When Camelot Came to Harvard

The Class of '61 entered Harvard in an era of complacency, convertible Thunderbirds and "the rebel without a cause." They emerged with a Kennedy-inspired optimism to do what they could for a country caught up in the civil rights movement and Vietnam War protests.

In the spring of 1961, the big issue on campus incited more than 4000 students to riot and brought out the Cambridge police with tear gas bombs. But the two-day long protest was against changing the diplomas from Latin to English; the real-world problems of civil rights and military involvement raged with nary a mention in the Yard. News of Freedom Rider arrests, fighting in Laos, and arms control was virtually ignored as the class concentrated on achieving an unprecedented number of honors degrees.

"Our class can rightly be portrayed as a natural fabric about to change. At the time we had no inkling. The headlines about riots and Kennedy ordering troops to Cuba were just rumblings to us," says Richard B. Barthelmes '61, advertising director for Gourmet magazine.

But then the junior senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy '40, won the White House and the Class of '61 accepted the youthful president's inaugural challenge. They acted within the system to build a new society--some joined the newly created Peace Corps, while others served in the Justice Department, the State Department and the armed services. The rest stuck with the private sector, from acting to medicine to publishing, but carrying on with the same spirit of channelled cando.

"It was the end of an era of smugness and security and self-congratulation," says William L. (Jacobson) Tynan '61. In the happy-go-lucky days of the Eisenhower era, the Class of 1961 was incensed by a $250 tuition hike from the original $1000 a year fee. In the classroom, Dean of the Faculty McGeorge Bundy lectured about the importance of U.S. involvement in Indochina and the relevance of the domino theory. In Government 180, "Principles of International Politics," then-associate professor Henry A. Kissinger '50 told an overflow crowd of 350 that "students sitting at my feet flatter my ego."

As freshmen the class set off all the fire alarms in the Yard for fun; then they orchestrated a sit-in to protest the inedible dining hall fare and disrupt the traffic in the Square. The all-consuming desires were for sport, study, and alcohol. "My main concern was beer," recalls Barthelmes.

"I remember seeing SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] on campus and thinking what's the point, what can college students do?" says Tynan, a reporter for Time magazine.

But at the end of senior year the Class of '61 was up in arms. "We were being cheated out of a birthright," says Peter J. Bloom '61, an international development expert. Bloom banded together with 4000 other Harvard students to place his life on the line in the face of Cambridge police. They blocked traffic on Memorial Drive and hurled firecrackers and eggs. The police retaliated with tear gas and made six arrests. Luckily, someone was on hand to supply the vicious mob with ice cream cones. All in the name of Latin diplomas.

"It was like a fraternity prank--foolish," says former Lowell House resident Richard H. Linden '61, now a member of the Massachusetts civil service commission.

"The fact that there was a riot over something that silly compared to issues such as nuclear weapons and hunger is indicative of the innocence and immaturity that all changed in the 60s," he says. "[The protest] shows how little we had on our minds," says John G. Ryden '61, the director of Yale University Press.

But the mood was slowly changing. A few members of the class fought for equality in the South before senior year, but their involvement was "looked at askance, as a jerky thing to do," says Linden. "When it was met with violence, it was brought to reality."

By the fall of their senior year, most members of the class were eligible to vote for the first time, at the age of 21. Kennedy was the favorite son and won 62 percent of the Class of '61 vote. When Kennedy brought Camelot from the Senate to the White House, the Class revelled in the glory of every Harvardian's favorite alum.

"We all thought that to graduate from Harvard was to graduate from the best of our generation. Kennedy affirmed that we could have an effect on the world," says Tynan, who acted in touring companies for Broadway shows and in a soap opera before going to work for Time.

When in January 1961, the President arrived in the Yard for a Board of Overseers meeting, the former Winthrop resident was promptly mobbed. "An enormous wave of affection and triumph took hold of people," says Tynan. "It was an affirmation of our importance and significance. He was one of our own." Tynan recalls Kennedy's quip at the time: "I've come to talk to President Pusey about your grades."

"It was an upbeat era, with an optimistic outlook on the world," says Kelso F. Sutton '61, executive vice president of Time Inc. "We were a transition class looking ahead."

Sutton recalls spotting Kennedy, replete with black suit and tophat, surveying the Yard "as if he owned it." At the time Sutton took economics with John Kenneth Galbraith, Warburg Professor of Economics Emeritus, and history with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. '38. "It was fun to see professors and people I worked with going into the administration."

"Kennedy harnessed the brain trust," says Ryden. Speculation about who would be the next pick for the Kennedy cabinet ravaged the Yard and nearly all such speculations turned out right.

The Kennedy-Nixon race started the class thinking about real problems, says Bloom. "Up to that point we didn't talk of world issues. "We were placid and dormant," Bloom says. Kennedy changed that.

In 1961 Kennedy established the Peace Corps, the Alliance for Progress, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), programs which "captured a notion of idealism," says says Daniel J. Givelber '61, now the dean ofNortheastern Law School. At the same time thesegroups provided "a constructive way" to deal withworld problems, says Bloom, who worked in Africafor 20 years for USAID and now heads itsAfrican-Asian division.

The combination of ideals and structured meansfor action sparked many members of the class tocarry the nation's torch of public service."Kennedy probably influenced me to go toWashington to work for the next 20 years," saysMichael Abbell '61, an international criminallawyer who spent most of his career in the JusticeDepartment.

When Givelber, who did not get involved inpolitical issues until he graduated, hit theworking world, he joined the civil rights crusadewith a month-long legal stint in Mississippi. "Ihad an idea I ought to devote some time to publicservice and civil rights was the time to do it,"he says. "It was clear that this was likely thegreat moral struggle of my life."

Like their professors who had been snatched wayin 1961 to bolster the Kennedy Administration,some members of the class who headed to Washingtonwere give direct responsibility for pioneering newfrontiers. College years spent on the footballfield and in the library, far away from any civilrights activism, were the end of "Eisenhower-eraapathy" for men like Terry F. Lenzner '61. Hisfirst job out of law school, with the JusticeDepartment, led him to Mississippi to investigatethe murders of three civil rights activists, whichhelped galvanize a growing national indignationabout abuses of Black civil rights. Lenzner wenton to head the national legal service program forthe poor, worked on the special Senate committeeinvestigating Watergate, and drafted the subpoenademanding the Watergate tapes from PresidentRichard M. Nixon in 1974.

Lenzner says his career proved to him theefficacy of working within the system to effectchange. Although half of the president's cabinetat one point said that programs they headed hadbeen sued by Lenzner's legal aid service on behalfof poor clients, the service was made independentand continues today. "I retain a strong confidencein the system," says Lenzner. But attendingcollege in a period of pro-administrationquiescence "might not have been helpful" for hiscareer, he adds.

"The civil rights problem was alien to me,"Lenzner says. "If I had been exposed to theproblem and had more time to think about how toresolve it, I might have been more effective thanI was."

Other classmates who started out working withinthe system realized that a better society wouldnot come about in the traditional way. "We thoughtthat if you voted for the right people and if theychose the right advisors then society would changefor the better," Ryden says. "Instead, societytaught us that if you wanted change in America,then you had to work from the outside."

Donald F. Herr '61, who drafts NATO policy forthe Defense Department these days, had similarmisgivings. The magna cum laude graduate says hewas in Cambridge when Fidel Castro received ahero's welcome on campus in 1959, adding that"Castro did not seem quite the ogre that thegovernment made him out to be" at that time.

When Kennedy bolstered the nation's involvementin Latin American affairs, Herr decided to involvehimself in the inner workings of policy. "I hopedI could make some difference if I got ingovernment and changed policy by working aroundthe edges."

As a foreign service officer, Herr wrote areport questioning U.S. policies in Cuba, in hopesthat "somewhere up the line things would berethought." Instead when "nothing did change,"Herr left the State Department in 1972. He laterreturned as a policy advisor for NATO.

Jonathan Z. Larsen '61, who is now a freelancewriter, says he approached the New Frontier withrenewed patriotism. "When Kennedy sounded thebugle, I was more than ready to follow." But theturmoil of the late '60s taught Larsen, who coveredthe tumultous 1968 Democratic convention inChicago for Time magazine, that the solution forchange "was to openly challenge the system." Asbureau chief for Time magazine in Saigon in theearly 1970s, Larsen grew disillusioned with "theanarchy" he saw in almost half of the AmericanGI's on drugs. "Kennedy would have beenpessimistic himself."

Some members of the class say that underlyingtheir lack of activism against the system was adissent, voiced in more subtle ways. In late nightbull sessions in cafes along Mt. Auburn Streetthey articulated their dissatisfaction with theirparents' value systems and found a spokesman inthe music of Bob Dylan, says Larsen.

"We were cynical among ourselves. We reactedagainst the Norman Rockwell self-satisfied visionof America," says Larsen. "We thought there had tobe more to life than that.