1972 April-June: Transition to Connecticut

Posted on January 9, 2021 by Mike

SEAD to Ann Arbor to Kansas City to East Hartford. Continue reading →

It could have been worse.

Although my last official day of active duty¹ in the army was Monday, April 10, 1972, I had most of the last week off for out-processing—visits to the dentist and doctor, filling out forms, etc. The only thing that I remember vividly about April 10 was that there was still snow on the ground at Seneca Army Depot (SEAD), which made it ninety-two snow-covered days in a row since the day that I arrived.

My plan was to stop in Ann Arbor on my way back home. I missed U-M much more than I missed KC. By this time I had lost touch with all my high school friends, but I had exchanged letters with Bill Davey, who was finishing his first year at Law School. Some of the guys from Allen Rumsey House, notably Frank Bell, were probably still there, too. My plans were not very specific. I would stay in Ann Arbor until I ran out of money or stopped enjoying it.

I still wear this occasionally.

I remember nothing about the trip to Ann Arbor. I probably took the reverse of the route that I had taken in January to get to the Rochester Airport. Then I flew to Detroit Metro, and I must have caught a bus to Ann Arbor. I would not have paid for a taxi, and Bill did not have a car. I think that I must have been wearing my uniform, but I don’t remember whether it was fatigues or “class A’s”. All my meager possessions were in my duffel bag. I am pretty sure that I did not bring a suitcase to SEAD. They let me keep all my Army clothes, including my field jacket, which I still have.

I must have walked from the bus stop to Bill Davey’s apartment. I slept on a couch or the floor there for the time that I was in town.

What did I do during the day? Well, mostly I walked around the campus and the surrounding area. I visited Allen Rumsey House, where I talked to Frank Bell and a few other guys. I walked down to the I-M building to see that AR’s record score for 1969-70 posted on the wall. I might have dropped by the Frieze Building to say hello to Dr. Colburn. I also have a vague recollection of attending some sort of hockey game with guys from AR. It wasn’t a varsity game. Maybe it was an intramural contest.

It is still at least two miles from the U-M campus to a McDonald’s.

McDonald’s was the only place that I could fill my belly for $1, but there were none near the campus. I remember walking to the one on the west side of town at least twice. The no-nonsense hamburgers were twenty-five cents; I ate four of them on each visit.

The old B-School building has been replaced by a much more modern complex.

I spent one afternoon at the placement office of U-M’s Business School. Someone there provided me with a list of actuarial contacts at quite a few large insurance companies.

After a few days in Ann Arbor I began to feel like an outsider. I decided to fly home and figure out my future in the comfortable environs there.

At home in Prairie Village I composed and typed letters to thirteen insurance companies. I explained my situation—just out of the Army with two actuarial exams. All thirteen responded. Ten companies said that they were not interested. Three in Hartford—Hartford Life, Aetna, and Travelers—wanted me to come in for an interview. They agreed to split the cost of my airfare and hotel expense. They put me up at the Hilton, which was within easy walking distance of all three.

This is the old Hilton on Asylum Avenue. In 2021 there is a parking lot on the site.

I flew out by myself and took a taxi from Bradley to the Hilton. I do not remember too much about the interviews. I definitely talked with Jan Pollnow (a guy) at the Hartford. I remember that the atmosphere at the Hartford seemed much more open and relaxed. It reminded me of BMA. Even the buildings were similar towers.

At both the Aetna and Travelers there seemed to be rows and rows of clerks with mechanical calculators, real numbers factories. The Hartford had plenty of clerks also, but they seemed better placed, and there was more open area.

I think it was the Aetna that made me take the Actuarial Aptitude Test, which had two parts, verbal and math. I got all the questions right. The guy who escorted me around told me that I was the first person who ever did that. He said that plenty of applicants scored 100 percent on the math part, but no one else had ever gotten all the verbal questions right.

I received identical offers from all three companies at a starting salary of $13,000 per year, which seemed to me like a truly enormous amount of money. I had never made as much as $300 per month in the Army, and I did manage to save part of that. Another way to look at it was that my first year’s salary was much larger than the total amount of out-of-state tuition for four years at a top-rate university. Things were different in those days.

I accepted the offer from the Hartford and started making plans for my move to the Hartford area. The first order of business was to buy a car. My Army friend Al Williams had purchased a small Toyota in Albuquerque. I rode in it several times, and it seemed like a cheap, practical, and reliable car. My dad, who served in the Pacific in World War II, had a very low opinion of anything Japanese. He advised me to buy an American car, but there were none as cheap as Toyotas and Datsuns. Furthermore, most people who had not been strafed by the Japanese thirty years earlier thought that the Japanese cars were at least as good as what came out of Detroit in the seventies.

However, more and more I looked at Datsuns and Toyotas, and I decided on a Datsun 1200 hatchback. I would be able to fold down the back seats and cart an enormous amount of my stuff from KC to Hartford. I picked a bright green one, which I called Greenie. I never had a problem finding that car in a parking lot.

I tried to negotiated by myself by playing one dealer against another, but I am pretty sure that they had an agreement. They certainly were not desperate for the sale. At any rate, I did get to witness the Fargo scene in which the salesman pleaded my case with the sales manager. I think that he threw in an AM-FM radio and floor mats rather than reduce the price, which was around $2,000. My dad co-signed the loan.

No “girlie stuff” on either greenie.

The car was totally devoid of “girlie stuff”²: power steering, brakes, or windows, automatic transmission, etc. It did not have a manual choke, but I learned how to set the one on the motor. It was a nice car on the inside, but it was awful on snow and ice, had too little power too carry a big load over the hills of Pennsylvania, and, in its twilight years was very difficult to start in the winter. Still, I loved it. It was mine.

I did not leave for Hartford immediately. I bummed about for a little bit, and then my sister got mononucleosis, and I had to help my mother out. Jan Pollnow called to ask when I would be coming to work. I set a date in June. It may have even been July.

I loaded pretty much everything that I owned into Greenie, said goodbye to my family, and set off on a route similar to that of the big family vacation of my youth. Thank goodness for the Interstate Highway System that made my drive a lot easier than my dad’s. I left very early in the morning, but I did not try to make it all the way to Hartford. I never exceeded the speed limit.

My recollection is that I stayed overnight in Hazleton, PA, but I don’t see how I could have driven that far by myself in one day. I can easily see myself leaving at the crack of dawn, but I would lose one hour by traveling east, and I definitely remember that I did not speed. To tell the truth, Greenie was uncomfortable at any speed over 60. Furthermore, I would not trust myself to drive very far after dark. Maybe I stopped at motels for two nights, once in some less memorable place in Indiana and once in Hazleton.

I had no credit card. I paid cash for everything. That, of course, was not unusual in the seventies.

The Shoreham was torn down and replaced by an office building decades ago.

I made a reservation for a couple of nights at the Shoreham Hotel, which at the time was located between the Hartford and the Aetna. I spent the evenings looking for an apartment. I used the want ads to locate two furnished apartments. I went to see both of them. One was very close to the Hartford. I was not crazy about the neighborhood. Instead I put down a deposit on one in East Hartford that actually had two addresses, 45 Olmstead and 23 Spring St. It looked like a motel that had been converted into apartments. It had a swimming pool in the back.
This is a satellite view in 2021 of the area that in 1972 was occupied by the apartment complex, which I think was called “The California Apartments” or something similar. The apartment building and the pool are completely gone, but the parking lot on the right is the one that was formerly used by residents of the apartment. I resided there until August or September of 1973.

The KFC is still on Burnside Avenue, but it has been spruced up.

I unloaded all my stuff from Greenie. I had to walk upstairs, but in those days that was nothing to me. I had not brought anything that I could not carry by myself. I opened a bank account at Connecticut Bank and Trust (CBT—the bank that listens—and deposited the money that was in my KC account. Then I went shopping at the JM Fields department store on Silver Lane. I bought everything that I could think of that I would need—pots, pans, linen, pillows, towels, dishes, silverware, a cookbook, and all kinds of soaps and cleaning materials.

On the way back to the apartment I stopped by Kentucky Fried Chicken (not yet KFC) for supper. I am pretty sure that I ordered the eight-piece dinner (extra crispy), which in those days was two meals for me, and a large Coke.³ It was not as good as my mom’s chicken, but it was still tasty.

I knew almost no one at all in New England, but I had been in the same situation in 1966 at U-M. It felt good to be on my own, and I was primed for a new adventure.

1. Draftees were required to spend two years on active duty, two in the active reserve, and two in inactive reserve. When the active duty period for draftees was reduced in 1972, the active reserve period was concomitantly increased. So, I was in the active reserve until October 5, 1974. Since the Army had made it clear that it did not want the draftees, there was not much danger of being called up to active duty during that period. However, for three summers rather than two I was subject to being called to go to “summer camp” for two weeks of training.

2. I purloined this phrase from Rosemary Boxer on the British television show Rosemary and Thyme. She was disparaging the later Range Rover models for the inclusion of such frills.

3. Diet Coke was not introduced until 1982. The only low-calorie cola drink that the Colonel offered in the seventies was Tab, which had that horrible after-taste.

1966-1970 U-M: Lingo and Abbreviations

Posted on September 25, 2020 by Mike

Abbreviations & idiomatic terms. Continue reading →

1A: First affirmative speaker. Add C for constructive or R for rebuttal.

2A: Second affirmative speaker. Add C for constructive or R for rebuttal.

1N: First negative speaker. Add C for constructive or R for rebuttal.

2N: Second negative speaker. Add C for constructive or R for rebuttal.

AR: Allen Rumsey House.

Chihote (hee HO tay): A device consisting of surgical tubing and a kneepad for propelling water balloons great distances.

Co-ed: 1) n. female student. 2) adj. containing both male and female students. In this period no house was co-ed, but some dorms (e.g., South Quad) were.

Constructive: Ten-minute speech.

Drop: In debate, to miss or neglect an argument made by the other team.

Flowing: Taking notes (including planned responses to an opponent’s arguments) in a debate. The sheet(s) of paper is called a flow or flow sheet.

House: Smallest unit of dorms at Michigan. Quads had 6-10 houses.

IM: Intramural sports. At Michigan the competition was separated between frat houses and dorms.

MISL: Michigan Intercollegiate Speech League—all colleges in Michigan

NDT: National Debate Tournament held in March every year.

RA: Resident Adviser: one per floor in a dorm.

RD: Resident Director: one per house in a dorm.

Rebuttal: Five-minute speech for advancing, refuting, and summarizing arguments. No new arguments are allowed in the rebuttals.

Resolution: The topic being debated. The same resolution is debated all year. The ones for 1966-1970 were:
1966-1967 RESOLVED: “That the United States should substantially reduce its foreign policy commitments.”
1967-1968 RESOLVED: “That the federal government should guarantee a minimum annual cash income to all citizens.”
1968-1969 RESOLVED: “That executive control of United States foreign policy should be significantly curtailed.”
1969-1970 RESOLVED: “That the federal government should grant annually a specific percentage of its income tax revenue to the state governments.”

Spread: To present an inordinately large number of arguments, sometimes with the intention of dropping some later. If the opponent does not mention an argument, it can be claimed as valid by the team that made it. Spreading can be done by talking fast or using economy of language. The best debaters do both.

SQ: South Quad.

Topicality: The issue in a debate as to whether the affirmative’s plan is a legitimate interpretation of the debate resolution.

U-M: University of Michigan

WQ: West Quad.

1966 Summer Between High School & College

Posted on September 12, 2020 by Mike

Transition. Continue reading →

In June of 1996 my dad and I made our first and only road trip together. The primary purpose was to help me decide between the University of Iowa and the University of Michigan.

Our first stop was in Detroit, where my dad introduced me to Howard Finsilver¹, a sales agent for my dad’s employer, BMA, and his son, Sandy, who was my age and planned to attend U-M in the fall. I spent some time with Sandy and a group of his friends from (I think) Mumford High. At least one of them was also going to U-M. Then (as now) most good students in the state hoped to attend U-M. In some parts of the country many top students disparage state schools, but not in Michigan. Sandy and all of his friends were quite impressed that I had been admitted as an out-of-state student.

We shot some pool in the basement of the house of one of the friends. Someone then drove Sandy and me around Detroit to show me some of its highlights. I don’t remember details, but I doubt that the Chamber of Commerce would have agreed with the sites that they chose.

The diag and the bell tower at U-M. — The view from the steps of U-M’s graduate library: the diag and the bell tower.

On the next day dad and I drove the thirty-seven miles to Ann Arbor to talk with a professor from the math department. I don’t remember the specifics of the conversation, but I absolutely fell in love with the town, the campus, the entire atmosphere. And that was before I ever set foot in the football stadium. Just about everyone who visits the town in the spring or summer has this reaction.

On the way to Iowa, we stopped somewhere in Indiana to play some golf. I don’t think that either of us enjoyed the round much.

The last hundred or so miles before we got to Iowa City we saw almost nothing but corn on either side of the road. The professor we talked to at the university made a pretty good case, but I had already decided that I wanted to attend the University of Michigan.

My dad was fairly often involved in providing entertainment for some of the company’s salesmen and regional sales managers when they came to the home office in KC. In the middle of July one of the salesmen had brought two of his sons with him on such a visit. One was close to my age and the other, who also worked as a BMA salesman, was in his twenties. I think that their last name was Roberson. BMA bought three primo tickets for me and the two sons for the Starlight Theater, an outdoor venue in Swope Park that showed musicals in the summer. The show was Bye-Bye Birdie, and it starred the rock group Gary Lewis² and the Playboys. This occurred at the height of the group’s popularity. The group had one big hit, “This Diamond Ring”, and a number of other songs that did well on the charts.

I am sure that the newspaper’s caption was useful to those who thought that J.L. was a government figure. If the wife bent forward just a little or wore her hair down, I would be in this photo.

Gary Lewis’s father was the comic actor, Jerry Lewis. On Monday, July 11, Jerry and his wife and entourage were in KC for their son’s opening night. Believe it or not we were in the fifth row right in the middle. Jerry Lewis was seated in the fourth row between his wife, who did not utter a word all night, and another woman who must have been an agent or something. Jerry Lewis himself sat a few inches from my right knee.

As soon as Jerry Lewis arrived, he consulted privately with another staff member who was seated on the other side of Lewis’s wife. The staffer left for a few minutes and then returned with a large paper cup that was quite different from the kind available at the concession stand. Lewis sipped from it until intermission. Before the play started a few young people came up to ask for his autograph. No dice. The staffer who brought the drink did not let them get close to the star.

During the first few minutes of the performance J.L. tried to record the sound. He had great difficulty operating the recording device. The results of his efforts were a snake’s nest of tape around his feet and a torrent of blue language, the likes of which I would not hear again until I took part in basic training at Fort Polk in 1970. He abandoned the recording project somewhere before intermission.

At intermission J.L. and the staffer exited through a door that was not accessible to the public. They returned just before the play resumed. J.L. was fidgety and generally disruptive throughout the rest of the show. He downed another large paper cup of the mystery beverage during the second half. The Robersons told me that they could smell alcohol.

The play itself was OK. The rest of the actors were fine. I am not a big fan of musical comedy, but I had really liked the story when I saw the movie with Ann-Margret³. Gary Lewis was not believable as a teen dreamboat, and his rendition of “One Last Kiss” was almost laughable, IMHO. The group then played “This Diamond Ring”. They might have also played one or two other songs. There was no screaming from teenage girls in the audience.

I enjoyed Cinderfella, mostly because I was captivated by Anna Maria Alberghetti

At the end the Robersons asked the staff lady politely for autographs, but Jerry Lewis wanted only to get out of the theater immediately. He was in a very bad mood.

My opinion of Jerry Lewis did not change much. I thought that he was a self-centered obnoxious jerk both before and after this occasion. He pretty much ruined the event for everyone within fifteen feet of him.

I don’t remember what I did for the rest of the summer other than mow lawns and play golf. I don’t recall a job.

In late August my parents drove me and some of my belongings to Ann Arbor. Jamie probably came with us. I don’t remember much about the trip except my eagerness to get on with the next phase of my life. Of course, I was also a little nervous.

The University had notified me that I had been assigned to 315 Allen Rumsey⁴ House in West Quad. We drove there and met the third-floor RA, Jim Krogsrud, whom everyone called Gritty. Because classes did not begin until the following week, almost no one had moved in yet. Nearly all incoming freshmen had attended the week-long orientation period during the summer. I was allowed to stay in room 315 while I attended the orientation.

Gritty explained that all the rooms were doubles, but three people had been assigned temporarily to room 315. He said that he was sure that this would be promptly resolved. The family helped me carry my stuff up to the room. Then I said good-bye to them, and they drove off into the sunset.

Gritty asked me a few questions, one of which was whether I played bridge. He was very happy to hear that I did. He and Andy, the house’s RD, liked to play, and they were looking for opponents. He also explained how the laundry and other aspects of life in the dorm worked.

They must have served meals in the West Quad dining room for the few of us who were there that week. I don’t remember having to find restaurants or walk to another dorm.

After breakfast on the day after my parents left I met with my orientation group. Our group leader was a guy. I don’t remember his name. The members of our group were all enrolled in the college of Literature, Science, and the Arts. One of the first orders of business was taking language placement tests. LS&A had a two-year language requirement. I was preparing myself mentally for the Latin test when the group leader told me that he had received a note stating that I did not need to take the test. He said that he had never heard of such a thing. He advised me to take the test anyway.

I showed up for the Latin test. It consisted of a multiple choice grammar test and a sight translation of some lines from Vergil. It seemed pretty easy to me; I was the first person to leave the test room.

I later learned that my 790 on the SAT’s Latin achievement test was the reason why I did not need to take the test. However, I did not get any academic credits for skipping the four semesters of introductory Latin. I did, however get three credits for Advanced Placement English and eight for AP math.

A few days later I got to consult with my academic advisor, who was, of all things, a biology professor. I only met with him for a few minutes once per semester; I don’t recall his name. He told me that I should have been invited to the honors program. He made a few phone calls, after which he told me that I was now in it. He then penciled in a schedule of four classes for me:

Math 195. There were three math sequences, two for honors and one for others. 195 was the first class for the higher ranking of the two introductory honors math sequences.
Great Books, an honors class in the English department.
Chemistry 103, the introductory class for students who did not take chemistry in high school.
Russian 101, which would meet a requirement for math majors—two semesters of Russian or German.
Two semesters of phys ed were also required for freshmen. I picked the course in golf for the first semester.

However, when I got to the actual registration, I discovered that all sections of Great Books were closed. So, I added a 300-level Latin class that focused on Cicero’s orations. It was only a two-hour class, but I already had eleven credits under my belt from the AP tests.

I felt pretty good about this schedule. The subject that worried me the most was chemistry. I figured that I would need to work harder than I did in high school, but that was not really saying much.

While at registration I came across a girl distributing flyers for the U-M debate program. On Tuesday, the day before classes began, the team was holding an open house for anyone who was interested in debate. Based on my lackluster high school career, I had little expectation of debating at U-M, but I took the flyer anyway.

I was on my own in Ann Arbor. I knew almost no one. Only a handful of guys⁵ had moved into Allen Rumsey House yet. The only other person on the third floor of AR was Gritty. I probably should have made an effort to meet people in my orientation group—in all likelihood most were from other states with no friends in Ann Arbor. It never occurred to me. That’s the way I am.

I spent a great deal of time in my room that first week playing one-at-a-time, once-through-the-deck Klondike solitaire. I recorded all of my scores. I also read quite a bit. I had an AM-FM radio, but no other electronics.

In 1966 all freshman students were required to live in dorms. The residence halls were called “houses.” The men’s houses were in three groups. The houses in East Quad and West Quad had only males. South Quad had men’s houses and women’s houses. The remainder of the houses for girls were on the northeast side of central campus in the area known as “The Hill”.

Having been constructed in the thirties, Allen Rumsey House (#1 in the above photo) was the oldest dorm on campus. Little had been done to modernize it in the ensuing decades. With approximately one hundred guys, it was also the smallest house.

On the east side was a corridor between AR and the International House (#3). Wenley House (2), which was almost as old as AR, shared a wall on the west. South Quad was to the south, on the other side of East Madison St. On the north side was a courtyard. Two doors on the other side of led to the central section of West Quad, which contained the cafeteria and a lounge area. A third door led to the bowling alley (#4) and a shortcut to the Michigan Union (#5) and the rest of the central campus, the site of all my classes.

I quickly found the lounge on the first floor of Allen Rumsey House. It had comfortable chairs, a trophy case, a rug, and a piano. The house subscribed to the Michigan Daily, the Ann Arbor News, and a few magazines, including, I later learned, Playboy.

Downstairs was a game room with a small pool table, a ping pong table, and a free juke box! A section of this room and a separate room had televisions and chairs. Both TVs were 19″ black and whites. Next to the small TV room was a study hall that AR shared with Wenley House.

I eventually got up the nerve to shoot pool with another lonely guy named Dan Schuman. He had no hair anywhere on his body, and he was very cynical. We got along great. We played eight-ball. Although he was a better shot than I was, he was unaccustomed to an opponent who always left the cue ball pinned to a rail. The games were long and, for him, frustrating. I usually won.

Used books for every class could be purchased at the two big bookstores, Ulrich’s and Follett’s. Ulrich’s was on South University; Follett’s was on State St. I bought the textbooks for Russian, Math, and Chemistry at one of them. The Latin class had no textbook.

I think that classes started on the Wednesday after Labor Day, September 7. By Tuesday I knew that my roommates in 315 were Ed Agnew from Bloomfield, MI, and Paul Stoner from Adrian. Across the hall in 314 was Dave Zuk. His assigned roommate did not show up. So, Gritty had us draw straws or something to decide who would move across the hall. Paul was selected.

This was good news and bad news. I did not like Ed very much, but I did like his stereo. His taste in music did not accord with mine or anyone else’s that I have ever met. He loved “big band” music, and his all-time favorite recording was the soundtrack from Victory at Sea. However, he did let me use his stereo when he was not around, which, I soon discovered, was essentially every afternoon and evening.

I did not bring any of my records, but 1966 was an exceptional year for popular music. I spent most of my savings on albums. That is to say, I bought three or four records.

I didn't have any, but this is what they looked like. — I didn’t have any, but this is what razor blades looked like in the sixties.

Our room was on the north (courtyard) side. I claimed the bed on the west side, leaving the one on the east side for Ed. Two big windows on the north side were fronted by a large double desk with two chairs. The east wall was an external wall, but there were no windows. We each had a dresser. Maybe we shared a closet. There was a sink with a mirror over it on my side. There was also a slot over the sink for disposal of dull razor blades. I have never seen anything like it anywhere else. I wonder how many blades were inside the wall. I used an electric razor in college. Each room had a plain wall phone. I don’t remember whether they allowed us to make calls on it or not. To get mail you had to walk to the center part of West Quad next to the cafeteria.

I always just walked up State St. to the Frieze Bldg. I don't know why google maps advises avoiding it. — I always just walked up State St. to the Frieze Bldg. I don’t know why google maps advises avoiding it.

I attended the debate meeting in a room on the second floor of the Frieze Building, the headquarters of the speech department. About twenty people attended. We got to meet Dr. Bill Colburn and a couple of grad student coaches, including Jeff Sampson, who debated at Northwestern, a national power. Evidently there was no individual events program.

All of the new people filled out a form outlining our experience and interests, and then we watched a debate between two of the varsity teams. I thought that they were both horrible, and I was shocked to learn that they were U-M’s best teams.

I was paired with a fellow from Portland, ME, named Bob Hirshon. They told us that the topic was “Resolved that the United States should substantially reduce its foreign policy commitments.” Bill and Jeff privately made it clear that they were excited that Bob and I were interested in debate, and they wanted us to represent U-M at the Michigan Intercollegiate Speech League (MISL) novice tournament in October. We would be debating only on the negative. I was second negative.

I was shocked to be on the receiving end of all of this attention. I was uncertain whether I would be able to handle it, but I agreed to try. So did Bob.

1. Howard Finsilver died in 2005.

2. According to Wikipedia Gary Lewis was a better drummer than a singer. His voice was overdubbed on the recordings of his hits. I was surprised to learn that he was drafted the following January and served in Vietnam and Korea. After his hitch in the army he stayed on the fringes of show business with new incarnations of his band. In 2020 he was still performing at age 74.

3. Just to be clear, Ann-Margret appeared in the movie; she wasn’t my date.

4. Ann Arbor is named after Ann Allen and Ann Rumsey, early settlers of the town.

5. In 1966 there were no coed dorms at U-M. In fact, female students were not even allowed to enter Allen Rumsey House except under special circumstances.

1970 Part 2: January-March: Debate

Posted on July 10, 2020 by Mike

1970’s debate tournaments. Continue reading →

In my last undergraduate semester at U-M I planned to spend a LOT of time on debate. This was my last chance to qualify for the National Debate Tournament, and I intended to make the most of it. This post has details about a few debates. If you need a primer on intercollegiate debate in 1966-1970, you can find it here.

I must describe our coaching staff in 1969-70. Bill Colburn was the Director of Forensics, but he no longer worked with the debaters or took trips. The Debate Director was Juddi (pronounced like Judy) Tappan, who was finishing her PhD. We had two excellent graduate assistants, Roger Conner, Mark Arnold’s partner in 1968-69 at Oberlin, and Cheryn Heinen, who had been a very good debater at Butler. Roger and Cheryn could probably have been a big help, but they were seldom allowed to go to big tournaments, and neither planned a career as a debate coach. Because the program had very few debaters, we hardly ever had practice rounds, and when we did, Juddi ran them. Cheryn did not work with us much.

Juddi’s major contribution was to insist that I reserve the last thirty seconds of my 2AR to summarize the case. She was big on style and polish. No one else did this in 1970; time was too precious. So, on the affirmative we always had less time to present and answer arguments than our opponents did.

We received valuable help from an extremely unexpected source. In my senior year Jimmie Trent was a professor in the speech department at Wayne State University. He had been a legendary debate coach at (of all places) Emporia, KS, and was universally credited with introducing the Plan-Advantages form of affirmative case, which by my time had almost completely replaced the traditional Need-Plan format.

Jimmie Trent died in 2013. I found no other photos.

Jimmie had a big impact on my thinking about the negative. I was almost always 1N, which meant that I attacked “the case,” the reasons for adopting the plan. One of my principal weapons was “inherency,” which challenged the affirmative team to prove that the “present system” was incapable of producing an equally desirable result. Jimmie argued that this was an unreasonable standard. In his (and eventually my) way of thinking, both teams must defend an approach. The negative’s approach could, of course, merely allow things to continue unchanged, but it could not keep changing its mind about what that entailed, i.e., “we could just …” I did not immediately change my tactics on the negative, but on the affirmative I always tried to pin down the other team.

On the negative Jimmie recommended that we try the Emory switch when we thought that we could get away with it. Previously I was 1N, and I attacked the case. The 2N attacked the plan, arguing that it would not achieve what the affirmative claimed and that it would cause severe problems. With the Emory switch the roles stayed the same, but my partner became 1N, and I became 2N. We attacked the plan first and then the case.

This had many advantages. More of the plan attacks were “canned,” which is to say that they were the same for many different plans and therefore written out in some detail. Having the extra time to prepare for attacking the case was more valuable than for attacking the plan. 2N got more time when he needed it most‐to rebuild his plan attacks after the affirmative had answered them.

Also, of course, it messed up the opponents’ strategy. Each of them was doing an unfamiliar task, and our approach also gave the 1AR only five minutes to rebuild their case and to deal with the defenses of the plan attacks. Finally, it let me give our last speech, and I was a little better at selling.

There is an obvious counter to the switch. The affirmative team can delay presenting its plan until the 2AC. One of Dartmouth’s teams tried this against us. However, the 1AC made no sense without the plan, and two or three minutes were still available when he finished. I had no trouble adapting. I just reverted to my old role as 1N, and the 2A, who had to present the plan in his constructive for the first time ever, had too little time to defend the case well.

A better approach, which we would have used if anyone had tried the switch against us, would be for the 2AC to present additional advantages of the plan after (or before) dealing with the plan attacks. Then, the 2AR can then drop some advantages and defend others.

We only lost one round all year when we switched. We met a pretty good team from Loyola of Baltimore at a tournament in Miami. They did not even try to defend their case in rebuttals. They only argued that our approach was unethical because it emphasized the “spread,” i.e., taking advantage of time limitations to present more arguments than the opponents could possibly answer. We had a very good set of answers to these arguments, but the judge voted against us on the ethics issue. The lesson we learned was to avoid the switch if the judge seemed too conservative. Loyola evidently knew the judge better than we did.

Our first trip in January of 1970 was the “East Coast Swing,” where we used the switch in every round except the one in which Dartmouth delayed presenting the plan. My partner, Bill Davey, and I were allowed to fly to Boston to participate in the tournaments at Boston College and Harvard. At BC we went 5-3 and narrowly missed qualifying for the elimination rounds. Because we did not have a long drive ahead of us, we decided to watch the octafinals. I watched Brown on the affirmative v. Southern Cal. Bill watched a different debate. One of the Brown debaters was visibly startled when he saw me enter the classroom and sit down. He nudged his partner and whispered something to him.

A few minutes later I found out why. Brown’s first affirmative constructive speech was word-for-word the same as ours! Evidently they had tape-recorded one of our rounds at some previous tournament and transcribed it. I have never heard of anyone—in the previous seven and a half years of debating or the subsequent six and a half years that I coached—doing anything like this. In disgust I stopped taking notes a few minutes into the speech.

Brown’s was a bad strategy. USC, which ran a similar case when they were on the affirmative, annihilated them. I was totally embarrassed that a team incompetently running our exact case qualified for the elims at this tournament, and we did not. I told Bill about it, but no one else.

In contrast, Harvard, which was the biggest tournament of the year, with over 100 teams in attendance, was our best tournament ever. In the prelims we were 7-1, losing only to Canisius on our affirmative. By the way we had an astoundingly good record on our negative all year. If we got to face Canisius in the elimination rounds, we would be “locked in” on our negative.

In the octafinals we faced an overmatched team from Boston College. We lost the coin flip (as usual; we only won one coin flip all year), and so we had to debate affirmative. It didn’t matter. All three judges voted for us.

The quarterfinal match against Oberlin was somewhat controversial. The Oberlin pair was Mark Arnold, whom I knew from our days in Kansas City, and freshman Paul Zarefsky, whose brother had been a champion debater at Northwestern, and he now coached there. We were affirmative again. The timekeeper was a debater on Canisius’s second team. We barely knew him, but he was friendly with our opponents.

The first two speeches delivered by Davey and Zarefsky were fairly routine. I was somewhere in the middle of my constructive when someone, I think it was Arnold, yelled out “Time.” The timekeeper was busy taking notes and had neglected to time my speech. He put up the 5 card, followed quickly by the 4. Arnold was sure that he gave me extra time. I thought that he cost me at least a little, and he certainly flustered me a little when 5 turned into 4 so fast.

Anyway, we won three of the five ballots. Oberlin had had a very good first semester, they had done well at BC, and Arnold was considered one of the best debaters in the country. He later coached at Harvard.

Dallas Perkins had a lot more hair and a few less pounds in 1970.

Our opponent in the semifinals was Georgetown, a perennial national powerhouse, represented by Dallas Perkins (who also later coached at Harvard) and Howard Beales. Once again we lost the coin flip. I thought that we debated pretty well, but all five judges, including Laurence Tribe, voted for Georgetown. I will always think that if we had won that coin flip, we would have won the tournament, but who knows?

Still, it was our best tournament ever, and I was the #5 speaker out of the 200+ who attended. Dartmouth also had a tournament, but we did not attend.

When I called Bill Colburn to pick us up at Metro Airport, I told him that we had dropped eight ballots at Harvard. He just said “Really?”, and I replied, “Yes, but the good news is that seven of them were in the quarters and semifinals.”

Hank Stram & the Chiefs matriculated up and down the field.

I remember riding home from a bitterly cold tournament on January 11. I was sitting shotgun and therefore had control of the radio. I found a CBS station, and we listened to the surprisingly calm voices of Bob Reynolds and Tom Hedrick. It was near the end of Super Bowl IV, and the Chiefs seemed to be running out the clock. The Vikings were thirteen-point favoritess, and so we all assumed that the Chiefs had just given up. Au contraire, mon frère! KC had pounded Minnesota 23-7. I knew that my dad and all my friends in KC would be ecstatic.

Juddi made all of the decisions about pairing and scheduling. Two of her decisions puzzled me. The first was to have me debate with sophomore Mike Hartmann at the most important tournament in the district at Northwestern. Mike was a really good debater, and Juddi must have wanted to give him some incentive for the next year. That’s fine, but we had never debated together, and he did not know our case. I would not have minded too much if it was another tournament, but Northwestern was perhaps the most important tournament of the year.

Mike and I won all of our negative rounds and two of the four affirmatives. One of the losses was to a good team. The other was to the worst team in the tournament from Northeastern Illinois University, which I had never heard of. Their record in the tournament was 1-7. The judge, whom I had never before seen, gave both Mike and me higher speaker points than either of the NEIU debaters (although considerably less than we received in any other round). However, he gave NEIU their only victory of the tournament. The text on the ballot was short and bitter: “I just can’t vote for this case.”

Sixteen teams qualified for the elims. We were seventeenth. You know what they say about horseshoes and hand grenades.

I think that 1970 was also the year that Bill and I flew to the tournament at the University of Miami. I remember that it was 70° warmer when we exited the plane than when we boarde. I also remember that right in the center of the campus was a huge swimming pool. The diving team was practicing when we were there. The centerpiece of the Michigan campus is the graduate library.

It was not a great tournament. My recollection is that the elimination rounds started at the quarterfinals, and we missed on speaker points. This was very annoying for a number of reasons. The first was that we lost a negative round on ethics, the only time that we lost when we switched and one of only a handful of negative losses all year.

The other annoying thing occurred against a weak team. The judge was a Miami debater who had graduated the year before. He came up to me before the round and told me that he knew the debate was a mismatch. He demonstrated a little sideways wave with his hand as he said something like “If I do this, cut it short. There’s no reason to prolong the agony.” I ended up cutting at least a minute or two off of my constructive, and I jettisoned the thirty-second summary in my rebuttal. We did win, but he gave us speaker points that were well below our average.

The third annoyance was that we had wasted time and money on this second-rate tournament. I don’t remember any more details about where we went and how we did.

Districts:I need to mention that Juddi and Jimmie tried for a while to keep their torrid relationship secret, but nearly everyone surely knew about it. At some point during the year they got married, and Jimmie tendered his resignation at Wayne State to become chairman of the speech department at Miami of Ohio. Juddi decided that she might be a political liability for us. She decided not to go to districts.

We had to supply two judges. Roger and Cheryn were chosen. This was fine with us, but it did not erase the last few months.

1970 was the first year that I seriously prepared for the district tournament. Roger worked with us quite a bit. We prepared by sprucing up our affirmative case to appeal to a more conservative audience and by working on how our arguments would work without the switch. We were too afraid of political consequences to pull the switch at districts. The only round that we had lost with the switch we had lost on ethics. We could certainly expect arguments like those in every round. Some judges might vote against us on general principles even if the negative did not make the arguments.

Some words of explanation about the District 5 qualifying tournament for the NDT are in order. The district was composed of four states‐Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The national committee also invited seven additional pairs that did not qualify.

Northwestern was always a national power. Its coach, David Zarefsky, left his top team, Gunderson and Strange, at home because he was confident that they would receive an invitation to the NDT, and he was right. Northwestern sent its second team, Sitzma and Welch, to the district tournament. This was a break for us. We had beaten Sitzma and Welch all three times that we had met them during the year.

The district committee evaluated all the twenty-four teams in attendance. Six were rated A, six B, six C, and six D. Everyone debated two from each group.

Maybe we were not mentally in gear. Roger had tried to teach us to yodel, which he claimed was the best way to warm up. At any rate we lost the first round on our affirmative to a C team from Indiana State. Both Bill and I were just off. I thought that we had won, but I can understand why a judge could vote against us.

Then we met two pretty good teams—Hample and Sproule from Ohio State on our affirmative and Sitzma and Welch on our negative. We mopped the floor with both of them, and they knew it. It turned out that they were our two A teams. This kind of surprised me.

The next three rounds seemed uneventful. The seventh round was on Saturday evening. We faced an obnoxious guy named Greg Rigo from Ohio University on our negative. I don’t remember his partner’s name. They were a mediocre team with a very standard case. We debated fairly well and pretty much pounded them.

Two of the judges had familiar faces. The third one, who voted against us, was someone whom I had never seen. He came from one of the very weak schools. This sometimes happens, as it did to Mike and me at Northwestern.

One of the familiar judges voted for us and wrote that it was not close. The other judge, George Ziegelmueller, was the long-time Director of Forensics at Wayne State in Detroit. In my four years at U-M he had NEVER voted for any of our teams. His ballot in this debate was incomprehensible.

When I started debating in 1966, Wayne State was a highly ranked national power. The team of Kathy McDonald and Don Ritzenheim had narrowly lost in the final round of the NDT two years in a row. By 1970 they were just another mid-level team. I am not sure what happened to them, but it must have frustrated George.

Needless to say the Jimmie-Juddi business probably did not sit well with George. A faculty member at his school, who had probably never helped coach any of his debaters, was giving valuable tactical advice to a rival school! This just was not done.

I worked for George for three and a half years in the late seventies. I never brought this up, and neither did he. In those years I confirmed my impression that George was not considered a good judge. His note-taking was weak, and he tended to get fixated on one aspect of the debate, even if the debaters did not emphasize it.

The eighth and final round was on Sunday morning. Unbeknownst to us Juddi had shown up for the coaches’ cocktail party on Saturday night. I am sure that she pumped everyone with whom she was on speaking terms for information. Outside the room of our last debate she showed up with a huge grin on her face. She told us that we were doing very well, but we shouldn’t be too overconfident We had also heard a lot of buzz in the hallways that we had blasted everyone on our schedule.

At any rate in the last round we were on the affirmative against a so-so team from Illinois State. Both Bill and I were superb. We obliterated them. I had absolutely no doubt that we picked up all three ballots. In fact, one of the judges, David Angell from Albion College awarded me a perfect score of 30 and wrote on the ballot that it was the best performance that he had ever seen.

All the debaters, coaches, and hangers-on assembled for the announcement of the five qualifying pairs. Juddi was all excited when we told her that the last debate was by far our best.

Next came the assembly. Five teams would qualify for NDT. It took them at least half an hour to process the ballots. The district chairman finally came out and began, “There was one team that was 6-2 but …”

I swear the following is true: I screamed out “Oh no!” and buried my head in my arms on the desk in front of me. Everyone looked at me as he continued, “unfortunately had too few ballots to qualify. So, let’s have a hand for the University of Michigan, 6-2 with fourteen ballots.”

We lost ten ballots, five of them on the negative. We had only lost one negative ballot in the second semester, and that was on ethics. We lost that first affirmative debate 3-0. OK, I can live with that. We beat both of our A teams and our B teams. We kept both Ohio State and Northwestern from qualifying. The critical round, though, was clearly the seventh. There was no way that we lost that debate. However, we also somehow lost three other ballots on our negative. This just never happened that year.

In retrospect I think that we should have somehow made it clear to the other schools that we would definitely not be using the Emory switch at districts. The other 23 teams that were going to districts probably wasted many hours trying to figure out how to adapt to our tactic. This could have irritated a lot of people.

We submitted an application for a post-bid, but I knew we wouldn’t get it. The district recommended the two Northwestern teams and Ohio State in a tie for first. They recommended us, but as their fourth choice. They thought we were only the ninth best team in the district! NDT only gave seven post-district bids altogether. The other three from our district all got bids. Once again we got the shaft.

Our performance at Harvard earned us an invitation to the Tournament of Champions. Juddi encouraged us to go, but I could see no point to it.

Thus ended my debate career. Was I bitter? Yes. I only had one goal, and I would never get another chance to achieve it.

Bill Davey made it to the quarterfinals of NDT in 1971. He is a professor at the University of Illinois. His very impressive biography page is here.

In 1972 Mike Hartmann also made it to the quarterfinals of NDT. He is a lawyer. His webpage at the firm of Miller Canfield is here.

1970 Part 1: January-May: My Last Semester at U-M

Posted on July 1, 2020 by Mike

1970 January-May in Ann Arbor, MI Continue reading →

On December 1, 1969, the first draft lottery was held. #154 was assigned to my birth date, August 17. In 1970 they started drafting with #1. No one predicted that 154 was a safe number. As it turned out, the lowest safe number was 196. Bill Clinton got 311, and George W. Bush got 327.

I thoroughly enjoyed my first four years at the University of Michigan. I lived in the dorm all four years. It suited me perfectly. No worries about rent or food, clean linen, and a floating bridge game in the lobby, which was right next door to my room. As much as I appreciated this arrangement, by New Year’s Day of 1970 I was very tired of anything to do with actual classes.

Instead, in my last semester I planned to spend a LOT of time on debate. This was my last chance to qualify for the National Debate Tournament. This adventure is described in 1970 Part 2. Compared to debate and research for debate, sitting in the classroom and preparing for classes seemed excruciatingly boring.

Allen Rumsey House was new in 1937. My room 1968-70 was the corner room on the ground floor.

To give myself more time for debate, I resigned as president of Allen Rumsey House (a dorm of just over 100 guys in West Quad) so that someone who was returning the next year could get some experience. I resumed editing (which meant writing, mimeographing, and distributing) Rumsey Rumors, the newsletter published occasionally for residents.

I had thoroughly researched the school’s catalog for the second semester to construct the easiest schedule that would allow me to graduate in May. I was only three credits short of the required total, and I had met all the requirements except for one, which I planned to fill with an introductory course in social anthropology. I don’t remember exactly why I selected this course, but it met my own main requirement (no papers). Moreover, a sophomore who was a friend of mine was also taking it, and he was a skilled note-taker.

I was pretty sure that ten of my credits would not count for graduation. The catalog said that one could only have forty credits in one’s major. I had fifty in math. So, I calculated that I needed thirteen non-math credits in the last semester. As a four-year debater, I was allowed to take a three-credit individual study in speech communication. That would require little or no work. So, I needed two more classes.

My first choice was a 400-level Russian literature in English. I had read a few Russian novels, and I really liked them. I was worried that papers might be required, but someone who had taken the class assured me that there were no papers.

For my last class I picked introductory linguistics. How hard could it be? I had taken twelve semesters of Latin and Greek in high school and nine semesters of Latin, Greek, and Russian at U-M. I also took a language theory class in the Communication Sciences department, but it was mostly computer-oriented.

At the first linguistics lecture the makeup of the class startled me. It was about 70 percent females, most of whom were packed tightly in the first few rows of the auditorium. Furthermore, most of the guys were in small groups spread around the rest of the room, and they all seemed pretty big. What really struck me was the prominence of their jawbones.

Almost everyone fell into these two categories. No one looked like me. I was probably the oldest and certainly the skinniest (perhaps 140 pounds) of all the male students.

When the lecturer appeared, I understood the female part. He was good-looking and very personable. He began his presentation by explaining how the class would work: students would be allowed to assign their own grades! There would be no tests, and the only homework would be a workbook that we would be required to fill out and submit. That explained all the athletes; I knew for certain that the athletes had a formidable underground network for locating “gut” classes. This one must have been close to the top of the list.

That was the last linguistics lecture that I attended. I could hardly believe how lucky I had been to find this class.

$A small fraction of the reading list.$

A small fraction of the reading list.

The lecturer at the first Russian lit class distributed the reading list, which consisted of at least six heavyweight tomes, none of which I had already read. I also learned that there would be both lectures and discussion groups led by graduate students. I never attended any of the latter.

I attended the lectures in the anthro and Russian classes for the first five or six weeks whenever I was in town. After that I took the midterm exams, but I never even picked up my results.

Meanwhile I had been attending debate tournaments, which took up a LOT of time. I also spent a lot of time in the library researching for debate. I also played bridge in the dorm, but I was not serious about it. A few of us played in the club game at the Union once or twice. I was quite serious about intramural basketball. I played on our team in the “B” division. I did not contribute much, but we did win the tournament. We also won in B volleyball. I was the captain of that team. Allen Rumsey House, the oldest and smallest of all the dorms, won the overall intramural dorm championship with the highest total score ever recorded.

At some point in February I quit going to classes altogether. I judged that I could pass my two real classes by cramming for the finals. This was undoubtedly hubris. I had no plan B.

1970 was, of course, a very tumultuous year at every college. Young people were fed up with a stupid war in Asia in which they were supposed to do the heavy lifting. At U-M this discontent was joined by a separate issue called the Black Action Movement, which challenged the university to come up with a solution to the extremely low percentage of black people enrolled at U-M. This movement was championed by my debate partner during the first semester of my junior year, Alexa Canady, who quit debate and focused her attention on pre-med studies and editorials for the Michigan Daily. BAM called for everyone to go on strike, which fit in perfectly with my plan.

BAM Rally

I participated in one of the marches that BAM called for. I marched with them, mostly as a lark. I was accompanied by my outside agitator friend, Dave Bartlebaugh, better known as “The Ball”. He didn’t even go to U-M, and he didn’t care at all about the Black Action Movement, but he was a great agitator. He kept shouting “Free Huey! Free Bobby! Free all political prisoners!” He banged on trashcans as we passed them. I had trouble suppressing my giggles. I did join in the “Open it up or SHUT IT DOWN!” chants. It was a great time.

The Ball was a real character. During my junior year (1968-1969) he started hanging around in the lounge of Allen Rumsey House. He lived in an apartment off-campus, he already knew some of the guys in our dorm, and he liked the fact that some kind of nonsense was always going on. A the end of the 1970 spring semester he had successfully avoided the draft by failing the physical due to high blood pressure. I guess that he had somewhat high blood pressure anyway, but he augmented it during the week leading up to each physical exam through a regimen that included, among other things, a lot of coffee. According to this website he has been in the music business for the last five decades.

The BAM strike actually did some good. The university subsequently worked hard to help students from Detroit public schools to meet the school’s entrance requirements, which even for in-state students were pretty rigorous. When I returned to Ann Arbor in 1974 there were obviously more minority students.

A point system for admission to the college of Literature, Science and the Arts that aided minorities was also implemented. In 2003 it was declared unconstitutional by a 6-3 vote of the U.S. Supreme Court.

I spent the weeks before finals speed-reading difficult Russian novels and memorizing my friend’s notes. I liked most of the novels, but I had zero experience in how to prepare for a test in a college-level literature class. I had not taken even one class in the English department. I was supposed to take the Great Books class in my freshman year, but by the time that I got to Ann Arbor the class was closed. Because I had passed the Advanced Placement test in high school I was excused from the university’s English requirement.

The anthro test went about as expected. I thought that I did OK. The Russian lit class was another story. As I approached the room in which the test was held I was greatly concerned to see a large number of students handing in what appeared to be papers. I never did discover whether these were assigned in contravention of the information at the first class. They might have been extra-credit assignments from the leaders of recitation groups.

The test itself seemed to go pretty well. It required several short essays. I was able to write something reasonably sensible for each one. Keep in mind that my goal was just to pass, and at Michigan a D would suffice.

After the tests I started doing the exercises in my linguistics workbook. It took a couple of days. I went to my teacher’s office in the evening and slid it under his door the day before grades were due. I lacked the audacity to assign myself a grade.

As always, I did not pick up my exams. I could only guess how well I actually did. My grades were mailed to my parents’ house in Kansas City a few weeks later.

Exams were over by the end of April. I stayed in Ann Arbor for a few weeks. Bill Davey and his roommate let me stay in their apartment. I think that I slept on the floor.

I was busy with two things—the actuarial exams and the Junior College National Forensics Tournament, which U-M hosted in 1970. I took part 2 of the former and judged an astounding twenty-four rounds in the latter. I supplemented my income from judging with the proceeds from the sale of all my remaining textbooks to one of the bookstores. This is what I lived on.

I was in Ann Arbor for the graduation ceremony. Even thought the speaker was U Thant, Secretary General of the United Nations, I did not go. I was too afraid that they might not read my name.

I had passed part 1 (calculus) of the actuarial exams in my junior year. Part 2 covered probability and statistics. In both of these areas U-M offered courses tailored to the exams. I took both classes in the first semester and received a B in each. I also sat for the part 2 exam in November, but I did not pass, which surprised me a little. I had not studied much, and I was distracted by debate, but I was reasonably familiar with all the material. The grading for these exams was designed to penalize guessing, and I did my share.

In May I devoted not a single minute to studying for the exam. At some point it occurred to me that I should avoid guessing. My strategy was to work carefully on the probability questions and to answer only those statistics question that I was certain of. In the end I skipped 100 percent of the statistics questions. This meant that my best possible score was probably around 50 percent. For one of the few times in my life I was pretty certain that I had failed a test.

I had already decided that I would just go home and wait to get drafted. That’s what I did.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: University of Michigan

1972 April-June: Transition to Connecticut

1966-1970 U-M: Lingo and Abbreviations

1966 Summer Between High School & College

1970 Part 2: January-March: Debate

1970 Part 1: January-May: My Last Semester at U-M