Letters – Fall 2015
Trumbo And Lear
What a great issue! [Summer 2015] Your article “The Brave One” jogged a memory of ŷڱƵ that never went away — my brief friendship with Dalton Trumbo’s (A&S ex’28) daughter, Niki (A&S’62), in the spring semester of 1959. All too soon it was June; she graduated, filled her snazzy Packard convertible with her stuff and headed home to California. As an alumna, didn’t she deserve a sentence in your piece?
The other article that sent me time-tripping was Paul Danish’s (Hist’65) column, “Shakespeare to Remember.” This time I was yanked back to 1961. I was walking across the campus on a perfect early summer day when I saw some of my theater major friends talking to an animated man with wild hair and beard, and I thought, “That must be our Lear.” It was he, the Lear that Mr. Danish and I had the rare experience of seeing on a high platform, stage left, as he declaimed, “Blow winds and crack your cheeks” with a stormy light show behind him in the Flatirons. No wonder that it was branded into Mr. Danish’s brain.
Thanks for the memories.
William Scott Hommon
(Hist’61, MA’63)
Carmel, Calif.
Remembering Vetsville
My family lived in Vetsville in the early 1950s when my dad was going to school. My mom worked and I went to nursery school, and later I walked to kindergarten at Lincoln Elementary School. My sister was born while we lived there. We started off in a trailer, and I have a vague memory of having to use a communal shower. We graduated to a Quonset and were thrilled to be there. It had a kitchen, living room and two bedrooms. My mom made a little garden in front and grew pansies and other flowers. We had a refrigerator, but I remember ice being delivered to some of the buildings and I was told that it was for ice boxes being used in place of refrigerators — in retrospect, I don’t know if that is how the large blocks of ice were actually being used. One of my memories is of the kids “walking the wires.” There were some kind of waterways (creeks?) that were covered with some kind of woven wire to prevent the kids from getting in the water. So the challenge was to see if you could walk on the wires without having a foot slip through.
Pamela Graybeal
Stafford, Va.
Models To Follow
Wherever they are in America, East Africans set an exemplary model for ambitious, hard-working and successful immigrant citizens. As a Sudanese-American immigrant myself and a ŷڱƵ graduate, I am so proud of these young successful brothers and sisters from Ethiopia and Eritrea [See “Addis in Aurora,” Spring 2015]. I wish them all more success in their professional endeavors.
Saad Khalil
(MEcon’86, Phd’90)
Falls Church, Va.
Yorick’s Skull
I loved your stories about outdoor theater [“Boulder Beat,” Summer 2015]. Here are two more from Fairbanks, Alaska, where we have daylight all day and night in the summer.
It was Hamlet. It was clouding up with rain impending. During the intermission, many people left but others went to our cars to get umbrellas, which we needed. We sat in the rain until Act V, when Hamlet picked up Yorick’s skull and the sun came out just as he began to talk to it. “Alas, poor Yorick…”
The other was one of the romances — can’t remember which — but it was taking a long time for the lovers to get together. Near the end when they finally got to kiss, at the critical moment of the kiss, a squirrel in the trees above started chirping to the delight of the audience.
Outdoor theater is great!
Nancy Smoyer&Բ;(&;’65)
Fairbanks, Alaska