Sunday, August 24, 2014
Trip Today Scanning Old Photos Of My College Years There From 1972 To 1976 : Cheers, Enjoy, More To Come ...
In Ashland, Virginia, what a grand treat these four years were from 1972 to 1976 at Randolph-Macon College when it had just turned coed and it sure was exciting and different and I loved much of it, really I did! Cheers, enjoy these photos and remember the days way back when ...
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Randolph Macon College : 4 Years For Me : 1972-1976 : Formative Impressions
I was ready for Randolph Macon College in 1972. I had just graduated from the Lawrenceville Prep School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey and I was ready for a change. I needed one. This was something that I had coming after four years with only guys and a tough time adjusting to them and so much primal immature monkey-primate business that rewarded the Alpha Male adolescent achievers and those that by belonging to small groups necessarily pushed so many of us others out and far away that we truly became and lived lives in a small community as survivors and outsiders. This all sounds really harsh and a bit defensive and vindictive and like it will all end with me being in a big heap of trouble. And for what : to say things no so many years later when no one really cares a damn about it one way or another? It's okay, I want to clear my chest, to find some long-lost/forgotten and buried insult and pain and closure to a four-year period that certainly could have been better if more of the staff at Lawrenceville had been the least bit attentive to my needs and my capabilities.
The problem was that I did not fit ? I did not conform / that they did not know what to do with me or make of me? I was a problem - a wee little problem best hushed and put aside. I was not one of them, I was not yet the full-blown Alpha personality that they could decipher and use and mold to their prescribed for decades role. Oops! No matter that I actually could have added something and gained something, too from a stronger commitment from them during those four years there all alone and by myself while my family was off overseas working for our country as my father was a career foreign service officer and stationed with the American Embassies of Trinidad and Costa Rica and then of Paris, France.
So when my friend Suzie Lykes was at Randolph Macon College in Ashland, Virginia I decided to apply there myself. She was a year ahead of me and I visited the campus with her parents and saw her there and decided that it was a good idea to apply. I was accepted and I have myself and Suzie to thank for this. It was not for any guidance in my humble opinion from the guidance counselor I had back at Lawrenceville. He was basically no help at all : someone that I suppose felt it was best to cut me off as if I were in a life boat and should depart quickly from the mother boat as if I was pretty much one big, glaring embarrassment to them that had not shone in the ways that they saw fit? Too bad for them. It was only art-director and professor Jack Garver that believed in me enough to draw me back to be a part of an alumni art show after we graduated. Thank you Jack for that. I remember and appreciate that gesture and I was and still am happy tp have been included in that show.
Anyway, this is not about Lawrenceville : it is about Randolph Macon College where I met Jim and Chuck and Lynda, Margaret, Jim, Sandy, Patty, Memaw, George ( and his two Saint Bernard dogs ) and Martha and Bill Gibson and Jack Witt and Dr. Gray and Dr. McDonald and Mr. Longaker and more. I had a wonderful time there with George and Robert and Eugenia and David and so many others that I cannot recollect all here at once like this. I even joined a fraternity and became " one in the bond " and that surprised me as I worked for the school Yellow Jacket newspaper at first and then the Yellow Jacket year book : both of which I came to be the editor-in-chief of. These indeed were years of true growth and formation and I will never forget the late evenings in the old Biology building in the empty white-washed rooms with blaring bright lights from the ceiling as I painted alone and listened to all kinds of music on an old turntable like Beethoven's 9th and more. Wow, the hot steam pipes inside with warm air would knock and bang and make all kinds of jarring/frightening noises as I worked away on my various art paintings with both oils and acrylics on stretched canvases that I had made and primed white before transforming with my visions based on the realities there around me.
I learned and I shared and I even gave two wine classes there that some of my friends attended and learned from like Edward that reminded me of this just three weeks ago. Thanks for the call Edward : and I am sorry that I did not make it to your frat reunion party to meet the Frenchman that joined our fraternity back then. I would have liked to have reconnected with him again and had a chance to speak some French with him after all of these years. Unfortunately for me I do not recall having known him back then? How could I have forgotten? I love everything almost that is French, really I do.
Anyway, I will continue to add to this blog as I have time as it was a very fertile four years for me in which I also bought, owned and drove two Beetle VW bugs made in 1967 and 1968 I believe. I even drove one of them down to Daytona Beach once with my good friend then George and his friend. We had a blast there in a motel there right off the beach and did manage to see our good friends from college which included Margaret and Lynda and others.
It's now Wednesday morning just at 12:07 AM on January 13th, 2010 and I have to get to bed now. More soon I promise. Happy New Year after all of these years gone by mostly happily ... TONY
The problem was that I did not fit ? I did not conform / that they did not know what to do with me or make of me? I was a problem - a wee little problem best hushed and put aside. I was not one of them, I was not yet the full-blown Alpha personality that they could decipher and use and mold to their prescribed for decades role. Oops! No matter that I actually could have added something and gained something, too from a stronger commitment from them during those four years there all alone and by myself while my family was off overseas working for our country as my father was a career foreign service officer and stationed with the American Embassies of Trinidad and Costa Rica and then of Paris, France.
So when my friend Suzie Lykes was at Randolph Macon College in Ashland, Virginia I decided to apply there myself. She was a year ahead of me and I visited the campus with her parents and saw her there and decided that it was a good idea to apply. I was accepted and I have myself and Suzie to thank for this. It was not for any guidance in my humble opinion from the guidance counselor I had back at Lawrenceville. He was basically no help at all : someone that I suppose felt it was best to cut me off as if I were in a life boat and should depart quickly from the mother boat as if I was pretty much one big, glaring embarrassment to them that had not shone in the ways that they saw fit? Too bad for them. It was only art-director and professor Jack Garver that believed in me enough to draw me back to be a part of an alumni art show after we graduated. Thank you Jack for that. I remember and appreciate that gesture and I was and still am happy tp have been included in that show.
Anyway, this is not about Lawrenceville : it is about Randolph Macon College where I met Jim and Chuck and Lynda, Margaret, Jim, Sandy, Patty, Memaw, George ( and his two Saint Bernard dogs ) and Martha and Bill Gibson and Jack Witt and Dr. Gray and Dr. McDonald and Mr. Longaker and more. I had a wonderful time there with George and Robert and Eugenia and David and so many others that I cannot recollect all here at once like this. I even joined a fraternity and became " one in the bond " and that surprised me as I worked for the school Yellow Jacket newspaper at first and then the Yellow Jacket year book : both of which I came to be the editor-in-chief of. These indeed were years of true growth and formation and I will never forget the late evenings in the old Biology building in the empty white-washed rooms with blaring bright lights from the ceiling as I painted alone and listened to all kinds of music on an old turntable like Beethoven's 9th and more. Wow, the hot steam pipes inside with warm air would knock and bang and make all kinds of jarring/frightening noises as I worked away on my various art paintings with both oils and acrylics on stretched canvases that I had made and primed white before transforming with my visions based on the realities there around me.
I learned and I shared and I even gave two wine classes there that some of my friends attended and learned from like Edward that reminded me of this just three weeks ago. Thanks for the call Edward : and I am sorry that I did not make it to your frat reunion party to meet the Frenchman that joined our fraternity back then. I would have liked to have reconnected with him again and had a chance to speak some French with him after all of these years. Unfortunately for me I do not recall having known him back then? How could I have forgotten? I love everything almost that is French, really I do.
Anyway, I will continue to add to this blog as I have time as it was a very fertile four years for me in which I also bought, owned and drove two Beetle VW bugs made in 1967 and 1968 I believe. I even drove one of them down to Daytona Beach once with my good friend then George and his friend. We had a blast there in a motel there right off the beach and did manage to see our good friends from college which included Margaret and Lynda and others.
It's now Wednesday morning just at 12:07 AM on January 13th, 2010 and I have to get to bed now. More soon I promise. Happy New Year after all of these years gone by mostly happily ... TONY
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