Joe, Dear John. AndI was very proud of that. I had asked—I was—I belonged to a professional association. I was hopeful that Joe might be able to be the speaker at a meeting. I think it was going to be in Atlantic City. And I wrote to him to ask. He wrote back and he said that he would be happy to, but he was so involved in some other projects at the time, he wasn’t able to.

I know the people from other colleges, and have worked at the committee they saw this exchange “Dear Joe,” “Dear John,” wow. Yeah, I-I knew Joe. I worked for—[mumbling names of past University presidents]. I worked for four presidents. I was on the road with three of them. I was on the stage for the inauguration of three.

The most interesting thing that—I-I knew them I especially knew Allen Wallis, [174] Bob Sproulll [175] and Dennis O’Brien. [176] I-I also was very conversant with a lot of the people in physical plant. Carpenters, painters. I picked their brains because I was rebuilding the second floor in my house. I picked their brains and I borrowed tools. I was involved with all manner of administrative people around the institution. And when I was in the alumni area, I worked closely with people from Eastman School and the medical school. I was involved in all of the divisions of the University, too.

MM:  Let’s go to the presidents and talk about the—actually talk about the inaugurations. What did you do at the inaugurations?

JCB:  First one I was mere—I was still a student.  I was sen--it was when Cornelius de Kiewiet was inaugurated. I was part of the Men’s Glee Club. It was a very good Men’s Glee Club. It had the sound of the Russian Army Chorus. We had some basses and tenors that could really fill. Well, we were sitting on risers at the back of the Eastman Theatre stage. In front of us were rows of faculty and trustees, you know, in academic garb.

During the course of Cornelius de Kiewiet ’s inaugural address, in the expanse between us and a slope back there, and over the heads, a bat suddenly started to fly, swooping across the stage. The first time it came, you know, the people sitting there were a little astounded. The men put their mortarboards back on again. It swooped again, and as it came back and forth, several times, the heads moved like the wheat in the Kansas windstorm [laugher] You know, back and forth.

Of course we, in the Men’s Glee Club, were a little bit of irreverence. We-we-we had a hard time not snickering. We didn’t do it publicly or embarrassingly, but it was—it was a curious experience, because President de Kiewiet had no idea what was happening behind him.

MM:  Then President Wallis. What did you do at his—did you do anything at his inauguration?

JCB:  I-I-I was not involved in his inauguration. But in the course of my alumni relations, I-I worked with him on a variety of occasions. I was on the road with him for a few programs. And there were several events that were going on with prominent alumni that he was a part of. I got to know—he—I knew him fairly well.

In fact, such that, when he was still—after he had given up his CEO job and was chancellor, he had an office in the library. And on one occasion I was looking to have a panel for reunion weekend of some major figures. And as it turned out, it included Virginia Dwyer, [177] the highest placed woman in corporate America. Ed Coldony, who had just been elected the airline executive of the year. [178] David—head of Xerox.

MM:  Kearns. [179]

JCB:  Yeah, Dave Kearns. And I had Alan Wallis as the moderator. They were talking about business climate. [180] This was for reunion weekend. But I wanted to pick his brains on this. I called on him, and he said, “Okay, I’ll work with you, but I want something from you.” He wanted to know who—if I could dig out who the alumni were, who had been president of the student’s association while he was president. He wanted to reach out to them.

So we had a—in fact, he offered me a cigar, we sat there and had a cigar conversation. [181] And it turned out that he gave me some guidance on where to go. I made the contact with all of these people and got them involved. But he helped me to set up what their agenda might be. It was a wonderful gathering.

MM:  Wallis’s time as president was one of the more turbulent times in terms of student protests, not only at the University, but outside in the greater world.

JCB:  It was hard.  Hard times.

MM:  Can you talk a little bit about some of the major events that you remember here on campus that were disruptive or not disruptive?

JCB:  Well, the-the University came out of that protest area far more unscathed than many others. My sense is a lot of it was Allen Wallis. Allen was what you call a hard-nosed leader. He was straight and you knew what he wanted. And he got what he wanted.

One of his guiding principles was freedom of speech on campus. And there were a lot of people who came to campus, Timothy Leary [182] and a whole bunch of others in the—in the protest area. Allen Wallis never tried to prevent or—he would not suffer the actions of others who wanted to prevent people from speaking. [183]

One time he became incensed was when General Maxwell Taylor was featured as a speaker. And of course, he had been one of the generals in Vietnam. [184] And students in their protesting mode came running down the aisles with the head of a—a freshly severed pig’s head dripping blood. And they disrupted the thing fiercely. General Taylor never got a chance to speak. [185]

Allen Wallis was very incensed on that, and he let everybody know this: freedom of speech applies to everyone. And at that time, of course, the military was not welcomed on campuses. All of the Ivies got rid of their ROTC units. The U of R kept its—NROTC unit very much through the clever adaptability of Captain Cliff Largess. [186] He had been a navy torpedo bomber pilot in World War II. Brought a plane back well shot-up on one occasion.

Cliff Largess—and it was all men at that time in the unit—he allowed them to wear their hair slightly longer. No long sideburns, but what they had could-could be longer. And even longer hair, so long as everything was covered when they put their covers on. So long as they could present a reasonable military appearance. I think he even allowed mustaches or something of that nature.

And--what was very important--he did not require them to wear uniforms around campus on drill days. On drill days, they put their uniforms on and went straight from the dorm to the field house, where they were enclosed, did their drill, did what they had to do and came back. There was not confrontation on campus between students and military.

And I’m--I’m quite confident—I think a lot of other people felt that way, too. That was—it enabled U of R to keep its ROTC unit, and of course it’s been a very, very distinguished unit all the way along. [187] But there were some—the black students took over the faculty club. There was a sit-in in the administration building. There was a lot of administrative concern and memos and everything going back and forth regarding the sit-in in the administration building. But it was never—things never got really badly disrupted on campus. [188]

The thing that was visible was the garb of the students. About 1965, suddenly everyone who had been carefully clad, men wore coats and ties in there, they had short haircuts. All of a sudden, everyone was wearing cutoffs, long hair, beards. The prevailing thing was, as in the rest of the land, down with the establishment. Don’t be like the establishment. Any kind of planning or programming or budgeting, that’s establishment. Don’t do it. [189]

And that--at that point, so many things on campus fell apart. Student activities. There were no longer class officers. A lot of the traditions that had been were just wiped out. Even Keidaeans, that was—and there were—it was just “hey, the present is what’s important, and that’s what we gotta deal with.” There was that kind of a disruption.

But the University was fortunate. We did not have anything approaching the public mayhem that took place at Columbia, [190] Kent State [191] and things of that nature. And Allen Wallis, I think, was an important part of that. He kept a sense of academic focus, freedom of expression, and a restraint on the demonstrations. I think that was important.

MM:  You mentioned the black student union takeover of the—what was called, even at that time, the Douglas Building. Were your offices in that building at that time? This was 1968-9.

JCB:  At that time, no. My office, at that—when I came back to alumni relations on the campus, my offices were—was, for a time, in the administration building. Then we shifted to what was then called the math/science tower. We were on the seventh floor of that building for some time.

MM:  Hylan building we call it now.

JCB:  Yeah, by whatever name. Yeah. So we were not in the mainstream of any of the activities. However, I was out in the campus every day. I was at the gym many times during the week. I was crossing campus. I had contact with students and faculty. I had one very embarrassing experience in the—I think I can put this on. In the front—in the math/science tower. We’d been having—our offices were on one side of the building there, not too far from the elevator, and there’d been some kind of a discussion about the old west and people attacking forts and everything.

So, I was about to leave the office and go out and I said “well, keep the fort safe, don’t let any Indians in.” And just at that moment, the elevator door opened, and an Indian, a native of India, walked out. He looked rather startled. “Oh my.” I wanted to seep into a crack in the floor. I-I apologized. That was very unfortunate.

MM:  The timing. It’s always the way, right?

JCB:  Oh yes.

MM:  So in fact, it’s interesting thinking about where offices are located, how they then relate to the rest of the campus, and to their own mission. I think about the short time when Allen Wallis wanted to have his offices in Rush Rhees Library in 1963-64, and that didn’t happen. The fact that his office was then in what we now call Wallis Hall. [192]

JCB:  I referred to it as The Vatican.

MM:  The Vatican. And how that isolation may have affected the real or perceived relationship between students and the administration. So from the perspective of someone who was doing alumni relations at the time, that office moved a number of times. So it started in—

JCB:  Oh yeah, we moved.

MM:  - in the administration building to the math/science building to the faculty club in Douglass, to Fairbank Alumni House on—Fairbank House on McLean, [193] and now over to what used to be the St. Agnes school. [194]

JCB:  Right.

MM:  Do you have any thought about whether the—was there any plan in doing that? Did it affect how you operated?

JCB:  No, the—the alumni office was moved according to budgetary considerations, and for a long time, alumni office was not high on the budgetary priority list. In fact, it was so low that, during my last years in the alumni office in the 80s, our budgets were so short that, even in times of double digit inflation, my salary—double digit inflation, and my salary increases, I think the biggest one I got was four percent. A couple times a one percent. It was going up 9 percent, 10 percent, 12 percent, the cost of living.

So, in a sense—well, I still had some teenage and college kids. My income relatively went down. I was not happy with that, but that’s the way the priorities went. But I treasured the University. I participated in its life in a lot of ways. So, I said okay, that’s so—but the alumni office moved from the math/science tower to I think it was then called Fredrick Douglass, not the men’s dining center.

We were in the portion of it closest to the library, for a time. Then there was a concerted effort to build what was called the Matt and Ruth Fairbank Alumni Center. That shifted our offices—we took over a much bigger part of that third floor of the building, but shifted to the other side. There was a wonderful library in there. A conference room at which that tall grandfather’s clock that was from the Hutchison House [195] was put, because that was the only place on campus it would fit.

We could have meetings there, but it was particularly dedicated, and there were plaques assigned and a public event, which made it the Matt and Ruth Fairbank Alumni Center.

MM:  That was in the Douglass building? [196]

JCB:  That was in the Douglass building. And while we were there, the plans were made for re-refurbishment of—reconstruction, really, of a lot of it. When they cut a huge hole between the third and fourth floor, where that stairway in what is now the Meliora--they established the faculty club. The faculty club was gonna be on two levels. We worked there all that summer, jackhammers and all kinds of things, and air conditioning off at various times. It was a—it was a challenging summer.

Then when—that-that had been completed for a while. My office, at that time, was right opposite the stairway between the—that connected the various floors. The faculty club had a lot of student waiters and waitresses. And my office, the out doorway, it was always open to the stairway there. The students who were waiters and waitresses used that. I had a lot of face-to-face, and a lot of times they would pop in. We’d have conversations.

And it turned out many of them found that when they were graduating, they would pop in and look for references to alumni out in the world who were in the kind of field that they were looking for. So, I was able to make a lot of just personal contacts. The alumni offices were not planned in any way to be a part of the campus traffic. It just kind of happened that way.

It was my predilection, I went over—I had a locker for over 30 years in the gym. I played a lot of handball, squash, jogged noon hours. It was pretty active noon hours. I had a lot of contact at that time in the gym, on the track, in the locker room with faculty, students. I got to know a lot of—and the coaches. So I kept a personal network. I did it just because it was enjoyable and enriching.

MM:  And it really—so I mean almost by-by accident that the offices were where they were, which allowed you to then do what truly is alumni relations, and—and--.

JCB:  It proved that way, yes. It enabled me to enhance my—just my personal network. And I’d like to think that I took a lesson from Harm Potter.  That, in working with alumni and students, build friends. If you can establish a personal credibility—I-I never tried to pretend that I was on par with many of our alumni. A lot of them are a lot smarter than I was, a lot more—I didn’t try to—but I did establish some credibility.

And my sense is that if you can establish—Harm—if you can establish personal credibility, that that credibility is transferrable to the institution. So, I was identified with the University and we had good relations. So that, that I think, transferred in many respects to—in fact, there was one-one person several months back where they’re a graduate who had—I had first met as a woman who had partial—college partially completed, raising a family, came back. Very unsure about “how am I gonna connect with these bright kids in the classroom now?”

Well, we had a nice talk. She—I tried to reassure her and get her involved. She not only got involved, I later recommended her for Phi Beta Kappa. She ended up getting a PhD. Now that was—we’re talking back in the late 50s, early 60s at the most. Several months back, maybe a year ago, she made a gift to the University. She mentioned that she recalled, when she first came here, how important it was that she felt good about coming back. She mentioned my name and the fact of helping her to reconnect with the place. So relationships count.

MM:  So it’s not industry relations, it’s institutional relations and personal relations.

JCB:  Yeah.

MM:  So you were advocating for alumni and cultivating alumni and the current students at the time, here on the campus, but you were also doing a lot of work outside of Rochester, building alumni groups and networks, and traveling with groups that entertained. I wonder if you could talk about some of that.

JCB:  Probably the first group that I worked with in traveling with those that entertained, it was—it was 1968, which was only a couple years after I’d come back here. It was not long after the completion of one of those campaigns. Alumni had been sending out a lot of messages, a lot of people got messages here, especially in the upper floors of what I called The Vatican.

“You can always find us when you want money, but you don’t find us otherwise.” So, there was concern at that point that “Well, we’ve got these wonderful groups at Eastman. We’ve got a need to reach out to alumni, and there was a concerted effort, let’s spend some money and do some.”

MM:  They decided to—they, upper levels of administration, decided that it would be good to put the Eastman Wind Ensemble on the road. So, they actually arranged the timing--they someone in the development office had made original contact in a number of areas. The tour was set for Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Francisco, and two places in Seattle. One a big high school in Billingham, and a final concert was going to be in the Seattle Opera House. Well, this was a big operation. [197]

Don Hunsberger, I had gotten to know him at Eastman, and he knew that I had some musical credibility, and that I was connected now with the alumni program. [198] He asked, particularly, if I might be assigned as the road manager. What that meant was I not only worked with the alumni groups in arranging leadership in each city. The person that was gonna receive the reservations, handle the tickets, money and everything else from that area, and arrange receptions after everything, but as road manager with the group, I also worked with the hotels where they stayed, with they—their meals, their trucking companies in each area. They needed a 14-foot truck to carry all the—two buses. There were 55 people in the—in the group, plus the entourage. Don, me, Don Lyon, Don Smith and all the people. [199]

So I-I did the whole bag.  And Don and I worked—we did a—it was about a ten-day advanced trip. We practically lived out of the same suitcase. We went to all of the cities. We’d get to the city, rent a car, drive from the airport to the hotel. We’d have the distance and time down. We would drive from there to the location of the concert, get the time down. Don would measure the stage and find the entrances where various people and instruments could be brought in and make notes.

I worked with the hotel people on the room assignments and registration when we got there, how that would happen. Meals there. I worked with the airline, United Airlines, and I met with someone at each airport. In some cases, we did what’s called a hangar operation, where the buses and the truck would report right to the hangar. We’d get on the plane. In other cases, it was through the terminal.

We had all that worked out. Don and I worked very nicely together. We-we both had a vision, and he did his thing, I did my thing, and it really—and it turns out, the tour was-was, indeed, successful. A lot of people were happy with it. It was good for the students. The thing that I found on that, Don Hunsberger who was a superb musician and just took what Fredrick Finell [200] started and built it into an international—internationally acclaimed body. The standard for wind ensembles everywhere.

He was also—his connecting with the students was extremely good. They not only learned performance, practice and that, but they learned on the road what you had to do, to enhance your own being. Your-your part of your instrument, your physical condition, your mental condition is a part. He-he was extremely good. The students were 18 to 22, creative, they had all kinds of ideas in what they’d like to do. He-he was always there. Never preached to them, but if he saw something, he would take a couple guys aside, say—just talk to them. “Hey, you know, you’re a professional.”

The students learned what it meant to be a professional. That’s been true with all of the things that he has led. I remember when we got to Los Angeles, our performance was in Royce Hall. Very professional place. It was at UCLA. [201] It’s where the Los Angeles Philharmonic played. Ballets Russes had been there. [202] They had--I mean the whole place was very big-time operation.

When we arrived there, backstage, they were still assembling the shell on the stage. And the stage manager said, “Well, it’s gonna be some time before we can . . .” so Don said, “Okay, is it okay if the kids just go out in the hall and just warm up?” Well, he looked rather startled. This bunch of college kids, so he was saying—out in this hall they’re gonna—and he said, “Well, if there won’t be any smoking or drinking.”

Don snickers. Said, “No. They just wanna go out and blow their horns.” Well, okay. So they went. I stood in the back of the auditorium and the assistant manager came back. He stood with me. He was being friendly and talking, but I could see he was looking around. He was making sure that this group was behaving themselves. College kids, in the hall. And, when the shell was assembled, Don walked up on the stage. He just clapped his hands and said, “Okay.”

Everyone just very quietly folded up their cases, grabbed their instruments, walked up on stage, sat down. The oboe sounded the A. They tuned up. And he just stood, “Okay, let’s begin with the second movement of the Ingolf Dahl.” [203] Assistant manager was standing in the back with me, and it just went [whistle] boom. He was astounded. He said to me, he says, “Wow. I’ve never seen anything so professional. The Los Angeles Philharmonic isn’t that professional.”

Don’s-Don’s influence was just total. It was a good—I was later working with Don. We were on the road with the trombone choir, the percussion ensemble for Philadelphia, New York, Boston. Later, with the—after Ray Wright [204] came and the whole studio orchestra began, the studio orchestra and the jazz ensemble, and we went to Cincinnati, Atlanta and Nashville. It was a bus trip. We flew to Cincinnati. A bus trip between Cincinnati and Atlanta. We were going through North Carolina. This was the early 70s. It was still a very hairy period. Chuck Mangione [205] was there with his hat and his long hair. Jeff Tyzik was more burly at that point. [206] He had big hair, a beard. The whole gang was—they were good, but it was hairy.

I had a beard at the time. It was trimmed and that, but—and we stopped at a place for lunch along the road in North Carolina. I said, “You sit here. Let me go in and see how they get by me first.” It was a very redneck area. Well, when the person in there that I was dealing with—I said, “We’ve got two busloads of people out here.” It was a big place. They looked at me, glassy-eyed. You look like that, what are the rest gonna—I went back—I did not feel comfortable. Went back in the bus and I said to the driver, “Is there another?”—“yeah, there’s a place up there.”

So, we did stop at the second place, but it was a dicey experience. Later on, I was asked to do with it—this was just much more individual-individual. We had a—there was a desire to put a small group from Eastman on the road. They had a string quartet with John Celentano, the chamber music professor, [207] and a soprano. And we actually started in New York. There was a big University program there. We started there, flew to Detroit, but at the very high level school north of Detroit. Chicago, where we played in one of the Frank Lloyd Wright [208] places in Oak Park. Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco where we played in the Palace [209] and Legion of Honor. [210]

This was a unique kind of program. It was what I call a lecture demonstration for the first half, and the second half a more formal performance. In the first half John, who was a wonderful teacher, you know, the old Italian uncle, but he spoke to everyone. He told them, he was explaining how an ensemble works. What the tensions are, how people have to play it, the whole nuances, how they play together. He would ask people on the spot, “Victor, why don’t you play this piece. Ed, [211] why don’t you”—he would get them to play their portions of this particular quartet as a solo.

Then he’d say play it together as a solo. Oh. Then he’d say okay, now play it as you need to in—it was—the differences were amazing. Then he would say watch how the cellist watches the second violin on this part. Then, after getting that done, he’d say now let’s add another thing, a human voice. He brought in a soprano to add this human voice to it. It was all lecture, and it was really wonderfully educational.

The second half of the program were a couple of performances. One of an actual—a movement of a Beethoven quartet and another with a quartet with soprano over it. It was—it was amazing. The audiences were mostly River Campus people. This was a chamber music concert. They were sitting on the edges of their seats, paying attention. This is chamber music, but they were watching all the stuff that they had learned. It was just an amazing connection between Eastman and alumni from other parts of the University.

There were a lot of—I had a lot of chance for exchange on that. Rode the bus with Eastman Philharmonia when they were with—when—with Willy Stargell doing his thing. Went very prestigious areas. Opened at the Kennedy Center on Martin Luther King’s birthday. There was a reception for some people at the White House. Played at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. Moved from there to Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh, went to Carnegie Hall. Finished up in the Eastman Theatre. [212]

I’ve rode the bus with the orchestra and arranged all of the receptions afterwards. It was working with alumni, again, with the tickets for all of it. The connections with the students, with the alumni, with the various people—cuz when I’m dealing with the hotel, or the meal people, receptions, I represent the University of Rochester. I had to be aware of that. I think it worked out interestingly.

MM:  One of the other times when you were traveling, you were looking to see when they were gonna replace the carillon, the original carillon, instead of chimes—

JCB:  Oh yeah.

MM:  - with the actual carillon bells. I wonder if you could tell a little bit about that lunchtime trip?

JCB:  That is a unique thing. Taavo Virkhaus [213] who took over for Ward Woodbury when Ward left to go to Winter Park in Florida was a conductor. I worked with Taavo before, and I did a lot of oratorio stuff and Amahl and the Night Visitors [214] with Taavo, so he was a good friend.

Taavo was also a pilot. He had a private license. He liked to fly. Periodically he might call me about 9:00 in the morning and say, “Can you take a long coffee break?” I say, “Okay.” We drive over to the airport, we rent a plane, we’d go up for about an hour, fly around. I could operate the navigational dials on the plane. He knew that I had also been—my Coast Guard years, that I was familiar with the shorelines of the great lakes. One day he called me and he said, “Are you busy today?” I said, “What do you got in mind?”

He said—[clears throat] excuse me, he said, “The Hopeman family has offered to pay for replacement for the chime in the library tower. [215] There is a carillon in Cleveland that is made by the Eijsbouts company. [216] There’s a need to check it out.”

Says, “I’ve got two members of the Bellman’s Society here. He said I’m just wondering if you could go to Cleveland with us today, we’re gonna check that out.” I said, “You have a connection with the administration at the University. If it appears that—if I can say that I think this is good, if you can support my recommendations, cuz you have some credibility from an administrator and from a musical background.”

Well, he also knew that—he was gonna do it, rent a plane and fly. He also knew that I was familiar with the shoreline of the great lakes and he might find it helpful to have me flying the right-hand seat looking for Cleveland. Well, it turns out it was—it was—we left at, I think, 10:00. We left the airport at 10:00 in the morning. I said, “I’ve gotta be back.” I was singing with the Bach Chorus for the Bach Festival, for rehearsal at Asbury at 4:00. [217] “Well, I think we can do it.”

We went to the airport. We got on the plane. It was a large single engine. Taavo was flying, I’m in the right-hand seat, the two members of the Bellman Society [218] in the back seat. We flew to Cleveland. He was looking to try to land at Erie, Pennsylvania. I said, “No, Taavo, that’s Erie. Cleveland is up the line.” There was airport near the lake that he thought was lakefront. I said no.

Okay, so we went on to Cleveland. Parked the plane. Got in a taxi, went out to the Church of the Heavenly Rest, I think, in East Cleveland and they had the carillon. [219] We climbed the tower and we must’ve disrupted much of East Cleveland at that time, cuz we had to bang on the bells and this and that.

But it got a good—Taavo and the bellmen got a good feel for the musical aspects of this thing. We went back to the airport. Had lunch at a little counter at the airport. Flew back to Rochester. We got in probably a little after 3:30. That whole trip, for the four of us, lunch at the airport, I think the whole—the expenses for that whole thing was about $80.00. We could rent a plane and gas was much cheaper at that point.  Then I got to my rehearsal at 4:00. We did make the recommendation, and the Eijsbouts carillon became—but it was a interesting experience.

MM:  Not many people go out for a long coffee and go to Cleveland.

JCB:  No. No.

MM:  So, one of the other more—I don’t know how to say it . . . much more involved in the life of the University activities was your participation in commencement events.

JCB:  Oh yeah, that was—

MM:  If you could talk about some of the varying aspects of that? That would be wonderful.

JCB:  I actually participated in commencements almost from the beginning of the time I started working here. I was asked if I would be a marshal to help lead University School faculty and graduates in the commencement procession to their seats and everything. Carry a little baton. So I did that.

It turns out that, in 1968, after the Eastman Wind Ensemble tour, that was the time the University decided well, we’re not gonna mess around with trials on the outdoor thing anymore, because you always had to have—plan A was outdoors. Plan B was indoors, but if it rained, nobody really was all that familiar with plan B and it was a little chaotic getting plan B off the ground.

So they said “Let’s have it indoors.” They decided that the indoors should be the War Memorial. Big place, but there a lot of people expected. [220] And that was the first time that the University actually decided to have real music at commencement. For many years, outdoors and wherever, there was a Hammond organ. And, you know, they would play the alma mater and commencement hymn and everything on that. But there wasn’t real music to bring—good musicians playing it, but— [221]

So they decided that okay, the wind ensemble has just come back from tour. Let’s engage the wind ensemble to play. Well, Don was very astute. He said, “Okay, we will, but we’re gonna pay them union scale.” Hoo. Well, that was the condition, so that was agreed. Somebody said “Okay, that does that make sense.”

The other consideration was, for the group to sing, the alma mater, and that the commencement [O Matter Academicas] if someone is conducting it down front for the orchestra, in a War Memorial, by the time that sound gets back to the back, people trying to sing together with something—it’s gonna be chaos, because that’s delay factor’s gonna be. Don said, “What we need is someone on the stage to sing that into the mic and kind of conduct it, so that people in the back get it instantaneously.”

So he made the suggestion that I do it. I could sing. He knew that I could follow his beat. He’d be down there, I was up here. It worked very well. People sang. The problem was that nobody really knew or could do very well with the commencement hymn. I knew all three verses of it. So, we did that, but—so that—it worked well that time.

So, let’s stay with that format for commencements. After the second year, they gave up on the commencement hymn, because that was the only one singing it. But I was somewhat determined—Bernard Shilling who had been the very eloquent orator and proclaimed names with great style decided to retire from that. [222] “Well, John’s up there on stage, he’s not doing anything else. Let him do that.”

Well, I did. That was a challenge. I’ve determined that intoning names of doctoral candidates for this University at commencement is second in hazard only to umpiring Little League baseball, which I had also done. I looked at that list of names, and I spent about three weeks doing research. I talked with department secretaries. They were the best resources, and others, to make sure I knew however it was spelled, how you—not just what the proper pronunciation, but how that person might wish it. So I--I did—for about 20 years I did—I did both of those things up there.

MM:  Can you sing a few—actually sing a few bars of the commencement hymn?

JCB:  Oh, people sang it very well. In fact, it was at Bob Sproull’s inauguration, I did the—I led the singing on the stage. And I got a note from Bob the next week. He says, “Congratulations.” He says, “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard the whole audience singing the alma mater.” It was a—he-he was happy as a clam with-with the way that worked out.

MM:  Do you wanna talk a little bit more about working with Bob Sproull? He’s a very different personality than Allen Wallis.

JCB:  Bob was—all the presidents were different. Allen Wallis was-was pretty close to himself. Anything he said, you knew it was right. He never went into any kind of a meeting unprepared. He was—he did not suffer errors on other people’s part very easily. Bob Sproull worked very hard at being president. He took great pride in the University and in trying to make sure that the University always looked the part of a sound academic and intellectual institution, and that everybody that represented it did good. His—he kind of  micromanaged some things. He even put out his own style book for University staff to use when they’re writing news releases or other kinds of things. Some people thought he was a little bit of a micromanager.

But he took the University very seriously. And I think he protected the University’s character. At the time there was a challenge from the Secretary of the Navy regarding the naval—the Center for Naval Analysis, which the University had been running for several years. With an income, at that time, which was very good, about $7 million a year. [223]

It turns out that the then Secretary of the Navy wanted to determine what the research was. The University had always insisted, whatever we do is going to be reportable among the professional fields. They would not be involved in any classified research or reporting. But the secretary wanted to determine just what areas would be covered. And Bob said, “No, we’re gonna do this. We will determine the areas that we will specialize in.” They said, “Okay, if you do that, we’re gonna take away the money.”

He said, “Let’s forget it then.” He told the Secretary of the Navy, “Goodbye.” The University lost about $7 million a year, but he protected the University’s character. It was—he was a good president. He-he really worked hard to make sure that the University was a good place. He worked hard to protect people here, too.

I was on the road with him. He was always concerned that whatever we did in a program—I remember in a hotel in New York before the program, he said, “Make sure you talk—people—and they get that muzak turned off. We don’t want that.” He was—he was concerned about the whole-whole picture. I respected him very much.

MM:  And you also knew Dennis O’Brien.

JCB:  I got to know Dennis very well. I got involved in establishing and managing the receptions all over the country for introducing Dennis to the alumni. We’re talking some very prestigious places. Lincoln Center, New York the International Club in Washington. Algonquin Club in Boston. University Club in Chicago. There was a country club in Denver that was—I forget the name of it, but it was south of Denver, and it was like an old Scottish links course out there, but a very nice—

Los Angeles and Palo Alto. Bill Scandling even offered to have it at his establishment at Saga Foods, and that was the most elegant of the whole—work and Bill covered the costs of it. [224] But I was with Dennis on the road on all of those things. I even took him to a place outside of Phoenix that I knew of. It was like an old junkyard, outdoor museum. I’m trying to think of the name of it.

I took a picture of him sitting in an outdoor school chairs, sitting there. It was—Dennis did a lot for bringing relationships between people and the community, with the University. During Bob Sproull’s administration there was an effort to present the University as a national organization—looking for national [inaudible]. There were some challenges people in the cities said, “You’re getting a little too snooty for the area.” [225]

Dennis worked hard at bringing things back. He actually—being a philosopher and a speaker—he actually participated in a number of services, Sundays or Saturdays, at churches in temples in town. He preached sermon. He reached out very well, and in the various cities where alumni were still—there—there’s always antagonism with alumni. You know how to find us when you want money, but—

There were—there were a lot of issues that alumni were raising, leftover. There were even still, I think, some leftover things from the sit-in days. Alumni that had been ticked off a long time before and never had a chance to sound out about it. But Dennis listened. And he spoke with everyone. Eyeball to eyeball. He was very, very good at connecting people and establishing a bit more warmth, the institution with alumni all around. So it was a—I enjoyed that. 

MM:  I think it’s pretty clear that’s something that you’re able too do, as well. You went out to alums and sort of met them where they were, but then you also brought them back for reunions. And you had a lot of—you knew a lot of reunion classes from way back into the early 1900s or late 1800s, even. And I wonder if there’s some-some particular memories from that you wanted to share.

JCB:  Wow. I had personal contact and I’d say relationships of varying dimensions with alumni from the late 1890s to the 1990s. In those relationships, I got some insights on the transition of the University through various eras and incarnations in itself. I can remember alumni, alumnae, ladies from the classes of the teens and the ’20s saying, “Yes, I had some class with the men, but I always had to sit in the back of the room.” I got the sense that there was a very separate and unequal education experience for men and women, though many women came and they were well educated. The society was not ready for things. Women, in those days, they had a choice if they graduated from the University. They could either go back and raise a family, or they could have a career, but the two did not combine very well for-for many. Some were able to do it.

But the—the change in the University’s programs, and the opportunities for study, I-I-I did an oral history interview myself with the man who got the first PhD in physics, who had been heavily involved at Bell Labs for a long time. [226] So I saw changes in the academics area. And I was able to connect alumni—I talked to a lot of them about who their favorite professors were. And I found out what the connections were there and why they—why they felt connected with the University.

I also, in the course of—I had—I had—alumni clubs—Harm Potter had a bunch of alumni clubs set up around the country. Then in the protest period, everybody, even the ivy leagues, dumped their alumni clubs. They just cut them off. The relationships were bad. U of R was then without.

In the course of my working in the alumni relations, I actually set up and supported—and rebuilt when the leaders changed—17 alumni clubs around the country. Some were modest. Some were pretty active. The one in Washington were two of my classmates, Bill Kriegsman and Paul Brady were involved not in running it themselves, but in organizing the leadership down there. That club actually set up its own 501(c)3 techs program. They could contribute to the club to support themselves.

Those clubs were wonderful at the time I had to arrange things for taking Dennis O’Brien around the country. I think another dimension I haven’t mentioned, but for some 14 years I believe, I managed the alumni overseas tour program. It was not as extensive as many. Many schools, especially big state schools, they ran these programs to try to make money. I was fortunate. I was able to—my purpose was not to lose money. When I worked with the travel agencies, I said “My purpose is not to lose money.” I know we got some payment on that, but some of that money we plowed back into receptions while we were abroad for alumni.

Not just for the alumni on the trip, but in many cases, we connected with alumni from those areas. I can remember, particularly, talking with alumni in Egypt, in New Zealand, Australia, England, Denmark. And in the course of that program I was also—because of the times being what they were, and we had a good contact in the state department, and I’m embarrassed, I’m trying to think of his name. I know him very well. He was with USIA. [227] But he connected me each time with generally the deputy at the embassies. And I was able to arrange briefings for alumni in major embassies.

In Madrid. We did two in Rome. Athens. Copenhagen. London. In London, we had 250 people. It was a big crowd. We actually had it so that when we got there, I went to the embassy and I got personally engraved invitations for every one of our alumni. I got them to hotels so that they—when they went to the embassy for the briefing, there was also a very wonderful cocktail reception. That they handed us the Marine Guard [228] at the door, got ushered in.

The thing that was helpful about those briefings was that they were educational. We didn’t deal with the political appointees to the embassies. It was the pros. The one in Rome turned out to be George Ward who later became ambassador to Namibia. [229] One of our own graduates, but we got briefings on the history of the US with that nation. With Spain and Rome and Great Britain. It was relationships with NATO. We got on the political scene. But the political economics and the historical element. People got a chance to look at their country from a distant point, with different points of view.

They were the professionals that we dealt with. And they were—they were wonderful. The one was interesting. I had never met George Ward before. But when we were in Rome and he was presenting his presentation, because the deputy chief admissions said “We’ve got one of your own people to do this.” I stood in the back of the room, and our Italian courier, one of the best ones I ever worked with. She was a lady that had lived in the US, was very, very well-educated. She came up to me in the back of the room and she said, “I can’t tell you how good he is. He knows Italian politics, economics and history better than most Italians.” Says, “That must be some institution you people are from—or some University that you people are from.” So I just smiled. But those-those were wonderful educational experiences, too. 

MM:  So, when you retired from active duty at the University, shall we say, you still continued to be involved in a lot of different ways. I know you go to soccer games and concerts. You’re also still active with the Keidaeans and with the Alpha Delts. And also at the hospital.

JCB:  Yes. That’s an interesting thing. For about at least 15 years now I’ve been part of the standardized patient program at the hospital. We get paid, not enough to make a living, but we have to be employees of the University. So my current ID card says lab technician three. That’s code for the part-time job I have there.

But we play roles. Usually in hospital gowns, sometimes in street dress, for medical students to hone their diagnostic and interviewing skills. We play very carefully prescribed roles. I’ve presented with rupturing aortic aneurism, superior mesentery ischemia, dizziness and tingling in particular fingers. And they have to do an examination. With the aneurism and with the other, they’ve gotta figure out what’s happening, what’s wrong within a couple hours or I’m a goner. [Laughter]

I’ve also worked with first-year students. I’ve presented with depression and they have to figure out whether I’m suicidal or not. Whether they can let me go unattended. Sometimes, it’s just offering up my body for first-year students to practice with the tools of their trade. They learn to use stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs. And there’s a preceptor there helping them to do all of this. A few weeks back, someone says, “What are you doing Thursday?” I said, “I’m gonna be at the medical school.” I said, “I’m gonna be offering myself for examination by first-year students.” And I said, “I hope it is pre-mortem.” [laughter] “Pre-anatomical research” [laughter].

Yeah, I’m still pretty active in supporting both the men’s and women’s soccer teams. I like the games. I know the coaches. I know the team members. That’s a continuing connection. I go to basketball games. Go to things at Eastman. So, I keep a lot of connections. It’s a--University, it’s a lifelong enterprise. I’m pleased to say the University is a big place. It’s bigger than it ever was. It used to be a family thing. It’s too big for that now, but there still is—there’s still a lot of good things going on.

I am very grateful that the University’s HR programs now, it used to be called employee benefits or personnel stuff, are as good as they are. My health care benefits have been—are good. I am very, very happy with the way, and having TIAA-CREF, they manage my retirement. I’m not rich, but I can get by and I don’t have to fight Washington or anybody else for health care benefits. So I’m-I’m very grateful for the University. I’m very--I think I had a rich—I didn’t have a career here. I had a very mixed bag. People say, “What did you do at the University?” And I frequently say, “Well, many people wondered.” There was—I just—at Eastman School, I was a counselor. Even when I left the University School full-time, I maintained a part-time relationship. I wasn’t actually an academic advisor for over 20 years here. Included in that is being involved in the graduate program in community services, which Martin Ackman [230] ran at the hospital.

It was every bit as good as a social work program is—didn’t have that name, but it was a very strong program. I did all of the intake interviewing for that. I was an advisor for students who were looking to become interventionists. So I had a long time continuing connections with students related to their purpose for being here. And with alumni from all over. It got so that Ken Wood, [231] who was the assistant of many presidents—came in with Allen Wallis, continued through Bob Sproull, Dennis O’Brien. Ken Wood would send the invitations that the University would get from other institutions around the country, for a presidential inauguration. They always invite the president. He can’t go to every—maybe one or two he might, but they look to have alumni representing the University. So I got so that I got all those invitations. Say who can we send in this area? So I was identifying alumni to go.

And they even included one in Japan, with Hiroshi Tanooka [232] who had gotten his PhD here in atomic energy program. And He was very happy to represent the University at the inauguration—at the 100^th anniversary of Waseda University in Tokyo. [233] So There were a lot of—lot of connections.

MM:  When we—before we started the interview and turned the camera on, you talked about how you decided that you weren’t going to be a captain of industry, and you’ve mentioned how your career here was not necessarily a fully thought-out kind of career and just happened. And I wondered if you could recapitulate a little bit of what you were saying when you started.

JCB:  I really did not have an identifiable career. I didn’t go from step to step to step. I moved sideways. I did a—I found I participated in the life of the University. I was involved with people here, with the highest level of administration, trustees and carpenters, electricians, students of all varieties, faculty. I was involved in the musical performances. I was a fraternity advisor. I even played on an intramural soccer team for several years.

So I was involved in the life of the University. I did not have a career path, and I think it very much goes back to the days of what I would call—early days of post-youth. But I don’t know whether I was still at Kodak, or whether I had started at the University. Singing has been a very strong sidelight, and I was asked to sing at a funeral.

I forget whose it was, but it was someone that—in the course of that service, in between the time I sang the first piece and the second piece, I sat there in the chancel of the church, and I had time to ruminate a little bit. It was a funeral, so I started to think it’s all said and done, what’s it all about? I began to muse, and I said you know, it doesn’t make any difference whether you’ve been a captain of industry, a very prominent public leader, a very modest person, just someone loved by your family and your friends. All the tombstones look alike. They all weather at the same rate. At the end, what’s the difference?

I think it was in that time that I made a decision. I’m not going to try to climb the ladder of success. There were a lot of things I know I could’ve done to enhance a career that I don’t want to be in that climate. I enjoyed my climate. I had some challenges, and I think I did some things that were very worthwhile for the University. I decided I’m not going to seek a career ladder and do the things that are prescribed for one’s resume and one’s climbing up. When it’s all said and done, if I’ve made some good relationships that I have enjoyed, and maybe somebody else has been enriched by, it’s worthwhile. I think that’s been my guiding light. I have taken on challenges. I’ve gotten beyond my comfort zone in a lot of areas. It’s been worthwhile.

I learned in the Coast Guard, out in the ocean, that getting beyond your comfort zone can be sudden, and very challenging, but keep your head. Go through it. You end up with something richer. I think that’s what has been characterized. I’ve enjoyed my life. I didn’t make a lot of money. Now, if the University had paid me better, I’d be able to contribute more in my retirement years. [laughter]. But it’s been a good thing. The University is a very good place. There have been some challenges. The University is big enough that, when I found someone that was less than desirable to work with, or someone that didn’t do much, okay, the University can survive that. It has, and it will. It survived me, also.

I think it’s been a—it’s been a wonderful place. I’ve been very proud of this University, and of the people and the alumni that [inaudible]. The people who have been a part of it. A lot of older professors and that, I know what their heritage is. And I know what the heritage of some of the alumni are. Even whether I had good connections with them or not. I’ve seen a collective picture of the University has been—has come a long way in a good direction from the time that Martin Brewer Anderson [234] started out.

MM:  I think that’s probably a good note to end on. I wanna thank you for the time this afternoon, and the time that we’ve shared leading up to this afternoon, and the time that we’ll continue to share talking about the University, and learning about the University.

JCB:  Thank you. I hope it’s—I hope it’s been worthwhile. Down the—down the line, that it may be helpful in putting together some of the pieces that might not otherwise be seen.

MM:  Very helpful. Very helpful, and thank you.

JCB:  Thank you.