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Web Exclusives:
Under the Ivy February
25, 2004: To
fallen friends During my tenure as editor of PAW, a tremendous brouhaha developed after I announced that I would shorten the length of Memorials from 200 words to 150. Poison pens were lifted, coups plotted, tears shed, hairs pulled, and teeth gnashed, as alumni fretted not only how they would manage to remember their fallen comrades but, undoubtedly, how their own achievements would be summed up in such a small space. (The tumult brings to mind a recent Yogi Berra-ism: "Boy, I hope I never see my name up there," he whispered to a teammate last summer as the names of Yankee greats who had died in the past year were flashed upon the stadium scoreboard.) However, reading through PAW obituaries from 60 years ago helps put the concerns in a different light. These memorials are long, for the most part, yes, but deeply felt. The death of Frank Leonard Kellogg 1894, for example, recorded in the February 13, 1942, PAW, was "a great shock to his classmates, particularly those who had been with him at the Midwinter Dinner only the week before at which time he seemed in very good health and was his usual cheerful self." "Popsy," it is added, "was a regular attendant at all Class Reunions, where his genial and sympathetic nature assured him a warm welcome." Some of the memorials are poignant simply on their facts alone: John K. Culver Jr. '38 died in an automobile accident in January 1942. "With John at the time of the tragic mishap was his wife, formerly Miriam Beard, to whom he had been married less than two weeks," the obituary notes. "She also was killed." The memorial goes on to say that his death was a "profound shock to his many friends. His ready wit made him the most entertaining of companions; his sincerity and courage made him the truest of friends." Similarly, the February 20 issue of PAW describes the death of Culver's young classmate, Fuller Patterson, "the first member of our Class to be killed in action. He was killed in action over German held territory on December 7, 1941." The obituary quotes from a letter to another classmate, in which Patterson wrote, "If this is where I get mine, up there where it is cold and clear, on a battlefield where the dead don't lie about and rot, where there is no mud and stench, but only a blue sky above where a man is free and on his own ... if I get mine up there, there must be no regrets." Some of the obituaries reveal more about their author than their subject. The heartfelt memory of Arthur Leonard 1897 was prepared, it is stated at the outset, by his classmate Dr. Wilfred M. Post. Dr. Post remembers that he and Arthur were "the best of friends," serving together on the Nassau Lit. Arthur, "with his high literary ideals and his ability to turn out material of excellent quality on short notice, did not hesitate, as editor-in-chief, to veto anything he thought unworthy of publication, whether it came from brother editor or underclassman. Sometimes the experience was a little humiliating but we respected his judgment and it was good for us and better still for the Lit." Little surprise, then, that the two friends' "ways parted after leaving Princeton." Then there are the magnum opuses of memorials, the epics that
one can imagine the writers struggled over, finding it impossible
to sum up such a great life in any number of words. (These, we imagine,
are the remembrances to which all of us secretly aspire.) Stewart
Paton 1886 earned such a masterwork, a full column on his achievements
as doctor, writer, psychiatrist, veteran, Princeton faculty member,
and man of science. The reverential tone of the memorial begins
in its first paragraph: "To few men is it given to so justify
an appellation of admiration and of affection as it was the good
fortune of Stewart Paton to do. From his youth his comrade had called
him Felix. That he was: in felicity of soul and of spirit; in gentleness
of heart and of mind, with no sacrifice of strength." Even Yogi might like to stick around to read one like that.
Jane Martin ’89 is PAW's former editor-in-chief. You can reach her at paw@princeton.edu
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