50th Reunion
I left Amherst in January, 1943, and entered the Army in March. After six months in ASTP I was assigned to a field artillery battalion in the 95th Division. I grew up with the Burton twins, Robert and Steve, who were in ’45 at Amherst with me. They ended up in the same division but in the infantry. However, throughout the war I computed firing data in the artillery command post along with Dick Mayo-Smith, Amherst '44. We were involved in liberating Metz, and in closing the Ruhr pocket. We were brought back promptly to go to the Pacific and were in Camp Shelby, Mississippi on VJ day. The result was that I was virtually out of the Army by October. The Burton twins and I decided to transfer to Harvard and got in the first post-war class. I majored in economics, became a devout Keynesian and interested in the economics of the labor movement and social welfare which was to have a tremendous influence on my career. I graduated magna cum laude and entered the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. There I ran into Sherry Warwick, Amherst '44, who was also doing graduate studies. Following graduation in 1949 I worked in social work positions as a caseworker, social service planner and researcher in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Syracuse and Harrisburg before joining the faculty at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work in West Hartford, CT, in 1961. Prior to that I had been married for five years with no children that ended in divorce. Being near Amherst I went up for President Kennedy's visit. As I, along with those who were there, got very close looks at him that day, his assassination just three weeks later was a real trauma.
In July 1978 I married a widow, Barbara Codding, and acquired two stepsons, Guy and Lewis, who for the last twenty years have lived with their families on the island of Martha's Vineyard. I am very close to them and visit often for holidays and summer vacations. Being from the midwest it really freaks me out to get on a boat and go to an island even though it is only a forty-five minute ride. In 1968 I took leave from the University to get a doctorate at the Florence Heller School of Social Welfare at Brandeis which I completed in 1971. Sadly Barbara died of breast cancer at the same time.
