My life

It seemed too good to pass up, so I went in, got my steak, and found a table. Sitting near me were an angry boy and his heartbroken mother. He was giving her a verbal beating with the words, “It’s cheap, Mama. It’s cheap.” She kept saying the salesman had told her it was nice. Over the next few minutes I pieced the story together. She had saved up enough money to buy her son a record player that he wanted badly. The problem was that it was a standard high-fidelity system, called “hi-fi,” but he wanted one of the new stereo systems that had much better sound, and apparently more status among fashion-conscious kids. With all her scrimping, his mother couldn’t afford it. Instead of being grateful, the kid was screaming at her in public, “Everything we have is cheap! I wanted a nice one!” It made me sick. I wanted to slug him, to scream back at him that he was lucky to have a mother who loved him so much, who put food on his plate and clothes on his back with what was almost certainly a deadly dull job that paid too little. I got up and walked out in disgust, without finishing my bargain steak. That incident had a big impact on me, I guess because of what my own mother had done and endured. It made me more sensitive to the daily struggles of women and men who do things we want someone else to do but don’t want to pay much for. It made me hate ingratitude more and resolve to be more grateful myself. And it made me even more determined to enjoy life’s lucky breaks without taking them too seriously, knowing that one turn of fate’s screw could put me back to square one or worse. Not long after I got back from New York, I left the band to concentrate on my studies and student government. I won the election for freshman class president in one of my better campaigns, waged to an electorate dominated by Irish and Italian Catholics from the East. I don’t remember how I decided to go for it, but I had a lot of help and it was exciting. There were really no issues and not much patronage, so the race boiled down to grassroots politics and one speech. One of my campaign workers wrote me a note showing the depth of our canvassing: “Bill: problems in New Men’s; Hanover picking up lots of votes. There are possibilities on 3rd (Pallen’s) floor Loyola—down at the end towards the pay phone. Thanks to Dick Hayes. See you tomorrow. Sleep well Gentlemen. King.” King was John King, a fivefoot-five dynamo who became the coxswain of the Georgetown crew team and study partner of our classmate Luci Johnson, the President’s daughter, who once invited him to dinner at the White House, earning our admiration and envy.

On the Tuesday before the election, the class gathered to hear our campaign speeches. I was nominated by Bob Billingsley, a gregarious New Yorker whose Uncle Sherman had owned the Stork Club and who told me great stories of all the stars who had come there from the twenties on. Bob said I had a record of leadership and was “a person who will get things done, and done well.” Then came my turn. I raised no issue and promised only to serve “in whatever capacity is needed at any time,” whether I won or lost, and to give the election “a spirit which will make our class a little bit stronger and a little bit prouder when the race is over.” It was a modest effort, as it should have been; as the saying goes, I had much to be modest about.

The stronger of my two opponents tried to inject some gravity into an inherently weightless moment when he told us he was running because he didn’t want our class to fall “into the bottomless abyss of perdition.” I didn’t know much about that—it sounded like a place you’d go for collaborating with Communists. This bottomless remark was over the top, and was my first big break. We worked like crazy and I was elected. After the votes were counted, my friends collected a lot of nickels, dimes, and quarters so that I could call home on the nearest pay phone and tell my family I had won. It was a happy conversation. I could tell there was no trouble on the other end of the line, and Mother could tell I was getting over my homesickness.