Excerpts from Chasing the Lion: An Unresolved Journey Through The Phillips Exeter Academy
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE: The author arrives on Exeter’s campus, has an off-putting
introduction to his roommate and chronicles the circumstances, defining
exchange and backdrop to his presence there.
CHAPTER TWO: His first few months, the rising tensions with his
roommate and within his dormitory, a frightening attack on a dorm-mate
by town residents and a chastening encounter with a former grade-school
hero.
CHAPTER THREE: The end of the fall-semester of 9th-grade, marked by
academic success and the traumatic family episode that mars his return
home for Christmas vacation.
CHAPTER FOUR: Winter and spring terms of 9th grade, during which he
gets caught literally in the middle of a fistfight between a teacher
and a student and is taken aback by a classmate’s superior imagination.
CHAPTER FIVE: The changing face of class loyalty as a major theme, as
is having to deal with an unexpected early-semester demand by a faculty
member and an exposure to a famous alumnus’s profoundly affecting novel.
CHAPTER SIX: The school votes to become coeducational, the campus
reaction to Kent State, plus first-stirrings of later success in
racquet sports and a discomfortingly memorable scene in the last few
days of 10th grade.
CHAPTER SEVEN: A noteworthy bicycle trip through dangerous territory
and a boundary line is crossed in a doomed attempt to make the JV
basketball team.
CHAPTER EIGHT: A bitter and undeserved disappointment in a bid to
become Sports Editor that becomes engulfed in school politics touched
off by one inflammatory event.
CHAPTER NINE: Laying the groundwork for senior year, diving into the
college-admissions process and skipping the climactic football game to
cram for a potentially defining exam.
CHAPTER TEN: The thrill of early-acceptance to Harvard proves
transitory after confronting the excessive price for that outcome and
having a quixotic hope swiftly dashed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: A “Eureka moment” which transforms priorities and
perseveres through the growing pains encountered in a new pursuit.
CHAPTER TWELVE: An unconventional decision in a choice of college, the
salvaging of a senior-project in a way that earns a mentor’s respect
and feeling gypped out of an award he is convinced he has earned.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: A tumultuous graduation, partially rectified shortly
thereafter by a more fitting parting to the school and the sport he
loves.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The frequent favors he undertakes in subsequent years
on Exeter’s behalf, most of them obstructed, unappreciated and/or
unrequited.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Attending a recent Exeter graduation and the striking
difference in student attitudes around the occasion between his era and
the current one.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: The author catches the reader up on where his
classmates are now and is forced by someone else’s innocent question to
try to finally resolve his undulating feelings about and relationship
to Exeter.
The COFFIN/PATTERSON EPISODE (pages 64-70)
There was one memorable moment that spring in Latin
class, which had two African-American lowers (10th-graders), Nate
Gadsden and Mike Patterson, whose frequently angry demeanor and
militant attitudes reflected the emergent viewpoints of many black
people nation-wide – the ’68 Olympics in Mexico City, which took place
that prior September just in the first few weeks of school, are perhaps
best remembered for the clenched black-gloved fists that two black
American sprinters, namely Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raised on the
medal stand after one of the events. There was a third African-American
student in the class, Gary Humphrey, also a new lower (he was from
Oklahoma while I think Gadsden and Patterson were from the northeast)
but more easy-going than Nate and Mike. Gary eventually would become
co-captain of the wrestling team and go to Harvard after graduation.
Nate and Mike sat next to each other to my immediate
right (I had the seat directly to the right of the front of the oval
table, where Mr. Coffin sat), and they had actually been reasonably
friendly to me all year, though they seemed to like it when I got
caught making an error in class. There was even one occasion during the
winter, when we were going around the table in clockwise order (i.e.
left to right) trying to place a Latin word, and they somehow realized
that I didn’t know what the word was, and even though they both DID
know it, when it became their time to say the word, they deliberately
pretended that they didn’t know JUST so that it would then become my
turn and I would have to acknowledge that I didn’t know what the word
was!
In any event, as the spring wore on I started
getting the sense that those two were wearing on Mr. Coffin’s nerves,
and vice-versa --- they seemed a little less prepared for class, more
inclined to see if they could try to take advantage of Mr. Coffin, who
was not the kind of person it was wise to try to take advantage of. He
was a real New England teacher-type, prim and proper, his bowtie always
precisely affixed at the “right” angle below his neck, fastidious in
his appearance and preparation, very much ready to affirm his being the
boss if anyone tried to test him. I always got the sense with him, more
than with any of my other teachers, that he had his courses thoroughly
planned out, that on the second Saturday in November, for example, he
would be covering exactly the same material and/or passages in his
Latin One course that he had covered on the second Saturday in November
one year earlier.
He and I have stayed in touch since --- he is one of
the many Exeter teachers who taught there for several decades, retired
at 65 (in his case in 1987) and are still alive today, twenty-two years
later, and even playing tennis a few times a week with contemporaries.
I don’t know whether it’s literally something in the (fresh New
Hampshire) air up there, or the lifestyle (being around all those young
people) or what, but Exeter teachers seem to live in disproportionate
numbers into their late 80’s or early 90’s, and whenever I visit the
campus I always see a few of them, long-retired octogenarians, walking
slowly but self-sufficiently on Water Street or on the campus pathways.
Back in the spring of ’69, of course, Mr. Coffin was
no octogenarian but rather in mid-career, a man in his late 40’s with
seventeen years’ experience at Exeter who was in complete control in
his classroom and who made that clear every day. Patterson, who was one
of the better students in that class, was however not prepared for that
mid-May class session and luckless enough to have been tabbed to take
on one of the hardest passages of the homework assignment we had been
given the previous evening. He made a few half-hearted stabs at
it --- unprepared students would often try to somehow get away
with it one way or another, either shrinking a bit back from the table
in the hope of not being called on, or trying to ad-lib their way
through an answer.
But in those Harkness tables, there is really no
place to hide and it is usually foolhardy to try to avoid exposure, as
the teachers are far too wise to be successfully bluffed and usually
angrier when one attempts to do so than they would have been if the
student had just been forthright about not having done the homework.
Mr. Coffin tried a little to help him along, the tension both between
them and throughout the room growing as the seconds passed, an edge
mounting in both of their voices, until finally Patterson slammed the
textbook shut, dropped it onto the table and rudely growled, “Shove
it,” which was more than enough to push Mr. Coffin’s low boiling point
over the edge.
“Pick up that book right now,” he snarled, standing
up and pointing his finger directly at his wayward student, “or I’ll
have you fired for direct disobedience.” Patterson made no move to
accommodate him, whereupon Mr. Coffin loudly snapped his own textbook
shut and said “Class dismissed! You and I are going to the Dean right
now, Mike.” He started to advance on Patterson, who was getting up to
take Mr. Coffin on. As noted, I was the only person sitting between
these two, and I rolled out of the way against the nearest wall to
avoid getting caught literally in the middle of the impending
fisticuffs as my other classmates all stood up and backed away,
uncertain of whether they should intervene somehow.
I think that all of us feared that Patterson might
beat Mr. Coffin up and wondering what would be the best thing to do if
that started happening. I also in that split-second of pushing myself
out of the line of fire wondered what role Nate Gadsden would play,
whether he would pull his friend Mike Patterson away, whether he might
try to play peacemaker, whether he and Mike would gang up on Mr.
Coffin, whether he understood, or cared, what the ramifications of
whatever action he might take would be on his future at the school, on
his standing with the other black students (there was no question that
word of this incident would swiftly get around, whatever its outcome)
and on his friendship with Mike. I also realized that Gary Humphrey
might feel some pressure to get involved in one way or another, and
didn’t envy the dilemma that this fast-developing situation had put him
in.
This was an explosive time in terms of black-white
relations and black pride in the country, as I have said, and the black
students at Exeter were getting more militant as well. I clearly
remember, especially in the first few weeks, seeing them often moving
in fairly large groups (there never seemed to be groups anywhere near
as large of white students, although maybe that was just my perception)
and resolving to steer very clear from them. The linked memories of the
prior spring, when I and my Dalton mates had been attacked first on the
play-street and then a few weeks later in Randalls Island, were still
very fresh in my mind, even in the comparative safety of this
overwhelmingly white New England prep school setting, so far in miles
and months and mood from that explosive spring of ’68 in the New York
cauldron.
To Mr. Coffin’s credit, he advanced swiftly on
Patterson, wrestled him against the wall and started shoving him out of
the door, demanding “Are you coming with me to the Dean’s office or do
I have to drag you there myself?’ Patterson mumbled his assent,
whereupon Mr. Coffin released him, saying “Fine, then let’s go!” and
Patterson gathered his books as Nate whispered some advice-type of
counsel. After the two of them, i.e. Mr. Coffin and Patterson, had
headed towards the stairwell, I shakily went to the empty Math
classroom down the hallway There were still twenty minutes left in that
first-class period, and from one of the windows I saw Mr. Coffin
resolutely heading towards Jeremiah Smith Hall, where the Dean’s office
was located, and Patterson straggling maybe fifteen feet behind him.
Mr. Coffin never even turned his head to make sure that Patterson was
following him, so certain was he that Patterson had capitulated.
I saw them disappear into the administration
building and wondered if I had seen the last of Patterson.
Surprisingly, he was allowed to stay in school those final two or three
remaining weeks, though I don't think that either he or Nate Gadsden
returned for their upper year that fall, whether by their choice or at
the school’s request or simply as a kind of de facto matter, I never
found out. There was some tension at the beginning of Latin class the
following day, but Mike was prepared for that class and the year ended
without the atmosphere ever becoming too awkward. But I would never
forget that episode, nor did Mr. Coffin, who told me when we discussed
it many years later that that was the first and only time in his whole
teaching career that he had been involved in an incident anything like
that.
RETROACTIVE BONDING (pages 81-83)
I was on some level dreading lower year and was very on
edge those first few weeks back – not only was a whole array of new
courses awaiting me, including the same math geometry challenges that I
had been unable to successfully take on as a prep, but I kind of felt
that whatever advantages having gone to a school like Dalton had
brought me as a prep, and there’s no doubt that those advantages had
been considerable, would have worn off by lower year. What I found
threatening and dislocating more than anything else was the enormous
number of first-year lowers --- our class more than doubled in size
between prep and lower years, since so many students attended “junior
high schools” that ended after ninth grade, in addition to which many
parents felt that fifteen was a better age to be starting at a boarding
school than fourteen.
Allen Stevenson, for example, a Manhattan private school
much like Dalton and a Dalton opponent in football and basketball,
ended after ninth grade. The best win that my 7th/8th-grade basketball
team had had was in our final game of the season, where we thrashed an
Allen Stevenson team whose star player, Andy Susskind, the son of the
famous TV show host David Susskind, had scored sixty-four points in one
game, an incredible total. He entered that last game just seventeen
points shy of three hundred for the season. We set up a box-and-one
zone defense with our quickest player and best defender, Curtis White
(later a high-school All-City selection), shadowing Susskind, who
virtually NEVER passed the ball, chucking up shots the entire game. He
wound up with eighteen points, but shot a miserable percentage, maybe
twenty percent, and we won 49-24. Andy and I had been our respective
team captains, and when he showed up at Exeter at the start of lower
year, I realized that he and I might well be vying for a spot on the JV
a few months later, and that he was only one of a ton of talented
classmates who seemed bent on commandeering the top of the class-of-’72
totem pole that had been so meticulously constructed during the
now-seemingly-obsolete 1968-69 school year.
I had never felt any real class loyalty to or class solidarity
with my fellow preps at any point during my prep year, but when all
those new faces started appearing in my classes that opening week of
lower year, people who hadn’t been in the Assembly when my name had
been read out in the Highest Honors list in March and who didn’t know
or care about the status I had earned as a good student, I suddenly
felt far more loyal to, and far more bonded with, the second-year
lowers than I had ever been when we had been preps. It was almost like
the incoming lowers were interlopers, even impostors, even INVADERS
--- where had they been when we were running the “woods” part of
the cross-country course the previous fall?
The feeling of being bonded to the ninety-something
of us who began with me at the September-’68 starting line remained
quite strong not only with every passing Exeter year (there were a fair
number of additions in both upper and senior year, with many of the
one-year seniors being “ringers” who were brought in to play starring
roles on sports teams) but subsequently as well, all the way to today.
If you were to mention any of my classmates, I could tell you for sure
whether they were part of the prep class of ’72 or not, and I feel much
more loyal to those guys ---even the ones who didn’t last the
whole four years, even the ones, and there were several of them, who
only lasted ONE year --- and regard them much more as the “real” class
of ’72, than I do towards anyone who came along later on.
