They were accepted cordially, though their participation was sporadic, to say the least. They hardly ever went on Sundays. At Christmas they were on the slopes and Easter on the beach. But at least they belonged.
Both parents were intelligent enough to know that trying to raise their children as Mayflower WASPs would ultimately cause them psychological perplexities. And so they taught their son and daughter that their Jewish background was like a little rivulet that poured from the Old Country to join with the mighty mainstream of American society.
Julie went away to boarding school, but Jason opted to remain at home and attend Hawkins-Atwell Academy. He loved Syosset, and was especially reluctant to give up the chance of dating girls. Which, next to tennis, was his favorite sport.
And in which he was equally successful.
Admittedly, he was no whirlwind in the classroom. Still, his grades were good enough to all but guarantee admission to the university he and his father — dreamed of — Yale.
The reasons were both intellectual and emotional. The Yale man seemed a tripartite aristocrat-gentleman, scholar, and athlete. And Jason simply looked like he was born to go there.
And yet the envelope that arrived on the morning of May 12 was suspiciously underweight, suggesting that its message was short. It was also painful.
Yale had rejected him.
The Gilberts’ consternation turned to rage when they learned that Tony Rawson, whose grades were certainly no better than Jason’s, and whose backhand most assuredly was worse, had been accepted at New Haven.
Jason’s father insisted on an immediate audience with the school headmaster, himself an old Yalie.
“Mr. Trumbull,” he demanded, “can you possibly explain how they could reject my son and take young Rawson?”
The gray-templed educator puffed at his pipe and replied, “You must understand, Mr. Gilbert, Rawson is a Yale ‘legacy’. His father and grandfather were both Old Blues. That counts for a lot up there. The feeling for tradition runs extremely deep.”
“All right, all right,” the elder Gilbert responded, “but could you give me a plausible explanation of why a boy like Jason, a real gentleman, a great athlete —”
“Please, Dad,” Jason interrupted, increasingly embarrassed. But his father persisted. “Could you tell me why your alma mater wouldn’t want a man like him?”
Trumbull leaned back on his chair and replied, “Well, Mr. Gilbert, I’m not privy to the actual deliberations of the Yale committee. But I do know that the boys in New Haven like to have a ‘balanced mix’ in every class.”
“Mix?”
“Yes, you know,” the headmaster explained matter-of-factly, “there’s the question of geographical distribution, of alumni sons — as in Tony’s case. Then there’s the proportion of high school and prep school students, musicians, athletes …”
By now Jason’s father knew what Trumbull was implying. “Mr. Trumbull,” he inquired with all the restraint he could still muster, “this ‘mix’ you refer to, does it also include — religious background?”
“In fact, yes,” the headmaster answered affably. “Yale doesn’t have what you would call a quota. But it does, to some extent, limit the number of Jewish students it accepts.”
“That’s against the law!”
“I should hardly think so,” Trumbull replied. “Jews are — what? — two and a half percent of the national population? I’d wager Yale accepts at least four times that number.”
Gilbert, Sr., was not about to wager. For he sensed that the older man knew the exact percentage of Jews accepted annually by his alma mater.
Jason feared an angry storm was brewing and longed at all cost to avert it.
“Look, Dad, I don’t want to go to a school that doesn’t want me. As far as I’m concerned, Yale can go to hell.”
He then turned to the headmaster and said apologetically, “Excuse me, sir.”
“Not at all,” Trumbull responded. “A perfectly understandable reaction. Now let’s think positively. After all, your second choice is a very good school. Some people even think Harvard is the best college in the country.”
TED LAMBROS
Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf
Than that I may not disappoint myself,
That in my action I may soar as high,
As I can now discern with this clear eye.
All sensible people are selfish.
He was a commuter. A member of that small and near-invisible minority whose finances were not sufficient to allow them the luxury of living with their classmates on campus. Thus, they were Harvard men only by day — a part and yet apart — forced to return at night by bus or subway to the real world, Ironically, Ted Lambros had been born almost in the shadow of the Yard. His father, Socrates, who had come to America from Greece in the early thirties, was the popular proprietor of The Marathon restaurant on Massachusetts Avenue, a brisk walk north from Widener Library.
In his establishment, as he would frequently boast to members of his staff (in other words, his family), more great minds would nightly gather than ever had “symposiazed” at the Academy of Plato. Not just philosophers, but Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine, and economics. And even Mrs. Julia Child, who had pronounced his wife’s lamb in lemons “most amusing.”
Moreover, his son Theodore attended Cambridge High and Latin School, so very near the sacred precinct that it was almost part of the college itself.
Since the elder Lambros held the members of the faculty in a reverence bordering on idolatry, it was natural that his son grew up with a passionate desire to go to Harvard.
At sixteen, the tall and darkly handsome Theodore was promoted to full waiterhood, thus bringing him in closer contact with these academic luminaries.
Ted felt a thrill when they merely said good evening to him.
He wondered why. Just what was this Harvardian charisma he could sense even in the briefest motion of depositing a plate of Kleftiko?
One apocalyptic evening, it at last became clear. They had such uncanny confidence. Self-assurance emanated from these dignitaries like a halo — whether they were discussing metaphysics or the merits of a new instructor’s wife.
Being the son of an insecure immigrant, Ted especially admired their ability to love themselves and treasure their own intellects.
And it gave him a goal in life. He wanted to become one of them. Not just an undergraduate but an actual professor. And his father shared the dream.
Much to the discomfort of the other Lambros children, Daphne and Alexander, Papa would often rhapsodize at dinner about Ted’s glorious future.
“I don’t know why everybody thinks he’s so great,” young Alex would grudgingly retort.
“Because he is,” said Socrates with mantic fervor. “Theo is this family’s true lambros.” He smiled at his pun on their last name, which in Greek meant “gleam” or “brilliance.”
From Ted’s small room on Prescott Street, where he grinded well into the night, he could see the lights of Harvard Yard barely two hundred yards away. So close, so very close. And if his concentration ever flagged, he would rouse himself by thinking, “Hang in, Lambros, you’re almost there.” For, like Odysseus in the swirling sea around Phaeacia, he could actually perceive the goal of all his long and mighty struggles.
Consistent with these epic fantasies, he dreamed about the maiden who’d be waiting for him on this magic isle. A golden-haired young princess like Nausicaa. Ted’s Harvard dreams embraced the Radcliffe girls as well.