CONFESSIONS OF A LEGACY
BYTHETIMEIWAS 12,1 had attended two Dartmouth reunions. I remember Dad's 15-year the best. My brother and I got football jerseys and white plastic cowboy hats, climbed Bartlett Tower a hundred times, and did cannon balls off the high dive at Karl Michael Pool, No doubt I wasn't the first female offspring to develop a pre-coeducation attachment to the place based on unlimited food at the junior tent and on how cute the counselors were.
Most people can recall precisely where they were when they learned of Kennedy's assassination or the Challenger explosion. I remember another event just as vividly: It's the fall of 1971, and I'm in seventh grade at a prep school for well-heeled young ladies. I am riding in a minibus on my way to school, and we have just passed the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey. The radio is tuned to 77 WABC-AM. "And now the news," drones the announcer. "Blah blah blah blah the Trustees of Dartmouth College blah blah blah in favor of blah blah coeducation...." The other girls on the bus are jabbering about Huk-A-Poo shirts and the Jackson 5, but my life has been altered forever.
Maybe because of all those cannon balls, I associated Dartmouth with sheer joy. It had everything I wanted in a college: a tremendous English department, a daily newspaper I could write for, and a 3:1 ratio (at the time this seemed like a good thing). I didn't mail in my early-decision application. I handed it in during Dartmouth Night weekend.
Two months later, I am sitting in my high school AP French class. There is a knock on the door, Miss Kleinschmit, the college counselor, wants to see me. Oh, crap, I think to myself, it's gotta be bad news.
"I received a letter this morning," she says, handing it to me. "Read."
I read. "Yada, yada, yada Dartmouth College yada yada Class of 1981 yada yada yada accepted." My screams are heard throughout the building.
It is by far the happiest moment of my young life.
Patricia E. BERRY is a freelance writer and editor living in Montclair,New Jersey.
