Barrington Hall was a very large, 3½ floor apartment building on Dwight Way near the UC campus. It was bought by a student-owned cooperative and was run as an all-male boarding house. Some 350 men took meals there, of whom 175 lived in the building, mostly in 5-man, 3 room apartments. Fees in my time were $17.50 a month plus 4 hours of work a week, with an additional $6.50 a month for rooming. In my first semester at Cal (Fall ’36), I was unable to live there and stayed in a room in a private home a few blocks away. But I was able to move into Barrington at the start of my second semester and stayed there for 4½ years.

One of my four roomies in Spring ’37 was Steve Frost who rowed stroke on the first boat of Cal’s famed crew. He was frequently visited by friends who were also in the crew: one was Gregory Peck whom I met several times [yes: the Gregory Peck!].

In the fall of ’37 I moved to room 319 where I stayed for 4 years. My first roomie there was Denby Doran from San Francisco. He dropped out of school for a year (later to return to another room in Barrington) and Floyd Kemner of Long Beach moved in. Floyd and I remained roomies for 3½ years.

I began in the College of Chemistry and during my stay in Berkely had 4 teachers in physics and chemistry who received Nobel prizes: Ernest Orlando Lawrence, William Giaque, Glenn Seaborg and Willard Libby – and that’s some record! But I soon discovered that chemistry was not for me and shifted to geology in the College of Letters and Science at the end of my sophomore year. This shift in major and of college cost me a year of time. I am one of the few guys who needed 10 years to get through both high school and university.

As part of his “New Deal”, President Roosevelt established the Nation Youth Authority to provide financial assistance to students (among others). I had an NYA job continually for 5 years: 30 hours a month at 50 cents an hour. For 3 years, I worked as a typist/editor/translator (French) in the chemistry department and later as a general flunky (chiefly drafting) in the geology department. This was in addition to my 4 hours a week at Barrington Hall, but it provided my spending money.

In athletics at Cal, I was a big shot in my freshman year when I lettered in water polo, swimming and rugby. In later years, I continued swimming (quite unsuccessfully!) but I quickly discontinued water polo and rugby when I found that the guys in competition were too tough for me. In high school, I had thought that I was a hotsy-totsy javelin thrower and so I even tried for the track team at Cal and was quickly disillusioned.

We had lengthy summer and winter breaks at Cal. Barrington Hall emptied as most of its members went home during those vacations. I usually hitch-hiked to Carmel, taking car and bus from Berkeley to the end of the line at Hayward and thumbing my way from there. Once in Carmel, the real big hustle began — trying to get a job! Fee (then working for Nielson’s Market in Carmel) and Peggy (running a dress-making shop from our house on Casanova St.) were both strapped trying to meet my expenses at Berkeley: $27 a semester for registration, $24 a month for room and board. I will never, never forget their sacrifices for me during those days, and all that I earned during my school vacations was turned over to them. But it wasn’t much!

The big academic deal for all geology majors was compulsory summer camp to learn how to prepare geologic maps: 7 weeks camping in the boondocks, refining what we had learned about mapping and rock types. The camp in summer 1941 was at Huasna, some 10 miles east of Atascadero. We had 22 students organized in 11 2-man teams each having its own strip of land to map; and we had a full and an assistant professor, a cook and a dishwasher. My field partner was Garniss Curtis who continued at Cal to a PhD and a full professorship. Needing a car, I called on Jeanne’s uncle Louis Rondelle for help: he took Curtis and me to meet a friend of his, the manager of a large car dealership on Van Ness Ave., S.F. The manager sold us a 1931 Chevrolet coupe for $30, perhaps the first car he had sold in years. At the end of summer camp, Curtis and I gambled for the car and I won it. {A few years later when I was in the Navy, Jeanne sold the car for $150!}

Summer camp was my last class at Berkeley, and I received my B.A. in September 1941.

Four Super-Notable Teachers at Berkeley

I became interested in chemistry when in grammar school. In high school at Monterey, I took every available class in science and in mathematics. With that background, I entered the College of Chemistry at Berkeley and the most important classes in the first two years were “introductory” chemistry (3 lectures and 2 lab classes a week) and “introductory” physics (3 lectures and one lab a week).

In my first year in chemistry, WILLIAM F. GIAUQUE was a frequent lecturer, being a temporary replacement for the regular professor who needed many substitutes. Of the several chemical lab sections, WILLARD F. LIBBY ran the one I was in, while GLENN T. SEABORG ran the lab section in my physics class. In my second year, my physics professor was ERNEST O. LAWRENCE.

How many college students have had

FOUR NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS

as teachers?

[And in addition, Lawrence and Libby were instrumental in the development of America’s atomic bomb.]