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Reunion registration is now open!

A ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ Reunion (May 29–June 1) is a truly unforgettable experience and this year we welcome friends and alumni from class years ending in five and zero and all post-50th reunion classes, also known as the Old Guard, back to campus. We hope you’ll make plans to join us as it promises to be a celebration full of joy, entertainment, connections, memories, and of course ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ dining!

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Weekend plans will continue to be posted to this site and to bowdoin.edu/reunion, so please continue to check back for updates.

Memorable Events 

 

BILL FAHRENBACH

I transferred to ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ as a Junior in 1963. Apart from trying to remember the names of old friends, the most memorable thing during my time at ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ was hearing about the assassination of President John Kennedy, only a short time after I arrived at ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿.

 

DICK FONTAINE

The thing I remember most about the Senior Center fire was the many 5-gallon propane tanks being used to fuel the heaters for the concrete slip forms. The Delta Sig house was immediately downwind of the fire, which rained down large flaming chunks of plywood slip forms onto our fraternity house. As president of the House at the time, I felt some obligation to save it. So a large group of us brothers roamed the house roof dousing the embers as soon as they arrived, thus saving the house and providing fodder for some exciting stories the next day. Oh, and those propane tanks? As the fire super-heated a tank, the valve would blow off. The compressed propane ignited, creating an uncontrolled rocket that careened off the top of the building and into the campus below. Mercifully, none hit any buildings that I know of, but they made the rooftop ember-dousing even more exciting. 

Another fire-related recollection came also from junior year. Late one night the Delta Sig brothers were reveling around the grand piano in the living room. Somehow, the piano caught fire (not mentioning any names out of respect for the deceased), and the piano was pushed out through the French doors and onto the wooden porch. Someone called the fire department (possibly Professor Gustafson who lived next door). While the fire brigade was dousing the flames on the porch, some of the brothers, possibly emboldened by the singing earlier, proceeded to strip much of the equipment from the fire truck parked on the opposite side of the house. I was in bed and asleep throughout all this, but was rudely awakened by Dean Greason and the Brunswick Fire Chief standing over my bed. I was president of the House, and apparently, they thought I had some responsibility for the shenanigans. “You have exactly 1 hour to return every piece of equipment in its exact proper location on that fire truck.” The brothers ultimately made good and, as I recall, we dodged the promise of social probation, at least that time. 

Big-weekend visits from my high school sweetheart and singing carried me through ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿. BJ and I stayed together throughout college and married 3 days after graduation. Our 60-year lifetime together has been glorious. And her longevity on the scene as a ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ Bachelor’s groupie (usually cheering us on from the front row) meant that many of my closest friends from ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ were also hers. Glee Club, Chapel Choir and touring New England on weekends with the Bachelors provided much needed respite for me from the interminable succession of biology and chemistry afternoon labs required by a pre-med curriculum. The quality of the singing and the camaraderie enjoyed by the men were exceptional and a lifesaver for me. 

Late night diversions helped soothe the stresses of rigorous academic demands. Steve Putnam had a plow on the front of his pick-up and would clear off an oval track on frozen (was it Meadows Pond?) where those of us with cars senior year would finish off nights of study by conducting races. Great fun and those 4-wheel drifts around the corners taught us terrific driving skills! And a frequent after-study ritual freshman and sophomore years often included ping pong with a cheeseburger washed down with a Coke in the Moulton Union, providing respite for roommate Bill Hinkley and me on many winter nights. 

In retrospect, I really appreciate the heart and skill invested by the ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ admissions people and process, selecting on reflection a truly exceptional group of 200 men who were smart, motivated and eager to teach and learn from each other. Notwithstanding the creative pranks, these were by and large a group destined to make something of themselves “for the Greater Good.” It was an honor and a privilege to have been formed by the ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ experience. 

 

DONALD GOLDSMITH

The Senior Center fire right outside the Delta Sigma house was a memorable event we experienced as well as the opportunity to be the inaugural occupants. 

 

STEVE INGRAM

Of all the college students during the early 60’s only a miniscule percentage had reason to take such pride in their institution as we had at ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿. ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ accepted the challenge of entering a student team in the national College Bowl competition aired on network 

television. Colleges and universities across the country entered teams of four students in dual competitions requiring quick recall of specific facts. A team that won one week’s competition could go on the next week with a new challenger. There was no weighting of the colleges based on enrollment size, public or private, endowment value (if any), or type (liberal arts, engineering, religious affiliation, etc.). Luck of the draw identified a school’s next challenger. The ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ team of Ken Smith, Jotham Pierce, Michael Bennett, and Charlie Mills won their first competition and then went on to beat every challenger until after five consecutive wins they were ‘retired’ as ‘National Champions’. The campus was caught up in the excitement and for five weeks fraternities, always looking for reasons to push studies to the back burner, gathered around the TV to cheer on intellectual athletes. 

I realized I was among an infinitesimally small minority of college students who could boast their school was a “National Champion” of the College Bowl. But in ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿’s College Bowl Championship run there was a lesson for me – a new appreciation for an old adage, “You can’t tell a book by its cover.” Much more: it taught me that there was exceptionalism in each one of us, and to deny or ignore that will be a mistake with consequences! 

³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ athletes in the early sixties were fortunate. ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ had assembled a cadre of coaches for its athletic teams who as coaches and teachers of their sport also took seriously their roles as mentors of young men. Small college division III schools at that time all fielded freshman teams, separate from varsity athletics. For outdoor track and field teams, with 7 or 8 running events and 7 or 8 field events in each meet, most freshmen had to compete in multiple events, some as many as 5 or more. On my high school teams I would compete in 2 or 3 running events and 2 or 3 field events and continued those as a freshman. In addition, coach asked me to pick up the 16 pound hammer as a new event. During my practice throws anyone within the 360 -degree area around the throwing circle was in danger of being hit by an errant hammer or, more likely, by me - wherever the hammer decided I should end up! 

One Spring afternoon, after watching the hammer land closer to the throwing circle than I did, Coach Sabasteanski came over to coach, teach, and as I much later realized, mentor. In frustration, I suggested that I focus my practices on one or two events and get good at them rather than continue practicing several events, since I wasn’t making much progress on any. He replied by asking, “Steve, why are you out for track-for personal glory or to help the track team?” Now, I never would have made the ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ College Bowl Team, but I knew the correct answer to that question, “To help the team”. Coach replied, “Good, then look at it this way. The team member who specializes and wins his event, even if he sets a record doing it, contributes 5 points to our team. You may not win any event, but you can get second and third places in your events and in so doing you can contribute more than 

the specialist.” Without waiting for any retort from me he turned and started walking away. Then, he stopped, turned slightly and called over his shoulder, “Besides, it’s more fun!” 

Now, I realize that may have been just his nice way of saying, “You’ll never get that good in anything.” But in the 60 years since, I have come to realize that what he was trying to tell me is that the more challenges you put before you, and the more varied those challenges, the richer your life will be. It is an insight that I have had cause to thank him for many, many times over the years! 

The ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ memory that burrows the deepest but, nevertheless, is the most vivid is November 22, 1963. I had just walked past the chapel on my way to Massachusetts Hall, the home of the Math Department at that time. Coming from Massachusetts Hall toward me was Prof. William Whiteside. We had never met and I had never had him in class but he was known to all as one of ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿’s faculty icons. As we were about to pass one another he stepped in front of me, stopping us both. His eyes surprised me - I can only describe them as friendly, as if we were well acquainted, almost fatherly. He said, “The president has been shot!” Hearing his own voice, his eyes instantly changed to a vacant stare, nothing there, eye sockets a vacuum. He just stood there, motionless. I, too, was immobile, my legs just hanging from my torso, my only reaction: the absence of any reaction. 

Slowly, motion returned as tears began clouding his gaze. He stepped to the side and continued on. I took one step forward and pivoted to head back toward Sigma Nu, to a more comfortable reality. But the fraternity was suddenly home to a new, unfamiliar reality. Colleagues all clustered in silence in front of the TV. Walter Cronkite’s familiar voice, never before having failed him in a lifetime of news reporting, suddenly broke in midsentence. Recovering, he went on, “The President has been pronounced dead.” Only Cronkite would phrase it justly; the declarative, ‘The President is dead’ was just too impossible to be. 

In the 60 plus years since that night and the days immediately following, our country has never been more the United States of America! 

 

CHARLIE KAHILL

Avoiding the Brunswick PD while marching on the Cumberland; keeping abreast of changes to the official poker language left to us by Howie Hall, supervised by Steve Krisco and George Eliades. 

 

PETER LARKIN

There was an inter-fraternity sing in those days, a tradition that was not always enthusiastically supported by the brothers. I was the "conductor" for this event in our freshman or sophomore year - I don't remember which - for Chi Psi, and it was like pulling teeth to get the brothers to participate. Participate we did, though, and with all sorts of props and behavior that got out of hand, amusing as it may have been. I believe that it was not too long after our "performance" that the inter-fraternity sing was cancelled altogether. Amen. 

I believe it was Ivies in 1962 when Dave Brubeck played a concert at ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿. I was a percussionist, drummer, and was excited to meet Joe Morello, Brubeck's drummer, in person. What great music! I also fondly remember the concert by Trini Lopez - I think it was during Ivies - which got everybody up and dancing although it was not planned as a dance. 

I sang in the Glee Club (bass) and remember how enjoyable (though tiring) it was to go "on tour" during spring break. And I remember singing at the Boston Pops with the Glee Club under the direction of Arthur Fiedler. Great fun. Wonder if that still is a feature at The Pops? 

Seems I remember music the most. Continuing in that vein, I played in the band at football games, and also in a small jazz group, as well as in the pit at musical productions in Pickard Theater, including Neil Love's Legend of the Lute, which was his magnum opus as a senior (I was a sophomore, I think). 

 

JIM LISTER

I think it was sophomore year. Preparing for an inter-fraternity hockey game, or just exercising, I was trying some tricks on my skates, caught an edge and crashed into the boards. Who happened to be just on the opposite side of the boards? Sid Watson, the varsity hockey coach. I emerged with a cracked and dislocated right ring finger. It was just before end-semester exams, which I had to take writing with my left hand. I pity the professors who had to read my scrawl. 

 

BILL LYNCH

Remember all the controversy when the Sigma Nu big wigs saw the Morehouse exchange students pictures of our pledge class. It is good to learn of how successful the exchange program was from the Morehouse point of view. I didn’t remember that Bayard Rustin spoke at ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿. 

 

MIKE MCCUTCHEON

In our early Freshman year, a night before a football game (the first home game of the Fall or Homecoming) the challenge for the class was to get to the Cumberland (?) theater and run across the stage. 

Apparently the Brunswick Fire Dept was ready for us and the initial standoff was at the vacant land between the Searles science building and the Pickard theater where they had stationed a fire truck and a charged line. 

I had just spent a summer in Idaho on a forest fire fighting crew and one of the ways to have fun was a water fight between two guys using a charged fire hose. 

Thinking I was experienced, I ran into the center of the space taunting the fire fighters and rallying our classmates to head to the Cumberland. I lasted about a minute, was hit squarely in the face and decided to call it quits. At which point I hustled back to my dorm fearing the dean would catch me a chuck me out of school. 

The real stalwart of our class that night and forever more was “Defiant” Dan Turner who as the story goes was arrested by the police and proclaiming innocence asked the cop why he was being arrested, the cop replied “Because you had a defiant look on your face!” 

God rest Dan’s soul. 

I think everyone in our class remembers where they were when the news of Kennedy’s assassination hit the ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ campus on that Friday, Nov. 22, 1963. 

I was in the middle of a much needed Physics remedial class when Shawn Leach popped his head in and said “Kennedy’s been shot.” 

End of the class as we all hurried back to our respective houses to become glued to the black and white TV. 

As time progressed a group of us at the Chi Psi lodge decided to drive to DC and hopefully make it to the funeral. We headed out in Peter Larkin’s car and very early Monday morning made it to a plaza on I 95. We figured we would be late or not find a parking space so it was decided to take the train from Baltimore to DC. Getting off the train in Union station we realized they had just closed the capital so we walked around and found a curb side space on Pennsylvania Ave. and watched as the caisson carrying the casket and the riderless horse with the boots placed backwards in the stirrups passed by. 

After the procession passed us we walked around DC and caught a glimpse of the procession headed to Arlington Cemetery. 

Back to Baltimore and then to Pleasantville, NY where we headed to our homes for Thanksgiving. 

 

PHIL MCDOWELL

We (Phil McIntire and I) were both scholarship students, always scraping for money. One party weekend, he had bought a fifth of scotch, and as he started to carry it up to our room, he dropped it on the sidewalk and it shattered to bits! I can still recall vividly his loud reaction...not something a future Harvard Law School grad would say in court! 

 

STEVE MUNGER

Inspired by Roger Saillant’s recollections of a moose parade, I dredged through memories of our freshman year and still chuckle when recalling a Sunday morning in early spring when my roommate, Sandy Doig, came back from breakfast at the Beta House and said he was going over to Mike “Beast” Butler’s room in Hyde to see the big slingshot Beast had created. Sandy invited me to join him, and we headed up to Butler’s corner room on the top floor of Hyde, facing Appleton. A crew of guys had assembled in the room and several were running down the hall to the head where they were filling water balloons. Beast had fashioned a device to launch water balloons at open windows in Hyde. His slingshot was fabricated using rubber tubing, which someone had appropriated from the chem lab supply closet, attached to Butler’s freshman beanie. He and his roommate, who I think was Matt Coyle, nailed the tubing to the window frame. A water balloon was seated in the beanie and the rubber tubing could be stretched back across the room. With the aid of artillery observers, Mike launched numerous balloons, some very accurately passing through open windows and detonating in rooms from which outraged screams caused the 

crowd assembled around the device, named alliteratively the Hyde Hall Howitzer, to erupt in hoots and laughter. The morning event ended rather abruptly when Butler successfully launched a balloon over the corner of the Appleton roof and was informed that it hit a car parked a few spots down from the Chapel. The car was Dean Kendrick’s! He was in the car and rather soon after the impact, the Dean appeared at Mike Butler’s door, with the customary Camel dangling from his lips, proclaiming the end of the artillery barrage and growling “Butler, get your ass to my office . . .now!” 

 

BOB NESS

Journeymen concert as part of Ivies our freshman year. 

Four semesters of studying German paid great dividends when I was stationed in Germany, 1969—1972. 

Prof. Little’s extracurricular introduction to computers proved to be an anchor point after ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ both professionally and personally. 

 

HARRY NOEL

After performing poorly at the Interfraternity Sing, a group of Sigma Nu’s carried our baby grand piano from the living room up to the second floor deck, and tossed the piano over the side, smashing it on the patio below. Soon after some of us were called into the Dean’s Office to discuss the event. 

 

JOTHAM PIERCE

The highlight of my years has to be the GE College Bowl experience during my junior year. While I still have vivid memories of the whole five weeks of national TV exposure, let me mention a few highlights. 

When ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ was asked to field a team, the administration reached out to all the department heads for their recommendations of likely players and set up a formal competition for the slots. Perhaps in a 60’s version of being “inclusive”, the school allowed “walk-ons” to try out. As it turned out, the final participating team was all walk-ons. Bill Rounds, the alternate, was the only one recommended by his department. 

A second memory dates to our first formal training session with our coach, English instructor Dan Calder. He said, this looks like a pretty good team, but you guys are totally ignorant about art. Not a one of you knows anything. So we are going to give you all a crash course in art, because there is always one art question, and it might make a difference. So Phil Beam put on a massive slide show and set of summarized lectures all through our preparation period. It must have worked because we got the art question right every week. We lived like royalty for five weeks. We had five weekends in New York, and went to a Broadway show every week on Saturday night. I especially remember seeing the original cast performance of “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?” with Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill. Every Sunday we went to Rockefeller Center for the event. First, we had a practice game with our opponents, then a break, and then the live performance. Our third game was the most nerve-wracking. We had easily outplayed our opponents in the practice game and went into live action very overconfident. We played poorly, and regulation time ended with a tie. I am still amazed that Michael Bennett, a freshman, was able to answer a very obscure World War 2 question to break the tie. 

One final incident. Our last game ended with an easy victory over Westminster College by a score of 360 - 60. My younger brother, Class of 1971 and in high school at the time, attended the final game with a friend from Yale. They departed the studio and went down in the same elevator as the vanquished Westminster team. As the elevator reached the final floor, said Yalie turned to the dejected Westminster squad, flashed a big smile, and said “Nice game guys”, and then quickly left the scene. We have laughed about that ever since. 

 

STEVE PUTNAM

There are so many good memories from the four years at ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿. The trips to the fairs in my 53 Pontiac station wagon with the cardboard for floorboards and the stumplifter parties at PSI U, but one I remember well was the march on Mass Hall about parietal hours. As you may recall we had modified an intended march downtown. I didn’t realize that we had tv coverage and that evening we had one of the biggest parties in senior center 5C during which it was decided to throw a rather large object out the window and to shatter a number of beer bottles. I was awakened early (at least it seemed early) the next morning and was told my father was on the telephone. When he got me on the phone he started to berate me and telling me he didn’t send me to ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ to do such things. I wondered how he knew about our party and damage so fast and it was a while in the heated conversation until he said he had seen it on Boston tv which tipped me off that he was actually talking about what he termed a “riot”. Luckily, I had not apologized for the party yet and he never found out about that. Good memories. 

 

ROGER SAILLANT

The assassination of President John Kennedy stands out as one of my strongest memories. A number of us (Peter Sapienza, and Harold Noel, I believe,) drove with two upper classmen (Robert Lariviere and William D Williams) to Washington DC and observed the funeral procession. A sad and confusing moment in history. 

We all witnessed the Senior Center fire and wondered if the building would be completed in time to house us. Thankfully it was. 

Tom Zilinsky and I were honored to be the most outstanding back and lineman on the freshman football team. The honor included a round trip visit to see the Army Navy game in Philadelphia. We were hosted by an alumnus whose name was Mr. Bechtel I believe. My athletic career was truncated when I suffered a badly torn medial collateral ligament in my right leg. Not reparable in those days. It did allow me to spend a lot of time in the chemistry lab since there was to be no time on the athletic fields after that. 

I was very impressed on my first day on campus when walking to class around 8 AM to be greeted by a full sized moose walking on the street. He was accompanied by a police car with flashing lights. I thought at the time that this must be a regular occurrence in Maine since everyone seemed to be so accepting of its presence. What did I know? I was just a kid from Pennsylvania. 

Something that was no less dramatic but far more unnatural was the time when a group of Sigma Nu's rallied to toss a piano off the balcony of the Sigma Nu building (Baxter House). 

The inappropriate act during our sophomore year was not well received by the administration at the time. Although I was not part of the hoisting of the piano to the top floor and the tossing, I was quizzed by the Dean and asked why I did not intervene on behalf of the ill fated piano. What could I have done to stop the overwhelming energy of a group of inebriated brothers of Sigma Nu? 

That same year the brothers of Sigma Nu inducted two black brothers into our ranks. They followed our protocol for answering the phone at the time by saying, "Hello. This is the Sigma Nu Fraternity. A black knight speaking." Ultimately, this led to an investigation by the national Sigma Nu organization located in Virginia, I think. They spent a few days with us after which they threw the Delta Psi chapter out of the national organization for using language that defiled the consecrated property of Sigma Nu in Brunswick, Maine. Civil rights was alive and well on campus at the time. 

 

BILL SPRINGER

I'll never forget the exchange program with Howard. It was initiated, I believe, during our sophomore year. The guys who came up from Howard were fabulous. One Saturday night I was with four or five of them making the rounds of house parties and I said to them "now you're not involved with the freedom rides, are you?" They looked at each other, chuckled, and said they organized them. That and King's visit gave me, someone who was born and raised on the southside of Chicago, a completely different understanding of race issues. A very memorable part of my ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ education. 

DAVE STEVENSON

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s address to ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ students in the Congregational Church in our Junior? year including many elements of what later became his “I have Dream” address. 

 

ROBERT STRUBLE

Highlight: Sitting in the studio of College Bowl in New York to see the ³Õºº¾ãÀÖ²¿ team vs Duquesne end in a tie and hearing Allen Ludden ask during commercial – “What do we do now?” The decision was to have a one question tie breaker which freshman phenom Michael Bennett knew (Admiral Darlan), just out buzzing Duquesne for the win. The team went on to win for the fifth time the following week and retire as a national champion. 

Lowlight: Sitting in Dean Greason’s office at the end of my Junior year without yet declaring a major and hearing him say “You don’t have many strings in your bowl”, at least that was what I thought he said, an expression I had not heard before or since. Then ten years ago in an episode of Downton Abbey I heard Mrs. Patmore say to Daisy “You don’t have many strings in your bow” and I realized what the Dean had said. It didn’t make me feel any better.