What Were They Thinking?
A beaming Stanley King '03, second from the left in the foreground, stands on the steps of the Converse Memorial Library on the morning of Friday, November 11, 1932, shortly before his inauguration as the 11th president of Amherst. The uniformed man in the background is an unidentified aide to one of the dignitaries in attendance, Massachusetts Gov. Joseph B. Ely (Williams '02). The college's new president is with three former presidents—including, far right, Calvin Coolidge 1895, president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. King embraces two of his predecessors: Alexander Meiklejohn (1912-1924), left, and Arthur Stanley Pease (1927-1932). Perhaps someone told him, "We should get a picture of you with your predecessors," and someone else saw Coolidge frowning nearby and said deferentially, "You need to be in the picture too, Mr. President!" A bittersweet moment? King and Coolidge had both served on the Board of Trustees when it forced the peppery Meiklejohn to resign as president less than 10 years earlier. (Meiklejohn's difficulties with the faculty, and with personal finances, were detailed in the Fall 1982 and Spring 1983 issues of Amherst.) After King's inauguration, Meiklejohn wrote to the alumni magazine: "Nine years before I had left the College in the midst of agony and misunderstanding. And now, by action of the President [King] and trustees, I was here once more as a friend."
Keeping the Faith
Photographer Helen Bodian got a big smile from a lifetime Amherst football fan, Decius Beebe Veasey '50 of Haverhill, Mass., when he attended the Amherst-Williams game at Williams on November 10. Veasey has attended every Amherst-Williams gridiron contest in the last 55 years—starting with his freshman year in 1946. This time the game was one of the hardest-fought ever: both teams entered Weston Field undefeated. Williams finally prevailed in overtime, 23 to 20.