In Those Days: A Fredonia Memoir – 1969-1971 / 2024
I still remember the September day when my parents drove me to Fredonia. It was the only college I had been accepted. I wasn't a particularly good student. I was only later that I came into my own. It was a clear day and the land was so flat. I’d always lived in the northeast corner of New York State, a land of mountains and lakes. Coming into Buffalo was a ten mile wall of smoke. Gray. Toxic. Houses tucked into decaying neighborhoods. Thank god for the EPA that eliminated areas like this.
When I first arrived in Fredonia, I stayed at a place called the Rotunda House. In my head I imagined it to be round and elegant. I had no idea it was the surname of a successful Fredonia family. It was nothing more than rundown apartment building packed with young men, two to a room. The rooms were small, there was no place to cook and I’ve forgotten even where the showers were. I bought a meal plan on campus but that proved to be a failure, I ate sporadically and ate badly. I began to put on a lot of weight.
I stayed there for the first semester then somehow learned of an opening on the second floor of a home near the post office. 25 Day Street. The house was a classic kit house from Sears built around 1900. The landlady was Mrs. Mary Epolito. She had to be in her 80s when we lived upstairs. She was delightful. There were six boys living in the second floor apartment—myself, Dennis Brent, Dave Hermance, Dan Spink, Gary Voelkl and Tim Brown. I was the last one to move in.
My bedroom was off the living room. The bed was only a mattress, but it was mine. I’d never had my own bedroom before. In time I bought a stereo—a big deal in those days. I could pick up radio stations as far away as Indiana. It was my own little world, and it was wonderful. Those two years are some of the fondest of my life.
It was the first time that I had ever really lived with other people other than my family. We all got along. We were all different, but that was ok. Dave was a Vietnam veteran who was four years old than us. The house was politicized against the war and he knew our positions. How he ever lived with us is anyone’s guess.
My world was small in those days. The apartment. Downtown. Campus. On weekends, we would go down to a bar and sit in the back drinking beer, chatting and playing cards. In the spring, we looked forward to dark bock beer that was only produced at that time of the year.
I got into a very bad habit of smoking pot and going to bed very, very late at night and not getting up until noon. In those days you didn't have to show up for class. All that was necessary was to get papers in on time and take exams. (Writing was, and still is, something I have no trouble doing.) It was horribly irresponsible on my part and I’m glad universities demanded that students attend classes.
Standards were more relaxed in those days. I'll never really know how I got through school. It was only when I started student teaching that I started to blossom. And it was only in graduate school that I truly came into my own. (For all its faults, the public educational system in the United States does not pigeonhole students into a life career at the end of 8th grade. I learned a long time ago that many students take years to fully develop.)
We were very fortunate to have Mrs. Epolito as our landlady. I think she'd liked having boys living upstairs. She only charged each of us $150.00 a semester. Perhaps it was a way to augment her income or maybe her sons encouraged our presence. She was good natured and I remember that she would always bring us a pasta dish on Saint Anthony's day--March 19. To this day, I think of this sweet woman on the 19th of March and wrote about her once. ( )
I did some research on Mrs. Mary Eppolito. She and her husband were born in Italy and came to the United States when they were children. At some point they moved to Fredonia from the Buffalo area. I suspect there was a lot of industry at that point, and likely more egalitarian than it is today. The wealthy ones were the captains of the local industries who built the beautiful homes on Central Avenue. But Archie Epolito was also able to buy a home, albeit less elegant. We called her Mrs. Ep. She was probably a homemaker who helped raise four sons. All of them are gone now.
Campus was a mile away from where we lived. I bought a bicycle. Nobody had a bicycle in those days. I'd ride it up there or a walk. Life on campus was probably much like it is today. Classes. Library. In free times we’d meet at the Student Union, as it was called in those days. More than likely we’d play Hearts or some other card game.
In those days, there was no movie theater in town. There was the Batcave where they would show movies on a reel to reel projector. Today that’s the Opera House but back then it was a derelict run down space. Sometimes, the reel broke and we’d have wait for someone to fix it. On weekends, there were movies on the second floor of the Union. If you really wanted to go to the movies, it was a long trek to Dunkirk and that was too far for those of us without transportation.
From 1969 to 1971, the campus was expanding to accommodate first baby boomers who were entering college. Construction was all around us. Many buildings on campus today had only recently been opened. In many ways, there was still a newness to the library, the student center and Administration building.
I was living downtown and found a part time job at Aldrich’s Dairy. It’s long gone now, but in those days it was a drive-through dairy where basic items such as milk, eggs, hot dogs, bacon and bread could be purchased. It was an incredibly flexible job and my workmate, a guy a few years older than I and not a student, happily took my hours when vacations came around.
I was dating women in those days. It’s just what you did if you were gay at that time. Stonewall had only happened the year I entered FSUC. There wasn’t even a “gay liberation” movement. That would take another six or seven years to emerge. I was depressed and used food, cigarettes and marijuana as a crutch. I was pretending and I was in a lot of pain. I gained a lot of weight and became obese. Sometime in the early winter of 1971, months before graduating, I had the idea to quit college. My god, I think now. I started the paperwork but for final approval I had to see the college president. Whoever that man was saved my life. Whatever he said convinced me it wasn’t a good idea. I sought out counseling. Whoever I spoke to put me on an anti-depressant and in a very short period of time I got better. I got motivated and was able to do the work I had to do to finish my course work, student teach and graduate.
If you're reading this, you don't have a clue was like in those days to try to pretend and conform to be somebody. Thank God I was strong enough in future years not to bend to familial and societal expectations. How many lives were damaged by gay men and women marrying to please parents or society?
About 15 years later I ran into that counselor at a reading conference. How wonderful it was to tell him I had accepted my sexuality, found a partner, and had been teaching for all those years. I am eternally grateful to that counselor and to the president of the college. I cannot imagine what my life would have been like if I’d followed through on my idea to quit college in my last semester.
That last semester at Fredonia was one of the most pivotal periods of my life. The medication the campus counselor prescribed changed me. The previous Christmas, 1970, I was at my aunt Kate's for dinner. I left the gathering to use the bathroom and stared down at a scale. I took that big deep breath and got on it. I was appalled. I was eating a pound of spaghetti a day and a loaf of bread for dinner. I had no control over food.
In January when I came back to school, I quit smoking and I went on a very strict diet. In the morning I had a glass of orange juice and two rice cakes. Lunch was either a bowl of soup or a large salad. At the beginning it was incredibly difficult to wean myself off the massive load of carbs I was used to. Sometimes for dinner I’d eat 3 or 4 cans of canned vegetables, a head of lettuce and a healthy portion of protein. All bulk and no carbohydrates. In time I started swimming ½ mile a day or running 3 miles. In 3 ½ months I lost 55 pounds and threw away all my fat clothes. (To this day canned green beans and Kraft diet Italian dressing are absolutely offensive. But it worked then.)
In those two years, I went to Woodstock, participated in on-campus protests against the Vietnam War and joined one of nine buses that went to Washington DC for 1,000,000+ march against the Vietnam war in November of 1969. It was a volatile time, not unlike today. Whatever happened at the University of Buffalo filtered down to Fredonia a day later. When the National Guard opened fired at Kent State in 1970 they killed four students and injured many more. Within days, FSUC was affected. So tense was the situation, that school was actually shut down in early May.
I'm very proud that I took a stance against that war. It was immoral. All wars are immoral with that one especially so. I’m grateful that my journey did not bring me to Vietnam. As the years have passed, I've seen how those veterans have been victimized by the damage that was done to their bodies and their psyches. Today it’s vogue to demonize “draft dodgers,” but that’s what millions of us did. I hold no regrets.
That was 53 years ago. It's hard to imagine so many years have past.
I did not plan to return to Fredonia in June of 2024. I was in Rochester, checked the mileage and thought, what the heck. It’s only 110 miles and I haven’t got anything else planned this week. I left Rochester early, rented a retro-room at the Theater Motel in Westfield, then set off for Mayville.
In March 1971 I started student teaching at Mayville Central School. The building was one of those gorgeous WPA projects, sturdy and handsome, with big stately windows to let in fresh air. I did my student teaching under Merrill Clute. I was introduced to him through a woman I was working with at Fredonia High School. He was the perfect match.
He was only 43 years old, but he seemed so much older. He had lived in New York City and worked for the New York Times. He brought in controversial films that probably would not be allowed today. Freaksand Sunset Boulevard--films that likely would be challenged in this heated political climate. His goal was to educate as broadly possible a population of kids who’d probably never been anywhere. At least to me he was very worldly. At some point, he sent me down to eighth grade to observe. It was a nightmare and I was very glad to come back upstairs.
My students were polite and friendly and courteous and respectful. Many of them probably came from farm families who were taught those values. I suspect they weren’t much different from the students I came to teach a year later. Small town kids who’d never really gone far from home. Erie or Buffalo was a trip to remember. That was 53 years ago. Their grandchildren are the ones graduating from high school this year.
Those six weeks were weeks of great growth. In those days, at the secondary level, students were only required to student teach for six weeks. Hardly enough. I got my feet wet in the classroom, but when I got a real job the following September the learning curve was enormous.
Four and half decades later I was interviewing a lovely Lewis County family for a book I was working on. The mother asked me if I’d ever lived in western New York. I told her my story, then she told hers. She was one of those 11th or 12th students at Mayville Central School, though now she was white haired, with adult children. Amazing how the universe collides into our lives at time.
I spent a lot of time sitting in my car staring up at that school. It was a good time in my life, and I don’t think it was until much later that I saw it for what it really was.
It was mid-afternoon when I left Mayville. Sometimes, when leaving school, I’d drive the back roads back to Fredonia, and I chose to do it again. The only thing familiar was the beauty of the rolling hills and the vast space of blue I’d occasionally see when looking out at Lake Erie.
Since the early 1970s, and unbeknownst to me, the Amish have taken over farmhouse after abandoned farmhouse, much as they have done in other parts of New York State. Good neighbors, quiet. Fields were full of hay and men and boys were gathering it up. Blue panted with their traditional straw hats to keep out the sun, they toiled long and hard to get in the crop before any rain should come.
The sky was a clear, milky blue. Clouds floated by, buttercup and daisies filled the rolling fields. I parked my car and let the 19th century unfold in front of me. Cows grazed in distant fields, women on horseback helping her husband keep the tiller in a straight line. A young woman passed me, light summer blue dress, white cap. Under that pre-summer sky, the air was rich with the smell of freshly mown hay. A team of horses pulling a cart pass my car and head into someone’s home. It was a time of awe and wonder, words overused but applicable in this case.
Before I left the area, I drove into a person’s home who advertised baked goods. I should have purchased more. Her coffee cake was the best I’d ever had.
The following day was a day of further pilgrimage. Returning to Fredonia after such a long absence had just made the heart fonder. I parked my car in front of the Opera House and slowly headed to campus on Temple Street. In many ways, it was as if time had stood still. It was a spectacular, good June day. I was flooded with memories as I walked.
Beautiful fall colors when the trees in Fredonia blazed, winters when we still had heaps of snow. Walking that street felt as if time had stood still. It was beautiful then and beautiful now. Homes were well cared for then as they are today.
Walking through these familiar streets, I felt a bit like Rip Van Winkle might have felt. Everything was familiar, but nothing was the same. Old Main, the old Normal School, had closed and converted to apartments. The WCTU women’s residence had been turned into an assisted living facility. I thought of all the dear ones I knew who peopled my life at that time. All of us scattered. Each time I read a Fredonian I see more and more names from the class of 1971 who’ve passed.
Campus had a timeless quality about it. Nothing was familiar, but everything was. The space had matured beautifully, and new buildings fit perfectly well into the design I remembered. More than any place in Fredonia, the campus was the least familiar. So many, many years had elapsed that I have in a sense forgotten my actual presence in this space.
I graduated, moved back to Plattsburgh. There were few teaching positions open in those days. I was enormously blessed to land a long-term substitute position in September which gave me the “experience” to get a full time job the following January. I stayed in that school district until I retired in 2006. 35 years. First as an English teacher then as a teacher-librarian.
I framed my diploma and for years I kept it in the bathroom of my first apartment. I think I scoffed at it. Ha ha, a college degree. But as the years rolled on, I came to realize its great value. Of all the pieces of paper I subsequently earned, none is more precious than the one from Fredonia.
The student that I was at that time is not the man I became. I earned a couple of Master’s degrees, had a full K-12 teaching career, wrote books, learned another language, travelled to over 100 countries, and have continuously been a life-long learner. The ultimate goal of a good education.
A day later I left Fredonia. Just before I hit the freeway, I stopped at McDonald's for breakfast. There was nothing at that intersection during my time in Fredonia. No McDonald's, nor Arby's or Rite Aid. I don’t think WalMart even existed. America at the crossroads, I thought. Homogeneously boring.
I'm very grateful for all that Fredonia gave me—a new way of living, an education. My roommates? In a loose way, we remain friends to this day. Those guys were an important part of my development.
In all the years since I've been gone, I've only returned six times. The first time was the year after I graduated when I could still stay in the same house because some of the roommates were still there. Several times I returned with my husband, but he has no connection to Fredonia and, in a way, deflated the reverie. This was the first time I returned to Fredonia alone in years, always a better way for me to be reflective.
It was humbling walking through campus that day. I'm 75 years old. I am old certainly by anybody standards, although I don't feel or look 75. But at least three generations of students have graduated since I graduated on that May day in 1971. The students on campus were all so young, barely children. We were that way, too, I suppose.
I don't think it was until years later that I fully realized the importance of that time of great growth. I finally pulled away from my parents. I was too far from Plattsburgh to come home on a regular basis. I was the first time that I really become independent.
The degree that I earned from Fredonia gave me the life that I've had. I know that I didn’t appreciate it at that time, but I certainly appreciate it now. That piece of paper gave me purpose in life and a reason to get up in the morning. It gave me a job and a career. It never made me wealthy, but it gave me great meaning.
I was much smaller in those days, my world limited by minimal geography and dearth of experience. The great curiosity I have today is a post-Fredonia gift, a gift that a lifetime of learning has bestowed upon me. I am, of course, the same person I was when I left Fredonia, but in name and stature only. My life has grown and expanded enormously through the years
Walking through campus, I could envision myself in those days. If I could meet that young man today, this is what I’d tell him. It's going to be OK. It will be rocky for a while, but it’s going to be OK. You're going to have a wonderful life. You're going to meet somebody who you will love all of your life. You will have a career. You will live a long life You will write books and travel to places you don’t even know about today. You will be grateful and you will be gifted with things that are totally out of your imagination. It's all going be better than you can ever imagine. I suspect he wouldn’t have believed that at that time, but I know that today.
Sometimes I think I'd like to be 21 years old again and walk up the back stairs so that big green house at 25 Day Street, close the door on my bedroom, and plop myself on the mattress. But I don’t really think so. For all the nostalgia, it was a turbulent time, a time best left in the past.
We really only have today. Today is a gift. But for some of us, the past is a gift as well. Despite all the angst and personal conflict within myself, it made me the person I am today. I am so grateful for that experience.
Fredonia is an important link in the personal chain of life.
