[This is an expanded version of the interview that appeared in the printed Winter 2012 issue of Drew Magazine.]

University in the Forest author Cunningham (left), 96, and Rosenberg, 95, play a mean game of Scrabble. Photo by Lynne DeLade C’12.

JC: I lived in a private house on Maple Avenue. Drew had an arrangement with people whereby they would exchange a room for a student to rake the leaves and take the ashes out and do all kinds of household chores. I was lucky enough to get in with a family that gave me breakfast, sometimes the only meal I had all day. Then we’d eat at your uncle’s restaurant a couple times a week. What was his name?

HR: Isadore Rosenberg. Izzy. My uncle owned the Lackawanna Restaurant on Main Street, and I ate there every day.

JC: I ate there once a week.

HR: Twice a week, John. John used to come Tuesdays and Fridays. He would order, for 15 cents, soup and rolls and butter. My uncle had a brother who was a waiter. Couldn’t read or write, but could remember the orders of eight or 10 people. When he saw that John had finished his lunch, he would give him seconds.

JC: Your uncle was a big help to me, getting me through college. Drew was filled with students like ourselves. It was mostly a poor man’s college. We were very lucky because of all those oak trees in the fall, dozens of us raked leaves.

HR: For how much, John?

JC: Thirty-five cents an hour. Just think, for 10 hours you could get $3.50.

HR: You also wrote for The Daily Record. You got, what, a penny a line?

JC: Yeah, I was responsible for eastern Morris County. One morning I was awakened at about 5; the police called. There was a murder, and so I had to cover that. I arrived at my 7:50 a.m. class not in good shape.

HR: John and I were in the same history class together, weren’t we?

JC: Yes.

HR: Taylor Jones’ class. Fine professor. There were six or seven of us in the class. Very small class.

JC: He was a good professor. Probably the best. Now that I’ve already said it, I think McClintock was the best. I eventually majored in psych because of Jim McClintock. If you ask enough of us, I think you’ll find that Jim McClintock was both very well liked and very well disliked.

HR: He lived to be 100. He was brilliant.

JC: And he was disliked because he took no nonsense. If you were in McClintock’s class, you were expected to produce. Herman, your major was economics, right?

HR: I majored in a professor. It happened that he chose economics. He was the best professor alive. Professor Norman Milligan Guy. We had a very good faculty.

JC: Real giants, those days.

HR: Yes. The college wasn’t very old. The seminary was prominent in those days. Dominant, I would say. We were secondary. We didn’t have much to do with the seminary.

JC: Women came during the war. They came because without coming, the college would have closed. At one point, I believe, it was down to one male in World War II. My book University in the Forest tells why women came, and how they proved themselves and stayed. Although being at an all-male college had its benefits. You could go around looking sloppy. And since most of us didn’t have any money, we had no alternative but to look sloppy.

HR: I commuted from Morristown. Took the bus to school, cost me 10 cents. To save the 10 cents, we hitchhiked back home, Joe Taylor [C’37] and I. Joe Tamovitz, in those days.  There were maybe 25 in my class, something like that. You recall how many were in yours?

JC: Thirty-one. While it was a select college, it was very easy to get into, and very easy to get out of, too, because we had what were called comps at the end of the sophomore year. A lot of fellows bade farewell via the comps, the comprehensive exam.

HR: I recall, too, that since it was a Methodist school, we had to go to chapel in Brothers College twice a week, compulsory. But then it was stopped. I was almost converted to Christianity.

JC: No one ever attempted to make me a Methodist.

HR: No, there was no attempt, but it was so warm and cozy and comfortable, I was almost converted.

JC: I know that the Jews and Catholics outnumbered the Methodists by far. When you threw in the Presbyterians, the Methodists weren’t very numerous. Let’s see if we can agree on something. Who was the best mind you ever met at Drew?

HR: Professor Norman Milligan Guy.

JC: No, a student.

HR: Ralph Porzio [C’38].

JC: Porzio.

HR: No question about it. He became editor-in-chief of The Acorn. He was on the debate team.

JC: He went to Harvard, didn’t he?

HR: Yeah. I took him there in my little car, John

JC: Would you call him the brightest mind you ever met? He was for me.

HR: I would say so.

JC: He was a kid who was orphaned in the fourth grade. Both parents died and he literally worked his way through grammar school, high school, college and graduate school. I never heard of anyone else who did that. He became a very prominent Morristown lawyer. He also became the first graduate of Drew who became a trustee of Drew. He left five scholarships at Drew.

HR: I thought he would be a senator, and I would be his chief of staff. That was my dream. He wasn’t at all politically minded, though. He lost his health striving for an education.

JC: You and I both played baseball. In fact, this is Mr. Shortstop [nods to Rosenberg], and I was Mr. Second Baseman. Herm, I thought I had shortstop sewn up until I saw your arm, then I figured, “I’m going to be lucky to play second base.” I wish I’d saved my letters from Doc Young, our coach. That would have made me a much more conceited individual. He found something to praise, no matter what. Such as, “You made a great stop with your head on that ball.” Do you remember the weekly letter you got from him?

HR: Sure.

JC: Always upbeat, always on plays.

HR: Doc loved baseball. He said baseball was a religion with him at one time. He told me that he’d been going to baseball games, both sandlot and big league, for 25 years. He’d never gone to a ballgame that he hadn’t learned a new fact, or had an old fact struck home with new force. The man has a personality that just attracted you. Short, pudgy fellow. Had a paunch. One of the most eloquent men I’ve known. You wanted to be with him, and you wanted to please him. There was a clique of athletes who would be allowed to go to his office on the second floor of Brothers College. It was just a joy to be there.

JC: But we never got any preferences. That is, there was only one rule about athletics: pass or don’t play.

HR: Arlo Ayres Brown [Drew’s president] used to come watch our ballgames. He was rather religious. I remember one of the athletes was cussing away in his presence. He said, “Well, well.”

JC: But Dean Frank Lankard was more of an influence on us.

HR: Yes, yes.

JC: I was ill for about three days. There was a knock on my bedroom door in the house I boarded in, and there was Dean Lankard. It’s something that’s lasted with me all my life, quite obviously, because I’m stating it here now. That’s the kind of place Drew was, though. It was a very intimate place. We knew our professors intimately. Would you say you’re proud of your Drew education?

HR: You bet I am.

JC: I am too. Drew gave me curiosity, I believe, as much as anything.

HR: Drew opened the world for me. I had no awareness of it until I came here. I feel that John is the most prestigious graduate that we’ve ever had. I think I embarrass him when I call him the quintessential Drew graduate. He’s the best product that Drew has turned out, for my money.

JC: Thank you, Herman.

HR: You bet.

JC: I want you to emphasize the point that he is one class ahead of me. When we go down as the two oldest guys at Drew, Herm, you’ll have to be first. You were C’37, I was C’38.

HR: I’m a year younger.

JC: Aren’t you proud of that?

HR: I don’t know. Probably.

JC: That doesn’t make you very young.—Renée Olson

Frelinghuysen’s family tree includes Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, Chester Arthur’s Secretary of State. Photo by Richard Gerst.

Abercrombie was my first modeling job, which is kind of unusual, because it’s a big job.

I got called for it when I was studying abroad in London, and they flew me over here. I got to meet Bruce Weber, the photographer. They put us in a hotel; we were like movie stars. We shot with dogs in fields and all that fun stuff, and then they just flew me right back.

In modeling, you’re always going someplace new, working with someone you don’t know that well. It’s very exciting. But the craziest part is you can be called up at a moment’s notice—they can call and say, “We need you in New York at 8 tomorrow morning.” You kind of just have to say yes.

I never thought, “This is what I want to do with my life,” but the more I did it, the more I was like, “This is a lot like acting, this is really fun.”

What I’d really like to do is something like The Carol Burnett Show, like a live variety show. I guess we’ll see.

The thing that is essential to me is that I’m always working on something new.

I like people a lot, so I’m always interested in what they’re up to and I’m always listening, trying to figure out where they’re from, what they do, how they do it. I like to discover other people’s stories.

The Frelinghuysens have a lot of family history that is very interesting. I met Rodney Frelinghuysen [U.S. Rep., R-11th District] a little while ago. He’s a very cool guy, very down to earth. He’s my cousin. I’d like to put our family tree together one day.

His father [the late N.J. Congressman Peter Frelinghuysen Jr.] loved the arts. I am very happy I had the chance to perform for him in Drew’s 2010 production of As You Like It.

I have a lot of inspirational people in my family, in the past, in the present. It’s definitely inspired me to work as hard as I can.—Michelle Caffrey C’10

Dee is starting to cede control at Smarties headquarters in Union, N.J., to his two daughters.

D.Litt. candidate and co-owner, Ce De Candy, Inc., maker of Smarties.

By Renée Olson

I have one more course and then the dissertation. And I have no clue how long the dissertation takes. I’ve fallen in love with Darwin. [My topic] has to do with what Darwin thought about creativity at the time he was trying to be his most creative, the two years after he came back from the Beagle. He made a lot of comments in his notebooks about creativity and free will, and the headaches he got.

I was a math/physics major when I got to Yale. That lasted about a week.

My grandfather was something of an entrepreneur. As a boy he was in Russia during the pogroms, and he and his father escaped. They came up with a formula for clothing dye, and when things went well, they moved to Riga, Latvia. In the ’30s they left Riga and moved to England; some of the family didn’t, and they died in the Holocaust.

My grandfather invested in a coffee plantation in Kenya because all the upper-class British were investing in those kinds of things. He was very much into making a name for himself and emulating what the upper classes did. He ended up investing in a candy business in Cyprus, a chocolate business in Palestine and then a candy factory in London.

I took a creative writing class at Drew, and one of the women in the class said, “Oh, you wouldn’t believe this. My mother was a teacher, and she was known as Mrs. Smartie because she kept a jar of Smarties on her desk.” A lot of teachers use them as treats and rewards for kids, but when her mother passed away, they put her jar of Smarties in the open coffin.

The kids who grew up with Smarties now want a bigger roll, so we came out with Mega Smarties. They still have twisted ends. That’s been very successful.

Guilty pleasure? Dark chocolate.

The courses where I did my best work I didn’t get A’s, which is fascinating. People run away from the discomfort, but if there’s no discomfort you’re not pushing yourself.

It’s not about getting published, it’s about thinking and being creative, and maybe coming up with one or two new ideas. I’m not looking to be the number 1 evolutionary scientist at the American Museum of Natural History, but if I can be a footnote here or there, I’ll be quite happy.

Next-Generation Painter

In 2009, ABC News called Rodriguez-Graham one of Mexico’s “up-and-coming painters,” carrying on the tradition of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

By Christopher Hann

I grew up in Mexico City. I lived in the suburbs of Philadelphia for a few years with my grandparents. My mother was born and raised there. Other than that, I spent basically my whole life here in Mexico before going to college.

What was really important to me was the transparency of painting, where you could really see the process. I realized that the human mind has this capability of recognizing through symbols things that are so much greater than symbols. When I got back to Mexico, it was just when all the decapitated people started showing up. I could recognize in a severed head a whole body and at the same time recognize a whole person.

The Roman Catholic Church glorifies death. We have these very rich traditions in Mexico. So it’s not just a thing of sorrow, but a thing to celebrate.

I think it was de Kooning who said that oil paints were made to represent the flesh. It’s not opaque, and it’s not transparent. When you look at photographs of dead people or you look at meat, it’s got this luscious, sensuous feeling to it.

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Petz calls the labyrinth “a model of the path we are all on.” -Ryan Nicholson

There had been a dream [at Grace United Methodist Church, in Olathe, Kan.] of having a labyrinth for 10 years, but it never came to fruition. As we began to think about what it meant to journey together, that’s when we decided the journey metaphor and the journey of the labyrinth came together in a great way.

Some of the earliest labyrinths go back over 4,000 years. In Greek mythology there’s a wonderful story of King Minos’ labyrinth in Crete. As time went on, labyrinths were used in Christian cathedrals when people could not journey to the Holy Land because it was too dangerous.

In the doctor of ministry program, there’s a combination of bringing together academic work with a very focused project in our local ministry setting, with lay and clergy very much involved together. We had our formal dedication of the labyrinth in June 2008.

We encourage a three-fold experience of walking the labyrinth. As you walk into the labyrinth, it’s to release any burdens you carry, any difficulties, any struggles. In the middle, it’s to receive from God, to listen, to see what you need to be attuned to in your life. The third piece is to return. After you’ve received from God, how do you return back to the world?

Different groups use it. Families use it, people in the midst of difficult decisions or in need of healing. We’ve seen a great response from many individuals, finding respite, release and renewal from walking the labyrinth.

Whatever I’m dealing with at that particular moment affects how I enter it. If there’s a particular pastoral concern or personal concern or world concern, any of those pieces I’m wrestling within me, I bring that to the walking experience. Whatever I take in at the beginning affects my entire walk.

It’s 70 feet in diameter. The pathways themselves are 36 inches wide, so we could make it handicap accessible. You walk on crushed granite. And then we used paver stones to line it. We used about 24 tons of granite and 1,200 paver stones. The total cost was about $7,000. The labor was donated by members of the church.

We think it would hold up in a tornado pretty well.—Christopher Hann