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sons (anD Mostly DauGHters) of tHe Blue anD WHite
anything of interest of late. I told him that I had read a biography of Samuel Leibowitz, who had represented the Scottsboro Boys (and who, by the way, lived on Coleridge Street, near Hampton Avenue in Man- hattan Beach). Professor Ziegler then started firing questions at me in a challenging debate that centered on the efficacy of the American jury system (I took the position that, although it clearly had its weaknesses, I knew of no better system) and, of all things, euthanasia (as to which I took the affirmative side). It could not have been more stimulating, and I was determined to go to Amherst if the interview was any indication of what lay ahead and if I was fortunate enough to get in.
It was not until I went to Amherst that I learned that Professor Ben- jamin Munn Ziegler had graduated from Harvard Law School, was rumored to have been number one in his class, and was feared by many of the students. His Socratic style, combined with a gruffness that, as I saw it, was put on for humorous effect, made him a teacher whose courses I wanted to take. I was lucky enough to have had him as my sec- tion leader in American Studies, a mandatory sophomore course. What I recall most clearly was a class in which the subject was desegregation. Ziegler posed a hypothetical to me in which I was supposed to have been traveling with a black friend in the South when we stopped at a diner, sat at the counter, ordered ham sandwiches, and then heard the counterman say that he wouldn’t serve my companion and wouldn’t serve me as long as my companion stayed in the restaurant. “Well, Yaverbaum, what would you do?” Professor Ziegler thundered at me. I could come up with no immediate satisfactory reply, but I heard myself saying, “It’s easy, Professor Ziegler, I don’t eat ham.” Even he broke up.
But I again digress.
The Princeton Admissions Office had actually called me for an interview just on the strength, I assume, of some information that they had about me. (I had written for a catalog but had not applied.) I had the interview, but before I could take any further action, I was admitted to Amherst. I’m not sure that I had reached my sixteenth birthday when I got the acceptance letter, but I am sure that I celebrated and immedi- ately started my “senior slump.” I was extremely lucky to have been
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