La Salle Magazine Summer 1976 La Salle University

La Salle University La Salle University Digital Commons La Salle Magazine University Publications Summer 1976 La Salle Magazine Summer 1976 La Salle University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/lasalle_magazine Recommended Citation La Salle University, "La Salle Magazine Summer 1976" (1976). La Salle Magazine. 129. https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/lasalle_magazine/129 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the University Publications at La Salle University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in La Salle Magazine by an authorized administrator of La Salle University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SUMMER 1976 A QUARTERLY LA SALLE COLLEGE MAGAZINE DO WE HAVE A RIGHT TO DIE? A QUARTERLY LA SALLE COLLEGE MAGAZINE Volume 20 Summer 1976 Number 3 Robert S. Lyons, Jr., ’61, Editor W. Lawrence Eldridge, Jr., Assistant Editor James J. McDonald, ’58, Alumni News ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OFFICERS Joseph M. Gindhart, Esq., ’58, President Richard H. Becker, ’50, Executive Vice President William J. Leimkuhler, ’65, Vice President Thomas A. Sabol, Esq., ’71, Secretary John P. Gallagher, ’62, Treasurer La Salle Magazine is published quarterly by La Salle College, Phila delphia, Penna. 19141, for the alumni, students, faculty and friends of the college. Editorial and business offices located at the New Bureau, La Salle College, Philadelphia, Penna. 19141. Second class postage paid at Philadelphia, Penna. Changes of address should be sent at least 30 days prior to publication of the issue with which it is to take effect, to the Alumni Office, La Salle College, Philadelphia, Penna. 19141. Member of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. CONTENTS THE BICENTENNIAL 1 La Salle’s president reflects on the Bicen tennial and its impact on the college. DO WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO DIE? 4 The issue is moral, not legal, says a Cath olic theologian who focuses on some of the complications raised by the Karen Quinlan controversy. SOCCER’S SUPER SALESMAN 8 Bob Ehlinger, ’50, learned early that going up and down the numbers wasn’t very exciting. Since then he’s been promoting everything from real estate to the Atoms, Billie Jean, and now, Pele. REMINISCENCES: THE OLYMPICS 11 REVISITED For the six La Salle graduates who com peted in London, Melbourne, Rome, or Tokyo, it was an unforgettable kaleido scope of victory and defeat, excitement and disillusionment, joy and sorrow. THE TOY CONNOISSEUR 16 Leon J. Perelman, ’33, has enjoyed pro digious success as a businessman and civic leader. But what really turns him on is his incomparable antique museum. AROUND CAMPUS 18 A look at some bilingual La Salle people who are helping tourists at the airport these days as well as reports on the col lege’s 113th commencement, a new dean, and an athletic roundup. ALUMNI NOTES 22 Introducing a new format chronicling some significant events in the lives of the college’s alumni. CREDITS —Front cover, “Proportions and Movement of Human Form,” by Leonardo Da Vinci, with graphics by Omnigraphic Design; inside back cover, Mark B. Jacobson; page 8, Jerry Leib- man; 10, John L. Rosenthal (left) and George Tiedemann (right); 12, 21, Charles F. Sibre; 13, Jules Schick; 15 (left), 16, Lawrence V. Kanevsky; all others by Jacobson. The Bicentennial at LaSalle By Brother Daniel Burke, F.S.C., Ph.D. T he editor of La Salle has asked me for a few reflections about the Bicentennial and its impact on the College. What I’d like most to say is best expressed, perhaps, in some remarks I made at the beginning of the academic year, at a ceremony in which we became an official participant in the Bicentennial Colleges and Universities Program. I’d like to repeat those observations and to complement them with some notes for the end of the academic year, just as Phila delphia’s observance is getting into high gear. On September 4, I remarked that a book published recently by William Lee Miller had been called Of Thee, Nevertheless, I Sing. To my mind that title pinpointed very neatly the mood of many Americans at the beginning of the Bicentennial celebration. For, in recent years especially, we have been deeply conscious of the weaknesses of our native land —of our failure to achieve very closely the ideals of “liberty and justice for all” set by our forefathers or of disturbing breakdowns in our democratic system. But at the same time we have seen recovery and re-direction in what de Toqueville once called the greatest human experi ment ever undertaken. We have seen after Watergate that our society has the resources of law, the openness and free dom to correct itself. After the trauma of Vietnam, we have seen that the nation, drawn itself from many nations, has not withdrawn into itself but can still respond to the needs of others around the world. And after the depression of spirit following assassinations, declining expectations, and confusing changes, we have sensed again our reserves of endurance and the value of building realistically for the future. If our mood is chastened, therefore, we still have abun dant cause to commemorate, to celebrate, to break-out the flags. For our history has much to teach us about America’s enormous accomplishment for freedom, for human better ment, for peace —and that is the best ground of our hope. This College itself stands on historic ground; battles of the Revolution were fought nearby; Charles Willson Peale, La Salle people played significant roles in planning American ethnic history whose farm preceded the campus here, painted the heroes exhibits at the new Balch Institute, and Pulitzer Prize-winner/honorary of that revolution; the nation’s capitol was for a time at the alumnus Paul Horgan shared some of his writing secrets with students at the college during the Bicentennial. Morris-Deschler house in nearby Germantown. This Col- La Salle, Summer 1976 1 BICENTENNIAL-continued lege, too, stands for the basic American ideal of a demo cratic community that preserves individuality; for the values expressed in our motto e pluribus unum. We are an academic enterprise conceived in the crisis of the Civil War, concerned constantly since that time with the education and advancement of a great variety of ethnic groups. And that work of growing together continues in the Germantown of today. O u r intention during the coming year is to raise our con sciousness and in lectures, discussions, music and art to sharpen our remembrance of these ideals and the broader facts of the American Revolution and founding of this nation. And so we are indebted to the American Revolution Bicentennial Committee for honoring our intentions here. In the past eight months a goodly number of the activities so promised have taken place. For those who have par ticipated, I think it’s fair to say that there has indeed been a heightened consciousness of the traditions and the cur rent situation of our United States. A series of faculty lectures included, among others, John Seydow, Barbara Millard, John Cziraky, and John White. Ms. magazine editor-in-chief Patricia Carbine spoke to a contemporary American revolution, the women’s movement —and Eileen Meyers responded. Joseph Papp reviewed the condition of the American theatre and CBS vice-president Michael Dann, the impact of American television. Sociology lecturer Murray Friedman published a study called Moving Up: Ethnic Succession in America; historian John Lukacs, in the broad canvas of The Last European War, considered “ Americanization” among other trends deeply affecting the continent—and he also published a history of our sister college, Chestnut Hill; Joseph O’Grady prepared possibly the first traveling course offered by the College —“The American Revolution in the North.” And the Urban Cen ter collaborated with a number of area community groups to produce a series of dialogues on the “Great Issues” under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Among the arts, there were sessions with American poets like Howard Moss; recitals of American art-songs and, with Bernard Pfeiffer, of jazz; chamber concerts by the Guilford String Quartet, under a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In April, the College was one of the sponsors for the performance at the Academy of Music of “Aida” by National Opera Ebony, and we cooperated with the Philadelphia Bar Association in the production of 1776 on campus during April and May. Masque and Music Theatre productions include Front Page, Godspell, Sing, America, Sing and The Fantasticks; alumnus-playwright Charles Fuller has written a play on Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush that will be presented on summer weekends at Christ Church. And the Art Gallery has proposed ex hibits of colonial neighbor Charles Willson Peale and contemporary painter of flag motifs, John Castagno. 2 Finally, in the late spring several Bicentennial exhibits involving the College have opened —“Learning, Revolution and Democracy: Higher Education in Philadelphia, 1776- 1976” —a cooperative venture of twelve institutions in Philadelphia on the Mezzanine Floor of Penn Mutual Tower overlooking Independence Hall, and the Bicenten nial effort of the new Balch Institute at 18 South Seventh Street, a research institute in American ethnic history that has drawn on the talents of Joseph O’Grady, Timothy Habick, John Conboy, and Brother Gerard Molyneaux for its first exhibition. It has been a varied program. But its impact has frankly been limited on most of the College community, working as we do these days on the immediate academic job, its attendant committee work and sometimes petty concerns. For students, there is also the pressure of jobs needed for tuition costs and the more subtle pressure of the “market” that lies beyond graduation.

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