A Dropout Settles in at Drive-In

Twenty years after taking a leave of absence from Harvard, Christopher D. Thorpe of Newville, Penn., works two jobs.

By day, he's a waterworks operator for a rural township water authority. By night, he manages Twirly Top, a popular local drive-in restaurant.

And Thorpe is still--technically speaking--a Harvard student. Originally a member of the Class of 1980, the fine arts concentrator took time off after his junior year and hasn't been back.

Now, Thorpe lives in a house he built using materials from an old barn, 10 miles from the nearest town, on a hill overlooking the Appalachians. And as for his status as a Harvard student, "lots of people know but nobody cares," he says.

For Thorpe, his education was not a means to an end.

"I personally believe that the greatest things that men and women do are the things they do that don't earn them any money," he says.

Unlike many former Harvard students who owe their positions to the diplomas hanging on their walls, bulking up his resume was the last thing on Thorpe's mind when he enrolled.

"All I was looking for was an education," he says. " I didn't necessarily need that education to shape my career. I just needed it to shape me as an individual."

Thorpe adds that his idealistic educational philosophy made him something of a minority at Harvard.

"There may never have been another student at Harvard that thought that," he says.

After three years at a public high school in Carlisle, Penn., Thorpe transferred to private Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., with the aim of gaining admission to Harvard.

But he faced an unexpected obstacle. His senior year, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. At the time, he says, the survival rate for those afflicted with the disease was about 20 percent.

Although he survived his bout with cancer, the experience changed him permanently.

"From that point, I had a really different perspective on what was important," Thorpe says.

He spent a post-graduate year at Andover before applying to Harvard, "the only place I wanted to continue my education."

"Maybe I was foolish, but I had an idea that Harvard would be a place where there would be no closed doors for me...no limit to what I could do," Thorpe says.

He was wait-listed. But without any other place to go--Thorpe did not apply anywhere else--he attended a local college for a year. Eventually, he transferred to Harvard.

And while Thorpe says Harvard was well worth the wait, at the end of his sophomore year he took a leave of absence and returned to Pennsylvania. There he joined the local Teamsters union and worked at a truck terminal.

In 1979, Thorpe found himself working near Three Mile Island, which that year was the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters in the nation's history. The area was devastated, and Thorpe says he was "quite happy" to return to Cambridge for his junior year.

But nine months later, he was again restless. He took his second leave of absence. For the moment, he says, he had learned enough.

"It just felt like I was at a point where my education was very satisfying," Thorpe says.

Now one of his passions is maintaining Twirly Top--a summer-months-only restaurant that was built in the mid-1950s.

"It's a real piece of roadside America, which today is mostly vanished," he says.

He became involved with Twirly Top while he was working as a self-employed timber contractor, not long after his departure from Cambridge. It was there that he met Linda Sedell, now his fiancee, at the drive-in window.

Four years ago, when Sedell's parents wanted to sell the restaurant, Thorpe and Sedell decided to buy it. Now, after finishing the day at the water authority, Thorpe heads over to Twirly Top. He's there six nights a week.

Thorpe does intend to return to Harvard eventually, even if it's during his retirement.

"I'll come back long enough to finish up that part of my life," Thorpe says.

But he has firm plans to spend the rest of his life in south central Pennsylvania where he enjoys the quieter way of life and the connections to his roots.

Thorpe says he has never regretted his return to his family and the region where he grew up.

"I met a man years ago whom everyone loved and respected. And he never spoke of his job," Thorpe says. "I'm sure people knew what he did for a living, but it was never a topic of conversation-it was the rest of his life that people talked about.

"I had a lot of respect for that man."

Besides, he says, "what was I going to do in south central Pennsylvania with a degree from Harvard?"