Posted on Jan 1, 1999

Pericles, the Athenian statesman, claimed that “out of the greatest dangers
communities and individuals acquire the greatest glory.” At least Thucydides, who
like all ancient historians put his own words into the mouths of individuals whom he
thought he “knew,” reported that Pericles said so in his history of the
Peloponnesian War.

While it is a stretch to compare Athens and Schenectady, perhaps there is more of a
connection than one might initially think. After all, Minerva is the patron saint of both
Union and Athens.

In any case, we have a real challenge at the College. Despite the fact that we have had
great success during the past decade on the admissions front, sixty percent of the
students who choose not to attend Union after they have been accepted have indicated that
Schenectady is the reason for their negative decision.

Through the efforts of Schenectady 2000, of which I am a cofounder and vice chairman,
we are trying to address the needs of the City, with a focus on a downtown revitalization
based on new jobs, a movie theater complex, a tradeshow center, and a transportation hub
that will make Schenectady the northern terminus of the high-speed train to New York City.
And through the program that we announced on October 27, and that is described in great
detail in this magazine, we will address the issues in the area known as Seward West.

Why? Because, whether individually or institutionally, we all have an obligation to
improve the communities of which we are a part. In this particular case, it is also in
Union's self interest, since there is little question that the well-being of Union will be
determined — to an extent — by the well-being of Schenectady.

What has been happening over recent decades in Schenectady is not unique, of course.
Like many small cities throughout the country, Schenectady faces problems that range from
rising unemployment to a slumping real estate market. Seward West — again, like many of
the neighborhoods in those small cities — has been a neighborhood in decline, and the
problems there, both real and perceived, have been a growing source of concern to students
and faculty — and to potential students and their families.

For those who might question why college resources should be spent on projects
peripheral to the educational mission of Union, the answer is clear: We have a need, if we
are to attract the best and brightest students, to make Schenectady as safe and attractive
as possible. And, from a purely practical standpoint, Union, as one of the healthiest
economic engines in the entire Capital District, can serve as a key vehicle for
encouraging private investment.

In this nation, we equate, all too often, wealth and quality. A foolish concept, but
one shared by many. As a result of that belief, colleges oftentimes spend as little as
possible of their endowments, so as to allow their endowments to grow. To some, therefore,
we should draw as little as possible from our endowment in order for it to grow and for us
to become richer, that is, better.

While I believe that endowments should grow by the rate of inflation (and, of course,
by further gifts), I also believe that we must draw from the endowment enough to
accomplish the purposes that donors had in mind in making their gifts. We should also be
willing, in special cases, to use the income and appreciation beyond inflation from
unrestricted gifts to advance the institution. Seward West is a case in point.

A prudent risk. That is how I would label such an investment. It and other prudent
risks should be taken by Union. While Union has measurably improved during the decade in
every respect, and I thank those of you who have expressed those views to me, we need to
do more if we are to break out of the educational pack. We will.

In his history of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides also said that “an adversary
numerically superior comes into action trusting more to strength than to resolution, while
he who voluntarily confronts tremendous odds must have very great internal resources to
draw upon.” Through actions such as we have announced for Seward West, and so long as
we have the internal fortitude to pursue them, we can overcome the financial strength of
others.

Of course, we need to develop our own financial strength further. Our purpose, though,
must be more than to simply gather well. It must be to strengthen further this marvelous
institution to which we have been entrusted.

Roger H. Hull

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Posted on Jan 1, 1999

Men's
basketball celebrates 100 years

Back on Feb. 3, 1899, the Union basketball team took to the court to play the Amsterdam
YMCA. This Feb. 3, Union played Williams in a game that marks 100 years of basketball at
the College. Here are some memories from that first century.

Then and now

Basketball has not always been the fast-paced, high-scoring sport we watch on ESPN.

In fact, James Naismith founded the sport simply to give bored athletes at the YMCA
International Training School in Springfield, Mass., something to do during the long New
England winter of 1891.

Basketball's popularity spread quickly and, because those early games were often
ruthless and brutal, changes came quickly. Wire cages were set up around the playing court
to prevent the frequent brawls among players from spreading into the stands — and to
protect the players from the fans who threw bottles and nails onto the court. Backboards
were added to prevent the fans in the balcony from leaning over and interfering with the
game, by the 1930s the rules prohibited contact, and in 1936 the center jump after every
basket was eliminated.

Union Head Coach Bob Montana believes that the components needed to succeed as a player
and a team have been constant throughout the history of basketball — basic skills,
basketball intelligence, mental and emotional toughness. “The biggest difference is
that athletes today are stronger, quicker, and more agile,” Montana says. “But
that doesn't mean their basic skill level (shooting and passing, for example) and 'feel'
for the game have grown. Those are still the areas that make the difference between a good
player and a bad one. Athletically, today's players are better, but that doesn't mean
they're better players.”

From big crowds …

In its heyday, basketball at Union had fans hanging over the balcony in Alumni
Gymnasium to watch the game, and in the early 1970s record-breaking crowds jammed Memorial
Field House.

Joe Milano '36 — at 6'3″, the tallest player on the Union team — averaged 10
points per game, comparable to today's 25 or 30 points a game. He says that there were
basketball teams everywhere in the Capital District — YMCA, YMHA (Young Men's Hebrew
Association), General Electric, amateur, semi-professional, professional, and college
teams — and that the Union team even had male cheerleaders. Milano recalls handing his
gym bag to about half a dozen children waiting outside before a game and having them carry
his bag, gaining them free admittance. When the administration caught on to that trick, he
snuck the children in through the locker room window.

When the basketball team first moved into the field house in 1954, the court was
surrounded by a dirt track. As the crowds grew from into the thousands, the field house
became a dust bowl, with dirt everywhere — in the air and on the courts. Manager Paul
Rieschick '74 recalls having to sweep and mop the floor between halves.

During the 1972 season, the Dutchmen's games were broadcast on WGY radio, along with
the New York Knicks. When a snowstorm forced a game with Hamilton to be rescheduled to a
time when the Knicks also were playing. WGY chose the Union game.

That same season ended with a loss at the University of Rochester, ending a 15-game win
streak. As the team bus returned to Union at 3:15 in the morning, the players were told
there was a huge gathering at the Chi Psi fraternity. WGY had announced that the party was
open to the campus, the community, and to the players' families — and they were all at
Chi Psi to celebrate the end of a very impressive season.

Bob Pezzano '72, team captain, says, “To see how the campus and the community
supported us, and to see the bleachers expanded to support the crowds, was amazing. It was
hard to accept that we couldn't go to the NCAA tournament (due to league regulations), but
I feel very fortunate to be there when the team was turning around.”

… to smaller crowds

Since the late 1970s, attendance has declined to the point where games now attract 100
to 200 fans. Most observers tend to blame the introduction of televised basketball and the
ease of watching the Chicago Bulls or Duke vs. North Carolina. It takes a special event —
the night in 1981, for example, when Joe Cardany '81 was honored as Union's all-time
leading scorer — to fill the field house. Joe Wood '84, a member of that team, remembers,
“It was a very nice gesture for the community and students to come and honor
Cardany's college years. It was a really good night for the basketball program.”

Head Coach Bob Montana says the challenge is to bring the interest level back and to
get the students involved. “The interest in basketball is out there. You just need to
get them away from ESPN and to the field house. You need the students first, and the
community will come.”

A hockey town?

Perhaps a bigger “culprit” affecting the basketball crowds is hockey. The
basketball Dutchmen had packed houses through 1975, but in 1976 the crowd was cut in half
when hockey arrived at Achilles Rink — despite the basketball team's fine record of 18-6.

There are those who say the Capital District is a “hockey town” at heart. In
addition to Division I hockey programs at Union and RPI (which has won national
championships in the sport), the area has two minor-league hockey teams, high school
hockey programs that have produced state champions. and thriving hockey programs for
youngsters of all ages.

The priorities of the media reflect that change. Until the early 1980s, the local media
would give full coverage of the upcoming Union basketball season on Thanksgiving Day.
Nowadays, the sports pages and sports shows on television tend to focus on hockey and the
Division I basketball program at Siena.

Storytelling

From a Concordiensis story about Union's second game ever — a 35-5 loss on Feb. 10,
1898, to the Sitterlee Hose Co.:

“A large crowd was present, and it is but justice to say that the visiting team
was remarkably well treated. At the conclusion of the game, a banquet was tendered them by
the members of the hose company at their house. L.E. Montgomery, an old Union man,
presided and cordially welcomed the visitors. A musical entertainment followed the
banquet.”

Joe Milano '36, Ray McDowell '35, Jack Moffett '35, and Ralph Semerad '35, used to
travel home together after practice. They would pile into Milano's car and head to Mr.
Blue's — an emporium on Van Vranken where they each would have two beers apiece (at five
cents a beer). The first beer would be accompanied by casual conversation; the second was
“technical,” when they would discuss that day's practice and what needed to be
fixed for the next session. When they were through, each player chipped in a nickel for
gas money.

 

In the 1930s, Coach Nels Nitchman once set a substitute into a game, but the team
captain, Ray McDowell, stunned everyone by refusing the substitute. McDowell, an older
player who had played semi-professional basketball before coming to Union, said, “Am
I the captain or am I not? I can choose to accept the sub or I can choose to refuse the
sub, and I choose to refuse him.” The very furious Nitchman stomped his foot in anger
— right into the water pail. When he tried to get his foot out, he splashed water
everywhere, and his foot remained stuck.

Jim Tedisco '72 helped keep the team loose by doing impressions of politicians,
television personalities, and, of course, the coaching staff. Then Head Coach Gary Walters
had a habit of belching, so Tedisco did his share of imitating these belches, as well as
Walters's pep talks. The antics meant that the team did its share of running as well as
laughing.

To earn extra money at Union, Tedisco was hired as the mailman. Because he was a local
resident, Tedisco did not get mail, and consequently he didn't much care if anyone else
did, either. He often put the mail under his bed and took a nap. People would pound on his
door, demanding their mail, only to get a response such as, “Yeah, I'll deliver it
when I get a chance.” There were many times when students did not get their mail
until midnight.

Tedisco managed to come up with a story for every time he came late to practice, but
there was one time he was not so lucky. Tedisco lived at home in Rotterdam and would
commute to class and practice. On his way to practice one Saturday, he got stuck in a
parade. Needless to say, the coach did not believe his story, made the rest of the team
run laps, and kicked Tedisco out of practice.

The Concordiensis had a computer play a simulated game between two of the greatest
Union teams — the 19-3 team of 1971-72 with Tedisco and the 20-4 team of 1974-75 with
John Denio '76. The game was close throughout and came down to the last play. Tedisco
charged Denio and sent him to the foul line, costing Tedisco's team the victory by one
point. Tedisco commented, “That was before they made good software.”

Joe Wood '84 recalls a funny moment involving Joe Clinton '83. The Dutchmen had played
a game Friday night and had to travel five hours the next day to play New England College.
When they arrived, Clinton pointed to a spot on the floor about 40 feet away from the
basket and said he was going to take a shot from that spot because he was angry at Head
Coach Bill Scanlon for making them travel so far. Sure enough, two minutes into the game,
Clinton launches a ball from that exact spot. While his teammates thought it was
hilarious, Scanlon was furious and took him out of the game.

 

The shots heard round the field house

The late Bob Ridings was well known for firing the cannon at Union football games. On
Feb. 19, 1972, Union defeated Hamilton 110-79 in front of a crowd of 3500-4000 people. To
everyone's surprise — and shock — Ridings shot off that cannon in the Field House to
celebrate the team's 14th straight win. That same game was Jim Tedisco's last home game,
and Coach Gary Walters told the team at halftime that if they got their lead to 30 points,
Tedisco “can have some fun.” Tedisco pulled out all the stops and ended with 41
points, many of them long jumpers that would be considered three-pointers today.

Hitting the big time

During the mid-1970s, the Dutchmen made their debut in Sports Illustrated when the
magazine noted that the starting lineup came from large families. Bill Carmody '75, now
the head coach at Princeton University, came from a family of 11 children, and John Denio
'76, now an assistant professor at Albany College of Pharmacy, came from a family with 18
children. There were no twins or triplets.

The Dutchmen made their second appearance in Sports Illustrated a short while later.
The first names of 12 of the 13 players on the team began with a “J” — and
there were moments when all five players on the court were named Joe. “I tried to be
personable as a coach,” says then Head Coach Bill Scanlon, “but with so many
people with the same names, I had to go by their last names.”

Tedisco, now a New York State Assemblyman, broke all of Union's scoring records and was
named an All-American. During the 1998 NCAA Final Four in Indianapolis, Tedisco was
honored with the National Association of Basketball Coaches Silver Anniversary Award. Each
year, the NABC selects five All-American players from 25 years previous who excelled in
basketball and have contributed to their community. Tedisco was the first Division III
athlete to be honored.

Bill Carmody '75 and Coach Gary Walters both left Division III basketball and headed to
Princeton and the Ivy League. Walters is now the athletic director for the Tigers and
Carmody is the head coach of the men's varsity basketball team. Walters coached Union from
1970-73 and compiled a record of 53-13. Carmody, who played backcourt for Walters, has not
lost an Ivy League game in two years as head coach at Princeton. Princeton and Union had
their first meeting since March 20, 1920, with a game at Princeton on Jan. 25.

Three alumni with basketball connections made it to the pros — although it's not quite
what you might think. Joel Fisher '76 is now vice-president of Madison Square Garden; Paul
Rieschick '74 was the minor league general manager for the Visalia (Calif.) Mets after he
graduated; and Dave Dagostino '95 played minor league baseball with the Rhode Island Tiger
Sharks.

In the 1930s, John Fink '26, Ambrose Gilligan '26, and Sig Makofski '26 (an
All-American who later coached Mont Pleasant High School in Schenectady to a record of
461-35) often played in games against professional teams of that time, such as the
Schenectady Pros, the Troy Haymakers, and the New York (now Boston) Celtics, who played in
the Gloversville Armory. Joe Milano '36 played a bit of professional basketball in his
time and remembers making, at best, five dollars a game.

Students and athletes

Head Coach Bob Montana says that Union has been fortunate over the years to have had
some wonderful basketball players.

“To me, what makes them special, though, is that they are student-athletes, not
just athletes.” he says. “Basketball here feeds your passion for the game and,
at the same time, it develops qualities that will help throughout life.”

To make his point, he points to a list of basketball alumni from the past 25 years and
what they are doing now. The list includes teachers, lawyers, business executives,
engineers, doctors, a politician, and — yes, a few basketball coaches.

 

Stats to note

Union vs. the Ivy League

vs. Brown — 2-2 (last game 1927)

vs. Columbia — 1-11 (last game 1981)

vs. Cornell — 0-6 (last game 1922)

vs. Dartmouth — 3-3 (last game 1946)

vs. Harvard — 0-1 (1930)

vs. Princeton — 3-1 (last game 1920)

vs. Yale — 1-4 (last game 1980)

Union vs. selected Division I teams

vs. Syracuse — 3-15 (last game 1946)

vs. Fordham — 0-1 (1927)

vs. NYU — 8-12 (last game 1995)

vs. Army — 10-8 (last game 1948)

vs. Navy — 0-1 (1921)

vs. St. John's — 3-3 (last game 1931)

vs. Seton Hall — 1-0 (1931)

Union vs. Capital District teams

vs. Albany — 12-31 (last game 1994)

vs. RPI — 87-71 (continuing)

vs. Skidmore — 14-7 (continuing)

vs. Siena — 6-2 (last game 1974)

Union records

Overall record — 865-829

Winningest percentage — .929 (13-1 in 1915)

Losingest percentage — .000 (0-15 in 1954)

Most lopsided score, winning — 110-54 (vs. Vassar, 1994)

Most lopsided score, losing — 9-72 (vs. RPI, 1908)

Most overtimes — Five overtime loss to Rochester on Feb. 15, 1985 was an NCAA Division
III record.

Tallest player — Dean Gallup, 6'10 (1979)

Longest rivalry — vs. RPI (87-71, from Feb. 17, 1899)

Most points by Union — 115 (to 105 for Hobart, Jan. 24, 1987)

Fewest points by Union — 0 (to 4 for Watervliet YMCA, Feb. 25, 1899)

1st game — Feb. 3, 1898

1st win — March 1, 1901

1st winning record — 7-2 in 1911

1st postseason — Won the Northeastern League Championship in 1915 with record of 13-1

Coaching highlight — On Dec. 12, 1994, Bill Scanlon becomes only the 36th Division III
coach to reach 300 victories.

 

Coming up: A silver anniversary for women

The women's basketball team at Union will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year. The
Dutchwomen became a varsity sport in 1975 and, despite many talented players, have had
only four winning seasons. The last winning season came in 1991-92 with a record of 12-11;
the overall record is 174-279.

Included on the list of individual talent is all-time leading scorer Robin Romer '92,
who had 1,738 points. Andrea Pagnozzi '94 had 1,324 points and Amy Hitz '97 had 1,088.
Romer also tops the single season scoring chart (512) and leads in career and season high
steals with 230 and 67, respectively. Hitz leads Union in career rebounds with 947, and
Barb Weisinger '87 leads in blocked shots with 184.

 

Stats:

Lowest scoring game — 22-113 vs. Berkshire Community College (Feb. 9, 1979)

Highest scoring game — 90-74 vs. Southern (Nov. 29, 1997)

Most lopsided game — 22-113 vs. Berkshire (Feb. 9, 1979)

 

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Posted on Jan 1, 1999

Nearing the finish line of a grueling five-mile cross country race, Peter Flynn '99 hits the gas one last time and surges to a close
third-place finish in the New York State collegiate meet.

He coasts to the end of the finish chute, congratulates his opponents, pauses a few
seconds to catch his breath, and sets out to cheer for his teammates.

Minutes later he is off to jog a cooldown and get ready for the next event — a concert
with the College Orchestra, in which he is principal cellist. For the remainder of the
weekend, he will join a classmate to work on a design report for a flame-extinguishing
robot that they are building over the Internet with students in Ankara, Turkey. Sometime
during the weekend, he will sleep.

Welcome to the routine of Peter Flynn — runner, cellist, and mechanical engineering
major.

“You can always get everything done by not sleeping, everything but run well, that
is,” Flynn says. “When you're not sleeping, you won't run your best.”

Flynn says he doesn't go out much at night because he doesn't want his performances to
be jeopardized by lack of sleep. Yet his final collegiate cross country race, the NCAA
regionals, came at the end of a particularly sleepless week. In the final week of the
ten-week fall term, Flynn and a classmate spent a number of near-sleepless nights
finishing their design report for their robot. What didn't help the sleep schedule was the
fact that much of the collaboration with their teammates in Turkey took place early in the
morning, since Ankara is seven hours ahead of Schenectady time.

At the regionals, Flynn finished tenth, just twelve seconds away from his goal of
qualifying for the NCAA national championships.

“Peter and his teammates were disappointed that he didn't advance to the
nationals,” Union Coach Charlie Casey says. “But this is the reality of running
in college. You do your best to juggle academics and running, and sometimes the running
suffers.

“When you stand back and take a look at Peter's entire season, he had a wonderful
year, perhaps the best of any Union runner in at least a decade,” Casey adds.

Among Flynn's accomplishments were third place in the New York State Collegiate Track
Conference championship, second place at the Upstate Collegiate Athletic Association
championship, third place at the Westfield (Mass.) Invitational, and second place at the
Union Invitational. Twice he was named “UCAA Runner of the Week,” and based on
his finish at the NCAA regionals he was named to the NCAA Division III All-Region Cross
Country Team. Flynn was the obvious choice for team MVP at season's end, and the student
newspaper, Concordiensis, named him “Athlete of the Term.”

Flynn, of Newton, Mass., took up the cello at age five. “Playing the cello was
inevitable,” he says. “My dad had the preconceived idea that everyone in the
family would play an instrument. Music was a very important part of growing up.”
(Flynn's father plays violin and viola; his mother, piano; his twin sister, viola; and an
older sister, violin.)

“Our family played string quartets at church and at family reunions just to show
off,” he recalls. “My dad would get us out of bed early on Sundays and make us
play as a family.”

Flynn played in the youth orchestra at the New England Conservatory and with the
Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra. He continued once he arrived at Union, where most
of his fellow students didn't know he was an accomplished cellist until his sophomore
year, when he performed a Bach cello suite at the College's opening convocation.

Hours after crossing the finish line at the state meet, Flynn was with the orchestra
playing a concert of works by Beethoven and Dvorak. “All day, I was thinking, 'I have
to perform twice today,'” he says. “But with the concert, you have practiced and
you know how it will go. It's predictable. With the race, even though you have practiced
and you have a strategy, it's very unpredictable.”

Flynn is working with a computer systems major (Bill Desrochers '99) and a team of
engineers at Middle Eastern Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, to design and build a
robot that will autonomously locate and extinguish randomly-placed flames. Flynn and his
Union teammate (with six other Union students and two faculty) traveled to Turkey in
January to participate in the final competition.

Flynn says the toughest part of the project is communicating effectively with the
students in Turkey. “At times, progress seems slow, I guess because it incorporates
aspects of real-world problems that are not addressed in the classroom,” he says.

In addition to tutoring freshmen and sophomore mechanical engineering students, Flynn
has been spending thirteen hours per week as an intern at Encotech, a Schenectady
engineering firm that uses computer models to monitor and analyze power plant efficiency.
In the fall of his junior year, he gave up a cross country season to study engineering in
Prague, the Czech Republic. Last summer, the wanderlust took him on a seven-week,
12,000-mile cross country trip around the U.S., during which he tested himself on a
fourteen-mile run in the 112-degree heat of Glen Canyon, Utah.

As for his future, Flynn says he would like to travel for about a year and then return
to start a career in alternative forms of power generation. He also wants to continue with
the cello, playing a few hours each week to keep active. As for running — “I have
been considering how hard I would have to train to run a four-minute mile, but that would
be more of a stretch than a goal. But I would like to try the marathon in about ten
years.”

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Posted on Jan 1, 1999

A week before John Glenn went back into space,
another space pioneer came to campus to help launch the F.W. Olin Center.

Harrison Schmitt, the last of twelve men to walk on the
moon, said he, too, would love to go back into space.

“But I'd have to talk with my wife first,” he
added. “She says I can't go without her.”

Schmitt — geologist, former U.S. Senator, adjunct
professor at the University of Wisconsin, and advocate of using lunar resources — spent
the day at Union talking to audiences that ranged from fifth-graders to members of the
College's Board of Trustees.

In a morning talk to more than 100 fifth-graders from
local elementary schools, Schmitt made traveling to space sound awesome and possible by
anyone.

When he asked the children whether they wanted to go the
moon or Mars someday, dozens of hands shot up. Schmitt replied that they might not only
travel there but live there. “By the time you're ready to go to the moon, fifteen or
twenty years from now, it may be much more routine,” he said.

The pupils peppered Schmitt with questions. He said the
greatest hardship was trying to move his hands in the bulky gloves astronauts had to wear,
and he delighted the children with space trivia — the astronauts drank regular orange
juice, for example, not Tang; they kept comfortable with water-cooled underwear; the food
wasn't bad, except for the salmon salad; waking on the moon is similar to cross-country
skiing, except you can go six times faster than you can on Earth; and water or urine that
was jettisoned from the spaceship provided a spectacular display when it exploded in the
cold vacuum of space into atomized ice particles.

Schmitt and fellow Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan spent
three days on the moon in 1972, exploring the valley of Taurus Littrow and returning with
more than 250 pounds of samples for study. After leaving NASA three years later, Schmitt
was elected to the U.S. Senate from his home state of New Mexico. Today, he consults,
speaks, and writes on policy issues of the future, space, and the American Southwest.

Later in the day, in a speech after the dedication of the
F.W. Olin Center, he donned his hat as chairman of Interlune Intermars Initiative, Inc., a
company that advances the private sector's acquisition of lunar resources and helium-3
fusion power.

Saying that an increased standard of living required more
energy, he said we should start thinking of alternatives to fossil fuels — specifically,
the helium-3 found on the surface of the moon.

“There are at least one million tons embedded in the
lunar surface,” he said. “When you consider that one metric ton of helium-3
equals $3 billion worth of coal, and that thirty tons would provide for the entire U.S.
consumption of electricity, you see that the moon could provide energy sources far into
the future for the entire world.”

He said a good deal of engineering work is yet to be done
on how to mine the moon, and the capital required is extensive — an estimated $15 billion
over the next ten to fifteen years.

“I know the private sector won't want to wait ten or
fifteen years for a return on its investment, but when you realize that the Trans-Alaska
pipeline was a $15 billion effort, we think that we're in the ballpark for private
developers,” Schmitt said.

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Posted on Jan 1, 1999

Henry
Reed Rathbone and Clara Harris joined President and Mrs. Lincoln in their Ford's Theatre
box seats to watch Our American Cousin on the evening of Good Friday, 1865 — the night
the President was assassinated.

Thomas Mallon, whose novel Henry and Clara was the freshman reading assignment this
summer, discovered that the story of the young couple extended well before and after that
April evening. Last fall, Mallon spoke on campus about Henry and Clara, which has a
special connection with Union.

Henry Rathbone had entered Union on April 29, 1854, at age sixteen. A “Classical
course” student, he lived in North College and was a member of Sigma Phi fraternity,
graduating in 1857. Mallon based part of his story on records that he found at Union.

The quotations below are taken from chapter twenty-nine of Henry and Clara.

Please tell them that the President and his lady are here.

President and Mrs. Lincoln's horse-drawn carriage arrived at the Harris family
residence a little late. Their guests awaited an evening to remember with the witty
President and the boisterous first lady.

Henry and Clara had jumped at the presidential invitation, which had been declined by
Ulysses S. Grant and his wife. Young, handsome, and well-to-do, Henry Reed Rathbone was
the son of the mayor of Albany. He was seventeen when his father died, and he inherited
the grandiose sum of $200,000. A close friend of his mother happened to be Mary Todd
Lincoln.

His fiancee, Clara, was the striking daughter of U.S. Senator Ira Harris, Union alumnus
and trustee who would serve as acting president of the College in 1868-69.

“Where is your good father this week?” asked Mr. Lincoln, looking first at
Clara and then at Major Rathbone, unsure which one to put the question to. To his mind
they were both Harris's children, and when Mrs. Lincoln burbled the secret of their
engagement to him last year, he had stood for a moment without saying anything, just
feeling that it was a peculiar thing for a boy and girl raised together as they had been
to be marrying each other.

The couple actually had grown up almost as siblings. Henry's mother, Pauline, married
Clara's father, Ira Harris, after the death of her first husband. Henry and Clara were
children, and it was to their parents' dismay that they later become engaged.

The opinion expressed by President Lincoln is one of the many liberties that Mallon
took in creating his characters. True, the President and the young couple were well
acquainted by the night the Lincolns picked them up on their way to the theater. The
President might have made such a remark in his mind, although in re

ality, of course, it was Mallon who spun the dialogue.

Mrs. Lincoln made a whispery fuss of arranging them all: the President in a rocker,
herself beside him, Clara on a chair to her right, and Henry on a small sofa behind his
fiancee. “Will you be able to see?” she asked him. Everything she noted was red:
the floral wallpaper, the carpet, the damask of Henry's couch. The balcony seemed a toy
world.

Lincoln was preoccupied with the reconstruction of the South and so weary, in fact,
that he was seeking a bit of relaxation in going to the play. Henry, known as the
red-headed, fiery-natured young major, served in the infantry and was provost marshall of
the City of Washington. John Wilkes Booth had been planning an assassination attempt, and
officials feared the President to be danger.

Clara felt the muscles of her arms jump inside their puffed sleeves. A trap door must
have been sprung onstage. The loud crack was some bit of stage business, like this burst
of blue smoke she could see and smell. But that had to be wrong, she realized, turning
left in her seat: The smoke was behind her.

In Mallon's story, Clara Harris doesn't even realize that the President had been shot
in the back of his head when a loud bang startles the audience. In his telling of the
scene, Clara is shocked and still at the sight of a man grappling with her fiancee and
striking him with a knife, ripping skin from his elbow to his shoulder. John Wilkes Booth
pushes through the box, splattered with Henry's blood.

“Stop that man!”

“Won't somebody stop that man?”

Henry and Clara yelled as Booth scrambled over the balcony and through the crowd. In
their shock, it was all they could do, and Henry was haunted by guilt for the rest of his
life, thinking he should have done more to save the President.

Mallon's account describes how the balcony quickly filled with Army officials and how a
young doctor in the audience stretched the President out on the floor. In the confusion,
Clara and Mary went in and out of hysteria and disorientation, and Henry continued to
bleed. Booth's gun, a derringer pistol, had sent a nickel-sized bullet into the
President's brain, and doctors could do little before he died the next morning. Henry, who
had received six stab wounds, was rushed by carriage back to the Harris residence to
recover.

 

The doctors were trying to keep the tiny puncture behind his ear from clotting; the
pillow, Clara heard Stanton tell Sumner much too loudly, was a terrible sight.

After the President's funeral, Clara returned to New York, where her family owned a
summer cottage in Loudonville. She had been unable to part with the white satin dress
still stained with blood, untouched since the night she left the theater. It hung in a
closet until exactly one year after the assassination, when Clara claimed that she awoke
to the ghost of Lincoln laughing, just as he had been enjoying the play before he was
shot.

Family and friends assumed Clara had dreamed the episode, until another year later when
the same phenomenon affected the governor of Massachusetts, who was staying with the
Harrises. Henry walled off the closet, but locals always claimed the house was haunted. A
Rathbone son tore down the wall in 1910 and burned the dress, believing it had placed a
curse of violence and insanity on the household.

Clara and Henry had married in the summer of 1867, despite the changes that the
horrendous incident had caused. Ever since that evening in 1865, Henry suffered from
delusions and panic attacks, and Clara experienced faltering health as well.

On Christmas morning of 1883, the most disturbing part of the story is played out.
Henry entered his wife's bedroom in a house in Hanover, Germany, where the Rathbones were
seeking medical help for Henry. In a mad fit, supposedly duplicating John Wilkes Booth's
actions eighteen years earlier, Henry shot Clara and then stabbed himself six times. Clara
died, but Henry survived. He lived in an asylum until his death in 1911.

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