BardCorps -- Alumni Oral Histories

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Charles Friou '46 (BardCorps)

Charles Friou '46
Alumni/ae/x

“Some of the courses had horrendous reading lists. I remember sitting in Albee one night, like 3 o’clock in the morning, trying to read a novel that had to be finished by the next morning. And Dean Gray walks in, and says, “Oh hi, I just wondered why the lights were on!” It was that kind of intimate, personal, environment that we were in.”
Kathryn Kaycoff-Manos, '82 (BardCorps)

Kathryn Kaycoff-Manos
Alumni/ae/x

"There was a guy with a cape with white makeup following me around and acting like a vampire.There are, like, freaks here; what have I done?"
Robert McAlister, '50 (BardCorps)

Robert McAlister
Alumni/ae/x

"I am a strong believer in experiential learning and because of the experience we had as veterans, I think we brought some different perspective to the classroom."
Linda Murphy, '88 (BardCorps)

Linda Murphy
Alumni/ae/x

"Frank [Oja] pointed to that door at one point and said, 'Everybody in this room says that's a yellow door, but everybody...sees a different color yellow.' In other words, we don't all see things the same way, it's impossible. And that taught me to be accepting."
Edie Shean-Hammond, '72 (BardCorps)

Edie Shean-Hammond
Alumni/ae/x

"I came [to Bard] never having seen the place, having absolute faith in Walter Cronkite, telling me it would be okay."
Darius Thieme, '51 (BardCorps)

Darius Thieme
Alumni/ae/x

“Don’t be afraid to live with a blank page, and at the end of the day wind up with a blank page. That’s not bad. A blank page is just part of what you have to do... because you have to spend that time thinking about it.”
Eva Thal Belefant, '49 (BardCorps)

Eva Thal Belefant
Alumni/ae/x

"We consider it the Bard Family."
Jonathan Cann, '06 (BardCorps)

Jonathan Cann
Alumni/ae/x

"Even the bad days here...were part of a larger interesting story. I wouldn't do anything different."
Margaret Castleman, '69 (BardCorps)

Margaret Castleman
Alumni/ae/x

"I had a very hard time here initially. [I was] totally vulnerable to peer pressure, and to the wrong kind of peer pressure. So to have to come back and face that, and to disassociate myself [from] that sort of set the rules for my life in terms of how to be an individual. You have to go your own path."
Tyrone Copeland, '01 (BardCorps)

Tyrone Copeland
Alumni/ae/x

"To get to the beach, you had to jump off the boat and swim. Really, my swimming skills--no they're not great...I did my little doggy paddle...All those adventures pushed me to explore more."
Jodi DeVito, '81 (BardCorps)

Jodi DeVito
Alumni/ae/x

"I loved the landscape, the education; especially coming from a very traditional boarding school, it just sounded so alluring."
Anthony Ellenbogen, '82 (BardCorps)

Anthony Ellenbogen
Alumni/ae/x

"Every once in awhile I'll be loading a dumpster and one of my workers will say, 'Boy, it's a good thing that you spent all that money at Bard for an education.' And I think to myself, it may not be obvious, but it is worth it; it's why they're working for me and I'm not working for them."
Kit Ellenbogen, '52 (BardCorps)

Kit Ellenbogen
Alumni/ae/x

"I left the college a very different person than when I came."
Kim Fisher, '01 (BardCorps)

Kim Fisher
Alumni/ae/x

"So I'm just, you know, recording some of the scenery and I turned around and the class was gone. But, what I saw was three wild dogs..."
Ralph Levine, '62 (BardCorps)

Ralph Levine
Alumni/ae/x

" 'The more you know about different subjects, the more interesting your own life will be'...I thought it was a good justification for a liberal arts education."
Pete Mauney, '93, '00 (BardCorps)

Pete Mauney
Alumni/ae/x

"From having had a relatively mixed experience at Bard originally when I was a student I've ended up with a... long ongoing relationship with Bard as an employee...I've really enjoyed it."
Jessica Moore, '81 (BardCorps)

Jessica Moore '81
Alumni/ae/x

"If you talked to your teachers they really understood. A lot my teachers really understood, and inspired me...I guess the most important thing to me was the music...really being able to concentrate on classical music."
Charles Moore, '79 (BardCorps)

Charles Moore
Alumni/ae/x

"For 4 years the President could not rest...Our commencement was his commencement."
Andrea Muraskin, '06 (BardCorps)

Andrea Muraskin
Alumni/ae/x

"Everyone at Bard is an artist in some way."
Susan Playfair, '62 (BardCorps)

Susan Playfair
Alumni/ae/x

"It [Bard] had been lambasted by the Walter Winchells...It was amazing that it was able to keep going through the McCarthy era."
Tamara Plummer, '02 (BardCorps)

Tamara Plummer
Alumni/ae/x

"They came from everywhere, you know. We had really interesting conversations that I never had before about race and gender and ethnicity-- and what does it mean to be this thing? and what does it not mean?"
Maurice Richter, '53 (BardCorps)

Maurice Richter
Alumni/ae/x

"In those days we had what we called the Field Period...I worked for the anthropologist Margaret Mead in her office in the American Museum of Natural History."
Anthony Rivera, '01 (BardCorps)

Anthony Rivera
Alumni/ae/x

"Bard was my getaway from the ghetto."
Jim Salvucci, '86 (BardCorps)

Jim Salvucci
Alumni/ae/x

"I lived in Tewksbury, which was an adventure in itself."
Miranda Spencer, '81 (BardCorps)

Miranda Spencer
Alumni/ae/x

"I realized that I was a weird and quirky person. When I was at UNH everyone thought I was a complete freakadoid. When I came to Bard everyone thought I was so straightlaced. They called me 'Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.'"