Lowell Baker '63
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- Lowell BakerLowell: Do I need to identify who I am?
- Ben Doehr & Lowell BakerBen: Yes. If you could say your full name, where you currently live, and what class year you're a member of.Lowell: Okay.Ben: Go ahead.
- Lowell BakerLowell: Hi, my name is Lowell Baker. I live in Detroit, Michigan, third generation there. I graduated in the Class of 1963.
- Ben Doehr & Lowell BakerBen: So why did you come to Grinnell College?Lowell: Well, there were several reasons. My mother had a friend who had a friend that had a son here, Allison Davis, from Chicago, and his mother, Allison Davis’ mother talked to my mother’s friend and she shared it with my mom. So that became a school that I wanted to seriously consider.
- Lowell BakerLowell: When I looked into what Grinnell had to offer, I was very impressed with the academic requirements. I enjoyed the school colors, scarlet and black. They had something that I needed and wanted and that was Air Force ROTC.
- Lowell BakerLowell: At the time, there was a draft going on and the Vietnam War was getting more... getting hot. So I figured, if I had to go, I wanted to go as an officer, better chance of coming back with all my limbs, and with my life.
- Lowell BakerLowell: The last thing that was very important to me was that they offered a grant in aid of 1000 dollars a year for me and given the fact that my dad had two of us in college, it certainly helped.
- Ben Doehr & Lowell BakerBen: So what was your first memory of the campus?Lowell: Probably the Gothic architecture of North Campus was very impressive to me and the fact that the campus- oh and now that I think about it, the Burling Library was fairly new at that point. I was very impressed with the design and the precast concrete beams that made up the ceiling as well as the floor. But just the whole overall campus was very attractive to me and I was very impressed.Ben: Okay.
- Ben Doehr & Lowell BakerBen: So was there a professor, or student, or staff member that had a particularly strong influence on your life while you were here at Grinnell?Lowell: Absolutely. I was a Political Science major with a minor in History, and the person that most influenced me and the person I had the most classes from in political science was Harold Fletcher. He headed up the department at that time.
- Lowell BakerLowell: In terms of students that most impressed me and had the greatest impression on me over time, first was Barb Graver. I worked as the head waiter in the men’s dining room for two and a half years and that helped me pay for school, but it also gave me an opportunity to learn about how to organize schedules and to get along with a lot of different types of people.
- Lowell BakerLowell: Barb Graver was in charge of the women in the Cowles dining room and I was in charge of the 90-some waiters and four assistant head waiters.
- Lowell BakerLowell: We did a lot together, both professionally, on the job, but we also ended up in a rather interesting situation: our boss who headed up Saga Foods at the time, the manager of the food services in Cowles dining hall, had four kids, and Barb and I often found ourselves babysitting for all four of his kids and I- as a result of that, we used to play records quite a bit and one of my favorites, then and even now, was Percy Faith and all of his songs, so that was kind of cool.
- Lowell BakerLowell: The staff person that probably affected me the most was, again, as you probably suspect, Fred Huggins, and the fact that he was- gave me an opportunity to develop some skills in areas that I had not done for before.
- Ben Doehr & Lowell BakerBen: So what are your best memories of your time here at Grinnell?Lowell: Well, the best memories… First of all, because I spent so much of my time at Cowles Dining Hall, the fact that I was there and was able to develop a rapport with the other waiters, that was probably very important to me at the time.
- Lowell BakerLowell: The.. during the Christmas Holidays, we had something unique that you don’t have now, and that was called “The Boar's Head Dinner” which was- which has a... almost a medieval tradition where a pig -only in this case it was not a real pig, it was a Paper Mache pig- was carried on a tray with a procession and the Scarleteers, which you.. which was our singing group here at Grinnell, would sing songs, and then the entire dining room....
- Lowell BakerLowell: And this was basically for men only. They were always trying to sneak girls in when they could, but this was primarily a male program. We’d sing and we’d be dressed up, and it'd be a lot of formality. It was really kind of cool.
- Lowell BakerLowell: Let me see.. Another very important memory for me was: during my junior or senior year, we had an all-campus water fight on North Campus, and when I say all campus, it spread from North Campus, from the boys’ campus to the girls’ campus at some point later on, but it initially started in the boys’ campus.
- Lowell BakerLowell: They were throwing wastepaper baskets full of water down from the Loggia and water balloons on the folks that were down below, and the water got so thick, that some of the- so deep that some of the bathrooms in the basements of the various halls, Clark and Gates and Rawson, had six inches of water.
- Lowell BakerLowell: It was wild! That was kind of an interesting experience to say the least.
- Lowell BakerLowell: Once, I think during my freshman year, I was out in the countryside and we actually overlooked drive-in theater and I can remember seeing the original version of “The Sound of Music” with Clifton Web, from the hill. We couldn’t hear anything, but we could see it, so that was kind of different.
- Lowell BakerLowell: Another memory that I have was: my freshman year, I shared a room. We had adjoining singles with a door in between. My roommate was Ira Keeshin from Chicago, and he had a good friend by the name of Zal Lefkowitz ,who was a swimmer.
- Lowell BakerLowell: And both of them had come from Chicago, and they were both Jewish, I was an African-American, and we developed a sufficiently good rapport between the two of us that we could banter back and forth and tease each other about our race and our religion.
- Lowell BakerLowell: And that really was helpful for me because, even though I had been in predominantly Jewish schools most of my life, it helped desensitize me to the point where I wasn’t concerned if somebody said a word that might have otherwise caused me to go bonkers.
- Lowell BakerLowell: The other thing that was kind of interesting is that Ira had a girlfriend, and he would bring his girlfriend in through the window at night. It was wild!
- Lowell BakerLowell: Let’s see, another memory was: at the time in ’59, hazing still existed even though it wasn’t encouraged, and I can remember being hazed with paddles in Clark Hall and one of the hazers, believe it or not, was Herbie Hancock, who has become very famous.
- Lowell BakerLowell: Herbie used to lead us in song in our dorm, but also, he would take us over to the girls’ side and we’d serenade he girls, and he’d lead us. It was obvious at that point that Herbie was going to be somebody to reckon with and as we all know, he certainly is.
- Lowell BakerLowell: Lastly, I think I may have mentioned already, when Barb Graver and I babysat for Fred Huggins’ kids, that was quite an experience because he had four and I can remember one time, the boy, which was the baby at the time: we put the boy on the bed, and we were getting ready to change his diaper and I’ll give you one guess what happened… All over the bedspread, so we learned- learned the hard way.
- Ben Doehr & Lowell BakerBen: So how has Grinnell changed since you were a student here?Lowell: First of all, when we were here, Grinnell ran roughly somewhere between two and three thousand dollars a year for room and board. Most of us that had a need got some kind of financial aid either in a grant-in-aid or a scholarship. I got grant-in-aids.
- Lowell BakerLowell: Bottom line is: we were able to earn a third of our- at least a third of our total room and board, and tuition, during the summer, and you can’t do that today with 52, 53 thousand dollars.
- Lowell BakerLowell: So, the difference is that we didn’t end up with the kind of financial obligations that you do and we were not in debt when we graduated from school.
- Lowell BakerLowell: One of our classmates mentioned just a few minutes ago, that he got through Grinnell in four years under ten thousand dollars, so that’s a huge difference.
- Lowell BakerLowell: Of course, the other thing is that I think is the background and educational level... skill level of the students today are as good or better than they were when we were here.
- Lowell Baker & Ben DoehrLowell: We- Grinnell, at the time in the early 60s, got a lot of Ivy League rejects. Now, that wasn’t a necessarily negative thing, it just meant that very bright kids who couldn’t get into the Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, and so forth out east would come to Grinnell. Grinnell had a great reputation, and it still has a great reputation.Ben: Okay.
- Ben Doehr & Lowell BakerBen: So describe something that is no longer available on campus, but that was meaningful to you when you were here.Lowell: Well, part of the reason there were so many waiters in both dining rooms, both Cowles and Main, was: we had a tradition of having served meals at night. Monday through Friday, everybody came in, sat down at a table and were- and they were served by waiters and waitresses. That doesn’t exist anymore.
- Lowell BakerLowell: We also had a situation on Sunday afternoon where we’d have a sit-down meal and the fellas could bring their girlfriends or any girl over and it was a mixed co-ed situation.
- Lowell BakerLowell: And that’s not to say the girls weren’t there during the week, but fewer of them came unless they were invited for the Sunday afternoon.
- Lowell BakerLowell: And then as I mentioned before, we had a Boar's Head Dinner, which was a traditon.. which was kinda cool. It was different, very different, and these are the kinds of experiences that you guys don’t have today.
- Ben Doehr & Lowell BakerBen: So describe your favorite academic experience or class here at Grinnell.Lowell: My favorite academic experience. Probably, I would have to say that, during my senior year, Arnold Toynbee, who was a famous British historian, wrote a nine or ten volume: "History of Civilization".
- Lowell BakerLowell: Arnold Toynbee and his wife were in their 80s; they were in residence here for an entire year and lectured in Herrick Chapel, virtually once a week, and he had a concept called, “Challenge and Response” that civilizations, once they were challenged, if they responded to the challenge, responded positively and in a constructive way, they were able to maintain their situation.
- Lowell BakerLowell: If they didn’t respond properly, they became much less powerful and much less influential in the world. So I think that was probably the thing that I thoroughly enjoyed the most, ‘cause as I said before, I was a History minor and I loved it.
- Ben Doehr & Lowell BakerBen: So how would you compare the students of today with your classmates?Lowell: Well, as I indicated before, you guys are much better prepared academically, I think, but you’re also facing a lot of challenges that perhaps weren’t evident with us in the early 60s.
- Lowell BakerLowell: Vietnam had only started to get hot, you’re post-9/11 students and the world has changed. It’s a lot more dangerous, a lot more.. lot more upheaval is occurring. You’ve got the whole Middle East that is in the process of changing radically.
- Lowell BakerLowell: Things that were a lot more certain for us are less certain for you, and I think that creates, perhaps, some anxiety at times and the economic situation, obviously, is very different.
- Lowell BakerLowell: When we came out and graduated in ’63, the opportunity for getting a job, or in many cases where I was an Air Force ROTC cadet, we knew at some point I was gonna go into service, but the economy was much stronger and jobs were more plentiful. Today that's not the case.
- Lowell BakerLowell: We’re just beginning to come out of the worst recession since the depression of the 20s, and for a lot of college students, especially liberal arts colleges, the question is raised more and more frequently today: "Have I pursued the right kinds of courses that will get me a reasonably good-paying job?"
- Lowell BakerLowell: And that becomes especially questionable if you're pursuing a Liberal Arts degree, even though the advantages are obvious: you know, being able to be creative and flexible. So I think that’s one of the major changes that occurred.
- Ben Doehr & Lowell BakerBen: Do you have any last parting words of advice to a fellow Grinnellian?Lowell: Be aware of what’s going on, not only domestically, but internationally, because your world is so much more... so much smaller than ours was.
- Lowell BakerLowell: In effect, what I’m saying is: the impact of foreign affairs on your life and what happens to you is much greater than was true for us. That’s my personal opinion.
- Lowell BakerLowell: Things that happen overseas have almost an immediate impact on what happens here. You’ve got a situation right now where Europe is in a recession and it’s having a tremendous impact, negative impact, on businesses here in this country. That was not as true during the early 60's.
- Lowell BakerLowell: So, the other thing is to recognize that China is gonna play a very important part in your live, and those of you who can master Mandarin Chinese will never have to worry about a job, regardless of what skill you’re pursuing. The Chinese are going to be a major force to reckon with.
- Lowell BakerLowell: Read Freedman’s books; he’s got two books: one was “The World is Flat” or something to that effect, and his newest book is called, “That Used To Be Us” and it basically talks about what’s happened to the America and the United States recently and the fact that there are about seven or eight different areas that allowed us to be the supreme power in the world, and we’re in trouble in all seven of those areas, or all eight of those areas.
- Lowell Baker & Ben DoehrLowell: Be aware of that and then try and figure out how you can best manage your life and develop the skills you that need in order to be successful in a very rapidly changing world.Ben: I’ll keep that in mind.Lowell: Yeah!
- Ben Doehr & Lowell BakerBen: Thank you very much.Lowell: I hope that… Wow, do we get a copy of this?
Alumni oral history interview with Lowell Baker '63. Recorded June 1, 2013.