A welcome at Concordy
When I started writing for Concordiensis in the fall of 1966, Barry Newman '67 was already a local legend, the “boy editor” who had run the paper as a nineteen-year-old sophomore, then gone on to summer and stringer employment with the
Knickerbocker News and, later, The New York Times. His features and editorials, most memorably his ode to the Dempster Dumpster, were shown to the rookie reporters as examples of blending pedestrian subjects with a lively imagination to create memorable newspaper prose. Newman has been a globetrotting
Wall Street
Journal front-page columnist for more than twenty-five years; a quick Google search turns up more than 150 citations to his work. Has any other Union alum had so long a run on such an influential publication?
As a freshman sentenced to a West College cell and furious at a fraternity system that permitted racial and religious discriminatory practices, I found
Concordiensis to be the most welcoming institution at the College. Commitment, performance, and passion mattered more than what your grandfather's name had been upon arriving at Ellis Island. Add to the bargain savage editing of whatever you wrote and regular visits to Newest Lunch after putting the paper to bed, and there was no better way to turn college into an education.
Neil Kramer '70
Concordiensis
Editor-in-Chief, 1969
Golfing with Clare Graves
While reading John Moses's article in the winter magazine about his memories of his college days, I was reminded of one of the people who was really special to me: Professor of Psychology Clare Graves.
As a freshman in '46, I became acquainted with Dr. Graves and mentioned that I thought that Union had in the past had a golf team. He said he didn't know for sure, but that if I was interested in getting one started, he would help me. The first step was to put a notice on the bulletin board in the gym and see if enough people signed up. I don't recall the exact number, but there were more than the minimum of eight needed for a golf team.
He then said that he would contact some other colleges in the area and see if they had an interest in a home-and-home match with us. It wasn't long before we had matches scheduled with RPI, University of Vermont, Siena, and one or two others.
Clare Graves became our coach, using his skills as a psychologist. During our practice sessions he would unobtrusively observe our swings in an uncritical manner. On a later day he would bring his 8-mm movie camera (this was before the days of camcorders!), record our play, and later we would meet in the gym area to view the results. With his help we were able to see where our problems lay, and he showed us how to
correct them.
Our home matches were played at the Edison Golf Course. Danny Baskus, Charlie Leader, and I were native to the Schenectady area; the others were from other parts of the country. Roger Sturtevant, a senior, played #1 that first year, a position I held during the next three years (to move up the “ladder”
you had to challenge the
one above you and beat him in a practice round). During our first year we just about broke even.
One of my memories was of beating Ed Korlack of RPI, who beat Bill Shields of Siena, who beat me at the Edison. Later on Shields won the New York State Amateur Championship. Over the years I have lost track of most of the fellows on the various teams we had. I did play in quite a few member-guest tourneys with Al Doyle, Warren Frost, and Charlie Leader. Other names that come to my less than perfect memory are Joe Mendelson, Spence Warnick, Don McCoy, Joe Behan, and “Whistle” Todd.
Fifty-two years is a long way to look back. Scores in the
low 70s are no longer there; low to mid- 80s are the case nowadays. Looking in the scrapbook where I found
the enclosed clippings and picture, I found my cards
for seven holes-in-one! One
of them came a year after having a shoulder replacement in 1988.
If any of this gets published,
I would be very interested in hearing from these guys.
Frank “Ben” Swan '50
Binghamton, N.Y.
The photo (above) of the golf team circa 1950 was sent to us by Ben Swan '50. He identifies those in the photo as (from the left) Joe Mendelson'50, Dave Frost, Al Doyle'51, Professor (and Coach) Clare Graves, Spence Warnick '52, unknown, and Ben Swan.
We welcome letters. Send them to: Office of Communications, Union College,
Schenectaday, N.Y. 12308 or blankmap@union.edu.