Class Reunion — Prologue

As I write this column I am preparing to depart for Cambridge and the 35th reunion of my Harvard Law School Class of 1948. It will be the first reunion I have attended and, in fact, the first time I have returned to Cambridge since my graduation. I am filled with an equal mixture of anticipation and trepidation.

My class (commencing in 1946) was a special one. It was the first post-World War II class after a hiatus of several years, and there was a five-year backlog of applicants.

Going to Harvard Law School had been beyond my wildest dreams because of financial factors, but with the GI Bill paying for all tuition and books, plus a monthly $75 stipend besides, the possibility was no longer unrealistic for me. Somewhat to my surprise — as my CCNY academic record had not been noteworthy — my application was accepted. The impossible dream became a reality.

Author's first return to campus after 35 years evokes thoughts about insecurity, achievement.

In February, 1946, two weeks after being discharged from the Army and six years after graduating from college, I made my debut at Cambridge. Yet, somehow, I never felt I belonged.

Other than for my military service, I had never been outside the State of New York and seldom strayed from the confines of the Lower East Side where I was born and raised. My parents' lack of proficiency in the English language was such that we spoke exclusively in Yiddish at home. While I had been accepted at Harvard Law School, I felt out of my element there.

My first few weeks at law school did nothing to alter that feeling. All of my classmates nonchalantly dangled their Phi Beta Kappa keys, and in my class were sons of a U.S. Senator, a Supreme Court Justice, and of the then Secretary of State. I wondered what the son of a "pocket-maker" was doing in that company.

Although I had a sense of not belong, it was not my classmates who fostered that feeling. For all I know, now, many others may have felt that way. We each went pretty much our separate ways in large lecture halls of two hundred or more. There was no attendance required; no homework, no quizzes or being called on in class. For every course, everything depended on the one final exam and no one knew how he stood until that was over.

It happened to be the Golden Age of Harvard Law School. The professors were truly titans in their fields of expertise. They had written the definitive texts on Contracts, Constitutional Law, Trusts, Torts, Real Property Law, Evidence, Jurisprudence, and Bankruptcy. Their names were hallowed in the legal profession.

I was exhilarated and stimulated by the analytical and logical minds of my professors and fellow students. It was a heady time for the provincial student from the ghetto! It was wonderful so frightening at the same time.

Even today, in reflecting on that experience, I can best characterize it by saying I wouldn't have missed it for a million dollars and wouldn't want to go through it again for a million more.

Spurred by the intense competition of my fellow students, inspired by the brilliance of my professors, and feeling inadequate among all this brainpower, I attained my personal maximum level of achievement.

I graduated in the top 6% of my class (21st in a graduating class of 368), and yet was never sure I belonged. Ingrained insecurities do not abate in the face of accomplishment.

Now, as I prepare to return to the scene of one of my greatest triumphs and, at the same time, the place where I somehow never felt at home, I wonder what changes the past thirty-five years have wrought in both Harvard and me.