Omygawd, college!

When we arrived at BC in September, 1964, it was a heady time for us -- college! -- and near the beginning of what many people consider a particularly turbulent time in US history. It was less than a year after the assassination of President John Kennedy, who had been speaker at BC's 1963 centennial celebration about 16 months before we arrived (link to text). Essayist Lance Morrow said of that time, “The real 1960s began on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. It came to seem that Kennedy's murder opened some malign trap door in American culture, and the wild bats flapped out.”

Our moods, despite the circumstances of the world around us, were likely not very dark. There was a lot new for us to digest and many new people to meet. Roommates who weren't brothers or sisters, classes instead of "school days," more freedom, etc. Here are some Heights headlines and items from the fall of 1964 that give a flavor of that time.

September 25, 1964

"Fr. Hanrahan Appointed
Director of Resident Men"

Hard to believe that he was new. To freshmen and to all resident men, he seemed a spectral figure. He was known to appear suddenly, at night, to intercept wayward and usually inebriated students seeking to return to the dorms after curfew. What awesome capabilities must he have had? Talking with him about that many years later, he pointed out that drunken young men have a great deal of difficulty being quiet trying to "sneak" into a dorm, often urging each other to "Be QUIET!" and cursing at the typical stumble. All he had to do was be awake and listen. His main "power" was sobriety.

October 1964

Evangelist Billy Graham appeared at Roberts Center.

October 23, 1964

“McCrossen Flays Commies
Liberals Seen Shuddering”

The Heights editors, as was their wont, had some fun with the headline for the article on the annual Young Americans for Freedom lecture, presented that year by Vincent McCrossen. Prof. McCrossen was an outspoken political conservative, on what was, as we would see displayed in several ways during our time at BC, a pretty conservative campus.

November 6, 1964

“Fr. Drinan Sees
Hard Years Ahead
For Civil Rights”

Got that right.

November 13, 1964

“B.C. School of Ed. Says
No Marriage for Women”

Notice the rule did not apparently apply to men. While nearly everyone would consider this incredibly sexist, based on our current mores, note the context. In the opinion of administrators such as Mary Kinnane in the School of Ed, higher education for women was the objective and marriage was then an impediment to a young woman finishing college. As with so much else at the time and in the culture of the place, negative reinforcement was the method of choice. Remember, too, this was during a time when a pregnant teacher (of course, married) could not teach in a public school while she was "showing."

The topic of women at BC was such a major issue, in so many ways. There will be many other points of discussion on that topic.

Good sports from the start

One could argue that the past few years have been the best ever at BC in terms of sports. Multiple winning seasons, NCAA tournament appearances, and national and conference championships in football, basketball, and hockey. (Let alone growth in Olympic sports and the development of women’s sports, which is a completely different topic we’ll address in another context.)

But things certainly weren’t bad in our day, even as freshmen. Remember our first football game as freshmen, when we operated as a card section for the first and, as far as I can remember, only time? BC played Syracuse, then considered perhaps the strongest team in the East and one of the best in the country. With 12 seconds to go and the score tied (a moral victory already), Larry Marzetti threw a wobbly pass to Captain Bill Cronin. He caught it on the 25 yardline between two Syracuse defenders, who collided and fell down. Cronin staggered into the endzone (or is that exaggerated memory) to win the game for the Eagles.

BC then lost its next two games, against Army and Tennessee, but won five of the next six to finish the season 6-3. Notice only nine games, three to four games fewer in a season than the modern Eagles play. The schedule that year also included Miami (the other loss), Cincinnati, Air Force, Villanova, Detroit, and, of course, Holy Cross. It is also interesting to note that our classmates played that season on a freshman team, as freshman were not eligible, and that some on the varsity played both offense and defense.

Basketball went 22-7 in 1964-65, Bob Cousy’s second season as coach. Sub Turri of 1965 called it BC’s best team ever. John Austin, then a junior, averaged 26.9 points a game, gaining all-America honors (third team) and setting BC’s career scoring record after only two seasons. In more than half their games (15 of 29), the Eagles scored more than 90 points, including nine games with more than 100 points. Twice they scored 120 points. Remember, this is without a shot clock and without three-point baskets! Run and gun! BC finished the season in the NIT (only 23 teams, mostly conference champions, went to the NCAA tournament then), losing to St. John's.

Hockey finished #2 in the country freshman year, losing to Michigan Tech in the NCAA final. They opened with 19 wins in their first 22 games, including a 5-4 win over BU for the Beanpot, and finished 24-7 (no ties!). Funny to note now that the Eagles got to the NCAA final with a 4-3 win over … North Dakota. Even then! Jerry York, current BC coach, was a sophomore on the team, finishing seventh in scoring. Scoring leader was the great John Cunniff, with 31 goals and 36 assists in 31 games.

Numbers game

As of a couple of months ago, there were 1,412 members of the class that graduated from BC still around. I'm still trying to track down how many there were at graduation. (Another 181 were members of the Newton College class of 1968.)

Of that total, 1,055 were men and 357 women, pretty much a 3-1 ratio.

In terms of school affiliation (rounded)

A&S -- 37 percent
CBA -- 28 percent
School of Ed -- 19 percent
Nursing -- 10 percent
Evening -- 4 percent
Ex (didn't graduate) -- 3 percent

Curse of living in exciting times?

My 18-year-old daughter has sometimes expressed to me her envy that, when I was about her age, I … and we … lived in such “exciting” times. In a recent edition of the Heights, Amanda Leahy, a freshman in A&S, has a column saying current students are complacent and she urges them to fight for the causes they believe in.

“It is hard to contemplate the fact that 40 years ago,” she writes, “students our own age, students very much like us, collectively helped to shape history. While many students today are indeed passionate about the causes they believe in, gone is the dramatic vigor and the action that characterized college life during the ’60s. Gone are the urgent demands upon universities to change unfair policies, and lost with them are the sit-ins, the protests, the willingness to sacrifice anything for a common cause, the refusal to stop until real and lasting changes were made.”

Not everyone has such a vaulted sense of the impact of students during the ’60s. But it is striking to me, at least, to realize, when viewing various documentaries about the period, how much the times were characterized by violence and protest. Certainly September 11 was and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is violent, but much of the conflict we experienced and saw on television was American on American -- civil rights protests and angry reactions to them, college protests broken up by police swinging batons, fights between protestors and anti-protestors.

Did it seem kind of “normal” to you at the time? Not meaning that it was a good thing, but that it may have seemed a logical consequence of the issues and pressures in play?

I have a record album entitled “The Incredible Year.” It is a compilation of audio clips of events of 1968, produced by CBS News and narrated by Charles Kuralt. Many clips are very moving to hear again, and I hope to figure out a way to put some of them here (I’ve had it digitized). I plan to play some of them during the panel at reunion weekend, as introductions to sections of the discussion. “Glancing back at 1968 we find it hardly believable that so much drama, tragedy, and triumph could have been crammed into its mere 12 months,” say the album notes. “What made 1968 so incredible was the complete flip-flop of the expected. Event after event failed to follow the prepared script. Shock, horror, delight, and surprise came one upon the other in hammer-blow sequence.”

As mentioned in a post above, we arrived at BC less than a year after the assassination of President Kennedy, so it wasn’t that we were unfamiliar with shock and tragedy. But during our years at BC, things seemed to ratchet up incrementally and sometimes exponentially. I’ll have posts up soon about some of those issues.

A dream deferred?

The nation marked the 40th anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4. We didn’t know at the time, of course, that his assassination would be but the first of two killings of national figures, and heroes to many, that would mark our last several weeks at BC.

The Heights of April 9, 1968, reported that a memorial service for Dr. King was to be held that morning on Bapst Lawn. Classes scheduled for 10 and 11 am were cancelled and, following the memorial, there were to be all-day workshops on “Racism and the Black Rebellion” sponsored by the “University Committee Against Racism.”

There were several columns in the same issue of the Heights that discussed the issue of race relations in the US, and just about all of them saw a grim future ahead. One commentary carried the headline “This is the end of non-violence.”

We weren’t a diverse campus back then, unless you consider coming from different parishes in Boston or from New Jersey among the criteria. BC was very white then. When you look through editions of Sub Turri, just about the only black faces you see are those of performers who came to campus. It seems almost incredible now to look at pictures of BC football and basketball teams and see no African-Americans. (John Austin was BC’s first black basketball player and first all-American, but he graduated in 1966.) Not that nearly all-white student bodies were terribly unusual, cf. Animal House, for example, but this should be a topic we discuss in another thread. Why was it like that? What did it mean for us, in those times and as we grew older?

James Brown to the rescue?

Among the television programs shown in connection with the anniversary of the assassination of MLK was presentation on VH1 of the documentary “The Night James Brown Saved Boston.” Brown had been scheduled to do a concert in the Boston Garden on April 5. With anger generated by Dr. King’s death being expressed violently in several cities around the country, perhaps most notably in Washington, DC, there were calls in Boston to call off the concert. Instead, and the documentary provides fascinating details about the decisions and negotiations involved, the concert took place and was televised by WGBH Channel 2, one of the premier stations in what was then called “educational tv.” The broadcast, watched by many thousands in their homes … and therefore not on the streets … was credited with reducing violence in Boston to a significant degree.

I remember being among those watching the telecast of the concert at the Tam, more formally the Tam O’Shanter Lounge on Beacon Street. That experience, juxtaposed with the shock of the King assassination, of course, stuck with me. At the same time, I was surprised to hear in the documentary, as I did not remember it from seeing the telecast originally, the mellifluous, patrician voice of the Channel 2 announcer say, “Stay tuned for the concert by Negro singer Jimmy Brown and his group at Boston Garden.” Kevin White, then mayor of Boston and an old guy (38!), says in the documentary that he had no idea at the time who James Brown was. I guess the Channel 2 announcer was similarly unfamiliar with the “hardest-working man in show business” and Soul Brother #1.

I recommend the documentary to you. It really helps bring back the days.