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t w o The Professor: Colgate University After my discharge from the army and return to Addie, I began the process of becoming a full-fledged civilian once again. That meant discarding my army khakis for a civilian business suit. Addie’s uncle Sam Salinsky of Aberdeen, South Dakota, who owned a women’s clothing store, introduced me to the Hart Schaffner & Marx distributor in Chicago, and soon I was being fitted for my first postwar civilian suit at a very reasonable price. Since its quality was far superior to anything I had purchased before (and, in fact, to most of those I acquired for many years thereafter), I wore that suit until it was threadbare. The suit, which was my first order of business upon returning, was critical to my second order of business. At Biarritz, I had joined the American Veterans Committee (AVC), a liberal alternative to the American Legion. Its founder, the visionary Charles Bolté, wanted returning veterans to play a role in the postwar rebuilding of the United States and in the prevention of another world war; “Americans First, Veterans Second” was his motto for the AVC. Bolté’s widely read book The New Veteran appealed to the idealistic nature of many Americans after the war. I had been elected as the Biarritz Chapter’s representative to the AVC’s first national convention, scheduled for late April 1946. Decked out in my new suit, I took the train to Des Moines, Iowa, for the several days’ activities. There, navy veterans like Harold Stassen, the former governor of Minnesota, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. spoke, along with business, professional, and educational leaders. The speakers and meetings reflected the high optimism and feeling of great opportunity for returning servicemen. AVC delegates like me were not interested in rehashing our war stories; we were looking for specific job opportunities. Along with writing many letters and making many calls, I contacted various teachers’ employment agencies, but few of the available positions appealed to me. Paul Bennett, my former tennis coach at Northwestern, attempted to help me by contacting a steel executive friend in Middletown, Ohio, where there was an opening for a history teacher and tennis coach. I colgate university [23] was invited to Middletown and spent two days there with this influential executive. He looked me over, introduced me to prominent local people, including the high school principal and officers of the local country club. Then he asked me to show him my tennis teaching techniques. After two very busy days, I was offered positions teaching history in the high school, coaching its tennis team, and serving as tennis professional at the local country club, at a total annual remuneration of about $3,800 – a reasonable sum in those days. I couldn’t help feeling that I was valued more for my tennis prowess than my intellectual skills. Nevertheless, in the absence of any other offer, I was prepared to accept that Middletown job. Luckily for me, as I was considering my options I received a letter from Charles R. Wilson, the head of Colgate University’s History Department, who had been my colleague at Biarritz American University. I had written to Wilson and others whom I had met in Biarritz to tell them that I had returned to Illinois and was seeking a position. Colgate, an all-male school, had an opening, he said, and since he had already heard me lecture and was familiar with my written work, he had been authorized to offer me a position for the coming academic year at a salary of $2,400 – considerably less than what Middletown had offered. (In those days, high schools often paid more than colleges for beginning instructors with advanced degrees. Of course, the Middletown offer was really for twelve months rather than eight or nine, and included teaching tennis all summer.) Nevertheless, I accepted Colgate’s offer – the first of several occasions when I took a position with lower financial rewards than I could have attained elsewhere. I was eager to teach at the college level, especially at a respectable institution like Colgate, where excellence in teaching and scholarship were highly valued. Against those considerations, the salary was secondary. My arrival in Hamilton, New York, in June 1946 to teach summer school began a fifteen-year association with Colgate University. I couldn’t have asked for a smoother transition into civilian life. Every one of my students that first summer and fall was...

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