The Negotiator

by George Mitchell

  If it were possible to love and admire my mother even more than I did, it happened that summer. I was a young, healthy boy, but I was exhausted after just two months working the night shift. She did it for her entire adult life, while raising five children! It was with relief, and an overwhelming desire to sleep at night, that I returned to Bowdoin that September.

  Although I was unaware of it at the time, by then Bowdoin already had a long and distinguished history. Created by an act of the Massachusetts Legislature (then known as the General Court), it was the result of years of effort by the residents of the District of Maine to establish their own institution of higher learning. By proposing to name the college after the former governor of Massachusetts, James Bowdoin, the wily Mainers hoped to influence both the General Court and the Bowdoin family. They succeeded: the General Court prepared and Governor Samuel Adams signed the bill establishing the college on June 24, 1794. Then the family came through. The former governor’s son, of the same name, contributed land and cash and much more. It is in his memory that “James Bowdoin Day” is recognized each year.

  The college quickly developed a reputation for excellence, in part through the achievements of its graduates. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne both graduated in 1825 and went on to become authors of enduring fame. Franklin Pierce graduated the year before them and later became president of the United States. William Pitt Fessenden graduated in 1823 and became the first of several Bowdoin alumni to serve in the U.S. Senate. Joshua Chamberlain, Class of 1852, was one of the heroes of the Civil War and then served as governor of Maine. Robert Peary, Class of 1877, discovered the North Pole. Without going further for fear of boring the reader and slighting family and admirers of others not mentioned, it is sufficient to say that by the fall of 1950 Bowdoin was a well-established, well-regarded liberal arts college with about eight hundred male students. (The college now has about twice as many students and is coeducational.) For most of the next four years it would be my second home.

  I was uneasy at first, homesick for my family, for my friends in Waterville, and especially for my mother’s cooking. It was hard getting used to college food; the bread was never quite as fresh as my mother’s, the rest of the food not quite as tasty. And eating with a lot of strangers was, well, strange. I also was afraid that I wouldn’t fit in and that I would fail scholastically.

  I was assigned a corner room in a dormitory named Hyde Hall. Not until later did I become aware of the great man after whom the building was named. William DeWitt Hyde served as president of Bowdoin from 1885 until 1917. Athletic, energetic, intelligent, he left an indelible mark on the college and the thousands of young men who learned there during his tenure. It is out of date and it includes passages that today would be regarded as unacceptably sexist and religiously rigid, but I still enjoy reading President Hyde’s inspiring description of what the college had to offer:

  To be at home in all lands and all ages; to count Nature a familiar acquaintance, and Art an intimate friend; to gain a standard for the appreciation of other men’s work and the criticism of one’s own; to carry the keys of the world’s library in one’s pocket and feel its resources behind one in whatever task he undertakes; to make hosts of friends among the men of one’s own age who are to be leaders in all walks of life; to lose oneself in generous enthusiasms and cooperate with others for common ends; to learn manners from students who are gentlemen; and form character under professors who are Christians—this is the offer of the college for the best four years of one’s life.

  When I entered Bowdoin in September 1950, I had never heard of William DeWitt Hyde and the high sentiments of his “offer of the college” were way over my head. But as I look back with the perspective of time, I recognize that some—not all, by any means, as I shall shortly point out—of his words were relevant to my years at Bowdoin. They may not have been the best years of my life, but once I got over my early nervousness, the last three years there were the most fun.

  Since graduating from Bowdoin in 1954 I have returned often to the campus. Each time I pass Hyde Hall I don’t think of President Hyde. I think of Dan Gulezian. We shared a room there in our freshman year. Dan represented a lot of firsts for me: first roommate, first person from Massachusetts I got to know well, first person of Armenian extraction I’d ever met, first young person I’d known with a mustache. A freshman in college with a mustache! That alone made him seem mature and sophisticated. Dan was tall and easygoing and we got along well. But because we had pledged to different fraternities, our lives quickly diverged as more and more of our activities centered on fraternity life.

  I became a member of Sigma Nu fraternity, described as the “jock house,” a fraternity favored by athletes. To be considered enough of an athlete to be asked to join the jock house, even to try out for and play on the college basketball team—that was heady stuff for me. My brothers later deflated me by pointing out that the fact that I made the team at Bowdoin was more proof of the lack of emphasis on athletics there than of any ability on my part.

  President Hyde’s “offer of the college” is, as I have noted, somewhat out of date. In no respect was this more so than in his offer “to learn manners from students who are gentlemen.” Gentlemen at Bowdoin in the early 1950s were few, and rather than learning manners, I learned the opposite, what I have come to call unmanners. I had been around athletes and locker rooms, had listened to my brothers and their friends, so swearing and gross behavior weren’t new to me. But nothing I had seen or heard prepared me for the language or behavior of fraternity life at Bowdoin. There unmanners were raised to a high (or, depending on your perspective, low) level. In addition to the natural tendency of young people to exercise their liberty from family with exaggerated words and acts, the situation at Bowdoin was heightened by the presence of many veterans of the later years of World War II. Many of the men who graduated in the early 1950s had had their lives interrupted by military service. They were several years older than we freshmen, and their military service gave them a tougher, more hardened attitude. And a new language! I heard and learned more profanity in my first sixteen weeks at Bowdoin than I had heard in the previous sixteen years of my life. By the time I got into the army myself, five years later, I already knew almost every swear word in existence.

  While much of fraternity life was good for me, some aspects were not. Although I didn’t move into the fraternity house until my sophomore year, early in my freshman year I fell into the poor study habits of fraternity life. I lacked discipline and drive and was overwhelmed by my newly acquired independence. As a result I spent too much time fooling around, hanging around, and playing around—going to movies, joining in “bull sessions,” playing sports of all kinds. I had a great time and I made many friends, but too little time was spent studying. It wasn’t until I attended law school years later that I developed reasonable discipline in studying.

  It was at Bowdoin that I finally came to terms with my lack of athletic ability. This revelation came back to me in a rush a half century later in South Florida. I sat behind a desk stacked high with copies of a book I’d written, signing them one at a time for the people in line; they had just listened to me speak about my experience in Northern Ireland and were now getting my signature on their copy of my book on that subject. An elderly couple were next in line. The man was short, stocky, and slightly stooped. As he shook my hand he said, “We’ve met before.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Do you remember the name Bill Pappas?”

  “Billy Pappas! Of course, University of New Hampshire. You were a great athlete, quarterback on the football team, high-scoring guard on the basketball team.”

  “We played against each other.”

  “I remember it as though it was yesterday. At the Bowdoin gymnasium. Great game. You beat us by two points.”

  We laughed, he introduced me to his wife, and we had our picture taken. As they walked away, my mind drifted back many decades to a cold, wint
ry night on the Bowdoin campus. The New Hampshire Wildcats, led by their high-scoring guard, Billy Pappas, were heavy favorites to defeat a struggling Bowdoin team. It was my junior year. Although I was a starting guard, I had not yet lived up to expectations, mine or the coach’s. But that night it all came together for me. Although he was clearly a much better player, I gave Pappas a battle.

  I scored eighteen points, hitting on seven of eight shots from the field and four for four from the foul line. The game was close all the way and the lead changed several times. With just a few minutes to play and the score tied I committed a foul. I wasn’t concerned because the game was nearly over and I had another foul to give before reaching the limit. To my surprise, the coach sent a substitute in for me. I watched the last few minutes from the bench, glum and bewildered.

  I hardly slept that night, depressed by another close loss, and wondering why I was pulled in the last few minutes when I had played a near-perfect game, offensively and defensively, by far the best of my college career. The next day, unable to control myself, I did what for me what would previously have been unimaginable: I went to see the coach. Edmund Coombs, known to all as Beezer, was one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. Friendly, honest, with impeccable integrity, every player loved him, even though he was not a great motivator. He didn’t shout or threaten; he didn’t give emotional pep talks. He treated us fairly and firmly, with a respect that we returned. Politely I asked why he had taken me out of the game in the last few minutes.

  He was surprised. “I didn’t take you out. You fouled out.”

  I was stunned. “What?”

  “You fouled out.”

  “No, coach, I’m sorry, I had one more to give.”

  Now he was really surprised, but he remained calm, as I did.

  “I don’t think so, George, but here, I’ll look and see.”

  He fished through a pile of papers on the desk in his tiny office and pulled out a scorecard. As he read it his face reddened. I knew what he was going to say as he put the scorecard down on the desk and looked up at me with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen. “You’re right, I thought you’d fouled out. I was wrong. I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really very sorry.”

  “Thanks, coach,” I replied and got up to leave. I wanted to get out of the room before I said something I would later regret, so my back was to him when he again apologized.

  I took a long walk around the campus. A man I looked up to and admired had made a mistake, a simple mistake; it was nothing more than that, I told myself over and over again. But, try as I might, I couldn’t convince myself. I knew that my performance that night was an aberration, not the norm. Even then, on the best basketball night of my life, it had gone wrong. We had lost again, a very painful loss. I don’t know exactly how or why, but that one good performance enabled me to step away from my obsession with basketball and from my inferiority complex. It’s a game, I told myself, just a game. I’ve got to get out of my brothers’ shadows; I’ve got to stop living my life on their terms. From now on basketball would not be my life; it would be just a small and declining part of it.

  While attending Bowdoin I enrolled in the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), primarily because we were paid to participate and I needed the money. Early in 1954, during my last year at Bowdoin, the ROTC members were notified that the army had a surplus of officers for the Transportation Corps, for which we had trained. We were asked to volunteer for another assignment. Many considered the Intelligence Service as an attractive alternative, but it had one huge drawback: instead of entering the army at an early definite time, those who chose the Intelligence Service were subject to an indefinite delay and had to commit to entering on two weeks’ notice. That would make it impossible to get a permanent job, and there was no way of knowing how long the delay would be. As a result most declined.

  I had been considering going to graduate school to get a master’s degree (and possibly a doctorate) in European history, my major course of study at Bowdoin. I developed a lifelong love of reading history and greatly admired my professor, Dr. Ernst Helmreich, with whom I developed a close relationship. I imagined myself someday teaching at a small college like Bowdoin. But that was a vague dream, not a concrete plan. I didn’t have a job lined up because I had assumed I’d be entering the army immediately after graduation. But Intelligence sounded more interesting than Transportation. So I volunteered.

  The consequence became clear in June. After graduation I returned to my parents’ home in Waterville with no job and nothing to do but wait to be called into the army. It could be a week, a month, or a year. To earn some money I looked for a temporary job. The only one I could find was on the grounds crew at Colby. For six months, until the army summoned me on December 26, I painted doors and window panes, mowed large lawns, dug ditches, and was an all-around handyman. I didn’t especially enjoy the work, but I did enjoy going to and from work every day with my father, the janitor. He too loved it. Whenever anyone came within range, he would point to me working nearby and say, “You see that boy mowing the lawn over there? He just graduated from Bowdoin. Colby has reached such a level of excellence that to get a job on our grounds crew you need a Bowdoin degree!” He then laughed long and loud as the bewildered passersby wondered what was so funny. I loved hearing him laugh, even though it was at my expense.

  Although I left Bowdoin in the spring of 1954, it has never left me. I am profoundly grateful to have had the chance to attend a college that took me in, nurtured me, taught me, and helped me get through the fog of uncertainty and insecurity that shrouded me for years. I established friendships there that would last for decades. I came to terms with the limits of my athletic ability. I looked forward to serving in the army with a degree of confidence that was unthinkable four years earlier.

  A BRIEF INTERLUDE

  The months from June to December 1954 were long and slow. I turned twenty-one that summer and was anxious to get into the “real world,” but I had to wait until the army called me up. There was one small benefit: for the first time in my life I had a room to myself. But although I really enjoyed the luxury, I missed Robbie. After his graduation from the University of Rhode Island he had entered the Marine Corps and was now stationed at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina. I hadn’t missed him much while I was at Bowdoin because I had lots to do and many friends; indeed privacy was very hard to come by in a college fraternity house. But now our home in Waterville seemed empty, especially after Barbara returned to the University of Maine in September to resume her studies.

  So I was pleasantly surprised to receive a telephone call from Robbie in late September. He and Janet had gotten married. While he was at Camp Lejeune, she was living in Waterville, teaching school. He had just received orders assigning him to a tour of duty on board a navy ship in the Mediterranean Sea. He asked me to come to Camp Lejeune to pick up his car and drive it to Maine so Janet could use it while he was overseas. I was excited about the possibility of a trip and asked him how I would get to North Carolina.

  “The same way you’ve gone anywhere.” It took me a few seconds to grasp his answer.

  “You mean you want me to hitchhike to North Carolina?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve never hitchhiked anywhere but around Maine, and North Carolina’s a long way from Maine.” I knew exactly how far because the Bowdoin ROTC members had taken a bus to Fort Eustis, near Williamsburg, Virginia, for a two-week training session one summer.

  “You’re not scared, are you?”

  “No, of course not,” I insisted. But I was.

  “I really need your help, and besides, this is mostly for Janet.”

  “Well, okay,” I said, nervous and unenthusiastic.

  The more I thought about it, the more nervous I got. But I couldn’t figure a way out, so a few days later I rose with the sun and walked across town to the same spot I’d started from four years earlier when I hitchhiked to Bowdoin for the first time. My mother had pack
ed a bag for me with enough food for several days.

  I was lucky again. Within a few minutes a nice elderly man stopped to pick me up. He asked me where I was going. When I answered, “North Carolina,” he was surprised and in a loud voice repeated it. “North Carolina! You’ve got a long way to go, young man. I’ll give you a good start and get you to Boston.”

  My luck continued for about a day. Most rides were short, a few quite long, but I waited no more than two hours between rides, and, as I made my way south, I developed a rhythm. I ate and went to the bathroom between rides and, as much as possible, slept during the rides. Every driver who picked me up was kind and generous and, after hearing my story, patiently let me sleep until we parted company. But my hitchhiking honeymoon came to an end in Petersburg, Virginia. The driver who dropped me there was an army sergeant returning to his home base just outside of Petersburg. He had warned me of what to expect, so when I got out of the car I was not surprised to see dozens of men in uniform, on both sides of the highway, hitchhiking. I walked south along the highway to find an empty spot. On and on I trudged, lugging my bag, but I found more and more soldiers. Finally, after walking what seemed like a few miles, I was on an open stretch of highway. I was exhausted and hungry and, although I didn’t want to admit it, even to myself, I was worried. I walked into the woods a few feet from the highway, found some shade, and sat down. I ate one of my mother’s sandwiches and rested for a while as I thought about my plight. I assumed that no one driving south who might be inclined to pick up a hitchhiker would bypass the many soldiers on the road before they got to me. Even worse, as the soldiers now on the highway were picked up they would likely be replaced by others, so I might never get a ride. Fortunately I was wrong about that.