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Friends:

If you are surprised to see ME here, it's nothing to how surprised I am to behere. Still, as we have reason to know, Gene Tobin is a gutsy guy. Myassignment today is analogous to an invitation I received a few years ago todeliver the homily at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Clinton. Having beenborn into a church where laity were expected to be seen regularly in

church on Sunday but NEVER heard, and where females (unless you were the VirginMary) were regarded as a lesser breed, I found that assignment mind boggling.

Thinking back to the fall of 1952 on the Wertimers coming to Hamilton College,that male bastion on the hill (600 male students, 60 male faculty members, 6male administrators), where faculty wives were rarely expected to be seen atall and never expected to be heard, one marvels at the courage of the man andthe foolhardiness of the woman. I find this assignment mind boggling!

Since the inception of the Class and Charter Day Speech in 1950 by PresidentRobert Ward McEwen, it has been delivered by 43 men (Dave Ellis and Dick Coupergave two) and by five intrepid and yes, formidable, women: Sylvia Saunders in1974, Elizabeth McCormack in 1979, Julia Dietz in 1980, Marjorie McEwen in1983, and Barbara Gold in 1993. The quality of the five almost compensates forthe lack of quantity in the selective process. I trust I will not let down theside.

Sidney was hired by transatlantic telephone to be an assistant professor ofeconomics at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, beginning in the fall of1952. Neither of us had ever been there. We were in London, England, where hewas studying at the London School of Economics to get his Ph.D., a requisitefor teaching at a good college. He had submitted job applications to severalprestigious liberal arts colleges in the eastern part of the U. S., where the

emphasis was on teaching undergraduates, which was where Sidney's talent andinterest lay. From what we could discern, Hamilton seemed tailor-made forhim.

We arrived on the Hill in September 1952 with our two redheads, Peter, age 3years, and Sheila, age 3 months. The college, which provided faculty housing,had just renovated the Root farmhouse for three families. We had been allottedthe second floor apartment. The first floor flat was to be inhabited byChanning Richardson, his wife Comfort, and their two daughters, Meg, 2 1/2, andAnn, 6 months. Channing, a product of Columbia graduate school and a protegeeof Hamilton's famous alumnus Phillip Jessup, had been hired by the governmentdepartment to teach international relations. The duplex had been assigned toWalter Pilkington, the new college librarian, his wife Betty, and their10-year-old daughter Maud. The Root farmhouse had just provided six newDemocrats to a college community that was about 75 percent Republican on ourarrival.

We beat the Richardsons to the Hill, which permitted us to spec out their padbelow ours. We liked the furniture and the wallpaper, which made us hopefulabout the owners. They drove in that afternoon in their brand new Plymouthstation wagon, decreed by Consumer Reports to be the best buy in wagonsfor that year. We soon learned that next to the good book itself, theRichardson bibles were Consumer Reports and the Montgomery Ward (alwayspronounced Monkey Ward) catalogue.

It was a case of love at first sight, on our part at least. Thus began afriendship that has united our two families from that moment to now and, Deovolente, well beyond. We learned from each other. We introduced them to thepleasures of social drinking, what our dear friend, Lee Bristol, used to referto as "the attitude-adjustment hour." They showed us the power of

Quaker silence. I rather suspect that we were more successful with them thanthey were with us.

We lived happily together in the Root farmhouse until David and Stephen, bornjust two days apart in 1955, were two years old, when we moved up the hill andlived side by side in two houses we each built under the college scheme tosolve the faculty housing problem, thus causing Chan to remark, "We used tohear everything; now we can see everything."

From the start we babysat for each other and never kept track. The kids wereinterchangeable. I remember once Channing asked Comf, "Why is the Wertimers'house always neater than ours?" Whereupon she countered, with someunderstandable acerbity, "Probably because the Wertimers' kids are always downhere."

Three years after we moved into our houses, Comfort and I produced Eric andTom in 1960, just two months apart. Pat Tolles, the wife of the legendary DeanTolles (Pat was pretty legendary in her own right), called me to ask "Do youand Comfort decide these things, or is it Sid and Chan?" A small college is adangerous place.

The Hamilton we came to in 1952 was an excellent college. The faculty wasextremely well credentialed, most teachers had Ph.D.s, the majority of themfrom Ivy League universities with the largest number from Columbia. Theemphasis was on good teaching, although even then there were a number ofscholar-teachers among the ranks. Classes were small, even intimate, and

there was a good deal of interaction between faculty and students on manylevels, both educational and social.

The college maintained a low profile and most

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