Click on the illustration below to view the panorama version, then click on an animal, tree or plant to find out more about species that surround us on the main campus, and in the Forest Preserve and Arboretum. For students and faculty and for area high schools, the grounds serve as a treasured outdoor laboratory for research on forest ecology, pond ecosystems and wildlife.

About the Artist

A native of Bologna, Italy, Roberto Osti has taught at Drew as an adjunct instructor in the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies since 2002. In addition to teaching courses such as “Introduction to Medical and Scientific Illustration” and “The Botany of Healing,” he is a fine artist whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including Natural History and Scientific American.

Upload Your Own!

Help Drew create an archival gallery of campus nature photography by uploading your own photos.

Name *

Email *

Drew Affiliation Student Faculty Staff Alumni Friend

Location of the Photo

Caption/Details

Upload Your Photo *

Uploading Files. Please Wait.

Christine Hepburn (left) with Professor of Biology Sara Webb. Photo by Peter Murphy

A pair of determined women turn over a new leaf for what is now called Hepburn Woods.

By Mary Jo Patterson

The forest preserve was dying, and it hurt just to look at it.

Native trees had stopped reproducing. Mayapple, trillium, foamflower and other wildflowers had vanished. Thick ropes of wisteria and oriental bittersweet strangled trees. The only things flourishing were destructive plant invaders—Norway maples, garlic mustard and Japanese stilt grass—and deer, whose constant browsing killed any hope of regeneration.

Chris Hepburn, former resident of a house that bordered on the woods, funded the restoration's deer fencing. Photo by Peter Murphy

The sight pained Sara Webb, professor of biology and director of the Drew Forest Preserve—the 45-acre area at the southwest corner of campus—who uses the woods to teach forest ecology and conduct research. “I often thought about how to rescue it,” she says. It also pained Christine Hepburn, an environmental activist who lived on the edge of the preserve with her husband and son. “I loved those woods,” Hepburn says. “I raised my baby there. To me, they were not Drew’s woods. They were ours.”

A chance encounter between the two women grew into a shared resolve to rescue the preserve. Today, thanks to a $155,000 gift from Hepburn, plus donated labor and materials from the New Jersey Audubon Society and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, restoration of 30 acres is underway. Hepburn’s donation financed construction of a 10-foot-high deer fence around part of the woods and the adjoining Zuck Arboretum. Last April, volunteers planted 1,300 baby trees and shrubs.

Six weeks later Hepburn walked into the cleared portion of the preserve, renamed the Hepburn Woods. Tiny tree and shrub seedlings—grown by inmates at Bayside State Prison in South Jersey—dotted the ground. “I was in tears, just to think, oaks will grow here again,” says Hepburn, who moved from Madison to Manhattan in 2009. “It’s going to be so rich in birds. It’s exciting.”

The project has a long backstory. Hepburn’s chapter starts in 1994, when she and husband Ken Martin, a pharmaceutical executive, moved to Madison. “I’m a woods person,” says Hepburn, who grew up in Bucks County, Pa. “We couldn’t find woods in Madison initially, so I dragged my husband off to Mendham Township. He couldn’t stand it out there. One day he came home from a bike ride and said, ‘Chris, I saw the perfect house for sale. It’s in Madison, and it’s got woods.’”

The house, set on 1.6 acres off Glenwild Road, had belonged to Florence and Robert Zuck, former botany professors at Drew. (When they retired in 1980, Drew named the Zuck Arboretum in their honor.) “I met Mrs. Zuck, and walked through her gardens with her. I barely knew a rose from a marigold, but I told her I loved nature and the woods,” Hepburn says.

Webb joined the Drew faculty in 1986. “From day one I have wanted to protect this forest,” she says. One year, with students, she erected a small deer exclosure as a demonstration project. After two years baby trees sprouted inside, although neither shrubs nor ferns nor wildflowers reappeared. Another experiment involved removing Norway maples. The trees, introduced from Europe during the 1700s, destroy woodland by pushing out native plant species. Hepburn was home when the clearing started. “Suddenly there were chainsaws in my woods. I was hysterical, crying.” She called the university, which sent Webb over. As time passed, a friendship developed. Hepburn, meanwhile, complained to Drew about the state of the woods. “They’d throw up their hands. They’d say, ‘We’re a university, not a conservancy,’” she says.

In 2008 Hepburn suggested Webb contact the New Jersey Audubon Society, which—through a partnership with the federal fish and wildlife agency—had helped her restore wildlife habitat on land she owned in Hardwick, N.J. Both partners were eager to help restore the preserve, but on one condition. “Without a deer control fence, there was no point in planting anything,” says Audubon land steward John Parke.

“That’s when Chris came to the rescue,” says Webb. “She has really been an angel. The forest is going to take some time. But she’s left a great environmental legacy.”

Read more about campus nature in “Four Seasons at Drew.”

Tree Census

While the oak is near and dear to Drew’s identity, other trees are actually far more prevalent on campus. Here are the dominant species in order of abundance.

• American beech
• Sugar maple (native)
• Norway maple (invasive)
• The oaks: black, white, red and pin

By Mary Jo Patterson

Marianne and Tony Ehinger met at Drew in the late ’70s, grew close and married a few years after graduation. Three children and, for Tony, a long career on Wall Street followed. Now they’ve decided it’s time to take a pivotal role in Drew’s future.

The Ehingers have donated $3 million—the single largest gift ever received from living graduates of the college—toward a $12 million renovation of Drew’s University Center. When the project is completed one year from now, it will re-open as the Ehinger (pronounced “ENG-ger”) Center. The building will be the first to be named after alumni. Nice, but hardly the point, the couple says.

“We didn’t need a monument to ourselves, that’s just not who we are,” says Marianne C’80. “We’re giving back because Drew changed our lives. We have fond memories. Tony met great professors who turned him on. We wanted to enhance the university, and this is a project that’s been a lot of fun.”

Those memories date back to 1979, when Tony Ehinger C’80, now 53 and a university trustee, approached Marianne Hyzak outside the UC and asked her if she’d like to go to his room and listen to Bruce Springsteen. She said no, but he persisted. Hyzak, from Clifton, N.J., had transferred to Drew in her junior year and majored in sociology. Ehinger, an English and economics major, played soccer and lacrosse, worked as music director for the college radio station WERD (now WMNJ), produced three concerts and socialized with a tight group of friends. Born in Whittier, Calif., he had moved around the country—his father worked for Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of AT&T—and eventually landed in Summit, N.J. At Drew, he says, “I probably didn’t apply myself as one should have, but there were a lot of terrific professors who had a meaningful impact on my development, particularly around my ability to put my thoughts together and write.”

After college Ehinger spent four years selling computers and phone systems. When a friend went off to graduate school, he considered getting an MBA himself and becoming, perhaps, an executive at an up-and-coming tech company. He was accepted at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, where the buzz was all about Wall Street. “The sales and trading thing was something everyone wanted to do,” he says. Soon he did, too, joining the First Boston Corporation in 1986. He spent 25 years with Credit Suisse, which acquired First Boston, before retiring as co-head of global securities in the investment bank division in July.

Ehinger credits his business success to his ability to thrive amid flux. “I view change as an opportunity,” he says. “I’m low maintenance, kind of a self-starter and reasonably even keeled, so the wild cycling swings of the business don’t really get to me. When things get really high-pressured and very intense, I tend to enjoy it more.”

Ehinger marked his 30th class reunion by working with his classmates to raise a half-million dollars from members of his graduating class to renovate the Pub. Then, believing Drew needed a high-energy social hub, he went further, committing $3 million to the project. “Having had three kids go through college, it’s clear the student center features prominently in a student’s decision to attend a university. Because Drew has no sororities or fraternities, it needs a strong location for a vibrant social life,” he says.

The renovation will raise the roofline, usher in light through high windows and redo the floor plan. New features will include a Starbuck’s-style café, two fireplaces, a lecture hall and the WMNJ studio. Ehinger consulted with architect Pamela Rew of KSS Architects of Princeton, who was struck by his understanding of design and attention to detail. “Tony also understands the current generation of students,” she says.

With homes in New Vernon and Mantoloking, N.J., the Ehingers look forward to the next phase of their life. Both enjoy travel, gardening, golf, cooking and spending time with their kids, Kristen, 25, Michael, 23, and Patty, 21, a senior at Bucknell. “We have really big dreams,” Marianne says. Tony insists his canvas is blank. “I’d like to do some other things now. Something charity oriented.”

We asked Arvolyn Hill, author of an ambitious Acorn series about racial diversity at Drew, to explain what writing it taught her.

By Arvolyn Hill C’11

I remember reading in The Acorn my first year about how my class was the most racially diverse yet at Drew. As diversity continued to increase, I’d see a similar article each year without fail. While the administration said Drew was committed to diversity, students I talked to had a different opinion.

Some students of color complained they had experiences that were painful, rooted in their peers’ ignorance about other races. Others said there was no universitywide forum to discuss racial issues—not just for students of color, but for the entire student body. For my part, I noticed a lack of diversity among the faculty.

Issues like these prompted me to write a four-part series for the paper this spring. My interviews with students, professors and administrators opened up a universitywide conversation about diversity and I got great feedback, including from those who wanted the series to define diversity at Drew more broadly and examine class, gender, religion, politics and sexuality. Doing the series, I discovered that diversity is always changing, and it’s important for a university to understand and adapt to those shifts.

My senior year last fall, I watched the freshman class interact with one another in a way that seemed more fluid than when I first arrived at Drew. I saw progress. With more students of diverse backgrounds, the student body slowly started to mix naturally without forced interaction. I took it as a sign of a university moving forward for all its students.

Arvolyn Hill C’11 is a reporter for The Millerton News in Millerton, N.Y. Read Hill’s Acorn series below.

The 21st Century Student Body

Percentage of first-year students of color and average GPA for entire class.

With no majority race among its students and 45 percent of its faculty non-white, the Theo School is fast outpacing U.S. demographic trends. The College of Liberal Arts has also seen a significant change in the laste decade: a nearly threefold increase in students of color, the result of Drew’s latest recruitment effort. “The educational advantages that accrue from studying in a more cosmopolitan community,” says Drew President Robert Weisbuch, “will prepare our undergraduates for a rapidly diversifying nation.”

Racial Diversity at Drew

Read the four-part Acorn series, written by Arvolyn Hill C’11 in 2011.

• “Changes in Acceptance Reveal a Culture in Flux” – February 4
• “Campus Diversity Extends Beyond the Student Body” – February 11
• “Theo School: New Issues Emerge From Pluralism” – February 18
• “In CLA, Still Playing Catch-Up” – February 25

By Christopher Hann

Jeremy Maisto C’00 and Emily Stine Maisto C’02

Late fall, 1998. Tilghman House. Spring registration. By 6 a.m., first-year Emily Stine had been waiting several hours before she was next in line. Both registration tables were empty. The guy behind one beckoned. The rest, well …

“He caught my eye,” Emily says.

Jeremy Maisto C’00, born in Paris, raised in London, was two years older. Didn’t matter. Soon they were sharing long lunches in the Commons. “Our group of friends kind of merged easily,” Emily says.

Emily and Jeremy are married five years now and living in central Pennsylvania, and Emily says their Drew psychology degrees helped prepare them for the birth, two years ago, of their daughter, Caroline.

Liz Keyser C’08 and Jackie DiLorenzo C’10

Jackie DiLorenzo was a sophomore and Liz Keyser a senior when they met in fall 2007 as counselors for The Good Line, a student-run crisis hotline. They didn’t dally in becoming a couple (“I basically moved into her dorm,” Jackie says), going on dates to The Other End, performances at DoYo and just about every other event on campus.

“Drew’s just a very accepting environment,” Jackie says, “so it was totally easy for us to be together.”

Today they’re each in grad school in Boston, and Jackie says they hope one day to take advantage of the Massachusetts law permitting gay marriage. “We’re not engaged just yet,” Jackie reports, “but marriage is definitely in our future.”

Lynne Tirrell and Tim Sperry C’77

Tim says he’s not surprised that Drew, with its friendly, compact campus, has seeded so many marriages. “Life is so focused at Drew,” Tim says. “You really get to know each other. That’s carried forward not only in marriage but in some close friendships we have, 30-plus years later.”

Tim and Lynne had their first date at the UC on Valentine’s Day 1976, watching Bogie in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Lynne left Drew after her first year, but Tim soon followed. To Wis­consin, then Pittsburgh, then North Carolina. Today they live outside Boston, where Tim is a consultant in the food industry, and Lynne is a philosophy professor at UMass Boston.

“For lots of reasons, but for the main reason of having met Lynne,” Tim says, “Drew’s got a big spot in my heart.”

Cathie (Huntoon) C’64 and John Crawford T’65

The future president of Drew’s board of trustees met his future wife while standing in line at the cafeteria in the UC with his buddy Jeff Smith T’65, P’93, the future Frugal Gourmet (let the record show that Smith met his future wife, Patty (Dailey) Smith C’63, P’93, while standing in line with John that same day).

John was a seminary student from Mississippi. Cathie was a political science major from Maplewood, N.J. They went to student dances, shared sloppy joes at Schwarmann’s in downtown Madison and sat together on February 5, 1964, when Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to an overflow crowd in Baldwin Gym. “Cathie and I had the kind of relationship where we didn’t mind just hanging out together,” John says.

They’re still hanging out together. Last January the Crawfords celebrated 46 years of marriage.

All photos courtesy Drew alumni.

By Christopher Hann

Drew’s beloved pub has served as a major center of campus social life for nearly four decades. And to think it all started with some really profitable pinball machines.

In the fall of 1973 the student committee that ran the UC installed an armada of pinball machines in the building’s former cafeteria. This soon turned into a gold mine for the committee. “I know it’s hard to believe,” says former committee member Kevin Hanson C’76, “but our take was 50–50 with the people who owned the machines. These things consistently generated $22,000 to $25,000 per year.”

So the committee did what any fiscally responsible steward of a pinball-induced windfall would do: Free Beer Every Saturday Night! That created a scene that was, well, pretty much what you’d expect. “It was crazy,” Hanson says.

A year later, the committee got a license to sell beer and wine, and several students crafted a 20-foot-long wooden bartop. On Aug. 30, 1974, Hanson served the Pub’s first official beer to Nancy Baughman C’77. (Lo these many years later, Nancy Baughman Csuti says she can’t remember ever paying for a beer at the Pub.)

And so it went. Thursday was Band Night. On Fridays students who brought a professor received a free pitcher of beer (a regular contingent of professors obliged). Alumni recall the Pub appearance of Sweet Pie, who played the piano while wearing nothing more than a modified scallop shell over his privates. Tim Sperry C’77 remembers going to the Pub with his future wife to see an upstart comedian named Billy Crystal, about whom Sperry prophesied: “This guy’s going nowhere.”

When Chris Walsh C’80 wasn’t cleaning the Pub on weekends, mopping up sticky puddles of beer, or serving as DJ—spinning LPs by the Doors, Bruce Springsteen and the Grateful Dead—he could imbibe with the best. Walsh especially remembers the night he and his buddies, at last call, filled 20 pitchers of beer. The Pub manager was not amused. “He said, ‘You can’t do that! You have to be out of here in 20 minutes!’” Walsh recalls. “We said, ‘What’s the problem? We’ll be out in 10.’”

Answers

Show

1. Top row: S.W. Bowne Hall; entry to Asbury Hall; radiator in Seminary Hall
2. Middle row: mailboxes in the University Center; shed door near athletic field; Davies House exterior wall
3. Bottom row: doorway in Brothers College; light fixtures in Brothers College; Dorothy Young Center for the Arts

By Amy Vames

Senior Andy Benavides knows that the University Center, where he works at the main desk, has seen better days. But he was finally convinced the facility needed work when he heard a squirrel scrambling around in the ceiling over his head. “This building is old,” says Benavides, an econ major. “The university is growing, and it’s time we got something more fitting.”

The university won’t argue with that. “The UC is not adequate when compared with peer institutions,” says Michael Kopas, director of special projects. “From a student comfort perspective, from a retention and recruitment perspective, this project is necessary.” So in May 2011, a yearlong, largely privately funded renovation—the first significant rehab since the UC opened in the late 1950s—is slated to begin, says Kopas. The project, with Princeton-based KSS Architects LLP, is expected to cost approximately $12 million.

In the redesigned UC, an entrance tower will usher students into soaring interior spaces.

The still-evolving plans also call for a radical and highly flexible reconfiguration of the space: The snack bar expands and moves out front, where the pool tables are now; the bookstore moves to the Commons to make way for a new lounge with a fireplace (sweet!); and student meeting space shifts back to the area vacated by the snack bar. The Pub will take over a larger space, the bookstore’s current back office.

Related

• Video

The Bowne Memorial Gateway renovation in progress.

One of several dozen figures on the gate.

Makeover might be too strong a word for it, but Drew’s old gateway looks like it spent the summer at a spa. Scaffolding came down early this fall to reveal a clean, crisp-looking gate, its Collegiate Style grandeur restored.

John Lindner, the owner of Union Stone Cleaning and Restoration, the company Drew hired for the restoration, tells me that environmental damage to the 1921 gate stretched back decades. “It had water infiltration from the 1950s as far as I can tell looking through photo archives,” he says.

The company washed the gate five times, redid the pointing and reproduced some of the cast-concrete columns and figures, such as the Virgin Mary, that had been worn down over the years from the stress of water freezing and thawing, corrosive minerals and exhaust from traffic on Rte. 124.

What I found most intriguing was that the gate, now a campus icon, wasn’t always so revered. When it was proposed to replace the gate from the original Gibbons estate, it was met with vehement resistance from both students and town residents. In his book The University in the Forest, John Cunningham C’38 describes the intensity of the response: “Replacement of the gatehouses provoked far more indignation than another sign of a new day: elimination of Hebrew as a required course of study.”—Renée Olson, Editor, Drew Magazine

The Who. The Lovin’ Spoonful. Jefferson Airplane. Iron Butterfly.
Four decades ago, Drew made an improbable appearance on the stage of a cultural revolution. We asked alumni from the peace-and-love generation to reminisce about their favorite rock concerts in the Forest.

Illustration by Tim Marrs; photograph for The Acorn, University Archives

Sha Na Na (1971)

The first concert I saw at Drew, days after I arrived in the fall of 1966, featured Chad and Jeremy, a likable folk duo from the lightweight division of the British Invasion. When I told one of my rhythm-and-blues friends the show was only so-so, he replied, “What made you think it would be even that good?”

Today, I remember it more charitably, and not because “Summer Song” had unexpected resonance. No, it was the opening act to a part of Drew the college catalog never mentioned: A century after its founding, this quiet Methodist seminary was about to become a heavily trafficked outpost on the 1960s rock ’n’ roll highway.

On a Saturday night in 1969, for a couple of bucks, you could see Blood, Sweat and Tears, Chuck Berry and Rhinoceros in Baldwin Gymnasium. OK, David Clayton-Thomas, the lead singer of BS&T, bailed out of the late show with a sore throat, and Rhinoceros remains better known as a large mammal. But Chuck Berry, when he still had all his voice, sang “Johnny B. Goode,” live, three minutes from Tolley Hall.

While rock concerts were not unusual by 1966, they were still moderately subversive. Our parents did not pay the $1,800 annual Drew tuition so Jefferson Airplane could remind us that the dormouse said to “feed your head.”

By modern standards, the whole operation was primitive. Rows of folding chairs were set up in the gym, whose acoustics sounded like a subway tunnel at rush hour. The speakers and amps, by today’s standards, would embarrass a sixth grader.

Jefferson Airplane (1968)

Didn’t matter. In March of 1968, The Who played that stage, unleashing a 45-minute blitzkrieg of sound. The gym, which seated 1,500, was half-full. The social committee was criticized for overpricing the tickets at $4.50. It was a great show.

Students did all the work, for nothing, and there were rough patches. Iron Butterfly didn’t go on until nearly midnight, meaning “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” ended around lunchtime.

Frank Zappa, ever the contrarian, made sarcastic remarks about the teeny-bops in the audience and then got into their faces by playing a set of wildly eclectic improvisations. The crowd shifted in its folding chairs, then started muttering, then left. So did Zappa. My friend Robert Hancock, maybe the only improv fan in the house, went backstage and told him, “You were right.” About the teens, he meant. Zappa just shrugged.

My favorite band, the Lovin’ Spoonful, played Drew just before finals in May 1967. I wanted the best show ever. It was good. It wasn’t great. They played for two hours, which was about their entire repertoire, but it lacked the transcendent spark of their best live work.

Turned out guitarist Zal Yanovsky wasn’t speaking to drummer Joe Butler and had decided to leave the band. Sometimes just believing in the magic doesn’t set you free. That’s rock ’n’ roll.

The diciest moment came in the fall of 1967, when the chairman of the social committee and three friends promoted a Four Tops show by doing a song-and-dance in the cafeteria. In blackface.

Bad idea.

But the real Tops were terrific. So were The Who, the Airplane, the Rascals, the Animals. Eight artists who played Drew back then were later enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Nine if you count Bob Dylan, who finally played Drew on April 13, 1996. The times they had a-changed by then, but I went back, and I’m glad I did. He was even better than Chad and Jeremy.

David Hinckley C’70

From left to right: Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane (1968), Frank Zappa (1969), and Martin Barre of Jethro Tull (1969).

As social chairman of the college in 1972–73, I remember Drew’s rock concerts with fondness. Live shows on campus by artists such as Mountain and Van Morrison, both in 1970, were invigorating, implausibly inexpensive at $5 a ticket and always a little raucous. The concerts conveyed not only the great passion of the performers but also American culture in the midst of change. And they conferred on Drew a kind of worldliness for a small college in a suburban town. Today, whenever I hear The Who belt out “Who Are You,” I always think of Drew and smile.

Frank J. Carnabuci C’73

Carly Simon, somewhat shy but confident of her talent, arrived at Drew on a chilly Saturday, Nov. 13, 1971. Her second album, “Anticipation,” had been released earlier that month (the title song, the story goes, reflects the anxiety she felt while waiting to go on her first date with Cat Stevens). That evening a smiling and reflective Carly charmed her fans on both guitar and piano. Her songs about life, love and heartache lingered with us long after her final curtain call on the Baldwin stage.

Unfortunately, the social committee, which I chaired, did not sell enough tickets to break even. Turns out we were a week too early. “Anticipation,” Carly’s next hit single, had just started to get airplay on New York radio stations. Had we booked her just a weekend or two later, Baldwin would have sold out, and our budget would have been a few thousand dollars healthier.

Next, we booked Sha Na Na, which had developed a cult following of oldies lovers after a show-stopping performance at Woodstock. Rather than confine the audience to the conventional rows of metal folding chairs on the Baldwin Gym floor, the committee agreed to put on a dance concert.

Baldwin was packed with more than 1,000 people, many outfitted in ’50s greaser attire—leather jackets and slicked-back hair or poodle skirts and bouffant hairdos. Due to a few rowdy townsfolk who had sneaked in some flasks of hooch, Madison police and fire officials decided there would be no dancing. Just before the opening number, the police ordered all the house lights turned up and announced that Sha Na Na’s performance would be terminated if everyone did not “cool off and sit down!” Not everyone complied, and sure enough, 35 minutes into the show, the lights were ordered back on and an officer announced that the concert was officially over. The crowd let loose with a series of loud and long boos.

Jeff King C’72

I remember my roommate, Greg Granquist, hiring Blood, Sweat and Tears before anybody had heard of them. By the time they came to Drew, they were a big hit. I think they were mad because they were getting so little money. Greg invented the two-show concert—a show at 7 and 10 p.m., a 45-minute set at each show. Blood, Sweat and Tears was booked with Rhinoceros, a Boston band, and Chuck Berry. David Clayton-Thomas, the lead singer, said he didn’t want to do the second show. Faced with a full house, I went over to Chuck Berry and asked if he was willing to play longer. He said, “I’m no amateur. You’ll need to pay me.” He had five other guys in his band. He said, “$5 for each of the guys and $10 dollars for me.” I said OK, and they played another 45 minutes.

Barry Fenstermacher C’69

When I was growing up in Madison in the 1960s, Jefferson Airplane came to Drew. I wasn’t allowed to attend since the university was not the place my parents wanted me to be (too many hippies). But what I didn’t miss out on was the prop they left across the street from campus. It was a real airplane they used during their concert and decided to leave as a “gift” to Drew and to Madison. It sure caught everyone’s eye: It was painted the colors of the rainbow. The founding fathers of Madison were not happy. The plane did not stay there long.

Diane Zsombik G’97

A fleeting but staggering memory of Drew and the whole rock’ n’ roll thing was a Mountain concert in the gym on a Saturday night in 1970 and an address by Strom Thurmond the following afternoon.Yikes! Now, there’s an education.

Margo Davis C’72

Jefferson Airplane (1968)

You need to understand what it meant to be social chairman in the ’60s. In theory, one was chair of the social committee. In practice, one was Hugo Chavez.

The first show I organized was The Who. We paid the band $4,000 for a 45-minute set. With other costs, the concert’s budget ran to $5,500. Believe it or not, the show lost money, about $1,500. The concert, however, was an artistic success. I recall the energy of the group’s performance, in particular the drummer Keith Moon, as well as their harmonies. They wore white Sgt. Pepper outfits, and I believe Pete Townshend smashed a guitar at the close. Drew was fortunate to have the group. It was like buying shares of Microsoft in 1985.

On the night of the Iron Butterfly show, one of the band members miscalculated his LSD dose and was incapable of leaving his motel room. Faced with the unpleasant prospect of refunding hundreds of tickets, I persuaded the opening act, a local teenage blues band, to drag out their set. And then play another set. And then another. Still no Butterfly band member. I huddled in the Baldwin Gym locker room while the audience stomped on bleachers, thundering their discontent. People pelted me with objects and boos when I went out to announce each delay. At last, at 11:30 p.m., the delinquent band member arrived. The group did their psychedelic thing and finished with a ripping version of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” replete with smoke bombs.

In September 1968, I booked my favorite group, Jefferson Airplane. Both shows sold out. I invited my parents (Lawrence Welk fans), who were nonplussed by the strange music. My dad congratulated me afterwards with the observation that it was the first time in seven years that he heard anything in his right ear.

Greg Granquist C’71

Special thanks to David Hinckley C’70, Jeff King C’72 and Masato Okinaka in the Drew University Archives for loaning photographs and posters.

Send Us Your Concert Memories!

We know there are more tales of concerts just waiting to be told, so share your favorite music moments in the Forest here.

When students showed up for classes in September 2008, they were in for a jaw-dropping surprise: over the summer, several well-trafficked spots on campus had been given an extreme makeover, including a new Brothers College Café, a revamped food area in the Commons and major residence hall upgrades in the Suites and Tolley/Brown. The renovations sparked excitement on campus, especially among first-year Tolley/Brown residents who had been briefed about what they narrowly escaped: the hall’s notoriously grungy carpet and shared bathrooms of years past.

Video

Juniors Michelle Caffrey and Mark Stratton walk you through the impressive renovations at the Tolley/Brown residence halls, the new Brothers College café and the Commons.

Slide Show

Photos by Shelley Kuznetz