A note from a budding novelist
In my 88th year (the 71st since entering Santa Clara as a freshman in the Class of 1943) I’ve written a novel: The Lake. Being published is not a new experience. I’ve written a half dozen nautical texts published by W.W. Norton of New York. But fiction is a different genre, and a more feasible route for someone my age seemed to be enlistment in an electronic publishing program. The pace from notepad to finished book is much faster, and to octogenarians time is, indeed, of the essence.
Although e-publishing might be a wave of the future, it is a tabula rasa. So I invoked the shades of such profs as Fathers Fagothey of philosophy and Shipsey of English to rehabilitate the skills they tried to give me while the shades of stern Fathers Gianera and O’Connell kept me on course.
Contrasts between Santa Clara today and that of my time are more than just startling. Gone is The Ship, an imposing theatre building which acquired its name by looming up like a mist-shrouded vessel in valley fogs. And not offered anymore, I’ve been told, is the degree Ph.B. (Bachelor of Philosophy) for which I was a candidate. Also no longer around, I imagine, is the name The Owl for Santa Clara’s literary magazine. I was editor of it in 1941 before heading off for war years at sea.
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Inspirational Jesuits: Fagothey, left, and Shipsey offer lessons to a writer almost
70 years after he graduated.
Photo: SCU Archives |
There have been many more changes, of course. Not only is the undergraduate population 10 times as large and co-ed, but gone are nightly lockdowns with lights out at 10 p.m. for freshmen in Kenna, 11 p.m. for sophomores in O’Connor, and midnight for upperclassmen in Nobili. And relegated to history, I’m sure, is the Saturday morning ritual of passing muster before a dean of discipline as formidable as Father O’Connell. He would consult his records of weekly miscues before granting a boarder permission to go off campus, and that would be only until 7 on Sunday night. The weather, though, was every bit as good as now, except, perhaps, for the stench in September from a nearby tannery.
The regimen rivaled that of a boot camp. Having a choice was seldom an option, and the food was less than gourmet. But by intention or not, we were ready for the wartime institutional life most of us soon encountered. I’m sure that I echo the majority opinion of my surviving classmates when I say that if given a choice, we might gripe as much but would do it again.
I seldom have occasion for campus visits. In fact, during the past 50 years I think there were only four. One was the interment of my cousin, Fr. Tom Sullivan, S.J., in a nearby cemetery, a second was at the start of my daughter Christine Crawford ’76’s freshman year, the third was the graduation of my son Dan Crawford J.D. ’86, and the fourth was the 50th anniversary get-together of the remnants of the class of ’43. And that was 17 years ago. It’s past time for me to schedule another visit.
William P. Crawford ’43
Beaverton, Ore.
Read more about Crawford’s novel on p. 43. —Ed.