As the Hungarian Revolt was being brutally crushed by Soviet tanks in 1956, large numbers of Hungarian refugees were making their way to various countries of the West, many of them to the United States. Among them were sizable numbers of university students equipped with a strong desire to continue their studies, but almost totally lacking in the resources necessary to accomplish this aim.
At Indiana University in Bloomington, a young law student and teaching fellow named Joe Board was among the number that responded to their plight. Filled with admiration for a people who had dared to assert their aspirations for freedom against imposed tyranny, Board developed a plan to provide room, board and tuition scholarships for some 20 Hungarian students. Essentially this involved free tuition fees provided by the Indiana University, as well as room, board and spending money provided by a group of fraternities and sororities.
The plan came into operation within a few short weeks. Board took it first to University President Herman B. Wells, and to Joe Franklin, the treasurer. Their immediate and enthusiastic response was quickly complemented by the support of 11 sororities and 11 fraternities. By the time that the next semester opened, there were 22 Hungarian students enrolled in the program.
When asked why he had been moved to provide a helping hand, Board replied, “Why not?” What he did not know at the time was that one of these students, Charles Gati, was to become a highly valued friend and colleague ten years later at Union College; and that Charles would go on to become one of the pre-eminent American scholars in the field of foreign affairs, still active and producing works of insight and scholarship like this widely acclaimed study of the events that brought him to the United States in the first place.
In 1956 former Union professor Charles Gati was forced to leave his home in Hungary after Soviet troops crushed a revolt. In his new book, Gati recalls the day he left. Below is an excerpt.
Two weeks after Moscow crushed the revolution, I left Hungary, going first to Austria and then in a few weeks to the United States. I became one of some 182,000 refugees from Soviet-dominated Hungary. My parents, though I was their only child, did not discourage me from leaving. They stayed up all night before I left, watching me as I wrote a few notes of farewell to relatives and friends and put a few belongings together for my escape from uncertainty to uncertainty.
Emerging from the kitchen, my mother came around to stuff her freshly baked sweets-the best in the world-into my small backpack. “Look up Uncle Sanyi in New York,” she said. At dawn, when it was time to say goodbye, my father tried to hold back his tears but he could not. “Write often,” he said, his voice quavering with emotion. We embraced. We kissed. As I left, they stood on the small balcony of our Barcsay Street apartment and waved. I walked backwards as long as I could see them, hoping they could also see me for another few seconds. (As I recall this scene some fifty years later, holding back my tears as my father once tried to do, I still see them waving on the balcony, and I always will.)
College chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, a historically black service fraternity, is part of a proud tradition on campus and beyond
Dapo Akinleye ’02 is a 25-year-old research scientist and graduate student at the University at Albany. George Smith is 67 and an emeritus professor of biology at the College.
Akinleye and Smith are like bookends and between them are a group of largely African-American Union College alumni and faculty connected by their membership in the service fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha. The Union chapter, Pi Pi, was founded in 1983 and is part of a network of chapters at U.S. schools stemming from the seminal chapter founded at Cornell University in 1906, which was then the first African-American fraternity in the United States.
“In November 700 Alpha men had a big celebration [at Cornell]. It was very impressive to see this army of black men marching through the university,” Smith said. “The history of Alpha sort of coincides with the history of the civil rights movement. Many of the civil rights leaders like W.E.B. DuBois were Alpha men. To me, it just felt like I was reliving history; rededicating myself to what I learned at Bethune-Cookman College and along the way.”
Smith taught biology at Union from 1973 to 2005 and, along with former Professor Twitty J. Styles, became the driving force behind forming the Pi Pi chapter. Smith joined Alpha Phi Alpha in the late 1950s as a young man at Bethune-Cookman College, a historically black college in Florida.
Both Akinleye and Smith say Alpha Phi Alpha’s focus on public service, leadership and scholarship have played a key role in their lives. The fraternity claims civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and nearly all presidents of black colleges as graduate members of the fraternity.
“It’s a legacy of excellence, leadership and social action,” Akinleye said.
The Pi Pi chapter was recognized by the College’s Intrafraternity Council in 1985 and has carried out volunteer efforts in Schenectady’s Hamilton Hill almost every year since. Na’eem Crawford-Muhammad ’08, of Queens, N.Y., is the president of Pi Pi and helped lead a voter registration effort in Hamilton Hill before the November elections in 2006. The voter registration drive is part of a fraternity campaign called “A Voteless People is a Hopeless People.”
“It’s more than just a social organization. It’s a community service organization. That’s really what I was looking for from Alpha Phi Alpha. They focused on the community of Schenectady, more specifically on Hamilton Hill,” Crawford-Muhammad said.
Recent graduates and former Pi Pi members like Akinleye and George Tiggle ’98, act as mentors to students. Tiggle works in the College Relations Department and Akinleye lives in Schenectady and works as a research scientist for the New York State Department of Health. He is also working toward a doctorate in epidemiology at the University at Albany.
Akinleye moved to New York City from Nigeria in the early 1980s at about the time that the first AIDS cases were reported in the United States. His uncle died of complications from the disease and Akinleye intends to build a doctoral research project associated with his work at the health department’s Bureau of HIV/AIDS Epidemiology. His research tracks New York State’s newly infected HIV patients and Akinleye views the disease as the “most urgent public health challenge of our generation.”
“Although the disease was first established in homosexual men, it has increasingly become a disease of color, with blacks and sub-Saharan Africans bearing the heaviest burden,” Akinleye said.
In early December Tiggle, Aikenley and Sean Washington ’06 traveled to Cornell for a second celebration of Alpha Phi Alpha’s centennial. Tiggle, who works in the College Relations Department, also organized a gala dinner in November at the New York State Museum in Albany.
Alpha Phi Alpha was founded by a cadre of black students at Cornell University in 1906, according to the Alpha Phi Alpha Web site. “[The men were] determined to bind themselves together to ensure that each would survive in the racially hostile environment. In coming together with this simple act, they preceded by decades the emergence of such on-campus programs as affirmative action,” reads to Alpha Phi Alpha Web site.
The Union College chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha was founded by James Mann ’86, John K. Johnson ’85, Winston Britton ’85, Greg Bowler ’85, Reinhard Walker ’86, Marty Glaze ’86 and Larry Romaine ’85. The Pi Pi chapter is normally comprised of eight to 12 mostly black members but does accept applicants of all races and there are number of Hispanic brothers in the chapter. Founding brother Mann is white.
“Every year we helped with Hamilton Hill groups and old folks homes. They were automatics. The service is a big part of it,” Mann said.
Web auctions and e-mail banter uncover items ranging from an antique cane to a V-neck sweater
Winter magazine 2007: A book with the signature of former President Chester A. Arthur and a cane given to Arthur and later purchased by the College.
A recent eBay search for “Union College” revealed items including a printing press block with the College logo, a brass doorknob set and an old V-neck sweater.
“I’m on eBay right now and I don’t even know what I am bidding on,” said Jason Oshins ’87, a College trustee, president of the Alumni Association and collector of Union memorabilia.
Rare items purchased via Web auction sites like eBay or with help from tips traded in e-mail messages have bolstered the College’s Special Collections and private collections like Oshins’. A few top examples of items acquired with help from the Web: a cane given to former President Chester A. Arthur, two copies of a book published in 1873 called William H. Seward’s Travels Around the World and a rare book chronicling the lives of the Class of 1875.
The cane was acquired by the College and the books by Oshins, who gave a copy of the Seward book to President Stephen C. Ainlay at his inauguration in September.
“We are acquiring things through unconventional means that we never would have known about before,” said Thomas McFadden, a librarian at Schaffer Library. “It’s the world’s biggest flea market.”
The cane, dubbed “Chet’s Cane,” was purchased in October for $2,400 using private donations and money given by various College departments. McFadden was tipped off to the cane auction in an e-mail from Vince Guerra ’55, who knew of the auction house based in Salem, Mass. Guerra’s tennis playing partner, Hank Taron, owns the auction company and handed off a catalog to Guerra after a match one night last summer. While flipping through the index, Guerra noted Arthur’s cane and sent an e-mail to the College Relations Department.
“Through these e-mails I became aware that Union was interested in the cane. I put Tom in touch with my friend. I am delighted that Union has the cane,” Guerra said.
The 36-inch long cane was a gift to Arthur and was carved from ash wood taken from his family home in Fairfield, Vt. Arthur graduated from Union College in 1848 and served as the 21st president of the United States from 1881 to 1885. McFadden participated in the cane auction by phone last fall and later drove to Rockport, Maine, near Acadia National Park, to pick it up. “Rather than trust it to the mail, I decided to go get it myself,” McFadden said.
Winter 2007 magazine: A brass doorknob with the College logo that was advertised on eBay in December 2006.
The cane will enhance to the College’s permanent collection of Arthur artifacts. Last September the College staged an exhibit in the Nott Memorial featuring items including photos, letters and a walnut desk used by Arthur during his tenure as a Civil War general. The cane was acquired after the exhibition ended.
McFadden has purchased items on eBay ranging from postcards to an old wooden eggcup decorated with an image of the Nott Memorial. And he is not alone on campus. Doug Klein, professor of economics and director of the Center for Converging Technologies, bought a slide rule engraved with the College logo in an eBay auction in 2004. Klein paid about $16 for the slide rule, which likely belonged to deceased alumnus William E. Fasake ’48.
Klein gave a lecture to alumni about five years ago that dealt partly with eBay. That’s when Oshins first considered searching eBay for Union items.
“I’m really proud of the stuff I’ve bought,” Oshins said. “I have a book published in 1891 by Leroy Press about the Class of 1875. The stories in it are just amazing. I got it from a guy in Tyler, Texas who had bought it at a bookstore in Arkansas. It is great when you get back something in Tyler, Texas. It’s in the middle of nowhere.”
The College’s most prized artifacts are stored in the Special Collections section of Schaffer Library. Among them are the original Joseph Jaques Ramée drawings of campus, the “elephant folio” edition of John James Audubon’s Birds of America and a rare 1922 edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses that is printed on handmade paper crafted in England.
Oshins has also obtained two copies a leather-bound book published in 1873 called William H. Seward’s Travels Around the World. Seward graduated from Union in 1820 and served as secretary of state under former President Abraham Lincoln and was responsible for negotiating the Alaska Purchase in 1867 for $7.2 million.
The book includes about 200 illustrations and recounts a two-year trip around the world Seward made after completing the Alaska Purchase, according to Thorn Books, a seller of rare and out-of-print books. Seward crossed the United States, visiting Mormon leader Brigham Young in Utah before stopping briefly in California. From there, Seward sailed to Japan, and later visited China, India, Palestine and Europe, according to the Thorn Books summary.
My Roomie is a horse who can run. Just ask David Siegel '80, an amateur harness driver and CEO of a company that sells horse racing data. With the horse, My Roomie, leading the way, Siegel set a North American record for amateur harness drivers on Sept. 28, 2006 at the Cal-Expo track in Sacramento, Calif. Siegel and the horse completed the mile-long race in 1:52.2.
Siegel is president and chief executive officer of TrackMaster, an Equibase company that provides handicapping data for bettors. Siegel took up competitive harness racing in November 2004 and, as of late 2006, had participated in 279 races and amassed 26 wins, 27 second-place finishes and 35 third-place finishes.
While racing another of his horses, Wastin' Time, Siegel nearly matched his amateur record. “I fell in love with horses and harness racing almost five years ago and have been driving for the last two as an amateur,” wrote Siegel in an e-mail to this magazine. “As most of my races are against professionals, I wanted to leave my imprint somewhere in the industry. I noticed the ‘fastest amateur mile' record in the [United States Trotting Association] record book and thought that breaking it was an achievable goal.”
Siegel, 48, lives in Palo Alto, Calif. and is married with two children. He earned a degree in economics and mathematics from Union College and master's degree in business administration from Stanford University in 1983. Siegel is the top executive at TrackMaster, which compiles and sells data relating to harness and thoroughbred racing.
He joined the company in 1993 as a vice president for marketing and development and helped develop TrackMaster's hand-held device. In his work, Siegel still uses basic statistical analysis learned in courses at Union. He also uses TrackMaster data to build strategies prior to races at the Cal-Expo track.
“I have access to data that, I believe, helps me figure out the tendencies of other horses,” Siegel said. “If I look at this data and see three horses have a good gait speed and like to be on lead, in a race like that, I will very likely go to the rail and bank on the fact that they will battle each other.” Siegel, who is also a long-time volunteer baseball coach, makes the two-hour drive north to the track in Sacramento about twice a month. As an amateur driver, he is not allowed to keep the driver's percentage of a purse, but does collect the owner's portion of the purse when Wastin' Time or My Roomie wins.
“It's a real rush to beat guys who do this for a living. Once I am out there on the track, I am very, very competitive. And people are betting money on you, so you have an obligation to do everything you can,” Siegel said.
The sulkies being pulled by the horse travel at about 30 mph and competitors ride less than an inch away from one another. Harness drivers are regularly hurt and sometimes killed after being ejected from the sulky and trampled by the horses.
Siegel wears a vest and helmet, but acknowledged that he is taking a risk to attain the enjoyment of the race.
