Making It With Pride

"My first day in the Marines, this sergeant was yelling at us: 'Serub out those toilet bowls!' I said to myself. 'I want his job.'" Chuck Hamlin '81

By most any standard, he is an anomaly among college students, and something of an anachronism. Married twice, 27 years old, a four-year Marine with four military ribbons to his name, caught between the We and Me generations. Chuck Hamlin will clutch his diploma today and cherish it as the culmination of a nine-year personal odyssey. He has come a long way. How many Harvard students finished 485th out of 522 in their high school class (and admit it without blinking)? And how many Harvard students participated in the evacuation of Saigon in April 1975?

Chuck Hamlin is a can-do type of guy. He is frank in an age of guardedness, blunt in an age of equivocation. "My life is an open book," he says, and his chapters on Harvard range from silly to profound. But you must understand one thing about Chuck Hamlin: he is proud, proud to "have turned myself around," proud to have served his country, proud of his grades, and above all proud to have made it.

His forward manner betrays a touch of bluster, but Hamlin's combination of complete honesty and friendliness precludes any arrogance. You get a pleasant glow after talking with him, regardless of whether you agree with him on politics (as the conservative club's vice president, he burned a Soviet flag on the steps of Memorial Church to protest the massing of troops near Poland), the military (he loves it, though he hates war, favors nuclear disarmament, and thinks part of the defense budget "should be allocated to building tables around which we can talk reasonably with the Russians") or general outlook ("I'm very Machiavellian and ruthless, and I can be ugly--but I don't want to hurt anybody"). Hamlin is the quintessential American dreamer who woke up in the middle of the night to find himself realizing his fantasy. And the challenges of Harvard are a far cry from the trials of boot camp.

He is no stranger to overcoming adversity, something he did daily, and spectacularly, in the Marines. "I committed myself to them. I made people sick, I was so meticulous. I played their game, and kept getting meritorious promotions." After only two years--on a virtually unprecedented ascent in the Marines--he became a sergeant.

Although he does not deny the importance of the Marines in his development, Hamlin reflects on his stint with mixed feelings. "People don't realize that there are citizens serving everyday. They don't ask 'Who's protecting the country?' I did."

He grows nostalgic when he discusses the Marines, although he drives home his points in characteristically animated fashion. "They beat Ma, apple pie and Chevrolets into our heads. 'Honor to the flag'--that was the big thing. They made me love America, force-fed me on the Red, White and Blue. At that time, I thought radicals and hippies were from another planet, afraid to go fight for their country. I resented their long hair. After all, how much respect can you have for people who don't respect themselves enough to clean up? I had short hair and was meticulous."

He draws a deep breath and continues. "People were going to Nam to die against their will. The Marines, we were all so gung-ho at the time. Now I ask, 'Why were we there? What were we fighting for?' I hated deserters then. The Marines lied to us. They told us it was a war of outside aggression. Now, I know it was a civil war, and there would have been a lot less death if we hadn't been there."

A pause, and then he adds with a tinge of regret, "I know now that you don't have to necessarily have short hair and be clear to have the right point of view."

But the Marines, he concedes, did their job well. "They get you crazy, get you psyched The discipline was incredible--we would act immediately, and deal with the questions later. Problem was, we should've asked questions earlier. But they can get you to do anything." Even kill? His voice sinks. "Definitely."

He relates his experience in a motivation platoon--"moto," as it was called. "We had to go through this long trench with mucky water, under and over barrels. And you'd better be screaming like a banshee when you come up for air. I had one more barrel to go under and as I dove down I could see an officer pissing into the ditch, just to spite me. I was so psyched I didn't blink an eye, and I broke water yelling as loud as I could.

"I gave myself, body, soul, and mind to the Marines, and I think I gained more than I lost."

His tour took him to Taiwan, where he met his first wife, Tina. She learned English and he learned Chinese, and they communicated by using a book. "I loved her a lot. She is a super person, and she pushed me. The Marines used to yell at me, make me get up that last hill. She nudged me in a gentle way."

The couple split because, in Hamlin's words, "we grew apart." He had left the Marines in 1976 and attended Riverside Junior College in California. He performed well, applying his military-bred sense of detail to his courses. Hamlin wanted to go further, so he decided to transfer. "I asked my guidance counselor, 'What's the best school?' I had joined the Marines because it was the best outfit. He said, almost jokingly, 'Well, the real best is Harvard.' It was the only place I applied."

Two days after he'd heard of his admission and a week before he was slated to give Riverside's valedictory address, Hamlin shattered his leg in a severe highway accident. The break, however, did not prevent him from giving the address in a wheelchair and a full-leg cast. "I would've crawled up onstage if I'd had to," he recalls.

Three months later, he was at Harvard in a cast. "I called John [P.] Marquand [master of Dudley House] and told him I needed an apartment because of my leg. When I got here, a key was waiting for me."

Having progressed from directionless in high school to highly-motivated in the Marines and academically confident at Riverside. Hamlin "turned to people and a global perspective" at Harvard. "I felt like I had made it, that it was all over," he says. "It wasn't." But he knew "they weren't going to stump me on any exam or catch me off guard," and he proceeded to "cultivate and cash in on contacts and connections." He sums up his philosophy about the University by declaring: "If you want Harvard to take care of you, you have to seek it out. You have to use it. Connections and resources are no good unless they're used."

At Harvard, Hamlin aggressively cultivated both academic and social contacts. As treasurer of the D.U. (one of Harvard's finals clubs), he made a connection that saved his father's life. Hamlin's normally powerful voice lowers to a reverent tone as he tells the story. "My dad had had his right lung removed because of cancer and six unsuccessful operations on his left lung. I was talking with [eardiologist] Dr. Powell at a D.U. club function, and he referred me to Dr. Herman Grillo, the leading bronchial tracheologist.

"I spoke with Dr. Grillo, and he said he'd look at my dad and maybe work on him. My dad flew here from California, and the doctor fixed him up at Mass General. Today, my dad is as healthy as you or I. We're eternally grateful."

Hamlin made contacts of a much less serious nature during a one-year stint in Quincy House and he retains several fond memories. He says his advanced age did not bother him that much, though he was disturbed by what he terms "some immaturity."

"It was upsetting to see people do immature things, like tear down posters, carve on walls, knock down stakes in the Yard, write on tables. I had thought Harvard would be a cut above, but I learned people are just human. It's hard to accept, and a little absurd to be destroving things when the same people 20 years from now will be giving money to Harvard, if their parents aren't already. It's not what I expected. The Marines would never have put up with that crap."

Hamlin, however, is not above a little mischief. Last year, a few of his buddies at the Pi Eta club got drunk and headed over to Quincy House where demonstrators were protesting the showing of Deep Throat in the House dining hall. "We made up a couple of banners and marched into the building chanting. 'Don't miss the boat, see Deep Throat.' We thought the First Amendment issue had precedence," the Government concentrator explains.

Like many undergraduates, Hamlin will also remember the more trivial protests he was involved in. One morning at breakfast, he recalls, a cockroach crawled out from under his scrambled eggs. He was furious, and he asked to speak to the dining ball manager "but I never raised my voice or swore. I know how to do that sort of thing."

The manager complained to the House master, and Hamlin was called into the master's office. "I didn't know what it was all about. I was scared. Then the master said, 'About that cockroach...'" But Hamlin didn't want to squander his upward mobility by making a fuss over a hungry roach. "It was a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. But I was worried, I thought: 'Is my degree in jeopardy? My future?' This master was pretty mad because the manager was outraged. I never got a chance to confront the guy."

He lived off-campus this year with his second wife, Cristi, "a fantastic, sweet, person, almost naive in her honesty," whom he met at Riverside. "People say you can't make long-distance relationships work. We made ours work, with phone calls and letters. I told her, 'I'm not a monk, I'm a Marine.' She told me to be discreet."

Next year he and Cristi will take their dream to its logical extreme. "I hate to seem so money-minded. I've gone through a lot, accomplished a lot, and I want to be financially secure. Where have I been the last nine years except under somebody in control of me?" he asks. "It's really nice to have options." So Hamlin will move into real estate in California, where he says "interest rates will have to go down" to the point where he will be able to cash in on the boom.

He plans to eventually dabble in politics. "I always will be issue-oriented, organizing people. I might get elected to a school board, become mayor of a small town--I'm a country boy--then maybe state rep, national representative, and who knows? If that leads to a senate seat, well..."

He will play it by ear. But he will not allow the chips to fall as they may. Hamlin belongs in the tradition of the self-made. And Harvard has proved an appropriate milieu for a proud ex-Marine. He has dissolved the tension between "We" and "Me" by choosing the latter, without hesitation or prevarication. Yet he maintains a fundamental unselfishness and deep loyalty to those who have helped him on his way.

"There's a good quote from Stairway to Heaven," he says. "I tell it to juvenile delinquents in the hall where I do some counseling: 'There are two paths you can go by/But in the long run, you can always change the one you're on.' I did. I made myself proud of myself. That's why I do volunteer work: I have something to share."

The distance between the Saigon embassy and the paths of the Yard is incalculable. But whether Chuck Hamlin is pushing helicopters off carriers, cramming for an exam, or selling real estate, he is doing it. Bold assertion belongs to a previous time, perhaps, but that hasn't stopped him.