Wesleyan University Wasch Center for Retired Faculty Newsletter Vol. 8, No. 2 Spring 2017 WESLEYAN RETIRED RECALL FIRST ENCOUNTERS WITH WESLEYAN n the last issue there was a call for brief Creeger, was looking for such an instructor for the accounts of retired faculty members’ Fall of 1962. Having returned from a recent stint as Iinitial encounters with Wesleyan. Fulbright Professor at Würzburg University where We announced “if we get enough of these he had worked closely with the Ordinarius for contributions, we can include them in the next English, Wolfgang Iser, he turned to the latter and issue . .” In fact, we received more than enough, asked for one of his lecturers to teach the intensive an even dozen. course at Wesleyan. Iser responded that he could Continued on page 2. Herb Arnold – A Circuitous Route All roads lead to Wesleyan, apparently. Some Read about these Wesleyan retired faculty by circuitous routes. Back in the early, formative First Encounters with Wesleyan: years of the College of Letters, a student going Herb Arnold...................................p. 1 Allan Berlind...................................p. 2 Peter Frenzel....................................p. 2 Stew Gillmor.....................................p. 3 Vera Grant........................................p. 4 Alex Dupuy......................................p. 5 Mike Lovell.......................................p. 5 Joyce Lowrie......................................p. 5 Paula Paige........................................p. 6 Yoshiko Samuel.................................p. 7 Karl Scheibe......................................p. 7 abroad in the sophomore year received some Vera Schwarcz...................................p. 8 intensive language training at Wesleyan before being turned loose on an unsuspecting Europe. Thus the then Director of the COL, George Continued on page 2. 1 First Encounters with Wesleyan continued from page 1. not spare any of his regular faculty members but Allan Berlind - Route 66: a Shattered Image might have an advanced student to recommend. That student, knowing nothing about this After getting my PhD, I went out to Berkeley prehistory, since he had been in England during on a post-doctoral fellowship. The person I was George Creeger’s stay at Würzburg, sauntered into working with was a bit removed from neurobiology, the university one bright Spring morning just as the field I would be qualified to teach in, so he Iser exited the building. “Oh, Herr Arnold, haven’t wasn’t directly in the loop of knowing about you been to the United States before?” “Yes,” I available jobs. I knew I wanted to get a job east answered, “as an AFS exchange student in high of the Hudson River, so kept by eyes open for school.” “Would you like to go again? If so, talk to such possibilities. Somehow, the very appropriate the secretary about the details.” I did, she detailed job listing at Wesleyan escaped my attention. the assignment, and I said, I’d need an But it was noticed by the opportunity to ask my wife Annemie.” I drove up for my administrative assistant in I thought a few months between my the Zoology Department Staatsexamen and starting my first job interview from New at Berkeley, who knew my with the Bavarian Ministry of Higher York, in a Checker interests and said “Allan, Education might not be a bad idea. you have to apply for this And so, Wesleyan acquired a temporary station wagon one.” It turns out she was instructor of German. borrowed from my the sister of Jason Wolfe Wesleyan was a small, all male school and had heard about the then and my accommodations were in mother. opening from him. So North College, a suite with sitting room, Jason’s sister is entirely workspace and bedroom, overlooking responsible for my being the football field, and a bathroom down here. the hall, on the floor that now houses My first physical the offices of the Vice President for encounter with Middletown Academic Affairs. The entire building is also firmly embedded in was a dorm, except for the Dean¹s and Registrar’s my memory. I had the appealing image of a quaint offices on the ground floor. For meals one went to and pastoral New England village before I came. Downey House for coffee and the morning mail I drove up for my interview from New York, in a and, if lucky, a seat at the famous round table Checker station wagon borrowed from my mother. where, as Ned Williamson of Romance Languages As I drove along route 66 my image was shattered, famously remarked, one would quickly establish or and I got more and more discouraged the closer ruin one’s reputation as an intellectual fit to teach I got to town. I’m glad that I didn’t give in to my at Wesleyan. Lunch, in my case, was available temptation to abort then and there, but continued at Psi Upsilon, which then had one of the better on to the interview. chefs on campus and the incomparable Willy Kerr as faculty advisor and raconteur. For dinner you Peter Frenzel - A Rescued Letter were on your own with few options on Main Street beyond the German restaurant called Krenz’s. It Back in 1966 I was teaching German at the was a small compass that contained the Wesleyan University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, trying to universe then. It has grown quite a bit over the complete my dissertation, and looking for a job. years. I had already been talking with Syracuse and Continued on page 3. Wasch Center for Retired Faculty 2 First Encounters with Wesleyan continued from page 2. Oregon and had been invited to their campuses postponed my visits to Syracuse and Oregon. And for interviews. One day our department head, that was that. Clarence Pott, asked me to stop by his office and showed me a letter from a former UM graduate, Stew Gillmor – Chicken on Route 17 Arthur Wensinger, who was looking for, as he put it, the best of the best to fill a slot at Wesleyan, In the spring of 1966, soon after I passed my PhD someone who could teach humanities as well as qualifiers, my Princeton advisors Charles Gillispie intro courses, in Wesleyan’s COL and a Freshman and Thomas Kuhn suggested (ordered) that my Humanities Program. “Is that in Ohio?” I dissertation topic should be a study of the life and questioned? “Not sure,” he replied, “but it is said career of the noted French physicist and engineer to be very good. Why don’t I give you the letter Charles Augustin Coulomb (1736-1806). Gillispie and you can do with it what you will.” So I took it told me that Wesleyan was looking for a junior level home, tossed it in the wastebasket, and thought historian of science. Given that I was heading to no more about it— France for a year, Wesleyan asked me to come up for “Is that in until that evening, an early interview, in May. I went to Wes, and talked Ohio?”... “No,” when Laurie and with all of the History Department senior people, I attended the and saw faculty from six of the science departments. he corrected wedding of a fellow Since my BS was in Electrical Engineering/Physics me. It’s in graduate student and I had some graduate work in astro/geophysics, (Bob Bazucha). The I guess I got along very well with the physical Connecticut man sitting next to scientists. I had an unusual lunch at Downey and has the best me at the reception house, with Geologist Joe Peoples, Mathematician college math introduced himself Walter Gottschalk and Historian Gene Golob. and we fell into Peoples was delighted that I was a member of the department in conversation. It American Geophysical Union the country. came to light that he and had published in their was the chair of the journals, Golob was generally math department puzzled, and Gottschalk at Oberlin. At some point he asked me what my quizzed me on how many situation was. I told him I was looking for an blind mathematicians I knew academic teaching job and had already had two and whether I had studied invitations to visit to be interviewed on campus. REAL math or just physics “And,” I added, “a letter came ‘round today from a math. I replied that the great Wesleyan University.” “You mean the Wesleyan?” Leonard Euler wrote 283 I stuttered around a bit. “Well . .I guess so; I think papers after he became blind it’s in Ohio or . maybe Connecticut.” “No,” he and that I had read some of corrected me. It’s in Connecticut and has the best them, and that the Dane, college math department in the country. I have Tycho Brahe, had a sterling lectured there a number of times and can assure silver nose due to a student you that its faculty is a most distinguished one. sword dual. Provost Bob Rosenbaum told me that He spent the next half hour or so expounding Wes didn’t pay for car tolls, and that there would be the glories liberal arts colleges in general and no cocktail reception for me, but that there was a of Wesleyan in particular. I went home, fished Colonel Sanders’ chicken place on south Route 17. the letter out of the wastepaper basket, and Continued on page 3. Continued on page 4. 3 Newsletter Spring 2017 First Encounters with Wesleyan continued from page 3. We had left Princeton at 5 am in my ’56 beat-up Scene II – Spring, 1967 The poster from the Jeep wagon and returned to Princeton by 10pm Amerikahaus in Freiburg announces a lecture that same day. Wesleyan’s cost for my trip: gas about Stokely Carmichael. What intrigued me mileage and a Downey House lunch. was the fine print, introducing the presenter/ While in Paris, Kuhn notified me that the U.