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In the blush of that vernal autumn I arrived with conventional gear and airy surmise. It was the days of slide rules and portable typewriters; record players and footlockers; brief cases and spiral notebooks. I even brought a shelf of real books.
The dorm proved to be a collection of recycled barracks from White Rock, New Mexico. Surplus WW II barracks were the go-to temporary buildings of the day, and they'd been pulled onto the campus in response to the GI Bill. There was no air conditioning. The bathrooms and washing machines were in the middle of the building, near a tiny lobby with ugly chairs. I lived in White Rock one semester until the slick new Regents Row complex opened. We haven't found many actual pictures of White Rock, save from a story about one of them burning in 1966, and a distance shot below, so we've included some protypical views from other venues to suggest the moment. If you're wanting to flip through some old NMSU yearbooks about now, click the title block, at the top.
White Rock Barracks just before destruction in 1963
From the Santa Fe New Mexican-July 1, 1973:
White Rock: Resurrection City
Ghost towns proliferate in the southwest, but who ever heard of one that gathered up its shroud and recycled itself into a model city? White Rock did! The new White Rock is a city of 9,000 people, with not a slum or ghetto area in sight. It is all new, and might well serve as a specimen sample for slick magazines. Homes are not cut from cookie cutter master plans, but express the individuality of tastes and needs. They share well manicured lawns, shrubbery and trees, winding paved streets, and a business section that refuses to be stereotyped, yet is completely efficient and more than attractive. Walk though "The Village", a multimillion dollar business center being developed by Andy Long with diminutive dynamo Peggy Corbett as his good right hand. The buildings are mission stone with shake shingle roofing. Grouped with open areas, minus gaudy, glaring signs, the center has trees, redwood planters, hanging flower planters, shaded portals, even a small coral adjacent to a western wear and tack shop. The professional plaza is already in use. There is a fabric shop with a children's play center, a "findings" department with jars of hard candy to help patrons make up their mind on which pattern to use and a sewing training center. Customers often bring in their creations for others to see how a fabric or pattern looks made up. An ice cream "saloon", barber shop, shoe shop, beauty parlor are already thriving, and plans call for a supermarket, gift shop, apartment houses, etc. in the complex. Play centers for children, parks and tennis courts are scattered throughout the town, and the view in any direction is superb by courtesy of nature. Schools, churches, fire and police departments are all excellent. White Rock is a suburb of Los Alamos, now connected by a high bridge over the narrow, deep canyon that separates the two cities.
In 1962, the first homes of the second White Rock were occupied and today it continues to grow. It is small enough to be friendly and large enough to care for its people realistically. It is really a dream town. When Los Alamos was chosen as the site for the secret Manhattan project, the laboratories developed around Fuller Lodge and Ashley Pond. It was the secret city, the gate opened only to those with the even for laboratory personnel. Contractors were loathe to even bid if it meant transporting their workers from Santa Fe or Espanola. Nearby was a stretch of flat land bordering on the gorge of the Rio Grande. Here a prefab town was built at a cost of $4,500,000 for construction workers. Streets were laid out, water, electricity, sewer lines were all installed and White Kid-size water fountains in "The Village." As it grew, officials decided that the main laboratories needed to be moved out of the prefab housing into a permanent location. This was in 1949. Construction people had to have somewhere to live, and certainly Los Alamos facilities were inadequate, White Rock was born. AEC put in 411 homes, 197 trailer spaces, 21 dormitories, an elementary school, food market, barber and beauty shops, drug store, a clothing store, doctor and dentist offices, a service station, police and fire departments. In short order it was a town of 2,000 people. An interesting sidelight surfaces in that the drug store had a liquor license, verboten in Los Alamos. They would and did deliver to the Atomic City. When the new laboratory buildings were completed, construction workers speedily moved out. White Rock rapidly became a ghost town, while the barracks type buildings were sold.
From the Santa Fe New Mexican-July 1, 1973: White Rock: Resurrection City Ghost towns proliferate in the southwest, but who ever heard of one that gathered up its shroud and recycled itself into a model city? White Rock did! The new White Rock is a city of 9,000 people, with not a slum or ghetto area in sight. It is all new, and might well serve as a specimen sample for slick magazines. Homes are not cut from cookie cutter master plans, but express the individuality of tastes and needs. They share well manicured lawns, shrubbery and trees, winding paved streets, and a business section that refuses to be stereotyped, yet is completely efficient and more than attractive. Walk though "The Village", a multimillion dollar business center being developed by Andy Long with diminutive dynamo Peggy Corbett as his good right hand. The buildings are mission stone with shake shingle roofing. Grouped with open areas, minus gaudy, glaring signs, the center has trees, redwood planters, hanging flower planters, shaded portals, even a small coral adjacent to a western wear and tack shop. The professional plaza is already in use. There is a fabric shop with a children's play center, a "findings" department with jars of hard candy to help patrons make up their mind on which pattern to use and a sewing training center. Customers often bring in their creations for others to see how a fabric or pattern looks made up. An ice cream "saloon", barber shop, shoe shop, beauty parlor are already thriving, and plans call for a supermarket, gift shop, apartment houses, etc. in the complex. Play centers for children, parks and tennis courts are scattered throughout the town, and the view in any direction is superb by courtesy of nature. Schools, churches, fire and police departments are all excellent. White Rock is a suburb of Los Alamos, now connected by a high bridge over the narrow, deep canyon that separates the two cities. In 1962, the first homes of the second White Rock were occupied and today it continues to grow. It is small enough to be friendly and large enough to care for its people realistically. It is really a dream town. When Los Alamos was chosen as the site for the secret Manhattan project, the laboratories developed around Fuller Lodge and Ashley Pond. It was the secret city, the gate opened only to those with the even for laboratory personnel. Contractors were loathe to even bid if it meant transporting their workers from Santa Fe or Espanola. Nearby was a stretch of flat land bordering on the gorge of the Rio Grande. Here a prefab town was built at a cost of $4,500,000 for construction workers. Streets were laid out, water, electricity, sewer lines were all installed and White Kid-size water fountains in "The Village." As it grew, officials decided that the main laboratories needed to be moved out of the prefab housing into a permanent location. This was in 1949. Construction people had to have somewhere to live, and certainly Los Alamos facilities were inadequate, White Rock was born. AEC put in 411 homes, 197 trailer spaces, 21 dormitories, an elementary school, food market, barber and beauty shops, drug store, a clothing store, doctor and dentist offices, a service station, police and fire departments. In short order it was a town of 2,000 people. An interesting sidelight surfaces in that the drug store had a liquor license, verboten in Los Alamos. They would and did deliver to the Atomic City. When the new laboratory buildings were completed, construction workers speedily moved out. White Rock rapidly became a ghost town, while the barracks type buildings were sold. Some of these buildings can still be seen scattered around the nearby countryside including Espanola. A few Los Alamoites, AEC, LASL and Zia employees, living at White Rock until quarters could be built in Los Alamos, moved into the hill city as rapidly as possible. Gov. Edwin L. Mecherti cut the ribbon across the road into Los Alamos on Feb. 2, 1957 to open the secret city. New Mexicans, enroute to Bandelier, sometimes paused and rambled around the White Rock site and not knowing why it was built to begin with, readily believed the story that Los Alamos people simply didn't want to live in White Rock. Housing problems in Los Alamos proliferated. Barranca was the first "suburb" of privately owned homes to be built. Robert Y. Porton, PR Director, recalls that pessimists preached doom for that housing area, and even more so when, in 1959, White Rock was suggested as a development site. The government was withdrawing completely as landlord, contractor and head of various factors that go to make up a city. Housing for workers remained a problem, and bids were opened with E.I. Noxon Construction Company of Los Angeles being awarded the contract to develop the first 250 acres by AEC in 1961. The old White Rock facilities—water, sewage disposal, lights, etc. had not only deteriorated during the "ghost town" period, but were simply inadequate for the new project. They were replaced, Roger and Peggy Corbett bought, and still occupy, one of the first houses in the new White Rock. They now have lots of happy, contented neighbors.
David W R Denzler, Roomie
My roommate was David Denzler, also a freshman, but with a difference. David had graduated from Albuquerque Adademy, a prestigious private school, and was eons ahead of me in sophistication. He majored in mathematics, because, he said, the weirdest people he knew were mathematicians. His high school Latin teacher had been the poet, Robert Creeley and David had lots of stories. David loved classical music, opera, and literature. He had a girlfriend, owned a car, and knew how college life should proceed. He'd even attended a semester at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, marking him as a venerated elder, although he was younger than me.
I was without such savoir vivre, but barely realized it. I wanted to be a physicist, and had a goal of learning everything. I had a staggering case of homesickness that nearly put me on a bus back to Carlsbad. I affected a taste in jazz, although I tolerated David’s classical stuff, since he owned the record player. In retrospect I see my musical taste as a mimic of that era's intellectual cool set. Eventually, I changed my major to math also, because it was easier than physics, and I was beginning to suspect I wouldn't be able to learn everything.
David realized the beds in our tiny room were stackable. That freed up space for the easy chair he'd hauled down from Albuquerque. He spent a lot of time in it, reading, studying, and philosophizing. He had a souvenir from a bout of childhood polio, but he made no concession to it, except for a slight limp. His parents visited a few times and they took us out to dinner at La Posta. His father was a well-known doctor in Albuquerque. David's pride was a meerschaum pipe. He also got brownies from home, which he shared from a fruitcake box kept in the closet. He was a valuable asset to a bewildered young freshman, although I didn't realize it at the time, and wouldn't admit it to myself for years.
All the rooms were off a single hall, and ours was the first room nearest the parking lot. We got a lot of visitors, partly because of our location, and partly because of David’s gregarious and scholarly mien. People were always dropping in for help with homework or just friendly advice from the Sage of White Rock. He made friends among some of the foreign students, from Iraq and other middle eastern countries.
One of these, Farris Bakki (see above), introduced us to Turkish coffee, and became a confidant and portal to the world beyond. Dave and Farris shared a love of Madame Butterfly. There was always a discussion going on.
David involved himself with Frank Thayer, another White Rock resident, in reviving the campus literary magazine, renamed Puerto del Sol.
Marion Hardman, campus legend, and longtime stalwart of the English Department, had helped found the Rio Grande Writer, at some point in the 30s or 40s. It died in 1949 from lack of interest, and in early 1960, newly arrived Tom Erhard conspired to reignite the long cold ashes. Frank Thayer, Denzler, and others helped him get it going again, with a new name, during the 1960-1961 term.
For some reason the current English Department thinks literary life at NMSU began in 1964, but the youth have a fuzzy concept of history.
One night a frequent visitor, it might have been Charley Weaver, wandered in to get David's help with a math problem. He paused as if seeing the room for the first time and observed to the assembled, “This room has a lot of character.” He was right.
David Sears, Denizen of White Rock
Denzler made friends with David Sears, another White Rocker from the other end of the long hall, and the three of us hung out frequently in our spare time. David Sears was from Georgia, and had a jazz collection acquired from various junk shops. Today we would call these relics, “78s,” but at the time they were just records, distinguished from LPs and 45s. That jargon and its nuances are now as foreign as slide rules and typewriter erasers.
I knew very little about jazz at the time, an ignorance of which I was largely ignorant, having heard of Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and little else. My older brother was a jazz aficionado, so naturally I assumed I knew about it too. David Sears introduced me to Bix Biederbecke, Fletcher Henderson, Bubber Miley, Cootie Williams, Jimmy Rushing, Jimmy McPartland, and a slew of other artists I've cherished since.
David Sears had a Grundig tape recorder, reel-to-reel of course, and he agreed to record some of his collection for me. The Grundig was a wonderful machine. Push a button, and lights flashed, spindles whirred, relays clicked, and armatures maneuvered, during a moment of mechanical ponderation. Then, smooth-as-fresh-cream, it took off like a wisely trained race horse (I was learning similes and metaphors in Freshman Comp). We made two tapes of my favorites from his collection. I typed up notes. The Grundig picture links to a Jimmy Rushing song we would have recorded if David had owned a copy.
The tapes have survived, with only a short interval of magnetic interference owing to me hitting record, decades ago, during a playback. I had no way to play them after about 1970, until I recently had them transferred to digital media. Some day I need to capture the notes as well. Now, of course, many of the recordings can be found online. One of my favorites was Barney Bigard, playing “Steps Steps Up,” and “Steps Steps Down.” There was a lot of Coleman Hawkins, a little Duke Ellington, and some great Jimmy Rushing.
I lost track of David Sears. He left NMSU about 1963, and, as I recall, headed for California. He may be in Atlanta working as an IT consultant, but I’m not sure. I hope, wherever he is, he still has those records, and that magnificent Grundig machine. What a piece of engineering that was.
We all moved out of White Rock Barracks at the start of the next semester, into the swanky knew digs called Regents Row. That soon-to-be-demolished complex was the dream dorm of its time: air conditioned with a bathroom shared between two rooms. I learned the word "suitemate," and found out how to manipulate the sealed thermostat by draping a damp cloth over it. My education was thorough. My next three years were spent in Garcia Hall, now an administration building, more primitive than Regents Row, but lower "camping out" credentials than White Rock.
I now recognize my White Rock experience as a watershed. My old roommate and I seldom saw each other during the next three years, but the friendships, acquaintances, and social understandings acquired in that first year informed the botheration that followed.
David Denzler went on to be the editor of Puerto del Sol, and encouraged my writing efforts, and we both formed friendships with an important mentor, Tom Erhard, in the English Department (see link above). That semester at White Rock is the nmeonic touchstone for my college days.
As posted in the "Las Cruces News"
Longtime 'Voice of the Aggies' dies at age 90
By Frank Thayer
Posted: 11/12/2013 03:23:15 PM MST
For 35 years, the "Voice of the Aggies" never missed announcing a home football or basketball game for New Mexico State University, and it earned a place in NMSU's Athletic Hall of Fame for Thomas Erhard who died Sunday in Las Cruces at age 90.
While he was a dedicated Aggie fan and sports announcer, Tom Erhard was better known to hundreds of students and faculty as a professor in the English and the Theatre Arts departments, while also familiar to many thousands nationwide as the author of 39 plays for both young people and adult audiences.
A celebration of Tom Erhard's life was held at La Posta, Thursday Nov. 14 at 3 p.m. for his wide circle of family, friends and colleagues.
Erhard began his NMSU career in 1960 and retired as a full professor in 1991.
He had been in weakened condition for several months and was at Mesilla Valley Hospice since last Saturday. He died quietly early Sunday morning.
Born June 11, 1923, in East Hoboken, N.J., Erhard earned his bachelor's at Hofstra College in Hempstead, N.Y., in 1941. After military service in World War II, he returned to academics. His master's (1950) and doctorate (1960) were earned at University of New Mexico.
During WWII, Erhard was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed at Camp Shanks, N.Y., where his assignment was to play baseball. Erhard rubbed shoulders with similarly drafted and volunteer professional ballplayers who joined the Army. Erhard said Hall of Famer Stan Musial, of St. Louis Cardinals fame, was especially a mentor to him.
Erhard taught English and journalism at Highland High School from 1949-1953, and served as director of public information for the Albuquerque Public Schools from 1953-1956 where he founded its Public Information Department.
He went on to become assistant director of press, radio and TV relations for the National Education Association in Washington for a year in 1957 before taking a position as senior fellow in the English department at UNM in 1959 while completing his doctorate. He then moved to NMSU in Las Cruces where he spent a 31-year professorial career starting in 1960. He retired as a full professor in 1991.
Of his many plays for young people, "Rocket in His Pocket" was one of several that achieved national fame, and the royalties from the play were sufficient to finance all the costs of his doctoral studies at UNM.
In more recent years, Erhard was commissioned by NMSU to write the play "And Here Come the Aggies" in celebration of the university's centennial year. He co-wrote the play with his wife of 34 years, Evelyn Madrid Erhard. The two also collaborated in the dramatic adaptation of the Frank Waters novel "The Woman of Otawi Crossing" produced in Reader's Theatre at NMSU in 1989.
As part of his service to education in New Mexico, Erhard founded the New Mexico High School Creative Writing Awards in 1961, a contest and publication that reached out to all New Mexico and Southwest regional high schools. It was a project that he directed for more than 25 years.
Because of his passion for sports, Erhard began announcing Aggie home games in football and basketball almost from the inception of his NMSU teaching career. He was in the press box for every Aggie home game from 1960 through 1995, four years after his official retirement from the faculty. To recognize his service NMSU inducted him into the Athletic Hall of Fame in 2006.
One of Erhard's most-treasured awards came in 1986 when he received Hofstra University's George M. Estabrook award to distinguished graduates, an honor shared with such luminaries as filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.
Erhard is survived by his wife, Evelyn Madrid Erhard, three sons and their spouses: Danny Erhard and Sue Terebenetz; Larry Erhard and Kathryn Sayles; Bruce Erhard and Martha Lyle. The family has chosen Getz Funeral Homes for cremation services. Frank Thayer is a professor of journalism and mass communications at NMSU.
Magic in the Desert
In those days it was common for young men to join the service out of high school, and attend college later. Several of these veterans lived in White Rock, and considered the accommodations upscale. One NMSU alumnus, Pervis Atkins, who was part of the undefeated Aggie football team of 1960, lived a while in White Rock. His picture at right links to a remembrance of his experience. Here is how the barracks were described in a history of the NMSU agricultural department.
"Right after the war, when veterans were returning, they were given priority for jobs. Since Ralph Skaggs was not a veteran, he was invited to make way for a veteran to run the State Experiment Farm in June 1946. He immediately called Professor Cunningham and asked if the faculty position was still available. Since many veterans were being discharged and wanted to go back to school under the GI Bill of Rights, this proved to be a very good change in jobs. During the war the dairy department had an occasional student from some country other than the U.S., who pursued a degree in animal husbandry and required a course in dairying as part of the curriculum, but no U.S. citizens were ever enrolled in the department during these years.
The first dairying class in the fall of 1946 contained fifty returning GIs where there had been almost no students in the previous four years. The campus was swamped with GIs. Old army barracks buildings were moved in and used as student housing. Married GIs were placed in small trailers. Both temporary types of housing were located along the south edge of the campus. Some of these came from the construction town of White Rock, NM, near Los Alamos. They were named White Rocks barracks and given the number corresponding to their building number when used in White Rock."
Let's not forget, 1960 was the year of Magic in the Desert, the undefeated season for the New Mexico State Aggies Football team. To a freshman it seemed the natural order of things. It wasn't. Click the picture for a review of the book written by those who witnessed it.
Dan Perry, Journalism Major, was a junior in 1960 when the heretofore and hereafter hapless Aggies had their undefeated season. He wrote a book about the fabulous experience. It was published posthumously by Frank Thayer and other friends.
And while we're thinking about sporting events, let's not forget the first annual literary awards, sponsored by John G. Kuhn, my freshman comp teacher, in his second, and last, year at NMSU. The top prize went to fellow math major, Jimmy Johnson (called J-squared, of course). Dave Denzler and I both won prizes, but we weren't roomies by that time. See the pop up link at left.
Meeting Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who'd been somehow co-opted by Kuhn to pass out the awards and read his poetry, was another of those undergrad experiences that seemed one-in-a-long-string until the string proved very short.
His appearance was impressive, and we're lucky it was memorialized by competent observation. All I remember about Ferlinghetti's talk was his dismay with Ernest Hemingway, who'd recently shot himself. Lawrence, head Beat at that time, at least on the West Coast, dismissed Hemingway for not engaging the politics of pre-Castro Cuba in his latest book, "The Old Man and the Sea." Oh well.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Aggie Football Legend Atkins Returns To N.M.
Aggie Football Legend Atkins Returns To N.M.
Journal Staff Writer
Pervis Atkins grew up in Oakland, Calif. He’d been a Marine. He’d been on site in Nevada for testing of a nuclear bomb that, when detonated, created a flash so bright “you couldn’t see from here to there,” he says, pointing to his friend Charlie Rogers, sitting attentively on the other side of Rogers’ living room.
All of that tested his toughness, but in no way quite like his first night at New Mexico State, nearly a half-century ago.
Atkins was on a football recruiting visit with Bobby Gaiters, a much more heralded high school star from Ohio. Their night’s stay was in converted Army barracks moved on campus to help house an influx of students.
At night, cows were let loose to roam right outside. The mooing all night and manure in the morning didn’t sit well with a city guy. “White Rocks, they called it. Boy did it stink,” he says, laughing. “I said, ‘We can’t stay here.’ ”
But he did. Gaiters did. And Atkins, now 72, was soon to go from an unknown to one of NMSU’s greatest players ever — the nation’s leading rusher (971 yards in six games) and punt returner (15.1 yards per) in 1959; the school’s first and only first-team All-American the next year.
“I was ‘the dog,’ ” he says, laughing.
Atkins and, especially, then-quarterback Charley Johnson represent ties to the days New Mexico State football had its swagger, when victories over the Lobos and Miners were convincing and expected. They led both victorious Sun Bowl teams, in 1959 and 1960.
The latter team went unbeaten and was the subject of a Sports Illustrated cover story — “The Team The Pros Watch,” Rogers recalled — for all of its NFL prospects playing in far-flung Las Cruces for Warren Woodson.
The Aggies, alas, haven’t been back to the postseason since and currently bear the burden of the nation’s longest bowl-less streak.
Atkins went on to play parts of six seasons with the Los Angeles Rams, Washington Redskins and the Oakland Raiders. He settled in Los Angeles after his retirement and went into the talent agency business.
And he thought many of his athletic exploits had been forgotten until this past spring, when he was one of 75 nominees for the 2008 College Football Hall of Fame class.
“Totally, totally it blew my hat off my head,” Atkins said. “I said, ‘Somebody’s b.s.-ing me down the road.’ ”
He wasn’t one of this year’s eventual 13 selections — Troy Aikman and Thurman Thomas among them — but has a chance for future consideration.
Atkins is part of the weekend revival of the Aggie Nation. Boosters met Saturday night at an athletics fund-raiser in the Albuquerque home of Larry Lujan, president CEO of Manuel Lujan Agencies and an Aggie alum.
Today, boosters and alumni are gathered to play golf in the Fourth Annual Aggie Shootout at Rio Rancho’s Chamisa Hills Country Club. While Atkins will be golfing in a field including NMSU athletics director McKinley Boston, football coach Hal Mumme, basketball coaches Marvin Menzies and Darin Spence and the like, his friend Rogers, one of the city’s most active NMSU athletic boosters, is running the event.
Atkins and Rogers met when Rogers was working in the school cafeteria.
“Back then, the enrollment was 26, 28 hundred and the student body was very cohesive,” said Rogers. “Within a few weeks you felt like you knew everybody on campus.”
It’s a friendship that has maintained through the years. The two can call each other and within minutes they’re laughing at stories of the glory days, though in their time at NMSU, the glory days were really glorious.
“He’s my brother,” said Atkins.
Others in the Cast
There were other significant freshman influences, mostly positive, the more remarkable for seeming ordinary at the time. There was Stanley Puryear, math instructor, who, being black, informed my assumption I'd reached an airy height of social maturity. I didn't realize the rarity of black instructors, then and for years after. Mr. Puryear revealed the beauty of mathematics like a Pythagorean initiating his iron-age novices, then went on to an inspiring career in writing, civil rights, community activities, and academia, with stopovers in Aerospace. He is now known as Muata Weusi-Puryear and has been inducted into the Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame at Asbury Park High School, Asbury Park, New Jersey. My old math teacher has filled his life with passion and accomplishment. Salute, old friend.
There was also my first-semester Freshman Composition instructor, Peter B. Walsh, who demonstrated the pathological depths of eccentricity required to pass as a rare bird in the Beat Era. He'd been the editor of Pen, the literary magazine at the University of Utah, and had published in Poetry Magazine. The poem was anthologized as one of the best of 1955, the year Emmett Till was murdered. He was active in the campus theater, Shakespeare's Caesar, and some avant garde stuff, and seems to have had a voguish politics, think Dr. Strangelove, signaled to his classes by his assertion, hardly credible even to a freshman from the sticks, that the Civil War hadn't been fought over slavery. The poem links to a few letters to the editor, included not for edification, but as reminders of the dernier cri of the time. But I learned most of this later, after the culture that birthed the poem had long evolved. Peter disappeared without a trace as far as I can find.
John G. Kuhn, my second semester composition instructor, introduced me to W. B. Yeats, analyzing the famous Irishman's poetry with an expository crispness never elsewhere encountered. His analysis of Lapis Lazuli is the only one I've found that treats the theater allusions. Kuhn once invited me to his house, and admonished me for complimenting his wife on her coffee. He threatened to flunk me if I ever dropped another possessive apostrophe. I did and he didn't. Good man. Kuhn was a ruthless critic, the only valuable sort. He disappeared in my junior year, memory suggesting a migration to the University of Texas, but now I find he went on to a career of academia, literature, and dramatic artistry at Rosemont College. He was theater director for years, and is now retired. There must be, by this time, a cracker-jack diaspora of Kuhn-trained thespians, masters all, I'm sure. They probably have a secret handshake.
Before majoring in math I felt called to physics, but shortly abandoned the frictionless planes, and weightless strings for the ephemeral certitude of axiomatic logic. I hadn't heard of Kurt Godel yet.
I had to explain myself to this gentleman, a much-admired inspiration for young scholars. I couldn't tell him a truth I hadn't admitted to myself. Math was eating popcorn and physics was chewing nettles. I just wasn't up to it, and always felt I'd let him down.
Undregrad Symmetry
Group theory became important in Physics because of its methods in handling symmetries. Abelian groups apply to a special type of symmetry found in current models of reality. But, the theoreticians assembled at New Mexico State University were not working on the application of Groups. They were stimulated by aesthetic allure.
One of the Abelian Group Theorists to arrive in Las Cruces in 1963 was Dr. David Harrison, on leave from the University of Pennsylvania. He was among that rarest of sightings for amateur Prof Spotters, the research fellow who teaches undergraduates. A friend and I had the pleasure of taking an advanced algebra course from Dr. Harrison. Besides being an excellent teacher, able to articulate complex concepts, he was a high-energy entertainer. He became "Hurricane Harrison" to us. Nicknames for professors were normal. There was H2O, aka Howard O. Smith, the Chemist, Tugboat, the rotund and languorous physics prof who chugged into class puffing a pipe, and "29," the econ prof who began and ended every paragraph with the great depression. These names normally stayed within student control, but my friend once slipped in a conversation with his adviser and referred to "Hurricane." He was rewarded with the enigma of a mathematician's smile.
The Abelian Group episode at NMSU was exciting from the periphery of undergrad status. There were international conferences that anyone could attend. My friend made another rare sighting, a slender fellow with a beard to his navel, and identified him as, "the original Abelian Group." One of the Abelian forces was Dr. Elbert Walker, an object of special admiration to us because he had a beautiful wife who was also a mathematician. In fact, Dr. Carol Walker was, years later, the head of the department. The Walkers, Harrison and others were among the young, energetic PhDs on campus who gave NMSU such a vibrant ambience in those days. He has written a synoptic history of the Abelian group days, and you can access it nearby.
My old roommate of the White Rock days passed away recently, a truth weighted with unexpected emptiness. Our life journeys never steered within hailing distance, even though we worked for vigorously competitive rivals. I saddled up with Telecomputing Services Inc, thanks to a family friend, Jim Rucker, whose father happened to run an employment agency. I rode with the company for decades, through its many incarnations and cattle drives. David's employer, Computer Sciences Corporation, was a nemesis of ours, too often a step ahead in must-win competitions. I didn't know David worked for them until much later. But he was in the set of my hat, the grip of my reins.
David was a shaping force in my life. His significance far outweighed the short time I spent with him. He was a model of confidence, endurance, even exuberance. He failed as often as anyone, but David had a peculiar confidence in ultimate success. He never doubted it. If his car broke, he had a plan. If he failed a test, he learned why. Every moment changed him a little, but he was always his own person, making adjustments on the fly, confident he'd get there. A typical memory involves lunch in the cafeteria during "Sadie Hawkins Days," the post-Al Capp generations can look this up, when Dave put a hand-lettered sign on our table, "Notice! Still Available!" I couldn't have had a better freshman roommate.
White Rock Barracks barely survived our tenure at NMSU. The flashy new Regents Row that replaced them is probably torn down by now. The university, indeed the world, has passed into, and largely out of, the hands of our generation, and nothing seems the same anymore. Yet, that autumn glow of slanted sunlight reveals the truth, the only change is the modest tampering we did on our passing through.
Who in the world cares about White Rock Barracks?