Page 204 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
Ollie spent all of freshman year on crutches due to a severely frac- tured right leg, but he returned sophomore year to star on the Amherst hockey team. He also joined my fraternity but soon became an independent. Everyone liked Ollie. He took his own life soon after graduation. It was rumored that he was having an affair with my humanities professor, John Moore, and killed himself in Moore’s house.
• Rick Sims, from La Jolla, California, looked just like his name. He was also very blond, very handsome, very affable, and very likely, from day one, to pledge AD (Alpha Delta Phi), the fraternity that was known as a magnet for “hot shits” (vernacular for what used to be called “BMOCs,” big men on campus)—which he did. He became president of his class at Harvard Law and now sits on the California Court of Appeals. According to his online bio, he enjoys skiing, which he did at Amherst, gardening, which I don’t believe he did at Amherst, and living with his new wife, who appears to be at least thirty years his junior, a fact as to which I have no further comment.
• Junius Williams was the only African American in the class. Almost everybody liked Junie, for a very good reason: he was a terrific per- son. Yet it sometimes appeared to me that there were people who purported to like him, thinking it fashionable, I guess. He also joined AD, then went to Yale Law School, ran for mayor of Newark, wrote books, was active in the civil rights movement, and became the pres- ident of the National Bar Association.
• Before people jogged, there was Art Wenk, who looked somewhat like what you would have imagined if you were told that you were about to meet someone named Art Wenk. Actually, Art Wenk, who also spoke to no one, didn’t jog, he ran. Wearing a backpack well before that was in style with schoolchildren or anyone else, Wenk, who was from, I think, Iowa, actually sprinted from class to class and place to place on campus. I am not exaggerating when I say that I
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