Interviewees

Shaun Illingworth:  This begins an oral history interview with Dr. James Dougherty on March 3, 2023, with Shaun Illingworth.  Thank you, Dr. Dougherty, for joining me; to begin, can you tell me where and when you were born?

James Dougherty:  Sure, December 19, 1952, in Philadelphia. 

SI:  We usually start with a little bit of family background.  Would you mind telling me what you know about your family history, starting with your mother's side of the family? 

JD:  My mother's side is probably the easier side, I think.  Well, actually, both sides grew up in Philadelphia as far as I know.  My mother had one brother who served in the Navy, then, met his wife.  She was what they called a WAVE, I think, back then, World War II.  They moved to Florida and I really didn't have much contact with them after that, except for funerals and that sort of thing. 

[Editor's Note: Over ninety thousand women served in the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), the women's branch of the US Navy, during World War II.]

Her parents--my grandfather, he seemed to be kind of a jack-of-all-trades.  I don't really know if he had an occupation per se.  My grandmother was the breadwinner, my mother's mother, of that family.  She worked for what was then called Bell Telephone, which eventually became AT&T, which [became]--who knows?--Verizon, whatever.  She worked for them her whole life until she retired in 1965. 

My father's family--my parents separated when I was very young.  I never had, really, contact with my father, but my father's parents, I never really knew his father.  His mother, I knew and kept in touch with and visited with until her death sometime in the '80s. 

She, for lack of a better term, was a housewife and she raised my father and his sister, who had, I believe, four children.  Those cousins, I was friendly with for a short period of time, but, then, again, lost contact with all of them eventually.  So, that's pretty much the immediate family I can think of. 

I like to say, when we do other kinds of interviews and such, I was the first high school graduate of my family.  I know Rutgers prides themselves on first-[generation] college graduates.  I said, "Well, I can trump that by four years and say I was the first high school graduate."

SI:  It was not unusual in your parents' generation for people to leave for work before graduating.

JD:  Right.

SI:  Do you have any idea how your parents met or where they lived when you were born? 

JD:  I have no idea how they met.  What I did, what I was able to trace back when my mother died, I found her wedding license or something and her divorce papers.  So, I was able to deduce that I was conceived before their marriage, basically, by about three months.  [laughter]

So, that all makes sense for the '50s, but I don't know, I imagine they were too [young?].  They were both in their early twenties.  He was just--not just back--but had served in World War II and was back.  I don't know what their relationship was or anything.  She never talked about it, but they married in Philadelphia. 

I grew up in a section called Grays Ferry, which is right across the Schuylkill River from the University of Pennsylvania.  We lived in a small apartment, and then, moved into a house, a row house, next to my mother's parents.  I do recall they bought that house, so [that] we didn't have to pay to live there.  Then, we, my mother and I, moved with her parents to New Jersey, to Deptford, which is in Gloucester County, in 1961.  So, I was eight, turning nine. 

SI:  Do you have any memories from those early years in Philadelphia? 

JD:  Other than some brief, like, elementary school memories, the biggest, odd memory was that my mother (or grandparents or somebody) didn't want me to go to the elementary school that was in our neighborhood.  So, they borrowed someone's address to send me to a school where I had to walk a few more blocks to get to. 

That was always a bit uncomfortable, because I was drilled into learning some address that I had no idea where it was, but they used that in order to go into this other school.  To this day, I don't know why.  I don't know what it was about that school or about the other school.  I think it might have been a safety thing.  Everyone in my neighborhood went to a local Catholic school called St. Gabriel's and I was the only non-Catholic, so, I would be the only one in my block that went to a public school. 

My parents fought all the time, which obviously led to the separation.  My father was--I don't know enough of what was going on to call him an alcoholic, but I know he drank a lot.  I know he kept losing jobs frequently because of that.  So, I remember always being dependent on my mother's mother for most things that kids depend on.  I had a few great aunts that I would often go around [to visit] as well and they would feed me. 

Everybody lived, like, three blocks away.  My mother's father had--it's always debatable--I think, like, maybe twelve siblings.  So, yes, there were [a lot of family members].  Everyone's either Irish or Scottish.  So, a lot of his sisters (three of his sisters) lived about two or three blocks from me.   I was very close to the sisters, my great aunts, and would spend time there.  That was pretty much it. 

My mother, I guess, tried to do what she could do, but I was always very independent.  Friends of mine laugh that (and I didn't realize it was funny, not funny, but odd) I would make sandwiches for myself, mostly, they called it (and excuse the expression to anybody who doesn't like it), "welfare cheese."  It was these blocks of cheese and white bread and white mayo.  I'd make these sandwiches. 

I would actually walk across the University Avenue Bridge to go to the Penn Museum [The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology].  I would sit on the lawn, which now doesn't exist, outside of the Penn Museum.  It's part of that Penn Tower, that patient care center, but there was a lawn there.  Then, I would go in the museum, because I liked looking at the mummies and all the Egyptian artifacts. 

So, who knows how they allowed a seven or eight-year-old to do all this, it happened.  Then, I would walk home.  Friends, when I was growing up, would be like, "Did they know you were doing this?  How could any little kid walk across [the bridge]?"  I said, "I'd just pack my stuff and walk and do it."  So, as you'll see later in the interview, I remained independent for a lot of my life, but those are the only memories. 

I remember leaving, not being told much about where we were moving.  My grandfather built the house that we moved into, literally built, with other people.  I had visited it once or twice with him to see it, but I had no idea that I was moving there.  Then, one day in April, we moved.  So, I moved to South Jersey. 

SI:  What was Deptford like at that time?  What do you remember about the street you moved to, for example? 

JD:  It was somewhat rural, there were some farms around.  What would become my high school was (and might still be) surrounded by pig farms and turkey farms. 

It was very lonely for me.  I became friends with my immediate neighbors.  They were a couple, maybe in their twenties or thirties, and they were starting a family.  So, she would ask me to babysit.   I got close to them, and fortunately was able to get around--they had a car.  My grandfather had a car, but he hardly ever drove.  So, they would take me places. 

I went to an elementary school that I could walk to, was a few blocks up from where I lived.  I remember--I don't have good feelings toward Deptford, so, I'm not trying to scale back my reactions to it--but the school was, believe it or not, academically far inferior to Philadelphia schools at that point.  I remember, in Philly (we moved when I was in third grade), we were doing division and multiplication and all those things.  I get to this school, what was called Blackwood Terrace Elementary, and they were barely doing addition and subtraction. 

 I remember the teacher putting me with kids, when they were trying to do the other [more complex lessons], division, whatever, to be like a tutor, in a corner of the room.  I would walk home kind of ticked off that nobody was teaching me, that I was stuck with these kids.  So, that's my memories of elementary school.

I was bullied a lot.  It was in the times before people [cared]; I don't think people really cared about bullying.  I have scars from where I was pushed down on playgrounds.  I was small.  It's hard to believe now, but I was always the smallest in my class--oh, because, in Philly, they pulled me out of kindergarten and put me in first grade.  So, I was always one year younger than my classmates.

I was pulled out, because I do remember being taken to somebody's office and my mother showing up.  I don't know if it was a principal or whatever, but I just remember the principal (or whoever she was) telling my mother, "He keeps saying he's bored."  [laughter] So, they transferred me out and put me in the first grade. 

So, yes, that was the beginning of elementary school there.  I was never great at anything athletic, so, that wouldn't help with the bullying.  It was like that [trope] when you see in sitcoms where they're picking the kids and there's always the one kid there last.  That was me. 

 I had a few friends.  I didn't make many friends in that school.  One of the friends that I made, I would go to his house, which was just a few blocks away--his father ended up becoming my stepfather years later after his father met my mother.  Eventually, they were dating, and so forth, but it was a brief friendship with who would become my step brother.  He spent most of his education in some kind of juvenile jail.  Therefore, I didn't really keep up with him very much.  He had a sister who I was somewhat friends with and an older sister who used to babysit us.  That was about my only elementary school memories. 

SI:  How long did that continue, where they had you tutoring the other kids?  Was it just in the third grade? 

JD:  No, it was probably [longer], because I was in that school from the very end of third grade through sixth grade.  Different times throughout those three years, they would use me to help, mostly probably third and fourth grade.  I think fifth and sixth, I was left alone.  It was--I don't know what, maybe it still is--but, I mean, you would just be [in one room].  I can only remember the grade by being in a certain room in the school, because you didn't go anywhere else.  Then, maybe you were in a different room when the grade changed and that was about it. 

SI:  I would imagine it might have been a mix of local kids, maybe farm kids, and folks like yourself, who were moving out from Philadelphia. 

JD:  The mix of the [kids]?

SI:  Yes. 

JD:  Yes, I mean, probably more of the people that had moved from Philadelphia at one point, I think.  I read about, in the '50s, there was a big exodus from Philadelphia, or the "white flight" that occurred in a lot of cities, as I think they call it.  So, it was mostly people like that. 

I didn't know many people, per se, who lived or worked on a farm.  They were mostly just suburban kids that had come from Philadelphia, pretty much.  Some probably had been there a couple of generations, but, mostly, it was an influx of people, because, as the '60s moved on, more and more housing was built. 

When I started seventh grade, there wasn't a junior high school in the township.  So, I actually went to the same school from seventh through twelfth, the high school.  During that time, they built a junior high.  They put some kids in that side of the township into the middle schools, they call it now, but it was junior high then, put them in the junior high. 

SI:  Your mother was working at this time.  Do you know what she was doing?

JD:  When we first moved to Jersey, I was in third grade.  I don't remember her working.  My grandmother had this arduous journey.  She would walk to the corner at, like, four-thirty in the morning and take a bus.  Even though we were a fifteen-minute drive from Philadelphia, that would take forever.  That would bring her to Eighth and Market.  Then, at Eighth and Market, she would transfer to the subway to go to--I think somewhere in the forties where the Bell building was. 

So, she would do that, but my mother, I don't remember working until a few years later.  I don't remember when, she started working as, they called them "bar maids" then.   It was a tiny neighborhood bar around the corner, because she didn't drive and we didn't have a car.  So, she would work there from nine to six.  That was probably her longest job. 

Then, when I was at college, I think she just worked at a mall in our town, Deptford Mall--she worked in John Wanamaker's, which is  now a defunct chain, but was a chain then.  She worked there, but most of the employment, when she was working, I remember being in that bar. 

My grandmother retired in '65.  So, I would've been [in] seventh or eighth grade or so, something like that.  My grandfather died.  We were only living in that house about a year-and-a-half and he died.  So, it was just the three of us. 

SI:  Were there any clubs that you did outside of school, for fun or for other reasons?

JD:  No, not in that town.  The only thing that I tried to do was (and I think it was because of my eventual stepbrother's pushing), I joined the Cub Scouts for a while, but I didn't last very long.  I only did it for maybe a year or two, mostly, again, because--[laughter] I laugh, but I guess it's not funny--I was physically inept.  I mean, there was nothing, when we would do things, that I would do well in.  Then, they took us to some pool somewhere to try [swimming].  To this day, don't even ask me to try to swim--I just couldn't get the hang of it. 

Kids would just make fun of me, so, I just quit.  I remember, my mother asked me why I was quitting and I didn't want to tell her the real reasons.  So, I told her that the new den mother--I don't know why I even remember this--but the new den mother was making us take our shoes off when we went into the house.  I didn't like that, so, I quit.  She didn't question it.  The shoes part was true, but it wouldn't be a reason to quit.  I just thought it was odd that somebody wants to be a den mother to these grimy ten-year-old boys and is making everybody try to stay clean. 

That was the only club.  I didn't participate in any group things until tenth grade, when I started taking trumpet lessons and joined the marching band.  I was in our marching band and a little symphony band for the last two years of high school. 

SI:  Before high school, had you studied any kind of instrument or been interested in music? 

JD:  I had, right before we left Philly.  I didn't choose it and, I don't know, I can't recall anything, but I know that I started taking violin lessons.  I didn't choose violin.  It might've just been some kind of music program that Philly schools were doing.  I remember missing that, because when we went to Jersey, I asked about it.  Probably, the response was, "Are you kidding?"  [laughter] So, there was none of that. 

So, I didn't have any group participation until in high school.  Like I said, when they built that middle/junior high, then, in tenth grade, there'd be this influx of new kids that would come to the high school, where I was for those three years prior.  That was the first time I actually started forming some friendships and they were already in a band.  So, I was like, "Okay, I'll do that." 

I picked the trumpet, because my friends played trumpet.  My first choice, I don't know where I got that, but I remember I really wanted to play the flute.  My mother was like, "There's no way you're playing the flute."  I don't know if it was some kind of, like, prejudice or whatever or what the source was.  So, I thought "They play trumpet, so, I'll play trumpet."  Needless to say, I wasn't first chair.  I struggled, but I enjoyed it.  It gave me some social interactions.

SI:  Was there a particular subject or area in school that you gravitated towards? 

JD:  As the years progressed, mostly the sciences and math and things like that; in the beginning, not much, mostly anything.  I did enjoy reading.  I enjoyed reading a lot.  To continue the unusual part of me, my neighbor who I babysat for had, for some reason, a lot of works by Shakespeare.  That's what I did one summer vacation, I thought I would read Shakespeare,   I wasn't real young, maybe eighth grade. 

I remember sitting outside, under a tree, reading the works of Shakespeare.  That idea, when people ask you what you did on your summer vacation, that probably led to some of the bullying, because I probably admitted that I spent the summer under a tree, reading Shakespeare.  I eventually gravitated, for whatever reason, more towards the sciences and math. 

I was fortunate.  I mean, the school was horrible.  It just was academically horrible, but, somehow, they had hired a math teacher who actually had a PhD, I remember, from Lehigh.  He took four or five of us and tutored us in math that we weren't getting in the school.  So, I remember thinking that was pretty cool, learning calculus and finally getting some academic attention. 

It ended up paying off, because when I started Rutgers, I took Calculus 101.  I remember the professor holding up Thomas' Calculus, which I think was a very popular calculus book.  He said, "If any of you have used this in high school, you need to transfer out of this class and into ""Calculus for Math Majors." 

I remember thinking, "There's no way--I know that book.  [laughter] So, let me do well in this class and I can pay attention to the others."  So, that's what I did, just sort of cheated and did the same book again. 

[Editor's Note: George Brinton Thomas, Jr. (1914-2006), Professor of Mathematics at MIT, authored the widely-used Calculus and Analytical Geometry, first published in 1952.  Since the Eleventh Edition, it has been officially titled Thomas' Calculus.]

SI:  You shared the story earlier about going to the Penn Museum by yourself.  Would you still go places on your own?  I do not think there is a museum in the area, but to other places that you might go and explore.

JD:  When I was in South Jersey, in Deptford? 

SI:  Yes, up to high school or in high school.

JD:  Yes, I would.  Our street ended in a large, wooded area.  So, I would walk through there to see where it went.  I always had a bike, from almost my earliest memories of being able to bike.  So, I would bicycle, which I don't know whether it was far or not, to Clementon. 

I used to like comic books and there was a comic book vending machine at some store in Clementon.  I'm sure it was [available] closer, but I knew that one.  I liked Superman comic books.  So, I would bicycle, like, weekly to see if a new copy had come out, most of the time, disappointed, because I think they only come out once every couple of months, and would bicycle back.  That was my main means of roaming around.  Yes, I would do that by myself though. 

SI:  What would you say about the composition of your school?  Was it mostly white kids or was it more diverse? 

JD:  My high [school], whatever, seventh to twelfth?  Yes, I don't know the proportions, but, if I had to make a wild guess, it might've been, like, twenty percent black, fifteen percent, something like that.  The more rare thing, because of people saying, "Hey, do you know?" there were maybe one or two Jewish kids.  So, that was pretty much the only [other minority].  Male-female probably was equal, but that would be my guess.  I might be overexaggerating the black part, but it definitely wasn't an all-white school, like you would think some of the South Jersey ones might be. 

SI:  What about your local neighborhood or street?  Was it a mixture of people from different backgrounds? 

JD:  No, it was all-white in that area.  I forget the names of the areas, but there were parts of the township that were predominantly black and other parts that were predominantly white.  So, I'd have to say that it was all-white, no [other] ethnicities.  There were no Southeast Asians or Asians. 

SI:  Were there sections that were maybe more Irish or German or some other ethnicity?

JD:  That, I don't know.  I don't remember people bringing up they were this or that or this was an Irish section, because it was not super rural.  I can't even think of anything [comparable] around New Brunswick.  So, it was not super dense.  There were no apartment buildings.  Most were single, small homes with maybe a half-acre of land around them or, sometimes, a little bit less, but mostly half-acre or so.  I can't remember any kind of ethnic divisions to that extent. 

SI:  Up through high school, how would you describe yourself as a consumer of news?  How aware were you of what was happening in the larger world?

JD:  Well, obviously, with no Internet and only three TV stations, it was hard to consume a whole lot.  I remember major events.  I remember Kennedy being shot, Moon landing, those kind of things that everyone remembers.  So, I would watch the evening news and that was the only real source, the six-thirty evening news. 

I think the only newspaper that we got at the house was the local--what was it?--Courier-Post, I think it was, probably still exists, I think.  It came out of Camden at the time.  Gloucester County Times, I remember that one, but that might've been later.  My (eventual) stepfather would be good at getting newspapers.  I don't think we ever had anything delivered to the house. 

There would just be that and the radio, but I wouldn't [listen much].  My grandparents would sit and listen to the radio, I think more from when [it was] pre-television, but I was never brought into that, other than knowing to not talk during a baseball game.  That was one of my biggest lessons.  Yes, so, I could only consume what was available and it really was hard. 

SI:  As you got into high school, you were there during the Vietnam era and the Civil Rights Movement.  Were these events discussed among the student body or in class? 

JD:  Not as much as you would think it would've been.  It was more from what you would see on the outside, just living.  At the time, there were no physician facilities, offices, whatever, anywhere in our area or even places to buy a lot of things.  So, he wasn't my stepfather then, but the man who became my stepfather would drive us into Camden to go to doctor appointments, if we had those or anything like that.  Then, I recall when we had to stop going into Camden because of the riots that were occurring, but, in school, there wasn't a lot of discussion. 

[Editor's Note: The City of Camden, New Jersey, faced episodes of deadly unrest in September 1969 and August 1971.]

Vietnam was just like people say, Dan Rather or somebody reporting from there and just being the nightly thing and the nightly death toll.  I remember, I was one of the--I always forget the word, salutatorian?  Is that the second in the class? 

SI:  Yes, salutatorian.

JD:  Anyway, I was a speaker at graduation.  I remember, then, my speech was a lot more radical before it got edited down for public consumption.  So, I remember being upset about things.  Kent State had happened right before I graduated, so, things were fresh in our minds.  Then, they started the lottery system for the draft, so, those kind of things.  My lottery number was 19! My student deferment kept me out of Vietnam.

[Editor's Note: On May 4, 1970, four Kent State University students were killed by members of the Ohio National Guard during protests against the Vietnam War.  On December 1, 1969, the Selective Service System held a televised draft lottery to determine the draft order for 1970.  366 capsules, each possessing a date of the year, were drawn.  If one's birthday was drawn early, they possessed a low draft number, which increased their chances of being drafted.]

My stepfather--I was a freshman at Rutgers, though, at the time when I turned eighteen, because of that whole skipping a grade thing--he, like, almost had to force me to the draft office to sign up.  As far as being taught about them in school, I don't think it came up a lot, whether they were shielding us from it or [what].  I mean, you would know if somebody had an older brother that was drafted and, oftentimes, killed.  You would hear those stories, but not much more than that. 

My stepfather (again, pre-stepfather, but he would be at the house a lot), he didn't like watching a lot of it, I guess because of his [military experiences].  He was in Germany and France during World War II.  So, I don't think he liked watching it.  I don't think they [the school] did a very good job.  I know we had a course called social studies, but it just doesn't [ring a bell].  I don't recall a lot of that kind of talk. 

SI:  You mentioned you got involved with the marching band.  Were there other activities that you got into from tenth grade on? 

JD:  I joined the tennis team, because I figured, "Let me try that," and, also, because I was trying to build up sort of a resumé for college.  I knew that you had to have a lot of different activities, and so, I have to admit, I selfishly did it just as a resumé builder.  I really didn't care that much for the team, although I did all right considering. 

The only other activities were band-related.  There was a jazz band, an orchestra, a marching band, just those.  I was in the National Honor Society.  I don't know what we did with that, but I was in that.  That was about it. 

Oh, the other reason for quitting Cub Scouts was, on the days of the meeting (it just came to me), you had to wear that uniform to school.  I was lucky if I got through the day without that uniform being [teased], somebody knocking me over or something.  So, that's another reason why, like, "I don't need to add more beatings, and so, let me drop this," but I never told my mother that.  It was just part of the whole collection--sorry, that just came to me. 

SI:  Yes, if things come to you, just go right ahead with them.

JD:  Sure.

SI:  Do any memories stand out from the high school band, either going with the marching band to the games or any other experiences of performing?

JD:  They were all positive.  That was like the best experience that I could have ever had.  I made a lot of friends, which I had never really made earlier in my life.  It was fun going to these places.  We turned out to be, for a high school band, very good.  So, we won a lot of competitions.  I know we got to go to Washington, DC, for a parade.  I remember some people didn't want to do it because [Richard M.] Nixon was President and he was going to be reviewing this in [the] review stands or something. 

Yes, all the good times were just from there.  It was the only thing that gave me interests in those high school years.  Even though it was only three years of it, it was good.  I mean, we would hang out there.  If I had a free class, I would go down into the band area and not anyplace else in the school. 

I think it was obvious or clear in my form [pre-interview survey] that I'm gay.  I tried dating a girl in the band, so, it was like my way of trying to be like everybody else, because I had been bullied and beaten up a lot through those years before band.  It stopped when I joined band.  I don't know where that gave me the security of not being attacked so much. 

So, other people might've known I was gay much before I did, because that would be part of the slurs and stuff that they would throw at me during that.  So, yes, although nobody outwardly was gay in the band, it just was a comfortable place to be. 

I just regretted not joining or trying out for the Rutgers Band, but I had it in my mind that I needed to have all the time necessary to study.  I was afraid it was going to take too much time, because in high school, the band was, like, all-encompassing.  It was every day after school, it was all those weekends at football games.  So, I thought, "Probably not a good idea." 

SI:  Were there other folks who were thinking of college?  From what you described, I am not sure if many people went on to college from Deptford.  Were you in a group that was thinking that way? 

JD:  Yes, there were not.  There were about three hundred or so students in my graduating class.  From what I was told later on, twenty-five of us went to college.  Of those twenty-five--the Gloucester County College had opened [in] those years [in 1967], so, that even counts [those kids]--most of them went there.  Eight of us, eight guys, went to Rutgers College, which was all-male at the time, and, of those eight, five were band members with me. 

[Editor's Note: Rutgers College became coeducational in 1972.]

SI:  Were there any teachers or counselors guiding you towards college?

JD:  We had guidance counselors, but I just remember the guidance counselor that I went to had me apply to Dickinson College, which is in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.  I have no idea why.  I'm thinking, [un]like now, today, without the Internet, where you had to physically write every application and pay money for [it], it was always a tough job. 

When I was a junior, maybe even a sophomore, we went on an engineering field trip to Rutgers.  That was my first visit there and I remember sitting on the steps of what's called Brower Commons now.  I just was like, "Oh, this is where I want to go."  I just made that decision, that's that.  I don't know why, but that was when I made that decision. 

Yes, we had guidance counselors and they were probably [good].  I mean, the smartest guy in my class ended up going to MIT, so, somebody must've directed him to that, yes.  I don't remember it being that much of a help for me. 

I was more concerned about the cost, because, I remember, when I was starting to apply for these applications, they would come to the house.  I can actually remember my mother saying, "How are you paying for this?"  So, I was like, "I don't know.  Let's just see what happens." 

SI:  Did you work while you were in high school, either in summers or on weekends? 

JD:  No.  I would've had to have used my bike to get there and there were no [options].  I mean, I probably didn't try that hard, but there were no places [to work].  There was only a small grocery store near my house and that was a family-run business.  All of the sons, uncles and cousins worked there.  That was the only business within, I'm going to say four or five miles of my house, other than my mother's bar, but there's nothing I could do there.

SI:  Tell me a little bit about the process of applying to Rutgers, what you did to prepare to get in, how you found out about the EOF Program, for example. 

[Editor's Note: The New Jersey Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF), established in 1967, provides financial assistance and services to students of educationally and economically disadvantaged backgrounds who attend universities in New Jersey.]

JD:  Well, the EOF Program, I think, found me.  When I was applying to schools, I don't remember if there was a general form for financial aid or how it worked.  I remember, with Dickinson, for example, they offered me nothing, so that when I turned them down, I filled out the "no, thank you" form.  I got another letter back asking me why I turned them down and I probably just wrote one word, "Money."  [laughter]

Yes, so, with Rutgers (again, I don't remember, but I'm guessing), I filled out whatever forms were necessary to apply for different aid packages.  It ended up being, all four years, I didn't pay any money.  It was all grants and scholarships, including EOF and something called National Defense Student Loans (NDSL), was one of the names, something from New Jersey. 

[Editor's Note: The National Defense Student Loan Program, created by the National Defense Education Act of 1958, was the first federal student loan program and sought to increase education in the math and sciences during the Cold War.]

It was never much, but, then, Rutgers--everything's relative.  I think tuition was five hundred dollars a semester or something, but still a lot when you don't have anything and you're not making anything.  It becomes a lot.  So, when I got all the financial things, I was like, "Great, now, I don't have to worry about that," and was able to go. 

SI:  Tell me about your first few weeks on campus, what it was like, where you lived at first. 

JD:  Well, right before leaving to go, my mother had a bleeding ulcer or something.  She was hospitalized.  So, my--I'll just keep saying stepfather, because they didn't get married until a year later--but my stepfather and grandmother drove me.  I lived in Ford Hall, which is now closed, but it's on College Avenue, near the apartments.  You probably know which one I mean.  It's been closed for a long time.  They just sort of pulled up to the curb and it was like, "Here you go."  I remember getting out. 

At that time, there were two bedrooms with a set of bunkbeds in each, with a common living area, which was kind of cool compared to the other dorm rooms, and a sink.  I didn't know any of the other three people that were in there.  The guy that I was sharing the room with was a sophomore.  I remember him saying, "Here, let me show you around," and he took me to--do you know the name Greasy Tony's?  Yes, so, it's called Efes now.  It's a Greek place [on] the corner. 

SI:  Yes, it comes up quite a bit in the interviews.

JD:  It's the corner of Easton and Hamilton?

SI:  Somerset, maybe?

JD:  Somerset, yes.  It's like a little [point], comes to a corner.  I always, when I do see it, kind of laugh inside, because the sign that they have on the outside covers--I don't know whether it was a permanent sign or whether they took it down--but there was a sign there that said, "Extra grease for free."  [laughter] That was on the end there. 

Anyway, he took me there, and then, took me--this is the straight-and-narrow kid.  I never drank, I never did anything, and, day one, school hadn't even started yet, pulls out a joint and introduces me to pot.  I bumped into my friends from high school.  There was some kind of orientation on Voorhees Mall and we hung out there.  It was all good. 

It didn't work out in Ford Hall.  I moved into Clothier over Thanksgiving weekend, which was fine.  I don't know how.  I moved out because my bunkmate didn't mind bringing home dates whether I was there or not.  [laughter] I was this seventeen-year-old from South Jersey with no experience.  I was like, "I can't.  This is nuts." 

So, I moved out and was put in Clothier, which was fine, because two or three of my high school friends lived there.  So, I had that familiarity with being with them again, not that it's a big deal.  What is it, two blocks away?  Yes, so, that was my first [experience], and then, going to class.  I fit right in.  I loved it immediately.  I felt comfortable.  I was happy to be out of my house.  I was really happy to be out of Deptford. 

One of my sarcastic answers, when people would say, "Why did you choose Rutgers?" (back then, not now), but my answer was always, "It's far enough away that nobody can visit me without calling," because [we had] no email, whatever.  "It's close enough that I can bring dirty laundry home on the weekend--and it's a good school."  So, that was my three reasons for the application.  So, yes, it was just great from the get-go. 

SI:  The first two years you were on campus, the United States was still deep into the war and the student protest movement was still very active.  Were you at least aware of it?  Did you get involved in any protests? 

JD:  You couldn't not be aware of it.  I forget the date, but I remember the student protestors.  I remember the ROTC building being burnt down.  I can't remember the exact [date].  That would've been '71 or '72, maybe.  I was very much aware, because in the summer between my first and second year, I went home.  Those first two summers, I worked as a busboy in a restaurant in Center City, Philadelphia.  So, I stayed at my mother's house. 

[Editor's Note: On April 26, 1972, the Army ROTC building was damaged from a fire of unknown origin.  A crowd of three hundred students gathered at the site.]

My grandmother died that first summer and I only remember that as the date because we came back from burying her and they released (the newspaper had) the lottery numbers.  You've probably heard about the lottery system on the birth dates.  They would have it by the day of the month, and then, the lottery number. 

So, I was born on December 19th and I'm going through this big [list].  It was just on a newspaper page and the whole page was densely filled with this.  It was the only way of reporting it.  I'm like, "Nineteen, nineteen--no, that can't be right.  I'm not reading it right."  I'd go to try another date, "Nineteen, nineteen." 

Then, everybody was there drinking or whatever you do after a funeral and I'm in my living room by myself going, "Holy crap, my number's nineteen."  So, I was very much aware of the whole system, because that was an automatic Vietnam number, if you weren't in college with a student deferment.  So, not that I ever worried about my grades, but I thought, "Oh, wow, you really can't mess up now." 

I was the lowest number of all my friends and acquaintances.  I remember going into Center City, Philadelphia, and there was a draft resistance office or something like that, where they would go through [your case].  They would question you and try to find ways that you would get a deferment, because I definitely didn't want to go. 

I thought, "I couldn't fight my way out of high school.  There's no way I could be a soldier," but I also remember not thinking it was a just war.  The only news you would get is how many people were killed every day.  You would think, "Well, the young kids are just used for whatever," but they were the highest fatalities.  So, I just saw no sense in it. 

Those were my biggest memories, and then, always having that number over your head.  The year that I graduated, that summer was when they went to a volunteer force and stopped the draft.  So, it was called 2-S, my student deferment.  My 2-S became a 1-A ["Available for military service"] for, like, a week, and then, [the draft ended].  So, I just got by and avoided that. 

Where I lived--so, either '73, maybe, or '72--there were almost always bomb scares in the buildings.  There was no way of communicating that, because of no Internet, etc.  So, I had a class in the Engineering Building on Busch, or University Heights, as it was then.  On Busch, [to] know whether class was canceled or not, we would open our dorm window, because we were on the fourth floor, and listen for sirens.  That's how we'd [know], because, otherwise, you'd have to get on the bus and wait for buses and all that kind of stuff.  So, that's how we knew that was happening. 

[Editor's Note: The Busch Campus of Rutgers University, initially known as the University Heights Campus, was renamed in 1971 after Charles L. Busch donated ten million dollars to the University.  According to The New York Times, in the fall semester of 1970, Rutgers experienced 114 telephoned bomb threats.  Many of these threats were directed at the dormitories of Douglass College.  No bombs were ever discovered.]

I think the spring semester, maybe, of '72, there were no exams.  I don't know if you've heard [about that].  I know everything was cancelled.  I don't know if that was '72 or [not].  I'm pretty sure it was a spring semester and not the fall semester, probably because you could almost never go to class without the building being evacuated.  So, there was a lot of that. 

My sophomore year roommate, joined protestors and took over Mason Gross's office.  I think it was Mason Gross, right, his office?  He was President. 

SI:  It might have been Bloustein at that point. 

JD:  Or Bloustein, yes.  Yes, it was probably Bloustein.  He called our dorm phone, the payphone in our dorm wing, from Bloustein's office.  He was, like, laughing about it and stuff.  That was also probably the night--there was a night where the students laid down on the tracks of the train and stopped the Northeast Corridor trains.  That might've been the same night.

[Editor's Note: On the night of May 9, 1972, Rutgers students occupied Old Queens and the office of Rutgers President Dr. Edward Bloustein (1971-1989) to protest President Nixon's announcement of an escalation of the Vietnam War, including the mining of Haiphong Harbor, and call for the removal of the ROTC units from the campus.  The Army ROTC Building itself was taken over later in the week by protestors.  On the morning of May 11th, a group of antiwar demonstrators, primarily from Rutgers, conducted a sit-in on the tracks of the Penn Central station in New Brunswick (part of today's NJ Transit Northeast Corridor Line).]

SI:  Was it difficult to transition to the classroom work at Rutgers? 

JD:  From high school?

SI:  Yes. 

JD:  No, it was obviously harder.  There was really no challenge in high school, so, it was a rude awakening.  I knew I was [in for it].  That's the reason why I didn't, like I said, join the band. 

One of the first days there in the dorms, Clothier, standing around talking, the guys were talking about [how] they had AP [Advanced Placement] this and AP that.  I remember being laughed at because I said, "What's AP?"  So, they were like, "Wow, where did he go?"  So, it was always [challenging?].  I studied a lot. 

I had German all four years.  I liked learning languages.  I had Spanish for the four years in high school and just decided to randomly pick another language, but it took work.  I remember that was every day.  Then, the science classes were a ton of work, the infamous organic chemistry and things like that, but I always found time to do other things and relax with my dorm friends.

SI:  Do any professors or classes stand out in your memory?

JD:  The only one, I think she's passed,  I know her in my memory as Frau (Radisch?).  I think she was head of the German Department, or somewhere up there.  The offices, they were in one of those rickety houses that the [Rutgers] Foundation/SAS [School of Arts and Sciences] was using for a while across from Ford Hall, but that was the German Department.  Then, like I said, the SAS/Foundation offices moved in there.  I think, now, it's empty, because it should be condemned.  

It was always difficult in the third and fourth year, because you weren't allowed to speak English when you were talking to her.  So, it was always a struggle.  Then, when I would go to her for something else, I remember saying, "I've got to talk English now, because I've got to get this out and I've got someplace to go.  So, throw me out if you want," but she was always an inspiration. 

When we were graduating and walking through Voorhees Mall, she was standing there.  I remember she scowled and shook a finger at me, because that semester was the only time I didn't get an "A" in a German class.  She was like, "You messed up," no congratulations for three-and-a-half years of "As," but one "B" and that's what I remember.  [laughter] Other teachers and things, I don't recall having any one-on-one kind of connection. 

SI:  Were most of your courses on Busch or Cook? 

JD:  Most undergrad, they were split between College Avenue and Busch.  I had general chemistry my very first year, was in Beck Hall on Livingston, when the only thing at Livingston was Beck Hall and the Quads and Tillett Hall.  Everything else was either Busch or College Avenue.  I didn't go to Cook until I decided to go to vet school.  Those classes, I didn't start taking until grad school.  My senior year, I might've had a class on Cook. 

Douglass, I had one class ever on Douglass, speech.  It was required for Cornell Vet School for some reason.  So, I was the only guy in that class.  That was interesting.  So, not only do you have a fear of speaking in public, but it was just a bunch of girls,  waiting for you to mess up.  [laughter]

SI:  When did you decide that you wanted to go to veterinary school?  Before that, had you had different career aspirations?

JD:  Yes.  Oh, the other reason I would tell people about going to Rutgers, not only because I liked it, it was because I knew that Rutgers pretty much had everything, even back then, because I didn't know what I wanted to do out of high school.  So, I thought, "Well, I'll decide some other time." 

When my grandmother developed colon cancer--and I saw the surgeries and the chemo, and then, subsequently, her death--was why I was taking mostly pre-med courses.  Well, I took the minimum amount necessary, because I wanted the arts too much.  So, I wanted my German classes and I had music classes.  I made sure that I had whatever I needed to take for pre-med. 

Then, it's semi-sarcastic, but it's mostly true.  With all the pre-med classes, I just really looked at a lot of the, again, guys in my class, because we didn't go co-ed until I was a junior, and think (I really remember thinking this and I've said it to people before), "I can't spend the rest of my life with these people.  They're too annoying."  So, that was honestly the reason for it at first and [started] looking into other things.

[Editor's Note: In 1970, the Rutgers Board of Governors voted to make Rutgers College coeducational.  In the Fall of 1972, the first female students moved onto the College Avenue Campus as students of Rutgers College.]

A friend of mine, who I'd met in my dorm, but she lived in [an apartment] when they first built those Cook apartments, I think, she was a high school friend of one of my roommates.  That's how I met her.  She's like, "Did you ever look at being a veterinarian?  You have all the science stuff, but you don't want those people.  Vets are much nicer people."  So, I'm like, "Hmm." 

I looked into it.  I started volunteering at a practice in East Brunswick, to see if I liked it.  When I went home that summer, I volunteered at a practice in Woodbury, which is maybe five miles away, I think, from where I lived.  I started investigating it more, but I didn't have enough credentials to get accepted after I graduated. 

 I stayed at Rutgers and did a master's at Cook for two years.  Actually, I did an accelerated master's and I finished it in a year-and-a-half, because I did summer courses.  I then started a PhD.  I always felt bad, because I felt like I was deceiving the PhD sponsor.  I really didn't want the PhD, unless I didn't get into vet school.  Then, I spent the two years at Cook, in Bartlett and Thompson Hall.  So, that's where [I was] when I finally got in. 

Back then, fortunately, New Jersey had a contract.  The State would pay the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition, believe it or not, if you went into Penn, Ohio State, Kansas State or Cornell.  Ohio State and Kansas State were out of the picture, because all I knew was, they were in the middle of the country and, if I had a hard time being gay in New Jersey, I'm not going to survive Ohio and Kansas.  So, I didn't even think about applying there and just applied to Cornell and Penn. 

SI:  I want to come back to that, but I was curious, because we have been doing a lot of research on Manny's Den in New Brunswick, if you knew about Manny's Den.  I would guess so, but were there any outlets, social outlets, for gay men at that time? 

[Editor's Note: Manny's Den (legally named One Eleven Wines & Liquors) was a bar and nightclub originally located at 111 Albany Street (later moved to Hiram Street) in New Brunswick.  The Den was at the center of the landmark New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay bars in the state in 1967.]

JD:  If there were, I didn't know it.  I knew about Manny's Den some point later in the six years that I spent there.  So, I don't know if you've seen pictures or heard stories--it was a little unnerving, sometimes, to walk on Albany Street.  I think it was either on Albany or was it across from where the Hyatt is now, somewhere along there? 

SI:  I think it was in that area. 

JD:  Yes, it was definitely in that area, but I don't remember.  I thought I remember going someplace where the J&J [Johnson & Johnson] building is now or across from the Hyatt--maybe there were two, maybe it was two locations--but just once.  I found it to be scary and I went back to the dorm.  So, it was one of those quick in-and-outs, like, "Not for me." 

In the early days, there was--I'd never liked the name--but it was called the Rutgers University Homophile League.  You've probably read about it.  That was probably the originator.  That was on the fourth floor of the Student Center on College Avenue.  There was an office.  I don't know the number of times that I walked up those steps and got to the door and never went in. 

So, it's my fault--I should've, but I didn't.  So, I never investigated that office or what they would have to offer.  Again, I look at, now, the Center for Social Justice email and it's huge.  It's so long, with different opportunities (as is the one at Penn), that I was like, "Wow, I wish I had had something like that," but I really didn't have any of those kind of other avenues or sources. 

[Editor's Note: In 1969, the Student Homophile League (SHL) was founded at Rutgers by sophomore Lionel Cuffie.  Later, this organization became known as the Rutgers Gay Alliance, then as the Bisexual, Lesbian and Gay Alliance of Rutgers University (BIGLARU), and is now the Queer Student Alliance (QSA).  The Center for Social Justice Education & LGBT Communities at Rutgers was established in 2005.  It was preceded by the Office of Diverse Community Affairs and Lesbian and Gay Concerns, established in 1992.]

SI:  Would you go to New York or Philadelphia?

JD:  During college?

SI:  Yes.

JD:  I'm trying to think.  During undergrad, not in the first two years, I didn't do anything.  First, to be honest, I mean, not eleventh and twelfth grade, but the seventh, eighth and ninth grade, I was beat up a lot, or [called] names or you name it.  So, I was still feeling a little traumatized, I think, when I went [to Rutgers]. 

I felt very comfortable in the student environment, but I didn't know what to do.  I still had the girlfriend from the high school band, we continued a relationship until I was finished my sophomore year at Rutgers.  I mean, there was never a relationship, just a charade.

I was good friends, and then, roommates part of my senior year with a guy who lived in Elizabeth.  We would go into Manhattan just to sort of [hang out].  We'd literally just walk around and check out places.  [laughter] I'm only laughing because I have this image--I mean, you've heard about how horrible, well, what 42nd Street was like.  I mean, it was all just X-rated theaters and bookshops and things like that from Port Authority to Broadway or Seventh. 

So, we were walking.  We would take the bus, got out at Port Authority.  We're walking to I don't know where.  This roommate was a bit of a clown and he pushed me through the doors of one of the porno shops.  I just kind of fly through and land into this room and there's the magazines and the booths and things like that, because I'd really tripped after being pushed.  He was laughing hysterically outside.  So, I was like, "Sorry," walked out.  So, we would make these kind of goofy trips into the city.  We didn't do much else about it. 

I didn't go into Philly, just because it was far.  When I was home for summers, I got a little bit of a taste, because the restaurant where I worked was on Sixteenth and Walnut.  I would take the high-speed line into New Jersey, which was at Sixteenth and Locust.  So, sometimes, when I would walk out, I knew, somehow, maybe from some of the waiters or whatever, that a lot of gay people hung out around that area.  So, I would just walk and kind of look and not really do anything or thought, "I better not," and then, just would go home.  I didn't have much of an exciting nightlife. 

SI:  Tell me a little bit more about what you found appealing about the dorms.  You said you lived at Clothier.  Did you stay there or did you move around? 

JD:  I lived in Clothier for half of my freshman, my sophomore and my senior year.  In my junior year, I lived in Mettler.  It was fine.  It was nice.  It was the camaraderie. 

You couldn't study in them.  I used to have to walk [to the library].  I would just go to Alexander Library and study, because once you walked on to that floor, all bets were off.  There were guys playing cards or Risk, the game Risk, in our lounge.  There was another guy who, even if you tried to go to sleep, he would walk around through the dorm, because we were all pretty good friends, and he would stick joints in people's mouths, trying to get people to smoke with him. 

So, it was just a zoo the entire time, [laughter] but it was interactions that I had never had.  I mean, I was an only child and I didn't really socialize with many people in high school.  So, it was like a whole other world and I got a kick out of it. 

Junior year, when I was in Mettler, that was the first year of Rutgers being co-ed.  Mettler was like the ultimate experiment.  We were on the first floor.  There was only one wing and that was all-male.  The floor above us was every other room.  It was two guys, two girls, two guys, two girls.  I think the third and fourth floor was girls one side, boys the other side, something like that.  So, it was very different.

Then, like I said, I always liked Clothier, so, I went back to Clothier our senior year.  I think, Clothier, it was all-boys one floor or all-girls another floor.  There weren't that many girls, so, there wasn't that much need for girl wings.  Mettler, I think, was probably the big experiment.  Whoever thought of that, it was interesting.  I'm still friends with one of the girls that I met, one of the women that I met, in that dorm at that time. 

It turns out, I don't know where she lived, but the star of Abbott Elementary that got the Emmy, Sheryl Lee Ralph, she was in that class.  I don't know where she lived, but who knows?  I could've been walking right next to her. 

[Editor's Note: In 2022, Sheryl Lee Ralph won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her work on ABC's Abbott Elementary.  Ralph graduated from Rutgers College in 1975.]

(As a member of the Board of Governors I ended up meeting her at a dinner the night before she gave the Commencement speech to the class of 2023!)

SI:  Yes.

JD:  Yes, dorm life was always fine.  I always enjoyed it. 

SI:  When Rutgers went co-ed, was there any kind of reaction, good, bad or indifferent, from the men in the student body? 

JD:  I don't remember anything being really [noticeable?].  Before it was co-ed, if you're familiar with Brower, you have to walk down that long ramp.  This would never be accepted in today's world, but, if a guy came in on Sunday morning brunch and was walking with a girl, there would be crowds of applause and yelling from the guys sitting there.  So, it was very sophomoric.  

The Douglass dorms, no one liked to go to, because they had curfews.  You had to sign in and they would come and bang on the door to get you out if you were in there.  Not that I was doing it, because I wasn't really interested, but I had some friends over there. 

When it went co-ed, the only difficulties were that, from what I can remember, Rutgers didn't change any physical plant for women.  So, their bathrooms had urinals, not that many, because in our dorm (this is forty years ago), I think there were three stalls and maybe three or four urinals in our bathroom and four showers.  So, nothing was converted.  There was a sort of mediocre attempt at splitting the locker room in the College Avenue Gym into making some female lockers.  So, otherwise, there were no other kind of accommodations that were made. 

The first class was pretty small, of the proportion of women.  Like I said, I made probably more--not all of them became lifelong friends--but more friends from that cohort of women.  Nothing different seemed to happen.  I mean, there were always women on campus from Douglass or from Livingston.  So, it wasn't that rare, but, in classrooms, it was a little bit odd, because it was always all guys. 

I think the way the course structure was then, it was some kind of rule,  if the course was offered by your college, you couldn't take it at the other college.  So, I couldn't take an English class at Douglass; I had to take it at Rutgers.  I think that got lax in the '80s, before the whole reorganization thing went on. 

The only reason why I had speech at Douglass was because Rutgers College didn't offer speech.  So, I had to take it there.  Then, when I started taking the ag courses, that was always co-ed, so, there was not much of a difference there.  That was good.  It definitely, probably, toned down some of the sophomoric activity of what you could imagine an all-boys school would be. 

[Editor's Note: In an effort to transform Rutgers into a leading public research institution, in 1981, the University merged the faculties of the independent colleges into a single centralized unit, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).  Rutgers College, Douglass College, University College, Livingston College and Cook College continued to exist until 2006, when the liberal arts colleges merged into the School of Arts and Sciences and Cook College became the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.] 

There were these mixers in--I don't know what they are now--but big, empty lounge spaces in Clothier.  I think the other [dorms], Mettler, Tinsley, they all had them.  On weekends, somebody would organize [a mixer], would bring in busloads of women from other colleges.  There'd be kegs of beer, because the drinking age was eighteen for a while when I was in college. 

There were kegs of beer and very wild parties and very smelly Monday mornings.  I mean, you couldn't walk through the lounge without that sticky noise on your shoes, because it would be impossible to get it clean.  That stopped, I think, after we became co-ed, because I think, probably, the Rutgers women were like, "No, this is barbaric."  So, I think that stopped. 

SI:  You told a couple stories that make it seem like pot was pretty ubiquitous on campus.  Was that true? 

JD:  Yes.

SI:  Did the administration try to crackdown on that at all or was it just sort of overlooked? 

JD:  Not that I'm aware of.  I mean, there was a guy, he's probably retired now, but he became an anesthesiologist.  He had, in his dorm room, this drawer.  He was very industrious.  It had pre-made bags of pot and condoms that he would sell.  This was his business.  Everybody knew that if you wanted either one of those, you'd go to his dorm room and there it was. 

The dorm RA [residence assistant], whatever they called the person that lived in the single room, he never [complained] in the years that I was there, because you would walk sometimes into the section and you could--what do they call it?--[get] a contact high from the smell.  I don't remember them ever enforcing a whole lot.  I think only if things got really out of control, or maybe the University would have inspections or something, but, every once in a while, he would kind of crackdown.  Other times, there didn't seem to be [an issue]. 

I mean, people wouldn't be sitting in the lounges smoking.  They would all be in the rooms if they were going to be doing that.  I don't know where they bought it from.  I was never a buyer of it.  I don't think I ever bought it in my life.  You almost didn't need to with all the people always looking for company.  Yes, it was pretty ubiquitous. 

I almost--no, not quite--I almost was going to say that even [in] the College Avenue Student Center, you might've smelled it now and then.  I don't know if that's true or not.  I don't remember that.  Again, when the drinking age was lower, in that basement was something, I think it was called the Rathskeller, where they sold beer.  So, there was drinking in that student center in the '70s. 

Yes, no one seemed to stop any of that.  There was probably harder drugs, I don't know.  None of my friends did that, but I don't think there was any difficulty if you wanted LSD or something else.  Again, I don't know where they would get it.  I'm sure there were people that were quite industrious.  Yes, it was pretty widespread, I would think. 

SI:  Did you get to know any of the administrators or have any dealings with them, deans, assistant deans? 

JD:  Yes, it's funny that you mention that.  Of course, his name's blanking out of me, but it should come to me, or you might even know.  When I was a senior, Clothier had (or maybe all the dorms had) an ID check when you came in, but it was student-run.  It wasn't like somebody with a paid job.  So, you would volunteer to sit at this desk and check student IDs. 

My roommate and I were doing it one night and there was a basketball game.  Of course, it was at "The Barn" [the College Avenue Gym].  In Clothier, the eighth floor, I think, was--I forget, it had an official name--but it was basically an African-American cultural floor or something like that.  A bunch of guys from the opposing team, whatever it was, came in and we tried to stop them.  They pulled knives on us and not pierced, but stuck them in our throat.  So, we're like, "Go up, knock yourself out." 

So, we called the police.  The next day or so, they wanted us to press charges, but we didn't know who [it was].  There was, like, thirty people that came in at once, but people started [to harass us].  When we would walk in, as the elevator door would close, a chair would be thrown at me, that kind of stuff, or they would wait at our dorm door. 

So,  he's got a dorm named after him on Busch and was one of the deans, Dean of Students or something, at that time--Crosby, Dean Crosby.  I forget his first name. 

SI:  Yes, Howard Crosby. 

[Editor's Note: Howard Crosby, RC '41, served as an administrator at Rutgers College from 1941 to 1983.  He served as Dean of Men at Rutgers College from 1964 to 1968, then, as Dean of Students at Rutgers College until his retirement.  The Crosby Suites, a residence hall on the Busch Campus, was completed in 1989.]

JD:  Yes.  He moved us into his apartment in Colony House in Buccleuch Park.  I remember, it was really cool.  It was a two-bedroom.  It was way up, like nineteenth floor, whatever.  He had George and I live there for, I don't know, we were there for, like, two weeks. 

Rutgers Police would drive me to class, which was cool.  I mean, I didn't get anything out of the severity or I wasn't afraid.  I just thought it was cool that I didn't have to take the buses for two weeks.  He was a very nice man, very kind, very generous. 

So, he was the one administrator, I think, that I had the most memories of, just because of kind of living with the guy for two weeks.  I don't think there were really any others, not in undergrad.  I mean, grad school, I had an advisor and stuff, but I'd have to say Dean Crosby was the one connection that sort of saved us, so-to-speak. 

SI:  Was it the kids that the kids from the opposing team were coming to see that would throw the chairs at you? 

JD:  No, I think they must've been friends of friends or something, because there must've been people that lived in the dorm that knew where we lived.  It was scary.  I mean, I know we went to court.  My roommate was very stubborn about these things.  I was like, "Let's just back out of this and be peaceful."  He was like, "No, they almost cut me and they were going to kill us."  So, we went to court and I think it all ended after that.  I don't know what transpired, but that was my senior year, yes.  I got to meet Dean Crosby and that was nice. 

SI:  Do you recall going to any of the shows that came to campus, either music acts or speakers that would come? 

JD:  Two come to mind.  One was, George Carlin came to the Student Center.  I guess there were no attempts at stopping anything, because, I remember, the room was so pot smoke filled, you could almost not see him.  Well, of course, he was doing it, too.  So, you probably saw him perform and it was hilarious. 

Once, at Douglass, the ESP guy, Kreskin [The Amazing Kreskin], I forget what you would call him, but I remember we saw Kreskin at Douglass.  I don't know how he did it, but he guessed my draft number.  That's the one thing that stuck with me.  He was, like, [doing] one of those things where, "Somebody in this room is thinking of a number."  I mean, it was probably [a trick], and then, fifteen, twenty people stood up. 

I stood up, because I had just gotten it a few months earlier, I think.  Then, he weeded them down, and then, there was just me and somebody else.  He said, "One of you is thinking of nineteen," and that was me.  So, he was good at what he did.  I'm sure he didn't have extra special powers.  So, there was that. 

There were concerts at "The Ledge."  I forget what they call it now. 

SI:  The Student Activities Center. 

JD:  Yes, and that was right across from the dorm.  If I saw him, I don't remember, but I know Bruce Springsteen was there one time.  I would go across there, because I think they were either free or twenty-five cents or a dollar or something.  They were on a lot of weekends. 

There was a movie theater--on Livingston Avenue? I think Livingston Avenue, I don't think Albany Street--that would do midnight Rocky Horror Picture Shows or other kinds of things, would be there.  So, those are the memories that come mostly to mind, those two, don't remember other concerts or things like that. 

SI:  At this time, was it kind of dangerous to go into New Brunswick or did students go there frequently? 

JD:  No.  I don't know how well-earned the reputation was, but it was a really beaten, downtrodden, dark, nothing-going-on town.  The only reason why you'd go--like, I had a bike when I was in grad school and, if I would go from one campus to the other, I just remember pedaling as fast as I could to get from Rutgers to Douglass. 

Well, Tumulty's Pub was there.  We would go in groups to that, because that would be our special treat, to go there and get one of those whopping big burgers and it was a wedge salad that then seemed to be to die for.  So, we would walk there, but they weren't that far up.  They were right off of Albany, but, no, people [stayed away]. 

There was nothing on Livingston Avenue.  There was nothing to go to past there.  There was (whether it's still there) a bus station across from the train station that we would walk to, but, honestly, anything past Seminary Place, people really didn't walk down in that direction.  There was nothing there, nothing on Livingston, nothing on Busch and nothing on Douglass.  So, basically, there was things on Easton Avenue.  There was a bar, I think it's called Olive something now, right behind the Student Center, [the Olive Branch, a bar and restaurant].

SI:  Oh, it was probably Paddy's.

JD:  Yes.  One of my roommates in grad school was a bartender there.  So, that was a big destination.  Three or four doors down, there was a liquor store, so, another hot spot. 

SI:  When it came to 1974, you are graduating, you already had grad school lined up, the master's degree.

JD:  Yes.

SI:  What do you recall about your advisor and the experience in grad school?  What stood out to you the most?

JD:  Well, I remember thinking that it wasn't undergrad anymore.  All the people that I knew had moved on.  I was on a different campus.  I was a TA [teaching assistant] for animal science, "Intro to Animal Science," had an off-campus apartment, had never lived off campus before.  So, it was a whole other world, sort of a job, sort of going to school. 

My classes were either at Busch or--most of them were at Busch, actually, and then, some on Cook--so, a whole different [landscape].  Meeting grad students was a whole different population and, basically, not knowing where I was going in my life, because I was in this transition period where I didn't want to not be going to school and I wanted to go to vet school. 

So, it was not as great as undergrad.  Though I kept telling myself, "This is not what I thought it would be," I tried.  Some of my friends that I had met when we went co-ed, I would meet up with them now and then, but there was always some kind of a strange, not barrier, but it just didn't feel the same.  Yes, I mean, it was just different, the two years there. 

My advisor for the master's, his name was (Santamarina?), super nice guy from Spain who would have us over to his house and things like that.  So, it was a nice experience.  When I started the PhD, I can't remember, his name was Tony something. 

I'm sure he was a very nice guy, but he was one of those people that always seemed like they were on a lot of coffee or something illegal, just buzzing and yelling and running around.  I just remember thinking, "This isn't good.  I can't do this for a whole PhD."  So, I'm thinking, "I'm going to have to switch into another program if I'm going to stay here." 

So, getting the acceptance to Penn was like, "Yay, I'm out."  [laughter] That happened probably whenever acceptances come out, April or something. 

SI:  Before we leave Rutgers, you mentioned that you had thought of going to the Homophile League offices, but did not.  Were you aware of the things that they would do, like protests?  I am not sure if "jean days" had started then. 

JD:  Yes, "blue jean days" had started.  So, I remember that, but that's all that I really remember, because they were pretty famous.  I think they were in April, but I'm not sure about that, if they were at a designated time. 

Yes, it was tough.  I had, finally, my first relationship, was at the end of my junior year.  He was my dorm neighbor my junior year, but dropped out of college.  He just didn't do well after that, his first year.  So, at least then I was starting to develop relationships, but it was never through big organizations or things like that.  It was just people I would happen to meet along the way under different circumstances. 

I'll just skip a little bit forward.  When I went to Penn, Penn had a much more organized scene, or maybe I was more ready for it.  Still, to this day, it has a very well-respected [LGBT center].  I think they were the second in the country to have a LGBT center on campus, second to, like, Michigan or something, but I felt more comfortable in organizations like that then. 

[Editor's Note: The University of Michigan opened the first LGBTQ+ center for students in 1971.  The University of Pennsylvania opened the second in 1982.]

SI:  Tell me a little bit more about "blue jean days."  What do you remember about them?

JD:  All I remember was, it was meant to embarrass straight people.  I think it was like, if you wore blue jeans, you were gay.  So, since that was the outfit of any college student, if you were really either against the whole concept or homophobic or whatever, it would be hard for a college student to find something that wasn't blue jeans.  So, it was a way of just forcing people to walk around with blue jeans and try to keep saying they were straight or whatever.  So, it was, I guess, a pretty good concept. 

I wore blue jeans because I--I never denied [it].  Once I went to college, if somebody would ask me, I wouldn't deny it.  I just wouldn't scream it out loud involuntarily, but I never denied my identity after I left high school. 

SI:  You mentioned that there was an African-American cultural floor.  Was there much interaction between black and white students, or students of different races, that you recall? 

JD:  Not that I recall.  I mean, there could've been amongst other [students].  I had a very good friend from my dorm that was black.  I remember going to his wedding in Newark and things like that, but I don't know if there was a lot of mixing. 

I mean, in the early '70s, it was kind of worse.  One of my high school friends went to Livingston.  That first week, before school started, my other high school friends that lived on College Avenue and I decided to go visit Rich, got on a bus and went to Livingston.  He was in one of the Quads. 

We were looking around and we asked somebody if they had seen him or knew where he lived, because there was no way of communicating anything.  They said, "No, he left."  I said, "What do you mean left?"  He goes, "He went home."  I said, "Home?"  They're like, "Yes, he quit."  We're like, "Well, classes haven't even started--how could he have quit?" 

I remember, she pointed (or he, whatever, because Livingston was co-ed, I can't remember), but they pointed and said "Go down there and look on the wall."  Spray-painted on one of the walls was, "Crackers, go home."  She said, "He saw that and did." 

So, it was tense, I guess.  I remember being surprised at that.  When I've said it in the past few years to black friends at Rutgers, their response is, "No, get out."  I can just say, "Yes."  There was a lot of animosity both ways, I guess. 

Livingston was an experimental campus.  There was a lot of [that ethos].  Then, it switched to kind of business-y, because friends of mine that graduated in the '80s or '90s say "Yes, it made this super transition."  Yes, so, Rich ended up getting drafted and I don't know what happened after that.  So, there was a lot of that kind of animosity. 

I never felt threatened or anything.  Maybe it was from the high school that I went to, whatever, but, I mean, you would say it was a [de]segregated--obviously, it was a [de]segregated school--but I don't know how much mixing there was. 

SI:  Tell me a little bit about the transition to Penn Veterinary School, where you lived, what the classes were like. 

JD:  That was like a whole other [world].  It was a total transition.  I lived my first year in a high-rise across from the Vet School.  It was all grad students, twenty-five floors.  I had three other apartment mates.  We had a four-bedroom apartment on the 15th floor. 

One of my apartment mates was a vet student.  We met over the summer.  We just posted on a bulletin board at the Vet School, "Looking for a roommate."  He and I found each other, but we also had two physics PhDs living with us. 

It was grueling.  It was the hardest experience of my life.  I lived there, the dorm, for a year, then, with three of my classmates moved into an apartment building almost on campus, and then, to a house that seven us rented a little bit further off campus, 44th, near 44th and Walnut.   Penn then went by quarters.  So, you were always facing a midterm or a final, no matter what happened. 

[TAPE PAUSED]

SI:  Yes, you were saying Penn was very grueling.  When you go to veterinary school, do you start thinking about some form of differentiation or is everyone kind of going for the same type of "private practice" veterinarian status?

JD:  You mean like large animals, small animals?

SI:  Yes.  I do not know that much about veterinary schools, but how much of what you hope to do in your career drives your study at that point? 

JD:  Well, you can't drive your studies; the first two-and-a-half years are all required courses.  The class moves as a unit, like all hundred people, always the same place.  You get to be very close (or not).  The labs are all fit for, now, 125, but a hundred people, and then, you start doing [the curriculum]. 

There are some elective courses the third year and you can then pick things that you might concentrate on.  Then, the clinical year, the fourth year, there's rotations that last two or four weeks.  If you want to do more large animals, you can take more of those elective rotations. 

Pretty much, when you graduate, I mean, you have an area that you want to do, but you could do anything when you graduate, once you start getting experience.  So, it's different in that set.  It might be a little bit different now. 

I think the newer curriculums now are introducing you to more flexibility earlier on, but we had none [of that].  We only had as grades, at the time, excellent/pass/fail.  I think they have grades now, but, if you failed a course, you had to repeat the whole year, not just the course.  At Penn's tuition, that was not a fun experience, so, nobody wanted to do that. 

Then, when you finished, you can go into practice or you can do internships and residencies in different specialties.  There's industrial veterinarians, pharmaceutical, lab animal, state veterinarians, but I'd have to say the most common are probably the small animal, dog-and-cat veterinarians, and then, horse veterinarians.  Then, probably last is the farm animal veterinarians.  They're the most rare. 

SI:  What were your plans or aspirations when you first entered?

JD:  I was always the small animal route.  I mean, back then, the people that were interested in equine or even farms, I mean, they had been doing it their entire lives and there was no way you could best them.  If there's a crowd of people around a horse, they'd be like, "Get in the back row, because you're not going to do this," that kind of thing--so, like, "Fine." 

I knew that I was going to do small animals, so, all my extra rotations and classes were small animal classes, but it was still enough [on the other fields].  There's a national board exam.  You still need to pass that and that has everything in it.  So, you can't neglect a species or a topic and still take that board exam and pass it. 

SI:  Did you have funding then or did you have to pay for it yourself? 

JD:  No, I paid; well, I took loans out for the whole thing.  So, by the end, I was somewhere close to forty thousand in debt.   That was 1980.  So, that was a lot.  Penn tuition then was only five thousand, if you can believe it.  I think they just, for next year, announced it's going to be, like, eighty thousand or something, but five thousand was a lot then. 

Yes, so, I just signed the loan papers thinking, "I hope I can pay this off."  Nowadays, I mean, an average Penn grad is, about 250 [thousand] in debt and they're thirty-year loans.  My loans were only ten-year loans.  So, it's a big burden. 

SI:  Do any of the classes stand out in your memory or professors? 

JD:  Well, in vet school, it's a much smaller experience.  So, it's all pretty intimate, but the person that stood out the most was a parasitology professor who happened to have the same birthday as me, not year, but date.  He was well known to be an out gay guy and would encourage students to find him and introduce [themselves].  So, I found this out right in the beginning and introduced myself to him. 

One Friday a month, he would have everyone to his house.  He lived off of Rittenhouse Square, he and his partner.  His partner was a psychiatrist.  He would just have whatever group of us wanted to go there for dinner.  They would make dinner, and then, people would go to bars or whatever.  It was a much different life, but he was always, always making sure that he took care of the lesbian and gay students at the time.  So, he would stand out the most. 

The rest, I mean, there were a lot of good individual people.  Like I said, when you're in such a small, intimate setting, it's a much different environment than undergrad school. 

SI:  Roughly how large was this group, half a dozen, a dozen people or larger? 

JD:  Oh, the gay kids?  At his house, there probably would be no more than ten at any one time that would be there.  Eventually, there were three or four gay guys in my class of a hundred.  We were fifty-fifty men-women.  I'm sure there were some women, but I don't know. 

SI:  From interviewing other folks, I have heard some say they want to keep that side of themselves quiet, at least regarding their career, because they think it might hurt them down the road.  Was that an issue at all in veterinary science?

JD:  I think, this is not paranoia, but the undercurrent, I think it might've been an issue with reputation or whatever.  With me, I know, when we were building our practice, I would take it personally, because I think when you're gay, you're generally paranoid about people hating you under their breath.  When somebody wouldn't use our practice or when someone wouldn't use me versus somebody else, that would come to mind. 

I don't know how true it was, but it would come to mind, but veterinary medicine is a pretty comfortably gay, especially lesbian, profession.  So, I don't think there's a lot of--I mean, I'm sure there is [some]--but it would be hard to be outwardly homophobic in the profession, unless you're, not to be prejudiced, a cow vet in Kansas or something, not that they don't exist as gay. 

Like, for example, pre-pandemic, our internal medicine group had a convention in Indianapolis.  It was the year that Pence, as Governor, did something to the businesses.  Our whole convention threatened to pull out of it.  So, they made all sorts of concessions or whatever and silly things, like, when you signed in, they had rainbow buttons or something.  We're all like, "Is this supposed to make us feel accepted in Indiana?" but they made an attempt. 

[Editor's Note: Mike Pence served as the Governor of Indiana from 2013 to 2017, and then, Vice President from 2017 to 2021.]

In, I think it was the end of my first year, there was a woman in my class--I always say to people, "If I was in the closet, I wouldn't have been," because she, after exams, would always be quite the drinker.  We were standing in this courtyard and I walked up, just to join the conversation.  She says really loud, with her beer in her hand,  "So, what's it like to be gay?"  [laughter] I mean, I didn't care, but I was like, "Well, I guess if nobody didn't know, it's good now."  So, it was always a much more open scene, open situation. 

One of my straight housemates, he and I have been close since school,  I was in his wedding, he and I talk almost weekly now--he used to go to the gay bars with me because he thought it was fun, had no inclination or anything.  He just got a kick out of it with me.  So, it was a whole different world. 

SI:  Looking back, it seems like the 1970s, the late 1970s in particular, were more open than what had come before and what would come in the 1980s. 

JD:  Right.

SI:  Is that a fair assessment? 

JD:  Yes, things got better.  I mean, the AIDS crisis didn't help and that created a whole other [problem], put a wrench in the works, so-to-speak.  Yes, things got more open and somewhat accepted.  I think, now, maybe we're seeing a reversal of some of those things, or a lot of reversal of those things. 

SI:  When you were in school, up through veterinary school, were you ever part of a group, not necessarily at the school, but maybe a larger group, like the Mattachine Society?  [Editor's Note: The Mattachine Society, established in Los Angeles in 1950, was an early gay rights group.]

JD:  No.  The veterinarians have always had some [organization].  They've gone through so many name changes, it's hard to keep up, but there's always been an association of gay veterinarians.  Well, gay, lesbian, whatever, it keeps changing, the alphabet, the letters keep adding, but there's always been an association.

SI:  Because it is coming up on twelve, I think we will need another session on your career and your work at Rutgers with the boards. 

JD:  That's fine. 

SI:  Up through Penn, is there anything that we skipped over that we should talk about or anything that I missed? 

JD:  Like what?

SI:  You would be twenty-four, twenty-three when you graduated from veterinary school.

JD:  No, I was twenty-seven.  Yes, I was twenty-one at college, twenty-three at grad school, and then, twenty-seven vet school.

SI:  Yes, I keep forgetting about your grad school.

JD:  Yes, no worries. 

SI:  Is there anything in that twenty-seven-year span that I have either gone over too fast or that you would like to talk about? 

JD:  No, because I think you said we would do it next session, the giving part, there's some things, after undergraduate and things, that it'll all come together and be better discussed along with the philanthropy side of me. 

SI:  Yes.

JD:  But, no, I think that pretty much is it, my high school reflections, the beatings, name calling, all that kind of stuff, the college, the few things that came out as far as personal life and classes and things.  I'm sure there's other things; like I said, if you ask the question, something might pop up.  I've thought of things now that I haven't thought of in ages.

SI:  Oh, good.

JD:  Yes.

SI:  Until our next session, I would encourage you to write them down, so that we can talk about them.

JD:  Okay.

SI:  Usually, things bubble up in the interim.

JD:  Sure.

SI:  One question, if it is not too personal, I was recently reading about folks in World War II who reported that they did not even realize that there was such a thing as being gay until they went into the service and met other folks.  When you were growing up, were you aware of at least some strata of society that was gay or lesbian?  Did you have any awareness?

JD:  I didn't; I felt quite alone.  I knew that I was different.  I mean, from the get-go, I never thought I was straight, but I knew, just from the way people would talk, that it was something that I had to keep to myself and figure out what it all meant and what it was doing. 

Like I said, I tried to have a girlfriend, just to try to ward off that.  I felt attractions to people that were friends in the band, but never acted on them, not until I got to Rutgers, when I started to see more of a presence, and then, at least feeling that, "Okay, you're not alone.  You can be more open with people for once," almost like you'd have to wait for the secret signal to know that it was safe to talk to a certain person or you'd wait for some kind of clue. 

It was difficult, yes, but I just knew that the attractions were different and, like I said, didn't know how to [proceed].  When I would try to become a little bit more comfortable, something would happen, even in my town--somebody would get arrested or what-have-you. 

I can remember something in a summer where somebody got arrested because he was behind a firehouse or something with somebody else.  I'm like, "Not that I've wanted to do that, but that sounds [dangerous].  I don't want to be arrested," yes. 

SI:  Thank you for answering that. 

JD:  Sure.

SI:  For now, we will conclude.  Then, we can talk about when the next session might be. 

JD:  Okay.

SI:  Thank you very much.  I really appreciate all your answers.  It really has been fascinating to learn about you.

JD:  Great, no, you're welcome, thank you.

--------------------------------------------END OF TRANSCRIPT-------------------------------------------

Reviewed by Shaun Illingworth 10/25/23

Reviewed by James Dougherty 1/29/2024