Reggie's Informal Undergraduate Ivy Style

Continuing the theme I explored in my post Reggie's Reflections on "Ivy Style", today's essay is one in which I feature images of knockabout clothing that I actually wore as an undergraduate at Yale, back in the 1970s.  Specifically, my crew letter sweater and my trusty white bucks, both of which are sufficiently talismanic for me that I have held on to them all these many years since.

While I am still able to wear the white bucks that my dear brother Frecky gave me for my twenty-first birthday, it has been rather a long time since I have been able to fit into my Yale letter sweater.  With the passage of time one's figure has become rather, um, portly, which is most unfortunate when it comes to one's ability to fit into one's college undergraduate clothing.  Not only is Reggie unable to squeeze himself into his letter sweater, Dear Reader, but the needlepoint belt that his then girlfriend, Victoria Vanderlyn, made for him during his sophomore year is, I am afraid, rather too small to clasp around Reggie's expanded middle-aged waist these days as well.

Ah well, at least Boy gets to wear them (and other articles of my clothing) from time to time . . .

The model for today's essay is George Peterson, the very affable and game husband of boy's assistant designer, the divine Nancie Peterson.  The charming and amusing Petersons spent the weekend with us at Darlington before the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy, and Boy took these photographs of George outfitted in my letter sweater and bucks as a stand-in for yours truly.  We dressed George to look as Reggie might have on an autumn weekend in New Haven back in the day, strolling around the Yale campus or on his way to a football game at the Yale Bowl.  The handsome George is also shown wearing a set of horn-rimmed spectacles similar to ones I wore as an undergraduate, and which I still wear to this day.

We have purposely posed our obliging model next to a sundial that stands on a garden walkway at Darlington, with the autumn trees and scattered leaves in the background.  Time and tide, as

they say . . .

Tell me, Dear Reader, are there articles of clothing in your closets or chests of drawers that you have fondly kept from your college days and that you cannot bear to part with—like Reggie—even though they may no longer fit you, or have fallen out of fashion?

Photographs by Boy Fenwick

Reggie's Reflections on "Ivy Style"

Boy and I spent this past weekend running around New York attending exhibitions and shows, shopping for clothes, and eating out in expensive restaurants.  We had a lovely time, Dear Reader.

The brochure for the "Ivy Style" exhibition
at the Museum at FIT

One of the reasons we decided to stay in the city instead of making our usual trek north to Darlington House was to take in the "Ivy Style" exhibition at the Museum at FIT.  As most of the readers of this blog likely know by now, FIT has mounted an exhibit that chronicles the evolution of a style of men's clothing, originally known as the "Ivy League Look," from its origins on the American campuses of Princeton, Harvard, and Yale (among others) in the first decades of the twentieth century up through the present day.  For those of us who are interested in clothing, style, and social history (and who isn't?) the exhibit is more than worth a visit.

The window at the Museum at FIT
advertising the "Ivy Style" exhibition
Photograph by Boy Fenwick

There has been much written about the "Ivy Style" exhibit in the media and on the men's "trad" clothing blogs, and it takes its name from one of the most popular of those blogs, written by Christian Chensvold.  Mr. Chensvold was involved in mounting the exhibit and is a contributor to the show's entertaining, thought-provoking, and surprisingly academic catalog.  Boy and I were invited to attend the opening of the exhibit by Thomas Cary of the Cary Collection, who lent many of the accessories featured in the exhibit, but we were, to my disappointment, unable to attend.

A brochure published by FIT showing
a Princeton blazer from the "Ivy Style" exhibit

In any event, I very much wanted to see the exhibit, and I am pleased that I did.  I am heartened that the style of men's clothing featured in it is considered worthy of a curated show at FIT and that there is a growing re-appreciation for the classic American Ivy League men's style in today's fashion circles.

One of the window displays at the Museum at FIT
Photograph by Boy Fenwick

Of course Ralph Lauren has been mining this particular vein for decades, but I am hoping this exhibit, along with the chorus of bloggers who have been championing Ivy (or Trad) style in recent years, will prompt yet even more interest among young men in this country in appreciating the integrity of dressing well again.  Hey guys, it's actually cool to wear a jacket and a tie on a weekend!

The Quadrangle section of the "Ivy Style" exhibition
Image courtesy of the Museum at FIT

The exhibit includes a catalog/book of essays by luminaries in the industry that is chock-full of photographs and illustrations from vintage periodicals and sales brochures.  It is a visual delight!

The exhibition's catalog, photographed on
one of Boy's J. Press tweed jackets
Photograph by Boy Fenwick

I've flipped through the catalog/book (published by Yale University Press) a couple of times, mainly focusing on the photographs for now, although I did take the time to read Mr. Chensvold's enjoyable interview of Richard Press, the grandson of the founder of J. Press—the venerable and iconic men's clothing store in New Haven, Connecticut, that did much to popularize the Ivy style.

The University Shop section of the exhibition
Image courtesy of the Museum at FIT

The exhibition is divided into a half a dozen or so themes, ranging from "the Quadrangle," to "the Dormitory," and my personal favorite, "the University Shop," shown in the preceding photograph.

"For God, For Country, and For Yale"
Image courtesy of the Antique Athlete

While I certainly enjoyed attending the exhibit, I had the eerie feeling while doing so that I was spending my time there staring at my own navel.  It was all very familiar to me, and much of the clothing on display could have come from the closets and cupboards of the men in my own family.  My roots in the Ivy League go back a number of generations, mostly at Yale, where my grandfather Darling, my father, and I and my brother were all fortunate to attend as undergraduates.

A postcard of Yale in the 1940s
From the collection of Reggie Darling

It was at Yale that I came to fully understand the true allure and iconographic significance of the Ivy style of dressing.  While my prep school experience at Saint Grottlesex prepared me for Yale (in many ways), it was only upon my arrival in New Haven that I came to truly appreciate the splendor of traditional Ivy League dressing.  I came to Yale as a boy, and I left it as a man.

My father and his freshman classmates in Branford College at Yale,
taken in the fall of 1940.  FD is standing in the second row on the far right
Image courtesy of Frecky Darling

When my father was an undergraduate at Yale in the early 1940s, he was clothing obsessed.  Letters written at the time to his parents in Grosse Pointe (which my grandparents saved and which I read many years later) were full of entreaties from him for yet more funds to purchase the clothing and sartorial accessories he felt were imperative in order to fit in with the smart crowd with which he ran at Yale.

I particularly liked these striped blazers from the 1920s
Image courtesy of Funky President

For my father's Yale 25th reunion, held in June 1969, I remember that all of his returning classmates were given blue-and-white striped blazers similar to the ones shown in the preceding photograph.  However, the blazers handed out were made of paper, like the Andy Warhol soup can paper dresses that were a craze at the time.  What I would give to have one of those blue-and-white striped paper blazers today!

My grandfather Darling's prep school alumni
blazer, ca. 1930, worn by Boy Fenwick
Photograph by Reggie Darling

One of my most treasured possessions is my Grandfather Darling's blazer from the English public school he briefly attended before Yale; I am showing it in the previous photograph.  As the "Ivy Style" exhibit notes, much of the clothing adopted by American Ivy League undergraduates in the early twentieth century had its inspiration in England.  But it became softer, less military, and less buttoned-up when it made its way to this side of the pond.

A vintage J. Press brochure.  I remember poring over these as a college
undergraduate, plotting out my sartorial dreams
Image courtesy of the Ivy League Look

When I enrolled at Yale in the mid-1970s, the Ivy League look was in its death throes.  Even though New Haven still had a number of Ivy style purveyors ringing the campus, almost all of them closed when I was an undergraduate there, with the exception of  J. Press (still going strong) and Barrie Ltd. (long-since closed).

Tweed jackets from J. Press and other purveyors of the type worn
by my father, my brother, and me in the 1970s and 1980s,
as displayed in the "Ivy Style" exhibition
Image courtesy of Vim and Vigor

My father used to let me charge clothes on his account at J. Press from time to time when I was an undergraduate.  Nothing crazy, mind you.  A sport jacket here, a couple of shirts there, some gray flannels, and a Shaggy Dog sweater or two.  Just enough to keep me out of rags, I suppose . . .

A sheaf of my old school ties, mostly bought
at J. Press and Brooks Brothers over the years
Photograph by Boy Fenwick

My roommate and best friend at Yale, William "Willie" Octavius Koenig IV, and I were among the handful of fellows in our class at Yale who appreciated the old Ivy League look from the 1950s and 1960s, and we spent a lot of our free time (and most of our disposable incomes) at J. Press making pests of ourselves.  One of the salesmen there, a fellow named Gabe, used to take us in the back room of the store and let us buy end-of-stock vintage shirts and ties from days gone by.  Gabe used to sell clothes to my father, too, whenever he came to town.  Willie and our friends used to call J. Press "the Squeeze" in those days, a play on its name and a comment on the injury that frequenting it did to our meager undergraduate bank accounts.

My most treasured white bucks, bought for me by my
brother Frecky from Barrie Ltd. for my twenty-first birthday
Photograph by Boy Fenwick

I was something of a throwback when I was an undergraduate at Yale.  Although I was happy that it had gone co-ed by the time I arrived there, and many of my classmates came from backgrounds different from mine—ones that didn't include prep school educations and legacy Yale histories—there was part of me that wished I had been born at a time when I would have attended Yale when it was still all male and more homogeneous and full of people like me, when people still dressed like the undergraduates shown in the following photograph from the 1950s that appears in the catalog from the "Ivy Style" exhibit.

Yale students leaving a university building, 1950s
Image courtesy of Ivy Style

But I didn't, and it wasn't, and they didn't, and that's more than okay with me.

There were still vestiges of that old Yale when I went there, though.  Although official dress codes had been abandoned by the university during the previous decade, undergraduate men during my time at Yale in the 1970s were still expected to wear jackets and ties to university-sponsored events, such as receptions at the president's house or athletic dinners.  And, as a member of one of Yale's undergraduate singing groups (and a highly social person to boot), I routinely found myself donning a jacket and tie at least several nights during the week.  I also owned a tuxedo and a set of tails when I was an undergraduate there, and I had occasion to wear them, too.

Evening wear from the first decades of the 20th
century, as seen in the "Ivy Style" exhibit
Image courtesy of Everything Just So

During my senior year at Yale, when I was a member of the Whiffenpoofs, we spent a week or so traveling with the Yale Glee Club on a Midwestern tour over the Christmas holiday break, visiting places like Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Detroit.  At the end of the tour, during the wrap-up dinner, I was given a gag award for being the "Preppiest Guy" on the tour, much to Willie Koenig's irritation (he felt he was gypped out of that recognition).  I wish I still had the certificate—that and a lot of other things from those happy, golden, bygone days . . .

The Library section of the "Ivy Style" exhibition
Image courtesy of the Museum at FIT

After I graduated from Yale and moved to New York to begin my Wall Street career, I pretty much stopped going to J. Press, even though it had an outpost in the city.  I missed Gabe from my undergraduate days, and the more urban, corporate Brooks Brothers seemed to me to be the more appropriate place to outfit myself as a junior banker than my old haunt of tweedy J. Press.

A page from a Brooks Brothers catalog

from the 1980s

Image courtesy of Evolution of a Gentleman

It was not until I was in my forties that I found my way back to the Squeeze again.  I'll never forget the time I walked into the old store on 44th Street, the one around the corner from Brooks, and how I almost started to vibrate when I tried on the same suits and jackets there that I remembered my father wearing.  Here I was, all grown up, slipping my arms into the very same tweed jackets and worsted suits that my father wore when he was the same age as I had become . . .

Getting fitted for a classic J. Press tweed jacket, 1950s
Image courtesy of Life Images

Not surprisingly, I still mostly outfit myself from the likes of J. Press and Brooks Brothers.  I also shop at specialty stores that sell traditional men's clothing and accessories inspired by the Ivy League style, in some cases updated for a more modern sensibility.   I like the look, I feel comfortable in it, and it is one that is appropriate for men of all ages to wear.

Ivy League undergraduates of the 1960s
Image courtesy of Take Ivy

In closing, I very much enjoyed attending the "Ivy Style" exhibition at the Museum at FIT, and I encourage you, Dear Reader, to be sure to see it, too, before it closes in January.

A brochure for an upcoming "Ivy Style" symposium
at the Museum at FIT

For those of my readers who happen to be in New York in early November, FIT will be hosting a two-day symposium on Ivy Style on the 8th and 9th that is sure to be of interest.  My friend and fellow blogger, the highly entertaining and mischievously amusing Maxminimus, is scheduled to appear in the gathering's closing round-table discussion, "Blogging About Ivy," which—I am sure—will be one of the symposium's more memorable gab-fests.

Who knows, you just might even run into Reggie there, too . . .

"Ivy Style" will be on view at the Museum at FIT in New York City through January 5, 2013.

Reggie's Three College 25th Reunions, Part III: Vassar Class of 1985

Perhaps much to the relief of some of the readers of my blog, this essay is my last on the three college 25th reunions I have attended over the years.  My purpose in writing this series, Dear Reader, is to chronicle how much one aspect of the world I come from has changed during my lifetime, and—in my view—for the better . . .


Vassar Class of 1985 25th Reunion

In addition to coming from a family where Yale figures prominently among the men, Vassar figures prominently among the women.  My father’s mother, known as Granny Darling, went to Vassar (class of 1913) and initiated the first Yale/Vassar marriage in my family when she married my grandfather, Yale class of 1911.  She dearly hoped that one of her offspring would continue the tradition.  My Aunt Mary (her daughter), Vassar class of 1941, was the first to frustrate that wish when she married outside the fold (headstrong girl!), and my father disappointed, too, when he married my mother, Sarah Lawrence class of 1943.  After both of my Vassar-educated cousins (classes of 1967 and 1972) failed to marry Yale men, Granny then looked, with mounting desperation, to her two grandsons with Yale potential (my older brother Frecky and me) to remedy this unfortunate situation.  She was further frustrated when Frecky (Yale class of 1974) married a Brown graduate shortly after finishing Yale.

  

An early postcard of Vassar's Main Building, taken prior to

when the later porte-cochère was removed

I was, then, her remaining hope for such a felicitous union.  More than once when I was an undergraduate at Yale my Granny Darling gently admonished me to be sure to “look up a nice Vassar girl” in the hopes of achieving her goal.  Unfortunately, Granny Darling died before I graduated from Yale and long before I met, and then married, Boy Fenwick, Vassar class of 1985.

Granny Darling was in the Vassar Daisy Chain in 1911
around the time this photograph was taken

Image courtesy of Mount Holyoke Archives

I can just imagine hearing my dear Granny’s reaction upon learning that one of her Yale-educated grandsons had indeed married a Vassar graduate (“At last! What joy!”), followed by her surprise when she learned that I had, in fact, married a Vassar Guy and not a Vassar Girl (“He married WHAT?!”).  I am fairly confident that Granny would have eventually come around after her initial shock wore off, since at least it is a Yale/Vassar union after all . . . it’s just not exactly how she had envisioned it.

The main gate entry onto the Vassar campus

Image courtesy of US GenWeb

So when I joined Boy at his Vassar 25th reunion last year, I did so more than solely as his spouse, but with an added appreciation of that college’s history, traditions, and its meaning to my family.  I enjoyed myself at his reunion, and I had a lot of fun there meeting his college friends and seeing the places on campus where he had once lived, studied and frolicked.  I also thought of my dear Granny Darling and the other Vassar women in my family when I walked around the campus, and I felt a pleasant connection with them and to the school that extended beyond the pleasure that I took in joining Boy there as he and his classmates celebrated.

An early 1900s postcard of Vassar's president's house

Even though Boy graduated from college only six years after I did, his experience at Vassar was quite different from mine at Yale.  For one thing, the majority of his classmates were female (55% to Yale’s 40% when I was there), which is not surprising, given its history.  Also, his classmates were a somewhat more diverse group of people than mine had been at Yale, at least they appeared to me at his reunion.  Finally, attitudes towards being gay had relaxed considerably by the time he enrolled at Vassar, and he was out as a gay man from the moment he arrived there as a freshman.

I think this is more of what my dear Granny Darling had in mind...

As I sat at our table under the large white tent during the big class dinner at Boy’s 25th reunion, I felt glad to be there with him and his friends who welcomed me with civility and good humor.  I also felt a connection with my dear Granny Darling, and was amused that her wish for another Yale/Vassar marriage had finally come true, albeit not quite how she had planned it.  And I felt very fortunate, indeed, that the world had evolved in my lifetime to such a point that I could happily find myself there with my beloved spouse, under the circumstances that I did.

All postcards, except where noted, courtesy of CardCow.com

Reggie's Three College 25th Reunions, Part II: Yale Class of 1979

In this post, the second in the series, I reflect on how much had changed in the thirty five years that separated my own Yale 25th reunion from my father's.

Yale Class of 1979 25th Reunion

Although FD's Yale classmates were almost entirely made up of WASPs, after WWII the face of Yale’s undergraduates started to change.  Slowly at first, and aided by the G.I. Bill, Yale’s student body began to become more diverse.  By the time I entered Yale in September 1975 it was a very different place from the university my father had enrolled in.  For one thing, Yale had gone co-ed in the fall of 1969 and by the time I matriculated 40% of my classmates were female.  In addition, a substantial percentage of my Yale class were people of differing ethnic and religious backgrounds from my WASP origins, and the majority of undergraduates there had attended public schools.

While being a legacy offspring and a prep school graduate was certainly not a liability to getting admitted to Yale when I applied, it was no longer the easy ticket for admission that it had been in my father's day.  In other words, Yale had become a meritocracy.  But Yale remained, and remains to this day, a very macho, competitive, and elite university.  Today, however, these defining characteristics of the university have nothing to do with the ethnicity or religion or gender of its students, unlike when my father went there when its doors were tightly closed to anyone who didn’t fit a very narrowly-defined vision of who should be admitted.  I loved my experience at Yale, and I look back on it fondly and with respect.  I feel fortunate to have been able to go there.

A view of the Yale campus, approximately 100 years later, ca. 1900

One of the things that has changed since I was an undergraduate at Yale is that the stigma of being gay in this country has largely dissipated in the intervening years, at least among sophisticated, educated people, and had long since become a non-issue among my classmates by the time of my 25th reunion, held in June 2004.

A 1907 postcard of Handsome Dan, the Yale mascot

But when I was an undergraduate at Yale in the second half of the 1970s, being gay was still stigmatized to a degree that would be unfathomable today, at least here in America.  Even though Yale had become known by then as politically liberal (a reputation that enraged many of its conservative alumni), it was not yet acceptable to be gay in the social and athletic circles I ran in at Yale, and many of us callow youths there so inclined weren't brave enough to publicly admit our true orientation as undergraduates.  Sure, there were a couple of out militant lesbians and extremist gays on campus, but they were marginalized exceptions, and were most definitely not found among the campus leaders whose ranks I aspired to join one day, and eventually did.

A Yale banner from the 1910s
Image courtesy of the Antique Athlete

While I (discretely) came out to a few of my closest friends during my senior year at Yale, it was not until half a decade or more after graduating from Yale that I finally fully accepted myself as a gay man, and closed the door—once and for all—on thinking that a life with and marriage to a woman was a possibility, however remote, for me.
    

Woolsey Hall, a fine Beaux-Arts pile of limestone
where all major convocations and concerts are held

It was not until my 20th reunion at Yale that I brought one of my partners with me back to New Haven, when I brought Boy Fenwick, my partner in life (and more recently my legally recognized spouse, at least in Massachusetts where we got married two years ago) with me.  While some of my classmates were slightly taken aback when I first introduced Boy to them at my 20th reunion, they rallied immediately.  And when he joined me at my 25th reunion, no one batted an eye.  I had a marvelous time at my Yale 25th, and having Boy there with me by my side was an important part of what made the experience memorable for me.

Berzelius, one of the eight
secret societies at Yale

Needless to say, that would not have been the case for any of my father’s classmates who would have had the audacity to do such a thing at their 25th reunion in 1969, where they would likely have been met with disapproving astonishment at such an introduction, and where the offending classmate and his partner would have been ostracized, if not asked to leave immediately.

Bull dog!  Bull dog!  Bow, wow, wow!  Eli Yale!

I'm glad that I graduated from Yale at such a time that I was not subjected to this type of treatment at my 25th reunion.

Sadly, this boat house had long since been abandoned
by the time I rowed at Yale

I'm also glad that I came of age in America when it had become possible in the world I come from to publicly admit to being gay without the fear of complete and utter ostracism.  I am not sure that I would have been able to admit to myself that I was gay if I had been in the class of 1944 at Yale, considering the way of the world back then.  Given who I am and the background I come from, I believe I would have done the expected thing then and gotten married to a nice girl from a similar background and had a family, as many gay men of that generation did.  But I would have always known, at least subconsciously, that I had chosen to do something that did not come naturally to me.  I also believe that it wouldn't have been fair to the woman I married, because I would not have been able to truly love her with the passion such a union deserves.  Fortunately, through advances since then I did not feel compelled to pursue that path—unlike I am sure a number of my father's Yale classmates . . .

To the tables down at Mory's,
To the place where Louis dwells,
To the dear old Temple bar we know so well,
Sing the Whiffenpoofs assembled,
With their glasses raised on high . . .

I must admit, though, being gay hasn't exactly always been a cake walk for me, and it certainly isn't something that I would have chosen had I been given a choice in the matter.  But I wasn't, and so I have made the best of it as far as I have been able to.  


With a clear conscience.


Next: Reggie attends Boy's Vassar Class of 1985 25th Reunion


All Yale postcards from Reggie's personal collection

Reggie's Three College 25th Reunions, Part I: Yale Class of 1944

Last year I had the pleasure of meeting Lisa of the blog Privilege for dinner in San Francisco when I was visiting the City By the Bay during a business trip.  Over the course of the evening we hatched a plan to write guest posts on each other’s blogs about our 25th college reunions, hers at Princeton and mine at Yale.

Sheet music from the early 1900s

Image courtesy of Historic American Sheet Music

When it came time to write my essay, though, I decided to slightly alter my subject and write about the three 25th college reunions that I have attended over a forty-one year span, the first two at Yale and the third at Vassar.  I did so as I believe they illustrate how one aspect of life has fundamentally changed over that period for a certain group of us here in America.  And that change has been for the better—at least in my view.  I have since edited and slightly expanded that essay, and will be publishing it as a three-part series here at Reggie Darling.


Herewith, Dear Reader, is the first installment.

Part I: Yale Class of 1944 25th Reunion


I attended my first Yale 25th reunion in June 1969, when I was twelve years old.  I was there because my father, known as FD, was celebrating his 25th reunion that summer, having graduated from Yale in 1944.  My father’s Yale class was a pivotal one, because it was one of the last that enrolled there before America entered WWII, and was almost entirely populated with the types of men that had attended the university since it was founded in 1701—namely White Anglo Saxon Protestants, the offspring of this nation’s ruling classes, largely drawn from the east coast, and the product of its elite boarding schools.  When my father applied to college he did so only to Yale, since it was a foregone conclusion that he would be admitted there.  As he told me when I asked him years later, it didn’t even occur to him to apply anywhere else.

A postcard from the 1940s of Yale's (then) recently completed
Saybrook and Branford residential colleges

FD brought our family with him to his 25th reunion, including my mother, my three older siblings, and me.  I was pretty much odd-man (boy) out at the reunion, because I was too old to engage in the activities organized for children, not old enough to hang out with the teenagers, and too young to join the adults, whose primary occupation there appeared to be drinking and talking while wearing white tennis hats emblazoned with a blue "Y" and the reunion's blue-and-white striped jackets.  My older siblings didn’t want to have anything to do with me, since I was a “dumb twelve year old,” and my parents were otherwise engaged.  So I spent a lot of time on my own hanging around the Class of '44's reunion tent observing what was going on.  One of the attractions of doing so was it provided me—in stark contrast to home—with unlimited access to Cokes, bottomless bowls of peanuts, and endless cheese and crackers, since the tent was set up with a fully stocked bar continuously manned with a fleet of accommodating bartenders morning, noon, and night.  I was in twelve-year-olds' Heaven.

A postcard from the early 1900s, showing Connecticut Hall,
the oldest surviving building at Yale, built in the 1700s

My father's class at Yale was a particularly distinguished and accomplished one, and for a number of years bore the distinction of having made the single largest 25th reunion class gift in the college's history (a distinction that has long since and many times been surpassed).  One of the highlights of the reunion was when one of my father's classmates, John Lindsay, who was then Mayor of New York, spectacularly arrived with his wife, Mary, and their children by helicopter and landed in the middle of the Silliman College quadrangle, where the reunion was being held, much to the delight and awe of his classmates and their families.  Talk about making an entrance!

A postcard from the late 1800s showing the "Old Campus" at Yale where
most of the college's students live during their freshman year

As I wrote earlier, I spent much of my father's reunion hanging around the class tent observing what was going on around me.  I was fascinated by the bartenders working there.  I got to know a number of them by name, and I enjoyed speaking with them when they weren't all that busy.  One evening, while lurking around after my parents had staggered off to bed, I noticed that one of the bartenders was having an argument with his manager, and I sidled over to see if I could overhear what they were fighting about.  It turned out that the bar was understaffed that evening, and the bartender was complaining that he didn’t have time both to wash out the used glasses and also to man the bar (this was back in the days before plastic glasses were used at such events).

A postcard from the early 1900s showing the procession of faculty
and students at a Yale graduation

Having nothing better to do, I volunteered that I would be happy to wash glasses for them, and—much to my surprise—the exasperated manager agreed to let me do it (something that would never be allowed today).  I spent the next several hours happily washing glasses and delivering them to the bartenders, who were quite pleased for me to take this burden off their hands.  I had such a good time doing it, in fact, that I spent the better part of the rest of the reunion washing glasses behind the bar, and I became something of a mascot for the bartenders.  My parents were more than happy to let me do it, too, since it got me out of their hair, they knew where I was, and—besides—they thought it was a hoot.

At the end of the reunion, much to my delight, the manager presented me with a crisp $20 bill for my efforts.  Not only did I get to wash the glasses for my bartender chums, but I got paid for it, too!

Next:  Reggie's Yale class of 1979 25th reunion, and his observations on how much had changed in the years since his father's Yale 25th


All Yale postcards from Reggie's personal collection