What I Learned From the Class of ’61

                        

These days a fragment of a Rogers and Hammerstein song keeps running through my aging brain.  Something about as a teacher “from your pupils you’ll be taught…”  But singing was the last thing on my mind on that September day in 1957 when I — twenty-one years old — first stepped in a classroom to face an expectant group of freshmen at Marquette University, the first of two classes to be faced that day.

Copus Hall, MU College of Journalism

That I was there was mere chance.  Bob Dufour, the School of Journalism instructor for all the school’s special English classes, had left the campus temporarily to be in residence one year at the university of Wisconsin while getting a PhD.  Bob was a terrific teacher, a mentor from whom I and others  learned an immense amount about writing.  The fabled Dean of Journalism, Jeremiah L. O’Sullivan, had divided Bob’s teaching load between two of us graduate assistants, allocating to me approximately forty students.

In our final interview, the Dean casually mentioned that I also was to be the “faculty advisor” to the forty, expected to meet with each at least twice a semester.  In other words: “The blind will lead the blind”.  Then he casually mentioned that he also was appointing me faculty advisor to Sigma Delta Chi, the journalism fraternity.  Bob had been the advisor and now no other faculty member was willing to step in.  When I expressed concern on obvious grounds that I was still a member, O’Sullivan said take the job or SDX would be abolished.  I capitulated.

The Young Instructor

That was just the tip of the Dairy Queen cone.  In addition to lesson planning, the classroom, and reading and grading forty papers weekly, I also was attempting to get an MA in journalism.  That meant going to classes where anything less than a “B” was unacceptable, studying for comprehensive exams, and beginning work on a thesis.  My personal life was also a bit, shall we say, problematic. Cooking for myself for the first time, I trembled on the brink of malnutrition.  The summer and fall had seen me emotionally torn between two young women, both of whom had invited me to meet their parents.  Finally, my usual routine included the 

11:45 PM “last call” at the bar of the Stratford Hotel.

Teaching the Class of ’61 turned out to be highlight of my days.  Although some students, particularly those with sub-par high school backgrounds, struggled at first, in time and with practice virtually all of the students improved markedly.  They had enlisted in a school where writing was paramount and seemed to understand that a new writing assignment every week, while burdensome, was important.

Being a student advisor proved to have its moments.  One young woman early came to see me to say she was having difficulties “because I am thinking of getting married.”  When I inquired whether it was someone she had just met on campus or someone back home, she replied:  “No one in particular, I’m just thinking of getting married.”  As her faculty mentor, my comment was: “Happy hunting.”  Soon after she transferred from Marquette.

When a male student handed in a piece he had written for class about the Jehovah Witnesses, I called him in to ask why he selected that topic, gently suggesting it was best to take a subject close at hand.  He rocked me by replying:  “I am a Jehovah’s Witness.”  Having checked earlier, I noted that he had said “Catholic” on his admissions form. He explained: “I am a Catholic too.  My girl friend is a Witness and I am boring from within….”  That left me speechless.  The paper earned a B.

The Teacher Makes a Mistake

As the school year ground to a close in May 1958, I had still not been evaluated for my classroom skills by a member of regular English faculty.  By the luck of the draw, the head of the department showed up, a professor I did not know.  During the class I attempted a blackboard diagram of a complicated sentence. Almost immediately hands went up and voices raised to tell me I had done it wrong.   Turning to my evaluator, I said:  “You may have thought I did the diagram in error to test the class. No, I got it wrong and they got it right. These are great people.”

That was all the Class of ’61 needed.  The kids figuratively were “bouncing of the walls” to participate in the discussion of sentence structure, paragraph formation, and the elements of style.  My subsequent rating as a classroom instructor was complimentary.  Dean O’Sullivan was pleased.

After I left Marquette for the Air Force in May of the following year, I never again taught English rhetoric and writing skills.  Or freshmen.  My subsequent experience was teaching political science to upperclassmen and post-graduates, frequently adults.  No class, however, matches my memories of the Class of ’61.  To quote Philosopher Bertrand Russell, they taught me that: “Education is not to be viewed as something like filling a vessel with water but, rather, assisting a flower to grow in its own way.”   Those “flowers” did grow.  Many of the class went on to have distinguished careers in journalism and other forms of communication. I have followed their trajectories with pride.

Note:  This post is derived from a piece I wrote following a “virtual” reunion of the Class of ’61 in late June of 2020 while the pandemic was still raging in America. Via ZOOM, I was connected with former students and others from my Marquette days, many of whom I had not seen in years.  The organizers of these reunions have been very gracious over the years to invite me and my wife, Paula, who was Dean O’Sullivan’s secretary.  We have been able to attend only one or two, and those years ago.  After the recent get-together participants were asked to contribute reminisces and the above was the result.

What the Chinese ARE Drinking

More than a decade ago I did a post for this blog entitled, “What Were the Chinese Drinking?”  It was an exploration of the origins of a ceramic bottle, like the one shown here, widely found in the United States and often identified by American collectors as a Chinese wine bottle.  As the result of personal experience, I was convinced that the Chinese were drinking a distilled spirit that I had imbibed in China in July 1976.

I was among a group of U.S. Congress staff aides that had been invited to China and were staying in Beijing’s Peace Hotel when the Great China Earthquake, one estimated to have killed a half million or more people, shook the city and caused our group hastily to leave the next day by special train to sites further south.  After two weeks on the road, we returned to the capital and the Peace Hotel.

During our trip we had been feted with a drink our hosts called “moutai.”  Several of us had developed a taste for it.  This highly potent liquor is made from rice or sometimes sorghum. It has an aroma and taste that some have called reminiscent of turpentine and cat urine. Famously, President Richard Nixon swallowed maotai and grimaced as he toasted Zhou Enlai during his groundbreaking trip to China.

On our last night in Shanghai before returning home, a several of us were partying with maotai but quickly ran out. Very enthusiastic, I ran to a nearby tourist store to buy another bottle. My recollection is that it cost only a dollar or two.  Four of us continued to drink up the new bottle before going to bed.  The next morning I woke up with what has been called the “dreaded maotai sweats.” A not-so-subtle aroma seemed to be exuding from every pore of my body. And my head was pounding. The experience even 44 years later is unforgettable.

My analysis that the Chinese in America were importing a liquor called maotai was only partially right.  Moutai is a brand name for a particular distilled spirit, the generic name for which is “baijiu,”  pronounced something like “bye joe.”  Despite this mistake, that post has been one of my most popular, attracting some 5,300 “hits” to date.  Among those looking in was an anonymous descendent of the Wing Lee family, apparently prompted by the image of the bottle shown here.  That individual provided this additional information:

“My grandfather was the third generation owner of the Wing Lee Wai company, producing Chinese wine and spirits in China, Hong Kong and Macau. The twin storks on the bottle are our family crest. It is the mark of a clan of high standing, and my grandfather's uncle was a Mandarin, an advisor to the Chinese Emperor.

“One of the most famous of the Wing Lee Wai concoctions was a rose liquor, which was brewed from the finest Rosa Damascena petals sourced in their native Turkey. Other popular beverages they made included an alcoholic cola drink, long before Coca Cola hit the mainstream.

“My father still holds the handwritten recipes for these amazing concoctions, many of which contained unusual Chinese herbs. The simple ceramic bottles were hand thrown and glazed on the family property and the shape was traditionally determined by the kind of spirit they contained.”

More recently the subject of Chinese tippling was exhaustively covered by author Derek Sandhaus in his 2019 book, “Drunk in China:  Baijiu and the World’s Oldest Drinking Culture.”  The book takes an lively and encompassng look at the ages old tradition of Chinese drinking such spirits. They come in many forms and may contain as high as 53 percent alcohol, registering them at 106 proof. Compare that to 80 proof for most gins and vodkas.

Sandhaus notes that despite its potency many Chinese contend that baijiu does not leave a heavy drinker with after effects.  He points out that Kweichow Moutai, the very one of my 1976 imbibing, for years has claimed its liquor is hangover proof.  He suggests, however, that by overindulging “you will feel like a fish slapped against the sidewalk the next morning.”  I can relate to that.

Perhaps the most startling information in the book is the revelation that the bottle of Kweichow Moutai that I bought for a couple of bucks in Shanghai has become the prestige libation of Chinese elites. Today that same baijiu sells for about $300 a bottle and might have gone higher if the Communist regime had not acted to rein in the cost.  Recently a bottle of Kweichow Moutai, vintage 1966, was up for sale on eBay at $2,800.

Despite biujiu’s popularity and the number of Americans of Chinese ancestry, there is only one U.S. outfit distilling the spirits.   In Wilsonville, Oregon, the Ly family make several varieties of baijiu in a barn behind their  home.  Shown here are the senior Lys, who are assisted by their five children.  Called Vinn Baijiu, a bottle retails for about $40 but is sold mostly in the Northwest.   The curious might wish to try some but, on my advice, not too much at one time.