Benjamin H. Johnston – 50th Reunion Essay

Benjamin H. Johnston

103 Laurel Lane

Austin, TX 78705-2813

johnston.ben@gmail.com

512-480-9899

Spouse(s): Christy Humphrey

College: Silliman

One final last-minute paper! It’s fitting since late papers crowned my Yale career with a late graduation. I went through the motions at commencement, received no diploma, could have lied about lost library books but just blurted out the truth. My mother, who took up teaching middle school math to help pay for three offspring in college, would not speak to me. Had I known I suffered from depression I might have blamed it on that, except depressives look no further than themselves for a scapegoat.

Both my parents had chemistry degrees, but their children all got BAs in English. Yet writing papers gave me fits while I enjoyed science and math, so go figure. At Yale the war/military-industrial complex seemed to cast a shadow over STEM studies. Thirty years later, however, I did pursue engineering, and received a BSME from UT Austin. Writing the senior design project report, of course, went down to the wire.

I also had a belated epiphany wherein I found I loved to dance. Seeing Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in 1954 was unforgettable, and if I’d realized those barn raisers were ballet stars I might have followed my sister to her dance classes. My path was more circuitous: I gravitated from folk music before college to folk dancing afterward, thence to tap, ballet, swing, tango, hip hop, etc. in later years. I met Chris—musician, actress, my partner of 25 years—in a Hungarian dance ensemble, and we’ve since attended hundreds of dances and classes and hope never to stop. We’ve also toured in a western swing musical and with a university choir, and lately have taken up circus aerials. In December 2016 we finally got married, on stage during a surprise coda to a mummers’ play we write and help perform annually for an Austin winter solstice celebration.

Looking back 55 years at my absurd college decision process, I remember my ambivalence about going to Yale—my admired/despised older brother was there already. Thus the interview went well because I was at ease; as a bonus I learned I could play intramural tackle football at Yale! Other schools had women and a folk music scene, but those interviews revealed I knew too much about world overpopulation and nothing about Virginia school desegregation: I thought my high school, Virginia’s newest and largest, was integrated because my class of 727 included one black student.

My school did integrate right after I graduated, and Yale admitted women immediately I left—what differences a year makes! Yet my siblings’ high school scrapped its “Johnny Reb” mascot only in 2015, and my own mega-school is still named for a desegregation foe. More women now graduate college than men, but they still fight to be treated as equals in charge of their own bodies. And human overpopulation—four billion more souls than in 1969—remains the planetary problem that underpins all others. It was much discussed in the ’60s; twice as apparent now, it’s hardly noted at all.