Anti-Gay Crusader Was a Sax Fiend

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Imagine how surprised I was to read that my classmate Martin S. "Marty" Wishnatsky '66 has been flooding the mails with some sort of homophobic crusade ["Alumnus Warns Parents About Sex at Harvard, April 6]. Perhaps I can offer an explanation.

Marty was the saxophone player for the rival rock band, the dreaded Dialectrics. I started one of the first rock bands at Harvard in 1962, the Deltas, and we all lusted after Marty. My band could play get-down-and-dirty that would curl the plates in the Union, but Wishnatsky played with the Dialectrics, and he was good. I mean baddd.

Wishnatsky was hot sax personified. The way he hugged his horn, you'd have thought he was in love with it. We would have done anything to seduce him away, but he was tight with the dirty dancin' Dialectrics, rockin' and rollin' all night.

The only things he hung up to dry in those days were his saxophone mouthpieces, which suddenly have acquired a new dimension. With our 25th reunion coming up, I had hoped for a little battle of the bands. But without Wishnatsky's powerful, pumping solos and his wailing, sensuous rifts, it just won't be the same. Salve et vale Marty Wishnatsky; he gave us the hot licks that kept us dancing back in 1962-1963, and that's the way we classmates remember him. Laurence O. McKinney '66