Lyndon State College: A Place Apart

I graduated from Lyndon State College in 1970. I was an English major and history minor, and the school awarded me an honorary theatre minor because (when I wasn’t in the library) I spent all my time in rehearsal! Although I was the son of a college professor, having grown up in Northfield where my dad taught biology at Norwich University, I was not worldly at all—I was immature, naïve, and conceited. I had done very poorly in high school, which was boring and educationally below par at the time, so my dad had to convince President Long to accept me to Lyndon.

I suppose I got the message that I needed to buckle down and I did very well academically. In that respect, Lyndon at the time was the perfect place for me, because it was a sheltering environment that gave me the room and support to grow up (a little, at least). If I’m not mistaken, the student population was about 450 students the year I matriculated.  

I was a walker (I still am) and I would frequently walk down into town for one reason or another, even in the dead of winter. The size of campus and community were just right for a “small-town boy.”  I lived in Vail Manor at first, which simplified my life because our mailboxes and the small assembly space in the attached Bole Hall were where we first mounted theatre productions and held student dances. The bands that played most often were Mott’s Men and The Daze of Time. Movies were also shown in Bole Hall and our theatre director, H. Franklin Baker, III (Frank), who arrived the same year I did (1966), gave his first concert there.

My involvement in productions began within days of my arrival (I tried juggling soccer and theatre at first, but that didn’t last!). Frank, who drove a Lincoln Continental, was a large presence on campus; he was bearded, sporting a cigarette holder (as if he fashioned himself a Hollywood celebrity), a flashy dresser (glen plaid suits and turtleneck sweaters), and had a terrific voice for the stage, radio, television, and most especially for singing (he played 12-string guitar and favored folksongs and ballads). We would attend his frequent gigs at and near Burke Mountain (where I also spent some leisure time skiing). Many of the productions in which I was involved were chronicled in The Critic, the campus newspaper. They included Spoon River Anthology, Rashomon, Of Mice and Men, Lysistrata, Darkness at Noon, Don’t Drink the Water, Under Milk Wood, Brigadoon, The Fantasticks, and the musical Carnival (which I directed).  Frank’s leadership was an inspiration and I tried to emulate him but soon I had to become my own person and other treasured faculty, especially Kurt Singer and Mary Bisson, gave me the affirmation I needed to do that.  

Mary was my major advisor and a brilliant teacher. She invited us to her house a few times and I was smitten by the beautiful Saluki dogs she raised (all named after characters in Shakespeare plays (“Feste” was my favorite). I enrolled in all the courses that fed my interest in drama (some prematurely—I was enrolled in 400-level courses as a freshman), but I was thriving. Don’t Drink the Water and Under Milk Wood were the first productions in the Alexander Twilight Theater, and we became The Twilight Players at that time. We also had some classes in the facility (the upper sections could be closed off to become instructional spaces). My most memorable class in Twilight was Graham Newell’s Vermont History course. I remember his occasional “remote” lectures vividly.    

A great deal happened in the world during my years at Lyndon. Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated, the Vietnam War was raging and protests on and off campus were in the headlines. The draft lottery took place at the time, and I received a high number, but my roommate drew #7! Needless to say, he enlisted shortly after graduation. Just as I was about to graduate, the Kent State University shootings occurred. Four students were killed, and many schools (well, at least the students at those schools) declared a moratorium from classes to honor those slain.

At most schools, including Lyndon, students were given the option to skip final exams, although not in every case without penalty (I had an “A” in my History of England class with Alfred Toborg, but received a “B” because I elected to observe the moratorium). I recently discovered that Kent State shortly thereafter asked colleges and universities across the country to send any materials related to observances of the event to their archives. I found that Lyndon sent the memorandum detailing the school’s policy about final exams (crafted by faculty and administration) that was distributed to students at the time.   

My time at Lyndon shaped much of my subsequent life. After graduation and a brief stint as a radio announcer at WIKE in Newport, I enrolled in the graduate program in theatre at UMass-Amherst. From there I went on to a Ph.D. program (also in theatre), completing my doctorate in December 1977. Shortly thereafter, I began a 38-year career as a theatre professor, teaching at colleges in Michigan, Virginia, and Georgia. After “retirement,” and another graduate degree (from Virginia Commonwealth University) I began an “encore” career as a narrative gerontologist. I presently work for three organizations: Senior Connections, Opening Minds Through Art, and The Shepherd’s Center of Richmond, Virginia, facilitating story and art-based programs for seniors.

In addition, I often teach courses about Irish culture for the three lifelong learning organizations here. I first traveled to Ireland in 1976 for my dissertation research and have been a productive Irish Studies scholar ever since, teaching in Ireland on five occasions and receiving a teacher/scholar Fulbright award in 2012 at The National University of Ireland-Galway. The landscape in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and the Irish countryside have a lot in common. It was reading John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World in Mary Bisson’s class that first piqued my interest in the Emerald Isle.

Lyndon holds a very special place in my heart and will always be “Lyndon State College” in my mind, despite the many changes that have occurred (the saddest is the loss of the original Vail Manor) and the numerous name changes. Had I attended a large university at the time, I would have been eaten alive and would not have received the special attention and preparation that Lyndon offered and most assuredly would have experienced a very different life, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

It was another time altogether, to be sure, but when I’ve visited campus in later years, I’ve felt that it has maintained the special character that distinguishes it from other institutions and of which it is justifiably proud.