Sunday, November 6, 2011

* The Anti-Yale's Yale: Nine Bits of My Yale History



My maternal grandfather, LeRoy Ward (above right), laid the hardwood floors in Yale's Strathcona  Hall.
My paternal grandmother, Hulda Bonhau Keane  (above), took in boarders in West Haven.


My maternal grandmother*, Alice Nugent Ward (above),  lived in a third floor walk-up with no hot water two blocks from Yale, at Elm and State Streets, from 1940-60.


(Link to YDN article) OUR PAST AND WHERE WE ARE GOING

Comments

River_Tam 3 days, 9 hours ago

I'm going to be honest, I know who Cole Porter was, but for the life of me I can't name a single thing he wrote.
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theantiyale 3 days ago

worked where we do now
My grandfather, LeRoy Ward* laid the hardwood floors in Strathcona Hall. Does that count, or do only the academic accomplishments of the big shots around Elihu's Empire count as "work"?
Paul D. Keane
*His widow lived two blocks from Yale in a third-floor walk-up with no hot water at Elm and State Streets until she was 70 years old.
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River_Tam 2 days, 23 hours ago

My grandfather, LeRoy Ward* laid the hardwood floors in Strathcona Hall. Does that count, or do only the academic accomplishments of the big shots around Elihu's Empire count as "work"?
Come now, Paul. We need not interact with our floor-layers in the same way that we interact with our sisters or our childhood best friends.
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theantiyale 2 days, 18 hours ago

Touché !
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joematcha 2 days, 12 hours ago

@Paul, I love that you know that. I wonder if there has been any effort in the past or even now to collect that kind of history. It would be fascinating on a number of levels.
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InterestedInBiology 2 days, 12 hours ago

Christian, did you take Yale & America?
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theantiyale 2 days, 12 hours ago

Every week of my childhood we drove in from Mt. Carmel to my Grandmother's ghetto apartment two blocks from Yale to bring my Grandmother to Sunday dinner back in Mt. Carmel. My mother would say, as we drove past Strathcona, "Your Grandfather Ward laid the hardwood floors in that building."
I have never repeated that story in the last 60 years until the previous post yesterday, I believe. It is a great personal satisfaction to think that someone found it interesting and also to write my Grandfather's name, LeRoy Ward, which has probably not been written or uttered for half a century.
Thank you, Joematcha.
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theantiyale 2 days, 11 hours ago

Here's another bit of Yale trivia. My Hamden childhood pal's father, Henry Pfisterer, was the enginerer for the Empire State Building. He told us that he had to design into the structure an ability for it to sway one foot in all four directions at the top of the building to accommodate the rotation of the planet, otherwise it would fall over! He was an adjunct prof in the Architecture School.
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theantiyale 2 days, 11 hours ago

Here’s another piece of Yale history: A theology professor at Yale, Douglas Clyde Macintosh, took on the U.S. government in the Supreme Court , over the supremacy of government over religion. United States v. Macintosh
283 U.S. 605 (1931)
Facts of the Case:
A Canadian citizen wanted to become a naturalized U.S. citizen, but he refused to pledge to take up arms in defense of his country. He would only fight for his country if he thought the war was morally justified. On his citizenship application he wrote, �I am willing to do what I judge to be in the best interests of my country, but only in so far as I can believe that this is not going to be against the best interests of humanity in the long run. I do not undertake to support 'my country, right or wrong' in any dispute which may arise, and I am not willing to promise beforehand, and without knowing the cause for which my country may go to war, either that I will or that I will not 'take up arms in defense of this country,' however 'necessary' the war may seem to be to the Government of the day.� While he was willing to give allegiance to the United States, he was not willing to put that ahead of his allegiance to God.
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theantiyale 2 days, 11 hours ago

Here’s a fourth for your Yale Trivia Quiz:  In 1977, thirty years before the category transgender became fashionable, Yale Divinity School was the site of the first lecture in Yale’s history by a transvestite on the subject of transvestitism: the actor and playwright, Quentin Crisp.
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theantiyale 2 days, 10 hours ago

Five: What Yale M.D.in 1984 revealed on CBS's "60 Minutes" to 20 million viewers for the first time the news that AIDS could be transmitted by a woman as well as by a man? Answer: Dr. John Dwyer, Head of Immunology at Yale New Haven Hospital.
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theantiyale 2 days, 10 hours ago

Six: What famous Yale scholar carried a typewriter equipped with Greek and olde English characters on his back like a backpack all over Europe to transcribe documents before the invention of the xerox machine? Answer: Roland H. Bainton, Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History and the author of "here I Stand" Abbingdon Press's all time best seller, the biography of Martin Luther.
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theantiyale 2 days, 10 hours ago

Seven:
When Lord Byron was exhumed to determine which of his legs was shorter then the other, that post-post-mortem took the extraordinary step of rcording the dimensions of every possible measurable on his body, including his alleged infamous record-breaking reproductive measurable. Where can that data be found at Yale? Answer: Sterling Memorial Library and its subsidiaries.
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theantiyale 2 days, 10 hours ago

Eight:
True or False?
 When a world famous scholar and prolific published writer at Yale developed Alzheimer's in his middle to late 50's in the late 1970's early 1980's and could no longer lecture, Yale refused to grant him early retirement and said that the only way he could maintain his position and salary was if he met all of his classes.
He had one year to go before he qualified for retirement, so kindhearted colleagues outwitted the cold administrators led the distinguished gentleman around to each of his classes which he greeted with a "good day" and then took him back to his office. He died when he wandered from his office into New Haven traffic and was hit by a car.
TRUE. (Astonishingly true.)
11/5/11
I just remembered a NINTH:


                In the old Faculty Club at Yale, where my ballroom dancing school held its banquets, there used to be a dining table with a semi-circle cut out of one of its sides. This semi-circle had been provided for professor William Howard Taft (later U.S. President Taft)whose girth was so enormous at 380 lbs, that he needed the accommodation in order to belly up to the table. I wonder if that table was lost to Yale history when the faculty club shut down in the 1970's.

11/6/11
I woke up with a TENTH, but rolled over instead.  If it comes back to me I'll add it.

I just remembered it (11/21/11) : Click on this link:  

  http://theantiyale.blogspot.com/2010/11/remembrance-of-g-harold-welch.html
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