Thanks, Bill
President Kennedy, addressing a Berkeley audience in March 1963, shared the following: “We must think and act not only for the moment but for our time. I am reminded of the story of the great French Marshall Lyautey, who once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow-growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, `In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon.' ”
Having been far from the Northeast in the five years following graduation, I returned to Union in 1971 and witnessed the horrible loss of our majestic elm trees, in particular those gracing North and South Lanes. While I was pleased to learn of the plans and plantings taking place under the leadership of Dean William Huntley and Professor Gilbert Harlow, I was still young and short-sighted enough to harbor a selfish disappointment that I would never get to enjoy the fruits of their efforts.
For several years now, the current specimens, while not as mature and stately as the old elms, have provided comparable dignity to that very central part of our campus. And, yes, I have lived to see it and hopefully still have a few good years left.
While Dean Huntley touched thousands of us in countless ways over his long association with the College, his most enduring legacy will assuredly be the exquisite flora of our beautiful campus. But the lessons of his vision, like Lyautey's, are as important for us to preserve and pass on as the beauty of the grounds we inherit. Beyond memorializing this remarkable man, all who care about our college can offer no finer tribute than to make the story of Bill Huntley (and Gil Harlow) a cherished part of our verbal folk history, a tale to be told over and over again to incoming freshmen and graduating seniors, so that its lessons of vision, ownership,
and contribution will be perpetuated. Long live Bill Huntley!
Thomas E. Hitchcock '66
Lexington, Mass.
The writer is a member of the
College's Board of Trustees.
Those great college days
Recently a friend sent us a copy of Larry Hart's “Old Dorp” column from the Schenectady Gazette, which mentioned Union College's Dutchman's Village. I can understand why someone today would ask if there ever was such a place. There is nary a trace of anything to remind us of the approximately eighty apartments that existed during the mid 1940's to the mid 1950's.
The village was located along Nott Street between Van Vranken Avenue and Lenox Road and provided housing for married students and some faculty. We were among those who lived there and the article reminded my wife and me of that special time in our life. For most of the students who lived in Dutchman's Village, the low-cost housing made it possible to keep the family together through college years.
The buildings were single story surplus Army barracks converted into one- or two-bedroom apartments to accommodate the surge of married veterans living on a shoe string while earning their degrees at Union. The walls were paper thin. They were cold in the winter (heated with kerosene space heaters) and hot in the summer (no air conditioning).
For many, it was their very first home. On limited budgets, each couple did their best to give the apartment a unique personality with paint, original decorations, and furniture from grandma's attic. In our living/dining area we used soft grey walls and rose colored drapes made from bed sheets. Our bedside tables were wooden orange crates. Bookcases were boards supported by cement blocks. It was amazing how creative each couple was and how one idea generated several others throughout the village. Incidentally, the cost of ground
round beef in those days averaged fifty to sixty cents a pound and monthly rent in the village was $32.
There were a few couples without children, but during one year on one street there were so many babies born that the rest of the village gave that street a sobriquet `Fertile Valley!' In the warm days of the spring, summer, and fall, as husbands finished afternoon classes and crossed the bridge over Hans
Groot's Kill, wives would be waiting with their children, and there would be a lot of squealing as the little ones jumped into their father's arms. On those warm afternoons, the wives and children gathered in the street or in one of the yards to share the news of the children's development-a new tooth, a new word
spoken or to share recipes or where there was a bargain to be had in
one of the local groceries. The children always came out when the Freihoffer bread wagon, pulled by a horse, came through. The streets in the village had very little traffic and were quite safe for riding trikes and wagons. In winter, they were great for sledding.
Everyone was on an extremely tight budget. Many of the men worked part-time jobs and shared opportunities whenever they could. A few of the wives were able to work. My wife and Ken Burnett's ('50) wife, both nurses, shared a job in a doctor's office, arranging their schedule around their husband's hours. Among the many jobs I had was one I shared with two other men during the winter. The Pasture Dorms were also converted military barracks, each with a
coal fired furnace. During the winter those furnaces had to be stoked around the clock, and we three worked the night shift, from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. We found that the most sensible schedule was to
take the duty every third night. There was a cot in one of the furnace rooms so that we could nap, using an alarm clock to rouse us when it was time to shake down the ashes and stoke the furnace. Then we would run to the next building to do the same-on through the night. It was amazing how much coal it took to keep the dorms warm-and how we managed to get by on so little sleep!
We studied long hours, worked hard-but we also had fun (if it didn't cost money.) A few of the wives were excellent bakers and about twice a week we would get together for coffee and cake, after the husbands came home from the study hours at the library at 11:30 p.m. I had rigged up several microphones and an amplifier and placed it in our child's bedroom. When we got together for coffee, we would run a wire between apartments so that we could hear any cry or noise from any nearby apartment.
Hal Lundstrum '50 was not only fullback on the football team but was also a practical jokester. One afternoon, my wife had prepared supper and then went out, with our daughter, to visit with the other wives. Hal sneaked into our apartment, put everything away-all the dishes, the silver, glasses, table cloth, all the
food. Then he went across the street and sat on his porch to enjoy the results. When I got home, my wife said supper was ready and we went in to the apartment only to find that there was nothing ready. She thought she was losing her mind-until she looked out and saw Hal laughing his head off.
As I mentioned, the walls were paper thin. One evening the wife next door was in the bathroom
half asleep. In the apartment next to her, the wife was reading, lying on the living room sofa, when her husband came in from the library and rather loudly said “Come on, let's hit the sack.” The wife in the bathroom next door jumped up and screamed because she recognized the voice of her neighbor and thought he was in her apartment! We all enjoyed that story the next day.
One year a group of guys prepared to celebrate the New Year and decided that they would make their own liquor-they were engineering and chemistry majors and would pool their knowledge to make some inexpensive booze. Everything went along very smoothly and they had several gallons that looked very promising. However, before drinking it, they took a sample over to the chemistry lab for some tests. The results proved that it was a high grade ethyl
alcohol and their party suddenly turned
non-alcoholic!
Where the field house now stands, there used to be fields and woods. Each spring a very large growth of wild blackberries produced delicious fruit and supplied many families all they needed. Each year we would make a large batch of blackberry jelly that would carry us through the rest of the year, and also had berries for pie, breakfast, etc.
While they had some special living problems that were different from the men who lived in the dorms and frat houses, those who lived in the village were not isolated from campus activities. Several members of the football team, fraternities, members of WRUC, and many other campus activities lived in the village. The wives also formed a group which arranged teas or coffees with programs on crafts, book reviews, and talks by some of the faculty.
We were all “in the same boat” and friendships that began in Dutchman's Village continue today. There was a camaraderie and mutual caring that gave us all the strength and commitment to stay focused on the goal of earning a degree, which both husbands and wives wanted to achieve. We look back on our Dutchman's Village days as some of the best years of our lives, where the wives also earned their PHT degree: Putting Hubby Through! It was a period in our lives that helped to cement our marriage and helped build a strong family life. Today, while we have a much more solid economic base, most of us look back on those days with very fond memories.
Thor N. Trolsen '51
Little River, S.C.