College Life At Harvard Left Its Mark on Fineberg

Provost Harvey V. Fineberg '67 arrived at Harvard in 1963 as an undergraduate--and never left.

Nearly four decades after he came to Harvard Yard, Fineberg is the University's second-in-command and holds degrees from the College, the Kennedy School of Government, the School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School.

Now he is being touted by University insiders as a possible successor to outgoing President Neil L. Rudenstine.

But before his transformation into an administrator, Fineberg was a student, even a (self-described) nerd. He was a trumpet player, and a radio announcer, and awkward with girls.

Harvard College was the beginning of his long friendship with the University--a friendship that has lasted nearly 40 years.

How Fineberg Got to Harvard

Harvey was sure he wanted to go to Harvard--so sure that he only applied to two other schools: Yale and Columbia.

In the fall of his senior year at Pittsburgh's Taylor Allderdice High School, he came to Cambridge for an interview with then-Dean of Admissions Fred L. Glimp '50.

He called the University from his room at the Hotel Continental to confirm his appointment and was so thrown off by the broad Boston accent of the operator who answered the phone that he hung up, thinking he had gotten the wrong number.

When he called again, he figured out that "Hahvahd" meant "Harvard"--and he made it to his interview on time.

"I was not too calm," he admits. "I always wanted to go to Harvard."

Harvey was the second of three sons of Saul and Miriam Fineberg of Pittsburgh, neither of who had the opportunity to go to college because of the Great Depression.

All three of their sons were Ivy League-bound: the oldest went to the University of Pennsylvania, the youngest went to Princeton--and Harvey came to "Hahvahd."

When he was an undergraduate, only men lived in the Yard. Coats and ties were mandatory for meals. Mr. & Mrs. Bartley's Burger Cottage had just opened. At Elsie's on Mt. Auburn Street--since replaced by the Wrap--he could get his favorite roast beef sandwich for less than a dollar. But he never, ever went in Mass. Hall, where his current office is.

Harvard didn't even have a provost.

"It's interesting how much is different and how much is the same," he says.

The Beginning

Fineberg was in Wigglesworth F-11 when President John F. Kennedy '40 was shot.

He remembers it distinctly. He was sitting at his desk, listening to classical music on a large, red portable radio.

The music stopped. The cars passing by his window stopped. And Harvard stopped, paralyzed by the death of one of its own.

"Everyone took that personally," Fineberg says.

It was, he says, the defining moment of his first year at Harvard College--the year that marked the beginning of a long-lasting friendship between the young man and the institution that molded him.

A biology course under General Education, the Core's precursor, helped persuade Fineberg that he wanted to go to medical school. He became a psychology concentrator.

Harvey shared the three-bedroom suite in Wigglesworth F-11 with John A. Gresham '67 and Elliot B. Little '67. The three were very different, Gresham remembers.

"He spent an awful lot of time in his room with the door shut," Gresham says of Fineberg. "He was a very sociable guy, but he really worked hard."

But although he worked hard, Harvey was more than just a student. He was an accomplished musician who played both the trumpet and the piano.

He also decided to join the band.

It was there that he met David Rose '67, a fellow trumpet player and psychology concentrator who would be his roommate during junior and senior year.

"We were in a section together and ended up doing a paper together, which I have to say because of my influence was probably the lowest grade of Harvey's career," Rose says.

The two became closer when they both ended up in Lowell House--Fineberg's first choice of residence in pre-randomization days.

When they both took an introductory psychology course that met at 9 a.m., Rose was contracted to wake Fineberg up in time to get there.

"He had trouble getting up in the morning," Rose says. "It was an ordeal to wake Harvey up. It's the only time of day when Harvey's not pleasant."

Finally, Rose issued an ultimatum.

"I didn't want to go through the ordeal and have him greet me with this incredibly pained and unhappy impression," Rose says. "I told him I wouldn't anymore unless he woke up with a smile. So he did. He would give me a big smile. Totally faked."

"David was better in the morning than I was," Fineberg says.

Rose also remembers Fineberg's meticulous practice habits.

"He practiced probably an hour a day for every day of his undergraduate life," Rose says.

Fineberg practiced on the Chicoring grand piano in the tower room of Lowell House, which was also where he played trumpet with Rose. The two often played fanfares for the tradition of Lowell House High Table. And he joined student radio station WHRB, where he worked the midnight shift. ("The only time I was awake," he jokes.)

Fineberg was also a part of Schneider's Band, which he describes as the "idiot fringe of the Harvard band." Schneider's Band was a group of Harvard musicians who would don humorous get-ups and serenade women's colleges with their somewhat off-color act. The aim, Rose says, was to meet eligible young women.

"Radcliffe girls were bored with this entirely," Rose says.

A Hot Date

Fineberg represented Harvard to the mainstream press for the first time his junior year.

David and Harvey were approached to be part of a photo essay in the Christian Science Monitor. The piece was intended to show a typical weekend in the Ivy League. But confronted with this challenge, the duo decided they would be anything but typical.

The most notorious photo of those that ran in the magazine shows Harvey and his date cooking dinner in their fireplace. It was the first and last time they did that, Rose says.

"I think we were both relieved that it was not in The Crimson," he adds. "We were not big date types and it made us look like we were fabulous with women.... He had plenty of dates, but that wasn't what would stand out about Harvey."

On one occasion, Fineberg's pursuit of women led him to broaden his education.

Fineberg went to a science class and noticed an attractive girl sitting in front of him.

"He wanted to try to meet her in some way, but like all of us he was not capable of talking to her," Rose says.

Fineberg tailed her to her next class--a course in modern Japanese literature, something in which he had no background. But the course sounded interesting.

Fineberg ended up staying, but he never ended up getting to know the girl. He doesn't even know if she enrolled.

The Quiet One

In Boston parlance, Fineberg was--and is--"wicked smaht."

According to Rose, Fineberg was what today's Harvard would term Group I. But he wasn't a Lamont-dweller. And he wasn't an attention-grabber.

"He didn't need everybody else to know he was getting A's," Rose says. "It didn't come at the cost of everything else."

"He didn't run for office and he didn't do anything to draw attention to himself," Rose adds.

Trying out for the position of student conductor of the band was Fineberg's one try for a leadership position, Rose recalls. Fineberg did well but didn't nab the job.

"I think he wasn't flamboyant enough," Rose says. "It was meant to be much sillier than Harvey could have been. It needed someone who was willing to be gross."

"I doubt people in the House knew how smart he was or how solid he was," Rose says.

Rose says that while Fineberg was clearly extraordinary to his roommates, other people might not have noticed.

But Zeph Stewart, a classics professor who was then Master of Lowell House, remembers Fineberg as "a very impressive young man."

"I thought he was very able and very personable," Stewart says. "I felt I knew him particularly well."

In those days, Fineberg remembers, Lowell was very different. One difference was the dining hall. Food was served in front of the fireplace, and boys came to meals--even breakfast--decked out in coat and tie. He favored one particular tie for meals.

"By the end of senior year you could have made soup out of that tie," Fineberg says.

Fineberg called his family every Sunday night all through college, went to all the football games ("more people did that in those days," Rose says) and always had time to hang out with his roommates.

According to Rose, everyone wanted to room with Fineberg.

"And I won," he adds.

Harvey was a fun, warm and generous roommate, Rose says, adding that he also inspired tremendous respect. One benefit of sharing Harvey's quarters was the regular shipment of his grandmother's cookies. ("Fabulous," Rose remembers.)

Another was his organizational skills. Fineberg kept a debt sheet on the door ("as a presage for him doing the University finances," Rose jokes) so everyone was always clear on who owed what to whom.

Oops

Fineberg wasn't always so put together. Like any college student, he had his share of hijinks.

One such episode involved his fridge. As a resourceful sophomore in Lowell I-23, Fineberg was determined to move his fridge into his bathroom to conserve space. But to get the fridge to the desired spot, he and his roommates had to lift it over the toilet.

"As it was being carried, a bulb containing the refrigerant reservoir in the bottom of the unit clipped the side of the toilet and broke off--and the liquid refrigerant came pouring out of the bottom of the refrigerator into the toilet bowl!" Fineberg says. "This seemed funny until we were nearly overcome by an incredibly noxious gas."

Fineberg's entryway was forced to evacuate while the Cambridge Rescue Service--sporting gas masks and protective gear--removed the refrigerator and placed it under a tree in the Lowell courtyard.

"I suspect it was the first, and maybe only, time that the Cambridge fire department rescued a refrigerator sitting on top of a toilet bowl," Fineberg says.

Do Pigeons Dream of...

Fineberg wrote his senior thesis on the sleep of pigeons, the experimental animal of choice in the psychology department.

He first became interested in the issue of sleep as a sophomore.

"Since I wasn't getting much I thought it was an interesting discussion," he jokes. He did a paper on REM sleep and dreaming.

By senior year, he was performing minor surgery on pigeons' skulls so he could monitor their stages of activity and sleep via EEG.

He constructed an experimental apparatus that used sensors to track their eye movements. To do this, he had to anesthetize the pigeons and implant electrodes on their skulls.

Wires ran out of their heads into tiny pigeon "backpacks," and from there into his measuring apparatus.

But Fineberg had a small problem. Pigeons can turn their heads all the way around. And his pigeons kept ripping their wires out.

He was at his wits' end when he hit upon an unorthodox solution. It was 2 a.m. and he was sitting in the outer office of his advisor's suite. Suddenly he looked up and saw the phone--and the phone cord.

Fineberg removed the phone from the wall and cut off just enough curly phone cord to replace the pigeons' wires. Then he resoldered the phone into the wall.

"I never got asked about it," he says. "And I never explained. I kept checking to make sure it still worked."

It did--and so did his experiment. The pigeons couldn't tear up the phone cord. Fineberg got his measurements--and graduated magna cum laude with the Class of 1967.

Rose says he always knew Fineberg would end up doing something impressive--although he's surprised his ex-roommate is still at Harvard.

"C. Everett Koop would have struck me as plausible," Rose says, referring to the former Surgeon General.

"[Fineberg has] become just a total Harvard groupie, and I never would have thought that," he says.

--Staff writer Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan can be reached at vganesh@fas.harvard.edu.