Grand Forks, May 1969
Eileen Sanborn was right about the mountains Reuben Castle was bent on climbing. Two days after he was elected editor of the Dakota Student he announced that he was a candidate for chairman of the Student Council.
Student reaction to that announcement came in stages. Most students weren’t particularly interested in extracurricular activities, except for following the UND sports teams. But some were, and among them the first reaction was one of slight weariness. (Oh, God, Castle rides again.) That developed, among some politically active students, into a fatalistic resentment. There was nothing to be done about it: Reuben Castle was…special. Though apparently carefree, he was earnest in his ambition to lead his class. He was also an effective controversialist, an accomplished journalist.
About a week before the Student Council election, Harold Blest withdrew his name as a candidate, followed three days later by Barbara Severson, who said she would be marrying and leaving school. That left Reuben all but alone to compete for the office. Most of his classmates simply accepted that Castle was a young man destined to make his way in life. The chairmanship of the UND Student Council was just the next rung in the long climb ahead. “The manifest destiny of the student body,” a junior editor teased in an otherwise solemn endorsement of Castle, “is not to question the path of the comet that crosses our sky. We should just look at it, and say we’re glad we had a glimpse of it.” By the time Reuben was elected chairman, his status as big man on campus was taken for granted. After his success in getting the university to ban ROTC, he was energetically applauded in ideological circles.
Among other things, Reuben’s election gave him the use of the university station wagon every other Sunday, provided it hadn’t been reserved for official purposes. Sometimes it was needed to cart stage settings to or from the Burtness Theater; it was used every now and then to meet, or dispatch, university guests at the Grand Forks airport or to take especially august figures (this service was most often used by visiting trustees) as far away as to the airport in Minneapolis. But barring such preemptions, Sunday possession of the car alternated between Reuben and Sally Paulsen, the outgoing Student Council chairman. Once he was formally inaugurated next fall Reuben would inherit use of the car every Sunday until May, when his successor was elected and the car sharing began afresh.
A group of students belonging to the activist Students for a Democratic Society planned a little commotion for the big day in October when the new Student Council and its officers would be sworn in. SDS had in mind something that would draw attention to protests against the war and against the deployment of anti-missile missiles in North Dakota. The college station wagon would play an auxiliary role in the proceedings.
Reuben’s inaugural committee had made up a large red ribbon, a foot wide and sixty feet long, bearing gold lettering: “GOOD LUCK CLASS OF 1970!” The three girls in charge of decorations would drape the ribbon around the station wagon while it was still offstage. The antiwar activists planned to swoop down on the vehicle with their own banner, overshadowing the official one. It would read, “STUDENTS AT PEACE—FOR PEACE.”
The festivities always began almost immediately after the hockey game ended, shortly before six P.M. In days gone by, the station wagon would drive onto the rink loaded with kegs of beer. The beer would be unloaded and joyfully consumed while the band played, ending with the college anthem, “Stand Up and Cheer,” students standing and singing out the chorus. Testimonials would be exchanged, and the station wagon would slide around the rink, pushed here and there by students on ice skates. The players on the visiting hockey team happily participated, and the band reciprocated by playing the anthem of the visitors’ college.
The proceedings always featured a mystery guest, sitting in the passenger seat of the station wagon, face hidden by a great green-and-white shawl. Everyone waited eagerly for the opening of the station-wagon door. Only the incoming chairman knew who would be stepping out. Last year it was the good-natured president of UND, George Starcher, wearing a fake mustache. Once it had been Miss America, once a caged lion, and the year before that the movie actress Estelle Linkletter. The cheerleaders would greet the mystery guest with enthusiasm and excitement. When Reuben was an awestruck freshman he would not have been surprised if John Lennon had emerged as the mystery guest.
But suddenly, in October 1968, there was no more beer. The easygoing neglect of the state’s blue law against supplying beer to minors had caught the attention of a law-and-order trustee—unhappily, a year-round resident of Grand Forks. Kurt Reuger was a devotee of UND affairs. He was capable of showing up at just about any scheduled student function. When he appeared, students would rue the day they were born, if that had been less than twenty-one years earlier and if they were detected with a glass of beer by Mr. Reuger’s vigilance.
The enforcement of the beer prohibition generated widespread resentment. “May as well blame it on LBJ,” Reuben had said to Henri, over a beer at the Hop See. “It’s the American way—blame everything on the chief bad guy.”
“Yes,” Henri nodded, her face solemn, but her eyes sparkling. “Blame him for the Vietnam War, the ABM program, and the rise in the cost of living.”
“That’s what we call ideological opportunism,” Reuben said, sipping his beer with delight. Reuben allowed himself to be carried away on the theme of LBJ. “You know, just imagine—just suppose—that Sally had thought to convey an invitation to the White House and that LBJ had accepted! The mystery guest comes out of the station wagon and it’s the president of the United States! Henri, I’m not sure he’d have gotten out of there alive.”
“That’s silly, Reuben. Dumb. The president can come and go without your permission.”
“Of course—though I’ve done my bit to restrict his movements. You know that.”
Indeed she did. Against her advice Reuben had marched in Chicago with the thousands of other protesters at the Democratic convention in August 1968. President Johnson, having decided not to run for reelection, had appropriately declined to attend. But Reuben was one of the agitators who had gone one step too far, ending up in jail after the police cracked down at Lincoln Park. He had asked the resolute cop who led him into the police station whether the jail had any postcards—“I’d like to send some to my friends.” Reuben winced at the memory. “That’s when he clubbed me.”
“I don’t blame him,” Henri said.
Inauguration Day 1969 was a festive day on campus. Henrietta wore her fake-fur coat and held up a UND banner, green and white, mounted on a three-foot-long stick. She was seated in the crowded stands two or three rows up from the improvised ceremonial stage. Reuben had wanted her to sit in the box with the student dignitaries, but she said no. “Reuben, I haven’t belonged to anything much here, and I’ve certainly never been president or chairman of anything—”
“I was going to suggest you appear as honorary chairman of the Duck Hunters’ League.”
Henri blushed lightly and turned her head, but Reuben had already darted away to see to his myriad duties.
She watched it all from her seat in the stands, looking down at the student powerhouses engaged in yielding authority, and assuming authority—early training in democratic discipline? After the preliminaries, Reuben was sworn in. He gave a five-minute speech on the moral responsibility of college students to be active in the development of national policy. Henri cheered and applauded as Reuben promised the end of the Vietnam War, a repeal of the Sentinel missile emplacements, expedited student loans, and the elevation of water hockey to NCAA status. “As for my predecessor”—he had turned to Sally Paulsen, seated alongside—“let’s cheer that she’s a girl—and won’t ever have to fly off to fight an illegal war in Vietnam.”
All eyes turned to the outgoing chairman with the wrestler’s build, an ardent supporter of Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War. Henri found herself relieved when, after an instant’s dramatic deliberation, Sally laughed. Henri laughed in turn: it would have been a memorable scene if, taking offense, Sally had sprung from her seat and lunged at Reuben. Sally was captain of the UND women’s volleyball team.
Then the moment came for the station wagon and the red ribbons, and the mystery guest. He turned out to be the aged campus hero Bronson Reid, Class of 1911. Reid had been an Olympic athlete the year after graduating, but now he had trouble stepping out of the car.
It was a heady couple of hours. By eight o’clock, half of the skating rink had been covered with squares of plywood, turning it into a dance floor. The big brassy UND band gave way to a rock band, and the undergraduates filled the rink with their gyrations. It didn’t hurt that beer was somehow getting around. Sally Paulsen, freed of formal responsibilities as chairman of the Student Council, offered toast after solemn toast in honor of Kurt Reuger.