[Phil '68 & Beverly Johnston '67/ Bob Lindsay '73/ Christopher McCray '89/ Memoir]

Proudly paleoliberal pair

When the British surrendered at Yorktown, they lay down their arms to the strains of "The World Turned Upside Down." In the Marshfield garage of Phillip `68 and Beverly Johnston '67 there are now upside-down campaign posters, symbolic of Phil's narrow defeat in the Democratic primary in the 10th Massachusetts Congressional District last fall.

At first declared winner, Johnston saw his victory overturned when a judge threw out 109 damaged and disputed ballots. But Phil and Beverly vow to continue fighting the good fight as Democratic "paleoliberals," as they were dubbed in the Boston Globe.

The "liberal" label is one the Johnstons warmly embrace. A portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt hangs in the living room, and downstairs in the den are prominent photographs of Eleanor Roosevelt and the Kennedys. Phil's only non-government job was a two-year stint as director of the Robert Kennedy Memorial in Washington, DC; Beverly has made a lifelong career in social work.

As students, both Johnstons volunteered at the Belchertown and Northampton state hospitals--which Phil, as health and human services director in the Dukakis administration, would later close down. (That early experience, says Beverly, taught her how a humane mission can turn disastrouswhen budget cuts become ruthless.) Most recently she was human-resource director for the organization Road to Responsibility; she had just begun a year's leave "to catch up on family things" when Phil decided to make a run for Gerry Studd's seat in congress. "So my sabbatical lasted three weeks and I became a fulltime campaigner."

During their UMass years Phil and Beverly worked side-by-side not just as volunteers but as breadwinners. At one point Beverly worked the 3-to-11 shift at Pro Brush in Northampton and raced home so Phil could work 11 to 7 at the same factory. In this way they managed to pay their tuition and take care of their first child. (Son Robert and daughter-in-law Amy (Gujeika) Johnston are also a UMass couple, class of '91.) A significant factor in Phil's UMass experience was campus politics; he established a civil rights organization on campus and helped persuade a then-unknown Bob Dylan to perform a benefit at the Cage. Beverly was, she says, "more philosophical and less political than Phil." Her fondest memories are of late night discussions at the French House."UMass introduced me to a real international community," she says.

Today Phil runs his own health-consulting business, using his 23 years of government-service expertise--with Dukakis in Massachusetts and the Carter and Clinton administrations in Washington--to help clients ranging from the National Association of Community Health Centers to a fledgling health-policy institute. His campaign theme of "health security" summarizes a career-long effort. "Access," he says. "Access is the key. Access to high quality, affordable health care."

Passionate environmentalists, partisans of humane welfare reform, the Johnstons are also avid supporters of public higher education. Both have attended the Kennedy School for Government at Harvard, "and I'm not going to knock Harvard," says Phil. "But in our experience the professors we had at UMass are as good as any anywhere--and our education cost a lot less." One of the things the Johnstons did when they moved to Marshfield, he adds, "was to look in government directories and find out who was running things. We discovered that in almost every major department there was a UMass alumnus. We're proud of that tradition of public service."

Asked to pose with one of the campaign posters from the garage, Phil and Beverly cheerfully oblige. "It was a great campaign," Phil said. "But make this fast or the neighbors are going to think it's happening all over again."
-Robert Abel M.F.A `74



Golden Flashes' Golden Guy

At the Kent, Ohio, off-ramp of U.S. I-76 stands a billboard emblazoned in Kent State blue and gold, boasting the successes of the women's basketball team. Last spring the team went 16-2 in the Mid-American Conference, and Bob Lindsay '73 was named Coach of the Year in Mid- American Women's basketball. (As we went to press, the team was 11-3 in its conference.)

Lindsay's ability to turn around a basketball program -- from years of losing seasons to regular appearances in post-season play -- sounds awfully familiar to Minuteman fans. But ask the head coach of Kent State women's basketball if he likens himself to John Calipari, and he cites a different role model: UMass lacrosse coach Dick Garber, for whom Lindsay played as an undergrad.

"He was a legend," says Lindsay, sitting in his Kent State basketball office, on the walls of which are pictures of lacrosse teams from both UMass and Holy Cross, the college in Lindsay's hometown of Worcester where he spent several years as coach. In his desk is a memento he likes to show visitors from back home: a season schedule card for Garber's 1990 team, the last he coached for UMass. Garber was head coach of the UMass men's lacrosse team for 35 years. At the end of his tenure, the record stood at 300-141-3; he had the most wins of any Division I lacrosse coach ever.

"I learned a lot from Coach Garber," Lindsay says. "Philosophically, he was never a proponent of big-time college athletics. He never liked to recruit. You played because you loved to play." Lindsay had never seen the game of lacrosse until he got to Amherst; that he became a starting defenseman for the Gorillas he credits to Garber's ability to teach. "The reason UMass was as good as it was for as long as it was," says Lindsay, "is that Dick was a great teacher of the game."

It was this educational aspect of coaching that Lindsay would adapt from Garber's playbook. In 1989, after eight years at Holy Cross, Lindsay moved to Ohio to head women's basketball at Kent State. The results have been gratifying: the Golden Flashes have had 20-win seasons in three of the last four years, and attendance at women's basketball games has increased 500 percent. Kent State now boasts the second-highest attendance in the conference, bowing only to Toledo, which is hugely popular among its locals.

Just as John Calipari and the Minutemen helped bring about the building of the Mullins Center at UMass, Lindsay and his team have helped spur much-needed refurbishments to their arena, the 7,000-seat "Mac" center. This is one comparison Lindsay is willing to entertain. "The Mullins and this place have a lot in common," says the coach with understated satisfaction.

-E. Douglas Banks '92

Born in the U-Know-Where

Here he is in this Bruce-Springsteen-kind-of-town, running every aspect of this 300-car, 30-employee dealership, and the guy can't even get a cheeseburger.

It's his own darn idea to even have the grill outside, offering up hamburgers and hot dogs to prospective buyers on this early winter day. He's the owner of the dealership- -Ford's youngest minority dealer and one of its youngest dealers, period--and he can't get his hands on the beef. "I'd gladly give you two Ford Explorers tomorrow for a hamburger today."

So Christopher McCray '89 waits, teases his staff. "I paid for the stuff, can't I at least get some lunch?" And while he waits you realize that this is exactly the kind of town where the American dream is supposed to begin. McCray's first--and believe him when he says there will be more--car dealership is in Anywhere, USA, Population: 20,000. A place where they work hard, shop wisely, and buy American.

"They could have put me in Siberia," says McCray. "If there's a Ford dealership there, that's where I wanted to be."

After rising through the Ford minority program--something his uncle Earl Harper, also a dealer, steered him toward--and impressing the right people, McCray was offered his own dealership, just south of Siberia and west of Allentown in Pottsville, PA. It is an hour and a half from where he grew up in Princeton, NJ, and as far as he's concerned, a stone's throw from Heaven. "I had this crazy goal of having a dealership before I was 30," McCray says. Next goal, please.

"My business philosophy is that the customer is always right," says McCray emphatically, making the credo sound very credible. "I believe in honesty and integrity. I'm in this for the long run. I'm going to make a profit, but it's going to be a fair and honest profit."
A financial management major in SOM, McCray also learned some business fundamentals playing football. "From Coach [Robert] Stull I learned goal-setting and from Coach [Jim] Reid I learned discipline," said McCray, who greets customers with a firm handshake that leaves a slight imprint of his 1986 Yankee Conference champions ring. "This ring is the hardest thing I ever had to work for in my life."

That was until he tried to get a hamburger at his very own dealership.

-David Scott '94

The Last Pond Party

My memories of the Campus Pond begin with recollection of the winter wind blowing across its icy surface. The wind lashed me as I pushed my way down the road that crossed the narrow brook that served as the pond's source. I was on my way to my job at the Dining Hall -- well beyond the opposite end of the pond. It seemed the wind's chill built up as it skimmed and brushed the polished surface.

I have other winter memories of the Pond. There was the time after finishing an exam when I felt all keyed up and in need of relief. I got out my Canadian racing "tubulars," hurried to the pond, and threw my pumped-up energy into speed skating.

After I joined the English faculty, I would join other skaters on the pond for impromptu, informal skating parties. Groups of youngsters, many under the age of six, would welcome those times when the ice was cleared of snow and a smooth surface permitted even those limited to "double-runners" to enjoy themselves. They were mostly children from the neighborhood, some of them faculty children, some not. After the skating, they would stop by my home for hot chocolate with toasted marshmallows and cookies.

But I associate other than innocent skating parties with the Campus Pond. Throughout my freshman year in 1924 and '25 occasional "Pond Parties" were staged as part of the hazing meant to keep the "Frosh" on good behavior, obeying such rules as jumping "9's" and saluting Senators. A condemned offender became the chief guest of the Pond Party.

The culprit was stripped to his shorts. A crowd of jeering, threatening students formed a double line down the path from North College to a platform at the water's edge. Down this path the the victim was made to crawl on bare hands and knees, propelled by lines of students vigorously paddling him on his way.

The path was covered with cinders. By the time the victim reached the Pond he was usually quite bloody. Once there he was made to enact grotesque and painful stunts, recite nonsensical doggerel and perform silly acts. The performance ended with two husky inquisitors taking him by the hands and swinging him into the water.

At one such Pond Party in the spring of my freshman year, the victim was a gentle, amiable fellow who not long after this ordeal died of blood poisoning. Having at best tolerated the institution of the Pond Party, the College seized the opportunity to abolish it, and indeed all such hazing. In this the administration had the support of the students and the weekly Collegian.

One annual event that drew a great crowd was the Rope Pull. Like the Pond Party, it stirred much excitement; unlike the Pond Party, it was for better rather than for worse. Being one of the drenched, defeated rope pullers only added to the merriment of the occasion.

Then there was Prudence. Prudence looked like the Trojan Horse in reduced dimension. She was the wooden polo-practice horse of the campus Military Department. She was stabled in a cylindrical wire cage big enough and tall enough to hold a real horse.

Getting Prudence out of her cage and put to various non- polo- playing uses was the avowed mission of a number of dedicated students, who took the horse on all manner of nocturnal sorties designed to keep the military unbalanced and preoccupied with the whereabouts and the welfare of the valued Prudence.

Being regularly addressed as "Your Excellency" or "Your Generalship," Prudence took on quite a personality. A wagon expropriated from the College Farm provided strategic transport. One night the wagon-borne Prudence headed up a "campaign parade." Astride the horse, waving a sword-like stave, was the politician of the evening.

The climax came on a Commencement week-end. Here was a challenge impossible to resist. The campus astir with parents, relatives, friends, alumni, civilian and military officials! Yes, this was the time to do it. But what?

An attempt was made to hoist Prudence up the flagpole at the Drill Hall. But Prudence proved too heavy. The rope broke, and Prudence came crashing down, almost killing those engaged in her elevation. Among them were several future university officials.

The next thought was to place Prudence atop one of the sectioned roofs of Memorial Hall. But that somehow had not enough pizzazz. Not far away, however, was - the POND.

It was convenient. It was shallow. It was the place where Prudence would achieve the appropriate visibility, prestige and homage.

The deed was done in darkness and deep quiet. Dawn came, and with it the delicious discovery, visible from various points on campus: Prudence positioned in the shallow sector of the pond, a broomstick for a tail, and suspended from the far end of that tail, a red lantern.

The perpetrators--known only to one another--were now much in evidence, joining in the general condemnation of the depraved beings guilty of this barbarity, offering words of advice and assistance to the "enlisted men" assigned the task of restoring Prudence to her proper quarters.

Sometimes I wonder what became of Prudence.

My undergraduate association with the Campus Pond came to a fitting conclusion when, after Commencement in our senior year, my classmate Ellsworth "Dutch" Barnard and I decided to stay on a few days just to enjoy the campus and the town.

At one point we found ourselves near the edge of the Pond; and it being the hot time of day, we sought shade underneath a nearby tree. Here at the water's edge my friend recited the Commencement Ode he had written: "Let us sit here together, you and I / on this our Campus...."

This quotation makes a fitting end to my reminiscence. It also opens Dutch's four-volume autobiography, In Sunshine and in Shadow -- a work so saturated with the spirit of Old Bay State.

-MAXWELL GOLDBERG '28
Commonwealth Professor of Humanities Emeritus Max Goldberg is also Professor Emeritus of Humanities and English at Penn State and Helmus Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Literature, Emeritus, at Converse College. He lives in Spartanburg, SC.