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PRINCETON ALUMNI WEEKLY

CLASS OF 1962 ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interviewee Al Muller ’62 and Barry Bosak ’62 Date June 1, 2012

Place Blair Hall

Interviewer Brett Tomlinson

Time 58 minutes

Tomlinson For the video, this is the Princeton Oral History Project. I have Al Muller,

Doctor Al Muller?

Muller Yeah, but Al is fine.

Tomlinson OK. And Barry Bosak, from the Class of ’62, and we’re going to talk

about Princeton in their time on campus, and their connection to the

University since. And also, their lives, their careers, that sort of thing. I

guess one of the, the easiest place to start would be how you came to

Princeton. How did you first decide to apply, and what drew you to the

University?

Bosak Yeah, Al’s story is fascinating in that regard.

Muller Well, mine was probably unique, because I was on, when I was 13 I was

on a quiz show, The $64,000 Question, and they asked me, before they

asked the questions on my topic, which was wild animals, where I wanted

to go to college. And I said my father went to Williams, and my mother

wanted me to go to Harvard, but I wanted to come to Princeton. And the

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chairman of the board of trustees for Princeton happened to be watching, a

very well known physician by the name of Dr. St. John. And he invited

my family and myself down, to Princeton, and remained one of our closest

friends and my mentor, and of course wrote a very nice letter of

recommendation, and when I ended up here at Princeton he continued to

be a sponsor and a friend and a mentor until he passed away at the age of

[89], he was the Class of 1905, and I do have a button from ’05, which I

now have to explain is not 2005, but 1905.

Bosak Mine was simpler, my father was the Class of ’31, graduating right into

the depths of the Depression. He still enjoyed life up in Scranton,

Pennsylvania, which was a hotbed of Princetonians. The school included

many people from Northeast Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York,

Connecticut, etc. Scranton had a very active alumni association, so I was

exposed at an early age I came down to a Dick Kazmaier football team in

November of ’51. Princeton beat Dartmouth, handily. Just before the game

we went to the new Firestone Library. I found the initials of a gentleman

(with us) who had etched his initials into a former table from the Nassau

Inn—in 1898! I got into the spirit of things, and applied six years later.

Then people applied, to two or three schools-- I applied to 3 schools, with

Princeton being at the top of the list. Fortunately I got in.

Tomlinson It seems ridiculous, I know, with all this noise out there, but I am going to

close this door to make sure we don’t pick up any noise from the hallway.

So when you arrived on campus, was it what you expected? I mean, you

had had some experience with it as the son of an alum, and you had had

this kind of—

Muller I’d never been—yeah, I’d never been here before, and we got invited

down when I was a, by Dr. St. John when I was sophomore in high school.

And we came down for Reunions. And being the chairman of the board,

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we got to sit in the reviewing stand. But I can still remember arriving on

the Dinky and walking through the beautiful, I guess that’s Little, we then

came through Blair Arch, and all of the beautiful grounds, it was really

breathtaking, as a high school sophomore it was overwhelming. And then

of course we got to sit in the reviewing stand with President Dodds, and,

you know, it was love at first sight. I mean, it was no doubt where I

wanted to go. And actually, my Williams acceptance came in early, and in

those days all the acceptances of colleges didn’t come out at the same

time, and I needed to respond to Williams right away. And we called Dr.

St. John and he said, well, call the admissions office, and find out. And in

those days we didn’t always get letters, and I called the admissions and

they said, well, hold on, just a minute! And the fellow got back on, and he

said, oh, we’re just up to the ‘m’s, you’re in. And that was how I learned I

was in Princeton.

Bosak Well, I did come to the ’56 reunions, my father’s 25th That was a

prolonged weekend--two or three days, perhaps. So I saw quite a bit and

then went away to school for two years before I got in. Getting in was a

normal process for me: apprehension and not knowing. And I’m in the

‘b’s, so that wasn’t easy. But you say what was it like when we got here?

Whatever the preconceived notion I had it was quite different. They had

the freshman-sophomore hazing. Then the cane spree and getting into the

spirit of things, was quite, quite different. I didn’t know what to expect,

the first two weeks, I guess. And then classes began and you’re, you’re

just not in the mood for classes. It was all fun, and competition.

Muller Barry, were you coming from high school, or prep school?

Bosak I came from Exeter, I went there. We had 36 members of our class come.

Yale had 50 from my class of 220, and Harvard 71. But that’s the way

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things were back then. Our class was the first one that was 51 percent

from high school.

Muller We were the first, I think.

Bosak 1961 was 49%, and I think once our class was 51%.

Muller Because I came from a public high school, a darn good one, but I was way

out of my league when I got here. I mean, I just breezed through high

school and then here, I just, I thought I was going to flunk out. I mean I

really did. I didn’t do well first year, and it was scary, cause I was in the

glee club, I was accompanist in the glee club, that was exciting thing, and

I had to practice for that, and I just, I fell further and further behind. So I

thought I was gonna flunk out, and that would have been a mental disaster;

all these people so proud of me. But I didn’t.

Bosak Yeah, well, I was, maybe took it too casually and was always on the verge

of not doing well until I woke up during the second part of sophomore

year. I started studying, and went uphill from there.

Muller Prep school preparation, I think was a lot better than the high schools.

Even the best ones. Because I hadn’t really known how to study until I

came here.

Bosak Although I think our (I forget our valedictorian) salutatorian, David

Rosenbloom, one of the most brilliant guys in the class, actually was from

high school.

Muller Really.

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Bosak Not just him, guys like the late Mike Huberman were from high school—

but probably the cream of the cream from the high schools.

Muller But it was quite a transition. I mean, I had beginner’s German, and I had

calculus, and I had physics, and oh, it was just horrendous.

Bosak Pre-med students had issues.

Tomlinson Academically, you found it difficult, socially was it difficult? Barry, you

know, had 35 classmates from college, er, high school.

Muller Well, I didn’t have, there were only, there were only, a couple of my

classmates were from Bronx Science, and I don’t even think I ever saw

them, and one of them I think had dropped out, but as the accompanist in

the glee club, that was the whole social thing. I was, there were two

accompanist, Professor Nollner, who became eventually an honorary

classmate, had just arrived from Williams. So my father was pleased, I

hadn’t gone to Williams, but here someone from Williams had come here.

And we consider ourselves freshmen together. So once I was in the glee

club, and there were only two of us and the other accompanist dropped

out, so I was it; and you got a whole glee club full of guys and we went to

other glee clubs concerts and so there were, you know, social gatherings

there. So I had my hands full with—

Bosak I think the affiliations people made were through groups like glee club,

were significant. My voice was changing, I didn’t get in, and here I’m in a

church choir for some 30 odd years. But, on swimming team, you got

close to the people.

Muller You were big on the team, swimming team—

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Bosak Groups, swimming team, and then you were in an eating club. I’d say the

primary tie even afterwards was roommates, teams and then through the

eating clubs. And a core within the eating club that you were really

buddies with. And I think certain clubs were tighter than others, as far as

congeniality, after graduation.

Muller Yeah. I mean one of our classmates who just passed away, Warren Reed

Crane, helped restart Cannon club. So they had a really, really tight group.

Some of the groups on campus, I mean we had a famous group called the

Lockhart Lair, and we had 15, 20 of them, and one of those members is

our class president, David O’Brien, and they’ve kept in touch all of these

years. The have annual get-togethers at one of the old members, one of the

old roommates’ homes, be it Tennessee or Florida, or, Concord, Mass. I

think it was last year, Brian’s, Brian’s house they get together. And we

have yearly lunches in New York and Washington, D.C., and then

sporadic ones elsewhere. But those have been traditional for 30, more than

30 years.

Tomlinson And what was it that created these, you know, very lasting and strong

bonds? I mean, you were most, if not all of you, not able to leave campus

because you didn’t have cars, you could take a train somewhere…

Bosak Well, you think we didn’t have cars.

Muller Barry used to have one!

Bosak There were a lot of cars. One classmate had three cars, Doug James, and,

they can’t get to him now. He’ll be playing in the band this afternoon. He

had a Volkswagen Beetle, a Mercedes 300 gullwing SL, and something

else--and also motorcycle. And Dean Lippincott did find one of the cars,

but Doug had backup. I had a car senior year, and I got permission, for my

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thesis. By senior year you were a little bit tired of the club. You had done

all the partying the middle of sophomore year, and junior year. Senior

year I could have lived in the club, but we were number two in the room

draw with only a double ahead of us four guys. I got car permission, to go

up to Cornell to visit the library up there to do my thesis on Jean-Paul

Sartre. As my advisor was signing the application, listening to my spiel of

B.S. on why I needed car permission, he said, I think seniors should have

car permission if they use it wisely and asked what’s her name?

Muller Exactly.

Bosak And of course fifteen months later we were married. And I also had car

permission with the skin diving club. If you threw a tank of oxygen, or air

in the trunk of the car, you could pull right up to Patton Tower. We didn’t

abuse that. But a roommate with similar car permission kept his car in the

garage all legally, just behind the Pit movie theater. He had a motorcycle

that the janitor kept in a hidden closet They would meet at the playing

field and make a handoff of the motorcycle. But we used it wisely.

Muller And there weren’t, I mean Barry was one of the exceptional ones. Most

people didn’t have a car, and I think that that was the university’s idea,

that this was residential college, nobody could be married, without special

permission, and it fostered a particular bond of, a little like when some of

us were in the army, and you know, you’re stuck with people, in a way,

but then you really get to know them and they’ve got your back. And the

bonds that were formed so early, they’re there. I mean, we look a bit older,

and yet, as soon as you’re back on this campus, you’re back 50 years or 40

years or 30 years when it started out. Oh, you remember that, do you

remember that? I mean, someone this morning was saying, he saw his old

roommate and he said, I can still remember when you put my bicycle up in

that tree!

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Bosak I think the cars were prohibited during the 1940s.

Muller —’20s, 1920s there were accidents, fatal accidents, and that’s when they

stopped them.

Bosak They had some problems, and it was the accident thing. Gee, just think,--

you live in Washington. If they took the airplane tickets away from the

congressmen and made them stay in the city they would talk to each other.

Muller Well, yeah, we wouldn’t…

Bosak Get to know each other and become human beings,

Muller The reason congress has gotten more partisan is because they don’t stay in

town anymore.

Bosak Because they go home.

Muller They leave.

Bosak But I think there—

Muller We won’t get into congress with that—

Bosak But groups of us would do things. ROTC was a big, I was in the army and

I’m going to the lunch shortly-- we’ve got a good crew going over to

ROTC luncheon here.

Muller The glee club has a thing, I think I’m not going to be able to get to it, but

yeah, these are, are early bonds, and they stay.

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Bosak I think these outdoor events they have now, the first week, orientation

week, kids get to go out in an outdoor trip, or something like that, my

guess is that really cements bonds.

Muller And a lot of the men went on, went on to graduate school and various

things, and some of the same people would be. I mean, I know exactly

which classmates went to medical school with me, and the lawyers are the

same way, and the architects I saw were bonding again.

Bosak Al went to Columbia Med School. After 2 years of army I’m walking

down the hallway at Columbia Business School in New York City, and

Bucky Kales comes down the hallway. We went to Exeter together; we

went to Princeton together,. We were always friendly, nodding and

smiling and all that We said, gee, let’s get together! And we’ve been best

friends ever since, as far as skiing vacations with the families and things of

that nature. But afterwards new relationships form.

Muller Absolutely.

Bosak Somewhat happenstance. You and I didn’t know each other as undergrads,

other than by sight, perhaps—same for Obie, our outgoing president.

You make these relationships afterwards by getting together and doing

something for a common cause, which is the class, and it’s not all about

reunions.

Muller Yeah, but the bonds are there. I mean, in Washington, you know I actually

didn’t know most of the people, from college, that are in Washington, but

as a result of the dinners I now, now we’re the closest of friends.

Bosak And you’ve got the best dinner, as far as longevity, and attendance, and

thing like that.

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Muller Well, it’s a, yeah, it’s a special, it is a, you know, we were talking about it

before this and we had a teleconference, one of Obie’s teleconferences,

and one of the, one of our colleagues was sort of chiding us, why are we

called super class, we haven’t raised the most—we’ve raised a lot of

money—and we haven’t done the most of this or the most of that, and I

didn’t want to answer to get into a squabble with, but every class is super

in its own way. We’re the only ones with the name of the super class and I

think that the reason is, if you—two things. If you look at that massive

book that Bruce Dunning put together, it really shows the individuals’, and

the whole class is greater than the individuals, and you put that all

together, and the other half of what you need to do is go to the memorial

service. Robert Burkhardt has just put together a magnificent thing. One of

the poems that is going to be there is a poem [about] Ulysses, and it

finishes with the famous phrase, “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to

yield.” And you read the class, and you see, you see them looking and

striving and finding whatever they’re finding—service and love and

family and friends, and not stopping. And some of these stories are heart-

wrenching.

Bosak They are, some people who really opened up-- they’re extraordinarily

candid.

Muller Yeah. It’s just, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. And that’s, that’s

what’s super about the class.

Bosak Take the online PAW. I think it’s January 18th. A classmate and I had

lunch, at his behest, last November, Nick Nicholas.

Muller Yeah, Nick Nicholas.

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Bosak Who became chief operating officer of Time Inc., and you know, we knew

each other to smile, but afterwards we’ve gotten to be friendlier, and he

said, let’s have lunch. We went to Knickerbocker club, and he said, could

you do an article about the class as a whole. I said, I’ve got this double

column in January. So the entire column doesn’t mention one name, but it

has a lot of classmates’ traits, so you might want to look at that, this year’s

January 18th. I’ve been the secretary now about five years.

Muller Super secretary.

Bosak Super class.

Muller No, he’s outdone all of us.

Bosak But it’s a lot easier; you were secretary it the era pre-email. I can do email,

and call people up, and they don’t hang up,. I can say, this is Barry Bosak,

it’s not about annual giving. They’re willing to talk. Now, you call up,

they’re there, they’re available, and they’ve got 15 minutes to chat. That’s

nice. Plus, all the defenses on whoever anybody was or is, have dropped.

Muller People are very candid and open and, and it’s easier to do as you get older.

As they used to say when we were in Vietnam, what are you going to do

to us? Send us to Vietnam?

Bosak Well why don’t you give them your Vietnam story? Coming back.

Muller Oh yeah. Well reunions are special for me. There’s two of us, that sort of

have this competition to be at every reunion. And so far we’ve made it.

But it was a challenge, when I was in Vietnam; the rule was you couldn’t

go back, to the States, or they’re afraid you wouldn’t come back, return.

But they worked on it, and they got a special exception that you were, if

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you were within, I don’t remember, if you’d only been there nine months

you could go back and then return. And reunions came in my 10th month.

And so I had to apply for a special exception. And it had to go all the way

up two chain of commands. It had to go up the chain of command of the

doctors, and he approved it, of course, being a doc; then it had to go up to

Westmoreland. And that SOB wouldn’t approve it. But what they would

approve is an R and R to Hawaii. So I got my R and R to Hawaii, got out

of the airport in my uniform, right into the men’s room, changed into my

civvies, and went AWOL, got all the way back to reunions, and changed

into our reunion outfit, which happened to be army fatigues and an orange

beret. And phoned in every day, pretending that I was in, in Hawaii. But…

Bosak Made every one.

Muller Yeah. So far, so far.

Bosak I made the majors, because I was out of the army for the 5th. And that was

good.

Muller Well you do see—

Bosak And I’m close by.

Muller The changes over the years have been interesting. I mean we didn’t, we

didn’t have women, initially. We didn’t have families, initially. They’d

stand. We used to go through ’79 Arch, and go down Prospect Street.

Bosak For the P-rade.

Muller Yes, for the P-rade. Then we had the terrible, in ’68, assassination of

Senator Kennedy, and there was a big, had to cancel reunions and instead

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they had just on the campus itself. And then eventually the great tradition

of the Yale-Princeton baseball thing, finally stopped. Yale just got tired of

coming, after they graduated, back to Princeton of all places! So then we

marched down the other way. So, the reunions have changed, and of

course they’ve gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, what, 25 to

26 thousand coming back now? I think that’s the total.

Bosak It’s in the 20s.

Muller Yeah, it’s enormous. And they’ve changed, from essentially drunken

orgies, to now a family oriented thing--, not that we don’t drink, but ,

family oriented, with the alumni forums—there’s too much to do now.

And it’s just a fabulous thing. Which Barry will write up in his column!

Bosak I will. Well keeping up ties is interesting. The school is very adamant

about keeping in touch with you, obviously, for the many reasons they

have, meaning, one. But it does create spirit, it creates alumni people

interviewing other graduates. There’s always been a dedicated core of

officers for our class, and the people that come back for the 5th, 10th,

whatever. They felt a pretty good bond, and--when the bands weren’t

blaring away--you could talk to each other. And now, we have less music

and more talking, and people come earlier. Ten years ago we had 120

people for Thursday night dinner; we had 374 people, last night. Expected

424, but it’s always off. But without the music you could just talk about

things. As I mentioned, with the defenses down, and not people saying I

one-upped you, or I accomplished this or that it was great. I don’t see

much in that book about braggadocio, you know.

Muller Yeah, it’s interesting.

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Bosak It’s an accomplishment. They might say, this is what I do, which is fine,

but it’s not “how many kudos can I put in my essay?”

Muller Yeah, in fact, it’s more kudos for family, and others.

Bosak Yes.

Muller A lot of contemplative type of comments, a lot of concerns about the

world, the community. Yeah, it’s a fascinating book. It’s absolutely

fascinating.

Bosak I talked to Sam Reiken who was our chairman for the 40th. He observed

that in the 1950s we were probably 60, 70 percent Republican at the time.

Just because everybody liked Ike, and you thought your parents were

Republican. I didn’t find out until 30 or 40 years later that my parents

were democrats. Scranton was a Democrat town, and my father was in the

printing business and he needed business. But we never talked politics, it

was not that avid a topic. My guess is now, and the survey’s in the books

so you can get testimony to it, most people are probably middle of the

road or independents. They’re not ideologues on one side or the other.

Muller Or they tend to be moderate Republicans or Democrats. But the

comparison is there. The interesting thing though is, politically, when we

have our class dinners in Washington, we know pretty much who’s

Republican and who’s Democrat, and how far who comes down is the

polar opposite of me, politically. And yet the class, unlike the congress,

can manage to look at all the positive things that bind us together rather

than the political and other things that would separate us. That’s a great

lesson that I wish congress would learn from us.

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Bosak Yeah, and the best lesson is you ask the women in the various pre-election

polls, whether it’s a year ahead of time or three days ahead of time, like in

’08, and they pick the winner. The women pick the winner.

Muller Yeah, we have an anonymous poll in Washington, right, we always have

our dinner in October, and it comes before the election, and the

anonymous poll is men and women separate who do you think is going to

win. And the women have never been wrong. Never been wrong.

Bosak Well, I’m married, I know that.

Muller I meant politically! I meant politically.

Bosak A number of us have been married since, graduation… Buzz Dunn, John

Dunn, married in June of ’62, as did John Adee, who just died.

Muller Oh, there’s a large number of classmates—

Bosak Yeah, a lot married within six months.

Muller —I mean you can see how many were married got separated, divorced,

etc. but a large number are still around, Bink Wurts.

Bosak 50 years coming up for a lot of us now.

Muller Yeah, a lot.

Tomlinson And that, that seems noticeably different from today. But there are loads

of things I’m sure, that you see from your experience that are different

from today. What, when you think back, what sticks out as have changed

at Princeton?

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Bosak Girls.

Muller Yeah. I mean, obviously. They were only visitors before.

Bosak And you know, you got really prepped up for the girls, too.

Muller Well, and minorities, too. We had one graduating African American. One.

One.

Bosak And you remember [Charles] Shorter, you know. Read his bio. He

discusses that.

Muller And he’ll be back.

Bosak Then Bill Levinson, very bright guy who did quite well. The Jewish

population was low but a good percentage were in my club, Dial. We had,

jeepers, so many guys who became doctors, but they were all, smart

students, a lot from the Bronx and Brooklyn-- the Brooklyn science

schools.

Muller Yeah, but there was a feeling on a number of our Jewish classmates that, I

mean I never personally saw it. And having grown up in the Bronx and

having Jewish members of my family there certainly, I haven’t seen any,

but there was a feeling by a number of our Jewish classmates of anti-

Semitism. And still in, you can pick up some of that in their readings. And

it’s also appropriate to point out that there, a former class president,

Sammy Reiken, is Jewish and will be reading a Jewish scripture at the

memorial service.

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Bosak A lot of people came from towns where you had no minorities at all--

whether it was New England or the deep south.

Muller So that’s been a big, big change.

Bosak And our class was, you know, before jet airplanes. Our class really was

northeast concentric, we had eight guys from Kentucky, two guys from

Maine, but it was really around here. Kentucky was an anomaly.

Muller But we had some from California.

Bosak Some from California; transcontinental flights probably were cheaper.

Muller Well Princeton has, always had a good contingent from the south. And

that was Cottage—or, or Colonial.

Bosak Cottage. And Colonial.

Muller Cottage and Colonial, were sort of the southern clubs. Well, I mean here,

you’re characterizing them, but it’s true! Each club had it’s own—

Bosak Identity.

Muller Ivy was sort of the wasp, upper class echelon. You know, each of the

clubs had its own—well, and there were no fraternities. I know there’s sort

of, whatever’s going on now, there were no fraternities.

Bosak Girls, girls to me would be the main difference.… Coursework we know

about it, but we don’t see it.

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Muller Well, it was harder when we were there, wasn’t it? We had five courses,

now they only have four.

Bosak Yeah. Saturday classes.

Muller We had 7:30 German.

Bosak Compulsory chapel.

Muller Oh, they’ve got it easy! Young whipper-snappers, they’ve got it easy.

Well, as you say, When I was a, when I was an intern, we didn’t get paid.

Bosak I gotta think final exams are different, with people carrying their power

books around, too.

Muller We didn’t have computers.

Bosak We didn’t have calculators. Slide rules and yellow pads and—

Muller Well I didn’t use a slide rule.

Bosak And little exam books.

Muller They still have the honor system. They still have, “I swear on my on my

honor as a gentleman I have neither received nor—” well, see, it was as a

gentleman, what do the ladies do? We had the honor system and we had—

well, we had chapel rule, remember?

Bosak Right.

Muller We had chapel rule.

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Bosak I think freshman year.

Bosak And freshmen year we had to know how to swim. You would like this. I

was not a good swimmer, just had to float for 15 minutes in Dillon

Gymnasium.

Bosak Great requirement, frankly.

Muller It was a requirement. We had to be able to swim before we graduated. And

actually one of our we would, lost. Drowned in the pool.

Bosak Glidden. Jim Glidden. And I was on the train with Monty Lewis, going to

Philly to get something. Monty was his roommate. And the sports, I guess

I notice the sports different now, they’ve more people playing rugby and

such. It’s not just girls’ teams, but the number of sports and the teams in

different disciplines be it tennis or something like that.. We always had a

lot of good teams whether it’s been squash or tennis but the football team

was more the epitome and the basketball games. Nobody goes down to the

football games now, I go to one every five years or so, and it’s a nice

stadium, it’s a fun day.

Muller Yeah, I used to come every year, once a year, and I haven’t…

Bosak Now there’s so many other sports that the students can participate in, so I

think the ability of people to be on a team in something that’s great. And

we had a lot of inter-scholastics. Inter-scholastics in freshman and

sophomore year, and inter-club, volleyball. ping-pong, and bridge.

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Muller The clubs, yeah the clubs were good on that. We didn’t have the Frist

Center, so we had Chancellor Green, which is a much smaller, I mean

Frist is spectacular. The students—

Bosak What was Chancellor?

Muller Chancellor Green? It had some food on the bottom, and there was that—

Bosak Oh, I remember, we had mixers there.

Muller Yeah, it was nothing compared to Frist.

Bosak I think proctors, let’s point out—

Muller Oh proctors, Axel!

Bosak I remember Axel, he was about six feet five.

Muller Oh that’s right, we had nine o’clock curfew—

Bosak What do you think about six five?

Muller Not curfews, what did the? It was a special name for it.

Bosak All women out of the dorm by 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. And I think

that was on Friday and Saturday.

Muller They were like large secret service; they’d come by with hats, and dark

suits.

Bosak I know, it was incredible.

21

Muller And they were big! They were all bigger than us.

Bosak And they knew where the trouble spots were.

Muller Yeah. Near you. Near those cars.

Bosak You’re right, and junior year when I mentioned to Dean Lippincott in

early November that I wanted to move out of a big suite where we had

three, three big suites he said, smart thing to do Barry. What room do you

want? He knew in November who was leaving at Christmastime. And he

gave me my choice of singles. Do you want to be in ‘01 or Dod?

Whatever. I had one that was closer to the club.

Muller And the rooms were more personal then, now, I guess now are they

furnished when you come? We had to get our own furniture, remember.

We had to buy and move in our own beds and stuff.

Bosak And 20 bucks for a refrigerator.

Bosak Yeah, our refrigerator, right. And if you, by the time of your senior year

you said, jeepers you know, we don’t have a refrigerator, we’d go to the

basement of Little Hall. There was a sea of appliances, and the guy said

well, what did you lose? And you said, well, I think it was a

Westinghouse, maybe it was a Frigidaire, somebody must have moved it;

and it was white. You’d walk out with a refrigerator, I mean they had 40,

50 refrigerators down there. But you got beds, couches. We had a TV

senior year but we never looked at it. So TV probably is a big difference.

Muller And we had, well you, we had—

22

Bosak TV was at the clubs, so you’d look at “Have Gun Will Travel” after dinner

before going to study.

Muller The Cane Spree. The freshman versus the sophomores.

Bosak They still do that?

Muller Which, we were the first ones that actually won both years. Which was…

Reunions were, reunions were really just a drunken orgy. I mean people

were out on the lawn, drinking making out, I mean it’s nothing like—

Bosak But you didn’t really get involved in that till you were—

Muller Senior, I’m jumping ahead. Yeah. Thinking back, what was different?

They still have the thesis, I guess, well that was still—they’re doing away

with the carrels, in Firestone. Remember now, I mean I was a bio major,

but all the history buffs and everyone, they had the their little carrels down

in the library. They’re going to do away with those.

Bosak Oh, I had one. My carrel partner lives four miles away from me now in

Westchester County. The joy with the carrel was “I don’t want my

carrelmate to be there.”

Muller Oh, I didn’t realize you had carrelmates.

Bosak You had your books and split the carrel in two.

Muller Oh, I thought it was just, I thought you just had one.

Bosak He didn’t want you there and you didn’t want him there.

23

Muller I thought there was just one per carrel.

Bosak Maybe guys who had certain grades.

Muller I don’t know, but yeah, we had thesis, which was important, and we only

had to have four courses our senior year, right? Senior and junior year we

went from five to four.

Bosak We did, during, and I’m jumping around now, but I think by junior year

they opened up the engineering quadrangles and the new dorms just below

Prospect and Guyot Hall. There were a bunch of new dorms where eight

guys could be in a room and have their own private bathroom and

whatever. So the first set of new dorms, post 1920s came in 1960

Muller Yeah, which looked like Howard Johnson’s. That changed.

Bosak No, no, that was horrible. Boring architecture—we called it “finkville.”

Muller What happened to collegiate gothic? I mean, just terrible.

Bosak Well it was all about money. And the hideous engineering quadrangle

opened up.

Muller Right, right. That was an old baseball field.

Bosak That was the baseball field.

Muller That was the baseball field, and that opened up.

Bosak And I don’t believe—oh, here’s the big change that took place: Woodrow

Wilson Association—a dining facility

24

Muller Right, and they moved it!

Bosak At first they were up at Madison Hall, which is right at the corner there, of

Nassau and University Place. That started as an alternative to the clubs,

and there were 25 members, I believe, in ’59 when it opened. We had 75,

give or take, you can check the number in my Januuary 18th column,

including 15 guys who were in other clubs but were “associates”of Woody

Wilson. These were just ’62ers who were in other clubs They said, you

know, I got so many buddies who are in Woodrow Wilson, and the

interesting thing about Woodrow Wilson, is that a lot of guys who joined

were pretty serious students. Not the most serious, necessarily, but some

of them, like Egbert Leigh, who you know, is a renowned botanist at the

Smithsonian in Panama. Wes Johnson, who was our correspondent back

in the ’80s told me “you know I thought of bicker and I thought of Wilson

Lodge, and I just thought I’d try something different, and it was just a

really,good idea.”

Muller They would have been termed the geeks of the age.

Bosak Then, but they really forged a new wave. Our president, senior year, was

Dave Watts—Bill Bond was our president the first three years, and, an

accomplished guy. Dave Watts became our president for a specific reason:

he joined a club to help another party get a bid instead of joinng a club

that he might have preferred to be in. Dave dropped out after six months

at the club. He became our president and then started talking to Dean

Lippincott about bicker reform although there were no bicker reforms

while we were there. However what happened four or five years later,

Dave, who’s here at reunions, feels that his work paved the way.

Muller Well they have the open, whatever, the open bicker.

25

Bosak His work really helped people think about what it really was. I know one

or two guys today who still have a bitter taste in their mouth about bicker.

And I tell them, come on, get over it. It’s happened, it’s life.

Muller Now they’ve got the colleges, which Woodrow Wilson was pushing, back

at the turn of the century and lost. And lost, and they’ve got the alternative

colleges, or Mathey and all of the, well, the Princeton, what used to be the

Princeton Inn is now university bought, I mean we used to send our

parents there, and they could have this nice, lush room, and look out on

the golf course. And now that’s part of the university. When you were

saying Woodrow Wilson, I thought you were talking about the Woodrow

Wilson building, which is a much separate story. That building was

originally this red, brick building, and you couldn’t believe it; they got a

large donation for a whole new building, and they lifted up this solid

building and moved it, whatever it was, 100 feet, down Prospect. So that

nice building now with the fountain and everything, that wasn’t there

originally, that was a different… yeah, and the clubs, some of them I guess

went out of business. Cannon is back, so that’s changed. You now got a, I

guess a stop light on what street is that?

Bosak Washington Road.

Muller Washington Road.

Bosak That was a definite need.

Muller Now there’s an overpass, or underpass?

Tomlinson There’s a pedestrian bridge, down, closer to where the new chemistry

building is.

26

Muller All this…

Bosak That wasn’t there, I was here in January, I didn’t…

Tomlinson It blends in pretty well. You barely notice it. But it’s helpful if you live

kind of down campus and you are going to chemistry, or Jadwin Physics,

or the athletics facilities, too.

Muller Yeah. Of course, none of which, almost none of which were there when

we were there.

Bosak The athletic fields were a lot closer, and a lot of those dorms now were

where we would play softball, or whatever you were doing; interclub

sports. So now, to get to some of the fields, you go across Lake Carnegie.

Muller Well, I remember, we don’t, we had the Dillon Gym, we didn’t have the

other gym. We had tennis courts right beyond the Dillon Gym, and that’s a

whole new…

Bosak Dillon pool opened in 1947; the old gym, I guess, burned down and they

rebuilt it right after World War II. We happen to have a swimming reunion

today from 2 to 4 with our honorary classmate, Bob Clotworthy, who was

the coach at the time. We said, why go all the way down to Denunzio

Pool? Beautiful facility, but far. They have an alumni swim meet on

Saturday morning that conflicts with our memorial service otherwise we

might combine the events. But the Dillon pool—it’s near and nostalgic!

Muller So you’re reuning at the, yeah, absolutely.

27

Bosak At the Dillon pool, and we basically invited all swimmers from ’58, ’59,

up to ’73 when Bob left Princeton.

Muller How old is Clotworthy now?

Bosak He’s 81.

Muller Oh, that’s not bad.

Bosak And he’s here. I picked him up at Newark Airport the other day. And he’s

as fired up as can be about being an honorary classmate—and honorary

member of the SuperClass!

Muller That’s the other thing, our honorary classmates are interesting. I mean the

first one we had was Judge Harold Medina, famous judge who’s

grandfather of two of our classmates, our reunion chair, and Standish

Medina, again, — a tradition. And Bob Clotworthy and some of our other

folks are in the administration. Mibs, and Rand, and…

Bosak We’ve got a woman. Molly Raiser.

Muller Molly Raiser is the first, yeah. Her husband was tragically killed in a plane

crash, was treasurer for Bill Clinton, would probably been, probably

would have been the secretary of the treasury, if he’d lived. He was killed

in a plane crash, and then Bill Clinton was elected, and made Molly Raiser

his protocol ambassador. So even our wives and women are super.

Bosak Well, we’ve tried to bring some women in. We’d like to make coeducation

retroactive, but we can’t. And it’s interesting, you know, how our

education would have changed, with women. I remember, we would drive

28

great distances. We knew Trenton State was right down the road, the

Princeton Hospital right here. Senior year you had more contacts with girls

since you figured it out.

Muller Rider was…

Bosak Rider was there, I mean, you had contacts where you had them. My senior

year I was going up to Elmira, New York, where my future wife/

girlfriend was.

Muller And we had mixers here.

Bosak Elmira was a five hour drive away, but we’d drive her back on a Sunday

afternoon and come back, right back, that night.

Muller Yeah, we had mixers.

Tomlinson Not a lot of interstates back then.

Bosak Two.

Muller No, no, we had—

Bosak No, three. Delaware Water Gap had one. There were few superhighways

Muller Well the glee club of course had, of course, we’d go to women’s colleges.

Mary Baldwin. Well actually, Gil High, will be back. He, I can still

remember being on the bus. Gil was, I was the senior accompanist, and Gil

became the president of the glee club. And I can still remember on the bus

trip we would usually ride back together on the bus, and we were coming

back from Mary Baldwin, and Gil turned to me and he said, you know, I

think I’ve met my future wife. And a year after graduation, yeah. They’ll

29

both be back. Their oldest daughter, then was a Princeton grad, Amanda

High, so, yeah, yeah.

Bosak That’s good.

Muller They’re…

Tomlinson When you get together, what are the things that come up most often. I

mean, what are the kind of the stories that come up over and over again?

Muller Well I think first, what are you doing, and now it’s, how’s your health,

you know, how’s your family.

Bosak Half the class is at that health care seminar right now.

Muller Especially, you know, how is your wife, how are the kids, the

grandchildren, that type of thing, but I think it’s also inevitably, oh, do you

remember, do you remember this, do you remember that, do you

remember from Princeton, the connection. But it’s fun to meet up with

people that you haven’t— It’s a little like, not that it’s a brother, but it’s a

little like seeing someone that you were very close to and had a connection

with, and you haven’t seen for years and years and years and years and

years. I mean, what do you think?

Bosak You pick right up.

Muller Yeah.

Bosak You pick right up, and it’s interesting. And the conference calls over the

last four years for planning for the 50th are fun. I take the minutes and

then publish them, so I can see what has been the focal point, other than

30

the nitty-gritty of the reunions itself: it’s been the memorial service. There

are a few spokesmen who are good, adamant spokesmen for the memorial

service. We have about 110, give or take, classmates to memorialize, and

I think they got everybody memorialized in the book who had died And it

was a chore. But I think the focus on having a nice memorial service, and

then, inviting widows; we didn’t quite know how to do that but figured it

out.. Within the last week, we got Torre-Tasso’s widow to attend.

Muller Who?

Bosak Torre-Tasso. And he didn’t graduate, but she heard the stories of Princeton

from him.

Muller And Diane Hill is back. She signed in last night.

Bosak I see that-- Dave Hill’s widow. I run the web and we couldn’t figure out

how to register them so I simply registered them as honoraries and they

come gratis., We’ve got close to 10 widows attending now.

Muller Two of the widows are speaking. Two of the widows, Molly Raiser is

reading.

Bosak Oh, that’s right, yes.

Muller And Lynn Nadeau. Yeah, so it is a very inclusive service, and it includes

the entire Princeton family.

Bosak I got a call, well, Linda Moore. And I didn’t know her husband and all

that—

Muller Breck Moore.

31

Bosak And she said, you know my husband died in 2004 and she said, I feel I

owe it to him to come back to his 50th. And it was a nice gesture.

Muller Yeah, and so, I mean from the widows’ standpoint, they are really

recapturing their loved one. Because this was, this is part of their husband.

Bosak And we’re comping them, meaning that they’re on the class. Karen

Campbell called me in January. Pete Campbell lived down the hall from

me, in Witherspoon Hall sophomore year—he was a very, very diligent

student and captain of the basketball team.

Muller And his sister’s coming.

Bosak His sister is coming for emotional support, and, you know, the memory

too. Karen called and said, I’ve been thinking of doing this for 15 years,

and I’ve finally gotten up the courage.

Muller Yeah, this is going to be very powerful.

Bosak So immediately I put her in touch with Al Kaemmerlen, who’s a

basketball player, and she said, oh, Al’s the one guy I remember. Al’s

6’10” and that was a giant in our days, still is a giant. But right away we

said, you know, we said we were going to have a procedure, we don’t

really have a procedure, what will we do? And now we have figured it out.

We’re just going with the flow. We couldn’t get a dorm room for one lady,

and put her out in the Marriott, and we said, okay, we’ll take care of that.

Which is quite nice.

Muller It’s interesting, because we got, we had a super basketball team, and then,

but just barely a year after we were so proud of ourselves, who came along

32

but Bill Bradley! And so suddenly, the Class of ’62, who were they? But it

was a super team, I mean we had—

Bosak Yes, it was,

Muller We had Kaemmerlen, and Pete Campbell, it was a great basketball team.

Bosak Well the one guy you got a room for, last night, his brother, Artie Hyland,

I think, played.

Muller Yeah. I didn’t even know.

Bosak It was not Arty, I don’t think it was Arty, I think it was his brother was a

year older.

Muller Because when we were seniors, we were seniors then Bill Bradley was

this little freshman guy. And suddenly nobody remembers the basketball

teams except, you know, except for Bill Bradley. But it was really, it was

the beginning of the super basketball heritage that really started around

our time. So there’s… what else has changed? Well, the U-Store which

was, I think just opened the year before we arrived.

Bosak No, it was in Dod. It was in Dod our freshman year.

Muller Was it?

Bosak Freshman year it was in Dod. Right in the basement.

Muller Yeah. And now look. We’ve gotten so old, they moved the U-Store.

33

Bosak And they moved it down here, and now they have this boardwalk sweat

shirt-shop down on Nassau Street. It’s just pure commercialism. But when

I went to the U-Store for the first time in umty-ump years, probably about

10 years ago, and I looked at it and I said, okay, there are books and there

are birth control devices.

Muller Yeah, that’s what they, they didn’t have that when we were here! That was

1960.

Bosak They didn’t want you kissing a girl, let alone—

Muller Oh yeah, that reminded me of something, now, I got a senior moment, I

forgot it. Oh, there was something.

Bosak The Daily Prince was a big deal, then. Every classmate probably glanced

through the Daily Prince for news, which was just gossip a lot of the time.

Muller But what’s gone, the restaurants. Renwick’s is gone.

Bosak The Balt.

Muller The Balt. Lahiere’s, just closed. The Princeton Inn is no longer a separate,

a separate thing.

Bosak The King’s Inn was, my senior year, when you quietly drove-- up to

Kingston. And the Wooden Wheel, up on 206, where a lot of Swedish au

pairs would go. That was the place to go, and rehydrate after you’d done

your thesis.

Muller The freshman, the freshman-sophomore eating halls, we had Upper and

Lower Cloister, which is Holder, those are no longer there, and in it’s

34

place, actually, is a Peter Firestone room, which is sort of nice, for our

classmate who died of meningitis, long, long ago, unfortunately. And

Lower Eagle, we didn’t, we don’t have those anymore. I remember when

there’d be dates, the dates when they were stupidly escorted into the

dining areas, there’d be this bang-bang-bang- bang-bang-bang-bang of all

the silverware if anyone brought their date there. I don’t know why a date

would ever come back!

Bosak You had to be broke to take your date to—

Muller The commons. Do they have, they don’t have, they don’t have commons

anymore, do they? Or sort of.

Tomlinson It’s still there, and it’s shared by two, I believe two of the residential

colleges.

Muller They were just long tables, it was like an English thing.

Tomlinson Still—

Muller Still there.

Tomlinson Still pretty similar.

Muller But not Upper Cloister, that’s the funny thing.

Bosak The evening meal was somewhat of a zoo. People from your dorm, from

your stairwell, would band together. When I lived in Witherspoon for two

years, you’d get maybe six or seven guys to agree that “it’s dinner time,

let’s go up.” And you just stood there, en masse, and they’d say, okay,

you’re in Upper Cloister, you’re in Upper Eagle.

35

Muller Ah, yeah, I’d forgotten that.

Bosak And then in the spring of, fall of freshman year, there was Madison, which

was all the way around on Nassau Street, and you had to run around, and

if you were at the back of the line you said, to heck with it, I’m not going,

I’ll wait for Upper Eagle to open up.

Muller Yeah, they had big, long tables, they were like this, and the veggies would

start on one side and the meat on the other. Elephant balls and mystery

meat. Elephant balls and mystery meat. And if you were at this end, you’d

end up with the garnish. I mean, nothing left on the meat.

Bosak The best one, Lower Cloister was the best for food fights. And they

weren’t really food fights—

Muller Alright, food fights.

Bosak They were with a spoon and trying to bounce a smaller meatball off the

portraits. Elephant balls were large, but, bounce a smaller meatball, or

brussel sprout or something like that,--brussel sprouts are only good for

throwing—We’d try to bounce them off a trustee, picture, I guess that’s

what was hanging up there.

Muller Oh, you were bad. I don’t remember that.

Bosak It was bad. But, whoever started forced you to retaliate. Shot fired across

your bow. Food fights occurred maybe once every two months.

Muller And then there were occasionally the riots. I remember there was one,

there was one, I wasn’t involved in that—

36

Bosak No, of course not.

Muller But I remember they were knocking down, the president of the university

on, in Prospect. So Bob Goheen was the, who was the youngest president,

he just started a year before us, right?

Bosak That’s right.

Muller I think he started ’57. And, and there was some ridiculous riot and they

were pulling down the fence around prospect, and somebody got tapped

on the shoulder; it was Bob Goheen, he was standing behind him, ah, sir.

Bosak They did rock the PJ&B. I think they rocked the train on its tracks, they

didn’t tip it over, but they caused some havoc. It was springtime

enthusiasm. I don’t believe there was any real devastation, it was just

something that you wanted to contain before that happened. But look at

the girls’ rugby team. Just, they recently won a game and went over to

Murray-Dodge, stripped, ran down Nassau Street to Witherspoon and did

a loop back through campus real quick, before anybody could realize what

was happening. This was just last spring, at least, or so I read in the Daily

Prince or somewhere that this happened. We missed that.

Muller We were before the, we had mooning, I remember that, but we didn’t have

that, what was it, the naked Olym—

Bosak Streaking.

Muller We did have the streak—

Bosak We didn’t streak.

37

Muller We didn’t have the naked Olympics, whatever that was.

Bosak Nude. The nude Olympics.

Muller Nude Olympics, the runs. We didn’t have that.

Bosak That’s in my P-Rade narration.

Muller Well…

Bosak We were pre-coeducation, pre-nude Olympics. I don’t think they’ll read

my narration. You can get the spirit now that you’re getting into things

that were memorable.

Muller Well what I can do, and this reunion I already button-holed it, are two

cardiology, I know all the doctors, and I button-holed the two cardiologists

to ask them about a specific medical problem that I’m having. I had a

whole discussion about it. Two free consultations.

Bosak Yeah, that’s good.

Muller Yeah, it’s—

Bosak Dave Mishalove is a cardiologist.

Muller Yeah, Dave Mishalove and Joel Friedman.

Bosak Oh, it’s Joel—

Muller Yeah, back from, back from—

38

Bosak Oh, he’s that golfer. All he talks about is golf. He’s still practicing

medicine but all he talks about is golf. Every class news story, it’s golf.

Golf, golf. And I say, hey, and he’s probably a very accomplished

physician.

Muller He’s very, he really is. He’s… Well, ask us more questions.

Tomlinson Well—

Bosak Yeah, we’re roaming.

Tomlinson We’re kind of getting near the end of your time, unfortunately, but I do

want to kind of, wrap up by asking you, in your careers and your lives

since Princeton, what have you drawn on from your Princeton experience.

I mean, what things kind of stand out?

Muller Oh, that’s easy. We had a famous lecturer here who wrote Rendezvous

with Destiny. Eric Goldman, famous history professor. And I guess junior

or senior year, even if you weren’t a history major, you could fortunately

get in there. And he gave these marvelous lectures, standing room only.

And one of the quotations from his book, has gone with me ever, “those to

whom much is given, much is expected.” Those to whom much is given,

much is expected. And everybody who comes to Princeton has been given

something. And our debt is to take what we’ve been given and in some

way, large or small, give back. I mean it’s, it’s that simple, and that

complicated.

Bosak I was a research analyst on Wall Street for computer stocks even though I

was in liberal arts. I liked Greek and Roman history, and all literature

courses, and a lot of French lit., It was delving into the subject, just

39

digging down, with the lecture setting the theme. But then in precepts

with only six or 10 people you delving into the subject in real depth,

making sure you could prove your case as opposed to just coming up with

an offhand opinion. CNBC and some of these news stations, just spout off

opinions they can’t document. I’m talking about stocks, per se, which is

my discipline. But political narrators just go overboard on things of that

nature, as you well know.

Muller Princeton reminded us and taught us how to think. And to think for

ourselves. That’s the most important thing.

Bosak And question your own comments.

Muller Yeah, and question yourself.

Bosak Question yourself.

Muller Question yourself, be your own devil’s advocate.

Bosak Didn’t always work, but—

Muller You usually have a lot of people questioning you, but how good you can

question yourself.

Bosak And my wife keeps me honest.

Muller Yeah, that’s right. You can always count on that.

Bosak I will say, you know, from a personal viewpoint, right after graduation,

going in the army, and then being married-- having to provide for

somebody. I think you can take a 16 year old immature boy and say,

40

you’re head of the family now, and the kid is all of a sudden 25 years old;

he’s grown up and he’s got a responsibility. But at age 22, having a wife

to take care of, going to Germany being away from the family and having

a captain that said on a Thursday, Barry, do this. I said I’ll get to it

Monday. He said, I didn’t say that-- I mean now. So I think the army,

where a lot of us served, helped., We have this Vietnam panel today at

four; I really recommend that you go to it. And I really recommend that

someone in Washington waging war go to it to listen-- don’t make the

same mistake again, which, we tend to do every 40 years.

Muller Yeah, Princeton is always, just one last remembrance. When you ask us

what things have changed. I can remember a reunion many years ago, and

I was behind Nassau Hall. And right close to Nassau Hall was this little

old gentleman, he was the last of the Poe brothers, the famous Poe

brothers in Princeton football history, there were like six brothers. And he

was short little guy, ’cause football didn’t need the big brawny guys. And

he was looking, you could just see on his face, the awe at how Princeton

had changed from the 1890s to this would have been 1960s, late 1960s.

And he was just standing there, looking at Nassau Hall, which was there

then, there now, even though everything else has changed, and it’s the

same with us. I mean, we went through yesterday, the marvelous

battlefield tour, and we had ended with, with Nassau Hall, and had this

marvelous history, and it’s, it’s there, it’s been there before we were here,

and will be there after we’re gone. And yet we’re part of it.

Bosak Yep.

Muller We’re all part of it. And that’s part of the poem which will be in our

memorial.

Bosak In summation.

41

Muller Ulysses poem. We are part of everything we’ve seen, and it’s part of us.

Bosak Great.

Muller And we’re part of reunions.

Bosak I hope this wasn’t too confusing, bouncing around.

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