Reunions Past I was a Lackey for Harvard '44

THE CLASSMATE lunged frantically into the carpeted splendor of the Essex Country Club locker room, just in time to pitch the blending of a New England boiled lobster, a day's worth of bloody marys, gin and tonics, and scotch-on-the-rocks, and a schedule of tennis, golf, and after-dinner dancing squarely into the hopper. At first, he only groaned; his hands anchored to the enamel circle, he prayed for his heart to fall back into first without tearing out the transmission. And then he began with methodic attention to wipe from his face the vomit and sweat.

"I must be crazy," he moaned for all in the room to hear. "I came all the way from England for this. Shit, I should see a psychoanalyst."

"But what do I do?" answered a voice from the neighboring stall. "I am a psychoanalyst."

One of the bartenders happened to hear it all, and, within the hour, the rest of us, the chauffeurs and porters and barkeeps and aides that had been hired to work for the reunioning 25th, had also heard the story and had shaken our heads in pretended amazement.

Every year the 25th Reunion Class spends $250,000 in treating itself to what one member of the Class of '44 called, "the best week of my life." As far as most undergraduates are concerned, Reunion Week only means that they are summarily forced out of their rooms hours after their final exams are over to make room for the visiting hoardes. For the graduating class itself, the Reunion is simply another obstacle that gets in their way as they nervously guide bewildered parents through the narrow and overcrowded streets. And as for the College's few extant radicals, one said, "It's an opportunity for the University to get the alumni drunk so they can hold them upside down on their way out the door while they gather up all the change that falls out of those rich pigs' pockets."

But the University isn't the only one who makes money off the event. Every year a few hundred students hang around for a week after school closes to assist Buildings and Grounds in erasing any traces of a year at Harvard that could upset an alumni wife (like scum in the shower stalls and marijuana seeds in the bureau drawers), and a few dozen of the best of these are chosen to stay on to work the handful of lucrative details that oil the relentless flow of events that comprises the Reunion. The "best" are, of course, chosen by the crew captains who supervise the work effort, and the promised tips of financially flush alumni are the oft-mentioned carrots that gets everyone on the stick.

Theoretically, at least, I worked clean-up and reunion two years solely for The Experience. But actually, I, like everyone else, did it for the money. That's how I found myself driving an oversized station wagon shuttling alumni and their families from the B-school to their dorms. "So you're a Harvard student?" they would ask, while I inwardly smiled at their shock of irrecognition.

Dress and Appearance

Dark shoes, dark socks, dark pants, a dark tie, and a white shirt are suggested as your basic dress. You will be issued a white jacket to wear at all times on the job. Your appearance should be neat and clean. Beards should be trimmed and haircuts should be reasonably neat. Beyond this, it is to your advantage to have rain gear for bad weather. Umbrellas are useful and can add to your tips. In fact, all these dress and appearance suggestions are made to benefit your tips.

-from a mimeographed sheet entitled Driver Information

Now, wait a minute. True, the '69 strike had died a painful death at least a week and a half before the Class of '44 arrived on campus. But still, that was no reason to dress as if you were attending an Irish wake. So it was somewhat surprising to discover most of the assembled chauffeurs and porters adhering to "your basic dress" code. To be sure, alumni enjoy Harvard exotica-but at a distance. They certainly don't want it driving their cars and pouring them their drinks.

Also, one began to suspect after a bit, they don't want it taking their money. As the Sunday onslaught of alumni slowly settled in, the usual legends had begun to capture our souls -we heard of one guy who tipped a porter 20 bucks on purpose, and another who had done so accidentally but it also began to appear, the legends might be no more than myths. For the Class of '44 was one of the first tight-fisted groups of returnees, and examples of outrageous beneficence proved to be their exception rather than their rule.

Everyone had a theory to help explain away his disappointment. "These guys had the war to put up with," held forth the cop who stood outside the Hasty Pudding where the classmates had their nightly bacchanalia. "They haven't had time to set themselves up all the way. They're just not ready to give their money away." No, argued the more daring of us, those who hadn't combed their hair or who had left the top two buttons of pastel-colored shirts unbuttoned. "The alumni hate us. They think we're a bunch of communists."

But there was one more theory afoot. When one bellboy complained to a college-age girl he was chasing that her father was being rather stingy in the favors he dispensed, she stared at him almost dumbfounded. "Look," she said, "the way daddy figures it, you're all Harvard guys and he's a Harvard man and he just doesn't see any need for one Harvard to give money to another."

Among those people who plan class reunions - and a special incorporated body is specially set aside to do the year's work that goes into a 25th-the memory of the Class of '44 brings with it a shiver of trepidation. Most people remember how it rained for the '68 Commencement and how half the graduates had to watch the ceremonies over television if they watched it at all. Few people realize that it had also been raining for the preceding four days. Which means that, for five gawdawful days the Class of '43 sat sequestered in dining rooms and dance halls while the ice in their glasses melted and their anger turned on each other. To make matters worse, the buses that shuttled the revellers through the rain and fog to the annual Tuesday Essex outing had to stop every fifteen minutes, because a catered dinner the night before had left its toll.

The people who run the whole affair do their best to be prepared for such unscheduled events-the executive secretary, who does everything from tracking down mislaid children to re-introducing their parents, wouldn't dream of setting out for Essex without armloads of safety pins, suntan oil, and Kotex. But you can't foresee every contingency. Gosh, the unexpected is half the fun of reunions!

The reunion is full of sideshows and of the half of them that are actually prearranged, one of the best is this boat tour that leaves the docks of the Manchester Yacht Club under the direction of a number of neighborhood women. Ostensibly the tours, led by bossy old ladies with cutesy-tough names like Muggins and Bet, ostensibly introduce interested alumni to the fine homes that overlook the coastline's coves. But, as Muggins confided to her coworkers, "Hah, I don't waste my time gushing on about all those old houses. I just let 'em all chew about their children- that's all they want to do anyway."

Not quite, Muggins. Some of the reunioners were on those boat rides for a quite different reason-namely, to escape their fellow spirits who crowded the playing fields of the Essex with an absolutely gleaming array of metal tennis rackets, assorted putters, and couture designer sporting outfits.

The day's single almost-emergency occurred when one such couple-you could tell that they just didn't cut it for they were not only from New Hampshire but had also been wearing the same clothes all day long -invited their bus driver onto the boat with them. By the time he returned, half his busload had already assembled and were impatiently demanding passage back to Essex. But the Losers had also gotten the bus driver drunk and so, when Mr. Loser boarded the boat for another swing around the harbor, Mrs. Loser led the bus driver off to the nearby sand dunes, leaving one of the chauffeurs to entertain her half-stewed teenage daughter. Meanwhile, the rest of the group suffered in the sun, as unsilently as possible, while back at the Country Club they began to serve up the evening's promised lobster.

Midway through the dance that was held the following night at the Sheraton Plaza, the classmates and their wives began drifting out of the main ballroom where some ragtime band was going into its 90th turn through "Hold That Tiger." Across the way, their college kids were having their dance and, before long, that was where it was, yes, at. For by Wednesday night, the crowd had really loosened up. Half the alumni daughters were dancing with porters they had picked up along the way. A good number of the wives were eyeing a few of the boys themselves. (After all, they had all seen The Graduate, even if it wasn't a very accurate picture of today's youth, Benjamin's Williams background notwithstanding.) And even a bunch of the men were out frugging-the last dance whose name they remembered-a little bit themselves.

And then suddenly, this corpulent type is ripping his dress shirt off his sweating body, and, hell, what's that he's got on? O my God, a strike T-shirt! This guy's out there dancing in his underwear with a big, red fist stencilled on his belly. And, you could hear the tempo quicken, and everyone gulp down another drink, and throw themselves into saving abandon.

Reunion etiquette is actually fairly simple. Just avoid unpleasant subjects and refer to your fellow alumnus as Classmate. At first, it carries an odd note of artificial formality. But then, everyone else does the same thing. Women talk to their sisters, and blacks to fellow brothers, and I even had a professor this semester who took to calling us all citizen to set things on a more equitable basis. Besides, if you're the type that just can't remember first names, it makes it all a helluva lot easier.

Just as alumni never fork over as much money to the University as the University hopes they will, we lackeys didn't rip-off the kinds of rewards we were looking for. But, the odd thing about it was that by the end of the whole siege it really didn't matter.

After the Sheraton Plaza dance, after we had ushered the last of the celebrants onto his bus (where everyone was singing Harvard fight songs), and after we had scoured the ballroom for forgotten handbags and gloves (discovering mostly lost shoes instead), the head chauffeur hugged the executive secretary and then they both looked at all the rest of us and shook their heads warmly and sadly. It was like straight out of one of Chekhov's final curtains, all the faithful family retainers standing around chuckling knowingly over the foolishness of their masters.

Of course, come morning, we'd laugh at them all once again. And husbands would fight with their tired wives, children holler, and everyone dozed off on champagne as they prepared to withdraw from town. But now, with two more years also gone from sight, it seems somehow more difficult to maintain the derisive laughter.

For, during those two years, we have suffered too many hangovers of our own. Some political, some not, and lately, a good many of them just plain old alcoholic. You almost begin to admire the simple tenacity that permits one to survive twenty-five years. So what if the Class of '44, with their station wagons, unmentioned divorces, second wives and four kids, are said, along with their other Harvard brothers, to rule the world. When you see them up close, you know they can't possibly be the guys who are really in charge.