Parlor Talk is a place for alumni to share ideas, swap stories,
reminisce about the old days and ruminate on the days to come.
Faculty Fellowship and Folly:
Memories of Pomona Professors
Most Pomona students had professors who changed their lives. These are the people who make the impressions that in turn make Pomona the unforgettable experience that it is. This issue's Parlor Talk is in honor of those dedicated professors.
Sandy Feinstein '74
My time at Pomona was influenced by three instructors, Professors Copeland, Andresen and Fadem (at Scripps). These "encounters" had the combined effect of determining what I would do with my life. Like them, I became an English professor committed to teaching.
With Ms. Andresen, as she was called then, and who has been at Pomona more than the 25 years credited to her in the recent PCM, I learned not merely to take criticism but to learn from it. I can still see the paper I wrote on a poet I would never again read or teach. Every time I wrote the word "realizes" she marked it; then in an independent study meeting, she bluntly told me to eliminate all the abstract language and pretentious pronouncements (I'd taken on Geoffrey Hartman). She invited Verlyn Klinkenborg '74 and myself to a conference at the Huntington, and I remember feeling intimidated and special, simultaneously.
Professor Copeland was the first Pomona professor I had while a student (I was in my first semester at Scripps and would transfer to Pomona the following semester). My most vivid recollection is being lectured by him about graduate school. He suggested that I apply to his alma mater, Harvard, and, though I said nothing, I was deeply affected. As it turned out, I applied to what he had suggested as a good "safe school," Indiana University, where I completed my dissertation.
My peculiar thank-you to them has been to publish at least one article on what they taught at Pomona, though I am more a medievalist than a Shakespearean or fiction specialist.
Jamie Court '89
I have been fortunate to have many mentors, Ralph Nader and insurance reformer Harvey Rosenfield among them, but Pomona history professor Richard Harrison first made me understand I was a populist.
When I heard of his recent death from one alum I did not know through another I married, I realized all three of us had been bitten by the Harrison bug--the sweet and sour sting of the American political tradition from a gadfly who savored the juice. All three of us have held public interest/political jobs since graduation and, despite their indignities, stuck with them--like Harrison waging a lecture about Watergate and its betrayals, but still seeing the hope of FDR and JFK.
To hear the powerful bearded man thundering away from his outline about the personalities that carried and betrayed the torch of the American democratic tradition, marveling at FDR and comparing JFK to Nixon, you felt the passion of the politics as though you were in every fight. Reading those outlines today--the only ones I have saved from my Pomona days--you can hear Harrison's voice orating the conflict between equality and liberty like he shared an air vent to every American president's Oval Office. He was intimidating to a lot of young Pomona students who, much like myself at the time, knew little of the political history that made the suburbia our parents bought into. Harrison caught us up and exemplified, in his style and persona, an inner conflict that America's greatest political leaders shared--the tension between the world as it is and the world as it should be.
His impulsive instincts were contagious. In writing a recent book about HMO abuses and the patients' rights movement [Making a Killing: HMOs and the Threat to Your Health, Common Courage Press, 1999] my thoughts often turned to Harrison's oratory.
Harrison's death is saddest because he will never see the impact on the American political system of all the students he, probably unknowingly, sweet-talked into it.
Pete Rosi '47
In the spring of 1947, Art Robinson '48, Bob Schulman '48 and our faculty fisherman "Chet" Jaeger '47 and I would head down to San Clemente at five in the morning to go deep-sea fishing for logs (barracuda) and sea bass on the half-day boat. The fishing was fantastic--we were usually well filled out with 10- to 15-pound barries and bass by noon.
Upon returning to Claremont our first stop was the Veterans Compound--the military barracks that had been remodeled for married vets. We would blare the horn and yell, "Fresh Fish!" In no time at all, the wives would come tumbling out of their units. We took special delight in presenting the bridge players--in their fancy spring frocks, arms outstretched and palms up, squeamish faces, noses crinkled--a slobbery 10-pound bass!
On our last trip before graduation, I landed a six-foot blue shark. We hung it from the crossbar on the football standard for the traditional "Me, Big Hunter" pictures. After dinner that night, we returned to the field to dispose of the shark, but it was gone.
The next day, those approaching the Greek Theatre for the graduation ceremony were greeted by a pungent odor of decomposing shark! Dear President E. Wilson Lyon never accused me, but to his dying day, I know he believed I was the culprit. It isn't too late for you vets who did it to step forward, is it?
Question for Next Issue:
Chirp! Chirp! Chirp! Calling all Fighting Sagehens! On the field, in the pool, on the court, or up in the stands, Pomona athletes and fans all have stories to tell. Share your favorite tale about being a Pomona athlete or supporting them. Send your submission by August 30 to: Sarah Dolinar; ATTN: Parlor Talk; Pomona College; 550 N. College Ave.; Claremont, CA 91711, or by e-mail to: sarah.dolinar@pomona.edu. Please include your name, class, address and phone number. Responses will be selected based on the content and will be edited as necessary for publication. Post-mailed responses can be returned if requested.
