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41 3 A Decade at Harvard with Only a B.A. to Show for It in the fall of 1957, an idealistic and anxious seventeen-year-old kid who had never strayed far from his Bayonne roots followed his sister ann to cambridge , massachusetts, to attend harvard. about eleven hundred freshmen walked with him through the historic gate and entered the hallowed grounds of harvard yard for the first time. Barney arrived with several books from home so that he would have something to read. almost everyone at harvard, he discovered , was smart. The freshmen who had attended andover or exeter and had already completed a year or two of college classes arrived with a veneer of intellectual sophistication that was formidable and intimidating. Barney’s freshman roommate was charles halpern from Buffalo, new york, who would go on to attend yale law School and become one of the country’s finest public interest lawyers. “it was a good match,” halpern said, “two smart, funny eastern Jews with similar senses of the world.” and they both wore thickrimmed glasses. halpern was immediately impressed by his roommate’s knowledge of government and his sense of purpose. he remembers that he showed up at harvard proud that he knew there were two houses in congress. But Barney already knew the names of all the U.S. senators and most of the members of the house and their voting records, as well as the names of all the congressional committees and committee chairmen. Barney soon became close friends with another freshman, hastings wyman Jr. The two had nothing in common except an obsession with politics, which fueled their friendship. They differed on almost every political issue of the day and would argue constantly and often fiercely. wyman, a Presbyterian, was a smart, reactionary southerner, very conservative and very much a segregationist, from aiken, South carolina, a small town of about five thousand people. Barney became a member of the young democratic club at harvard and wyman joined the harvard conservative league. chapter Three 42 wyman would later write his senior thesis on the resurgence of the republican Party in South carolina, an idea that at the time was not even a blip on anyone ’s political radar screen. after graduating from the University of South carolina law School in 1964 and practicing law in aiken for several years, wyman worked for the republican national committee as a southern field representative and then served for five years as Senator Strom Thurmond’s legislative assistant. in 1978, he started the Southern Political Report, a biweekly newsletter covering the politics and politicians of twelve southern states that he continues to write today. during the semester break, Barney took wyman to visit Bayonne. To wyman, “it was a whole different world and a real eye opener.” The blocks of row houses seemed to him “kind of dingy compared to pretty houses on large lots in a small town in South carolina.” The Franks were the first Jews he ever knew, and he found them warm and hospitable. he was impressed that Barney’s father made a lot of money and did it with little education. in the southern small-town rural environment wyman grew up in, he said, “people had education but little money.” a year later, Barney visited wyman in aiken. wyman remembers being alarmed when the first thing Barney did after leaving the plane was to walk over to a water fountain with a sign that said “colored people” and take a drink. “Barney made it clear where he stood,” wyman said. his parents liked Barney a lot, “although,” he said, “there was this sort of language barrier. he spoke so fast in a Bayonne accent and my parents had a southern accent.” Barney was totally focused on politics. he knew from the beginning that he wanted to be a government major and took almost every government course that was offered. during his freshman year, he became active in student politics and student council activities. at harvard, he found what for him was a new phenomenon—people to his left politically. But the whole time he was there he stayed deep in the closet. Though he and his roommate, charley halpern, often played tennis together and had many dinners in the graduate student apartment where Barney’s sister ann lived with her husband, Gerald lewis, a student at the harvard law School, halpern had no idea that his roommate was gay. many times during their...

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