-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: Spanning The Century Rudy Abramson©1992 William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019 ISBN 0-688-04352-6 778 pps – First/only edition – Out-of-print ----- At the same time the question of professional-versus-amateur crew coaching was being argued, Yale's venerable senior societies, a bedrock of undergraduate social order and alumni loyalty, were under growing student criticism and public ridicule. Fanned by a new novel, Stover at Yale, written by Owen Johnson, Yale 1900, the controversy saw the societies belittled for fostering offensive elitism that was out of place at a modern educational institution. But Averell was no more inclined to support the overthrow of the social order than he was to ignore the decline of Yale rowing. The societies bonded men like himself to Yale and to each other across the generations. As much as he had wanted to row under the Blue banner, he wanted even more to be tapped for membership and inducted into one of the imposing secret fortresses. He returned from his first trip to Oxford just as the three societies prepared for the annual Tap Day ritual. Vying for men from proper families who had distinguished themselves in ways deemed exemplary, each selected fifteen members from the forthcoming senior class to perpetuate the secret brotherhood. The taps of 1912 were anticipated with uncommon interest not only because of Owen Johnson's best-seller but because the class of 1913 included a bumper crop of offspring of publicly prominent Americans, Averell being conspicuous among them. Opinion among the undergraduate cognoscenti was divided over whether he would go to Skull and Bones or to Scroll and Key. The latter made claim to scholarly superiority, but Bones was the first of the societies, the list of its members an awe-inspiring roll of men at the top of America's political, financial, and social institutions. Over the generations, its pledge of secrecy had stood more firmly than marriage vows and professional oaths. Except for the fifteen active members and alumni, Yale men could only guess at what was inside the prison-like oaken doors of the great ivy-covered mausoleum. Wolf's Head, the third society, was out of the question for the son of E. H. Harriman, even though the family had no Yale tradition of its own to uphold. Unlike most of his friends, who represented second or third generations and hoped to follow fathers and grandfathers into Bones or Key, Averell could point only to his uncle, William H. Averell, and an Averell cousin as Yale men before him, and he had hardly known them, if at all. On May 16, as juniors did on Tap Day year after year, members of Averell's class with aspirations for society membership gathered beneath a gnarled oak in front of Battell Chapel to wait for a man from each of the societies to emerge from the fortresses. A spring downpour soaked them to the skin and left them standing in mud. They waited without hats and with their coats draped about their shoulders, seemingly oblivious to the rain as their judgment approached. Dozens of underclassmen scrambled up into the tree and took places on the lower limbs where they could have an unrestricted view of the proceedings, during which representatives of the societies would walk into the crowd to find the juniors found worthy, whacking them on the back and ordering, "Go to your room." Every window was filled in Durfee Hall, and faculty members crowded onto the porch of the chapel. Girlfriends, graduates, newspaper reporters, even parents—including athletic director Walter Camp, who was anxious to see whether Walter junior would follow his famous father into Bones—huddled under umbrellas on the fringe of the crowd. At the moment the clock on the front of the chapel struck five, a man from each of the societies, wearing a derby, a blue serge suit, and his gold society pin in his lapel, approached waiting candidates. The grave emissary from Bones walked straight to Harriman, spun him about and whacked him on the back with the command, "Averell Harriman, go to your room." From the tree, a shout went up, "Harriman goes Bones," and Averell hurried away through the parting crowd to his dormitory. The supreme honor of the tapping ritual was not being chosen first, however. By long-standing tradition, the moment of highest drama went to the juniors chosen last, and in the class of 1913, the last tap for Bones went to George Cortelyou, Jr., whose father had been an important figure in New York Republican politics before going on to the White House as Teddy Roosevelt's private secretary. Key's last tap honor went to Vanderbilt Webb, chairman of the Yale Daily News, who had continued to shine at New Haven as he had at Groton. There were more poignant moments, however,, as others arrived at the crossroads which many considered the most important of their college careers. At times, Owen Johnson's acerbic criticisms of the societies seemed unnecessarily kind. Crises of mutual embarrassment saw several juniors hoping for Bones or Scroll and Key decline a tap by a man from Wolf's Head, quietly saying no or merely shaking their head as the society's representative turned on his heel. Up in the tree, underclassmen injected themselves into wrenching decisions, shouting, "Take it! Take it!" as juniors tapped by one society weighed the odds of later selection by another. Richard W. Robbins, the business manager of the Daily News, turned down a Key invitation, hoping for a Bones tap that never came. Other sure shots were left standing uninvited and humiliated after all the forty-five new members had been taken. Among those rejected were Averell's roommate George Dixon; Douglas Bomeisler, a rowing star and contender for the captaincy of the football team; and Joseph Walker, the son of the speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Walker's exclusion was astonishing, for he had only recently defeated Averell for the presidency of the Yale Navy, Harriman's contributions to Yale rowing notwithstanding. Although being tapped was a momentous occasion, Averell was careful to let his mother know that it was taken in perspective. "I have gotten a number of letters of congratulations from Bones graduates," he wrote her in a tone concealing his satisfaction. "It must be a marvelous institution for these men to take it as seriously and to make as much of it as they do."[17] pps. 103-105 --[note]— 17. WAH letter to Mary A. Harriman, undated, Harriman papers ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations, Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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