By Sam Crump, Sr.
The year was 1972.
Richard Nixon was President and Watergate had not yet become the global
scandal measuring stick. As a seven year
old boy growing up in Newport Beach, California, it was a time of corduroy
hand-me-down pants, vans shoes and independence on a bike.
That was the year my parents took me and my four older
siblings, two of each, on a family vacation to upstate New York. This was a big deal for many reasons. First because flying a family of six across
the country in the early seventies was a big deal; hell, it still is. Second, because my family didn’t take big
trips. My father was an Episcopal
minister and ours was a camping family.
We didn’t take airplanes and we didn’t stay in hotels.
The reason for the trip was my grandparent’s fiftieth
wedding anniversary. These were my
father’s parents, Benjamin & Frances Crump, two of the sweetest people
you’d ever want to know. But they didn’t
have much money either, so I suspect it was my grandmother on my mother’s side
– Anne Richardson Harris, or “Granny” as she was known – who helped pay for us
to attend the big family reunion. My
grandfather Edward Harris II, died in the late fifties before I was born, but
he is important to this story so it seems appropriate to introduce him now.
I don’t remember anything about preparations for the trip,
but I do remember the day of departure at Los Angeles International
Airport. My mother decided to dress me
and my brothers all alike, which was unusual, but probably seemed like a
festive thing to do. And it was probably
her last chance because right after this trip my brothers got caught up in the
whole greasy-long-hair-dress-like-you-don’t-care of the seventies.
So there’s a great picture of these three young men of 7, 12
and 14, standing at LAX in red, white & blue star spangled collared shirts,
dark blue polyester pants and white Pat Boone shoes with a buckle. There we are, squinting in the early Southern
California sun, a little slice of Americana.
Viet Nam was about to end; G. Gordon Liddy had probably broken into the
Democratic National Headquarters the night before; and the Crump family of
Newport Beach was headed back to their roots in upstate New York.
Now I know that I actually remember the event of flying out
of LAX on that morning as opposed to simply remembering pictures of it as
adults often do regarding childhood events.
I know I remember because I specifically recall that we flew on a Boeing
747. This was a big deal because the
massive new passenger jet had only been introduced in 1970, and also because
our family somehow got bumped up to first class. At least that’s where I think we were,
because I will never forget how my seat at the front of the plane was against
the bulkhead and I actually faced the back of the plane (just as Southwest did
years later). I also remember climbing
the mini-spiral staircase to the upstairs hump in the 747 where there was a
lounge with bench seats and all sorts of space they would never waste now, and
where I imagine I feasted on peanuts and Coca Cola for five hours.
If you’ve never been to the Finger Lakes region of upstate
New York, I highly recommend it. It is
beautiful country that reminds many of Italy.
In fact, the area where my grandfather Harris built his cottage is
called Longs Point on Canandaigua Lake and the nearby town is Naples. The long and beautiful lake is surrounded by
lush green hills that slope steeply down to the water.
At one time Longs Point consisted only of quaint and rustic
summer cottages. Now, most of those have
been replaced by much larger year round homes.
My grandfather’s cottage with a stone chimney fireplace is one of the
last. The cottages were built by the upper
class folks from Rochester in the early 1900’s.
During the summers they would go there to recreate. I enjoyed hearing my mother explain which
family belonged to which house along the shore.
That one on the point is the Briggs’ home. We call that one over there Holly Hawks. Your great Uncle Larry lives in that
one. The entire place had a sense of old
money and elegance. There were boat
houses and tennis courts. I recall paper
trash would be burned and I can still remember enjoying the smell.
I heard the stories of summers spent at the Lake. Think of Searsucker suits and white buck
shoes. Think Great Gatsby. In fact, think F. Scott Fitzgerald before
Great Gatsby and that is where my ancestry crosses paths with the great
American author. While the setting for
Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway was Long Island and New York City in 1922, my family
crossroads was just a few years before that at Princeton University just prior
to World War I.
Apparently many of the well-to-do young men of Rochester,
New York in the early Twentieth Century attended Princeton University. Not sure why that is. But my grandfather Harris was one of
them. And this is where a great
coincidence occurred. Upon arriving at
Princeton, grandfather Harris became friends with a classmate named Lowell
Turrentine, who happens to be my great Uncle—on my father’s side. As if it was not enough happenstance that my
maternal grandfather and paternal great uncle would be friends in Princeton’s
Class of 1917, but would you believe who they counted among their fellow
classmates? You guessed it: F. Scott Fitzgerald.
I had the good fortune of becoming close to my Uncle Lowell
when I was in my teens. By that time he
was a retired professor of law at Stanford University, where he taught for
nearly 30 years. In 1979 he invited me
to attend his 62nd class reunion at Princeton. What a treat that was. I remember making my travel plans myself,
which might strike some as unusual for a 14 year old boy, but my parents raised
me to be resourceful. I was to fly on
World Airways from Oakland to Newark.
Then somehow I was to catch the train from Newark to Princeton where I
would meet Uncle Lowell. There was a
threatened strike with World Airways, which I think interfered with my flight,
but ultimately I did arrive in Newark late at night. I remember hustlers trying to get me to hire
their cab for a ride to Princeton, which didn’t sound like a good idea. So I caught a shuttle to the train station
and caught a train to Princeton. All the
while I was reading J.D. Salinger’s “A Catcher in the Rye” about a teenage
boy’s coming of age.
I remember arriving in Princeton around midnight. I took a cab to the lodging facility on
campus where I was supposed to stay. But
I ended up at the wrong place and a college girl drove me in a station wagon to
the right place. These were college kids
who had jobs for the summer helping with reunions and other activities and I
remember thinking this girl was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Anyway, I ultimately got to the right place
and some other college kids looked up “Lowell Turrentine” on their guest list and
then led me to his room. We agreed that
it was probably a good idea for me to let him know I had arrived before going
to my room. We walked down a long
hallway and knocked on his door. I’ll
never forget the sight of this 84 year old man answering the door in his night
shirt and I don’t think I’m making it up when I recall that he was wearing a
night cap – a real life Ebenezer Scrooge!
Over the next several days Uncle Lowell took me on long
walks around Princeton—I remember feeling tired and I think only now do I
really appreciate the fact that he 84 and I was 14! He pointed out the corner room on the second
floor of one of the beautiful stone buildings:
“That was my dormitory in my Senior year,” he said. He took me to the boathouse where he says my
grandfather Harris was captain of the rowing team, but that he himself had
asthma so wasn’t much of an athlete. He
showed me the supper club where he belonged and where he could get his meals
and socialize in between studies. By
today’s standards these clubs look like stately mansions, but in those days
they were simply supper clubs.
Then my Uncle Lowell took me to the University’s theater and
told me about the Triangle Club. I
learned that the Triangle Club is the nation’s oldest college theater group. It was formed in 1891 and F. Scott Fitzgerald
wrote plays for the troupe and is one of its most famous members.
I remember one of the highlights of the Princeton reunion
was the chance to walk with the Class of 1917 in the P-rade. This was the annual reunion march of all the
attending classes. There was a large
black banner with the orange letters spelling “Class of 1917” on it. I remember many sweet old gentlemen who were
classmates with my Uncle Lowell and grandfather Harris telling me stories about
the old days. One man in his forties was
there in honor of his father who had passed away, and I remember he gave me his
black baseball cap with the large orange “P” on it.
Perhaps most striking was learning that the Class of 1917
never got to attend their graduation ceremony.
For most of their time at
Princeton the young men were reading about the deadly war in Europe that had
already claimed millions of lives. The
tensions between the United States and Germany had reached a boiling point as
President Woodrow Wilson, himself a former President of Princeton, tried to
keep the U.S. out of the war. But on
April 6, 1917, the U.S. declared war on Germany and the young men of Princeton
would have to receive their diplomas by mail because their nation needed them
to fight in Europe.
Uncle Lowell became a bombardier, probably in the back of an
Airco DH.4, which was a wooden bi-plane used by the U.S. in World War I. He later graduated from Harvard Law School in
1922, assisted in the Teapot Dome scandal in 1925, and then settled in at
Stanford University Law School from 1931 until his death on January 18,
1992. He never had any children, but he
certainly inspired me and he was one of the reasons I attended law school.
My grandfather Edward Harris not only served in the Army
cavalry during World War I, but he became a career officer and later led troops
as a Colonel during the Battle of the Bulge in 1945 during World War II. After the war he retired back in Rochester
where he became a bank President and died of a heart attack in 1958.
As for F. Scott Fitzgerald, it was reported in the 1917
edition of Princeton’s yearbook, the Nassau Herald, it states, “Fitzgerald was
forced to leave college in December 1915 because of illness. He will pursue graduate work in English at
Harvard, then he will engage in newspaper work.” He actually did enlist in the Army, but the
War ended shortly after he arrived. He
continued his writing, of course, as he spent time in Paris in the twenties
palling around with Ernest Hemingway and others. In 1925 the Great Gatsby was published. While it never achieved critical acclaim
during his lifetime, it is now the emblem of an era. It was an era of an emerging United States,
struggling to define itself. The war to
end all wars had been fought and won.
Prohibition was breeding a new industry of bootleggers and The Mob. And soon an economic depression would descend
upon all of them.
But for the moment, three friends named Edward, Lowell and
F. Scott were enjoying the good life at Princeton. And a young boy in 1972 would sleep in their
cottages, swim in their lakes and hear the stories about them and about life in
America six decades earlier.
