Brewster And Coffin
Andrew Popper (ES ‘69)
“recovering photojournalist/photo editor”
(US News & World Report, Business Week)
In going through my photo archive for the ClassBook entry, I came across these two pictures, which I took while an undergrad. Other than what’s in the captions, I remember little of the events pictured. In each case I was trying out a new camera as a reportage tool: a used Canon rangefinder at the Brewster event, and a Nikon FTn, my first single-lens reflex, for Coffin. Both subjects were indispensable Yale leaders, and it goes without saying that their influence was felt well beyond the Ivy.
President Kingman Brewster, Jr. and wife Mary Louise Brewster greet the audience at the dedication of forty-four newly installed carillon bells at Harkness Tower in 1966.
- Chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr. entertains at a campus event in 1967 or ’68.
On a practical note, I was happy to discover upon digitally scanning the images, that the negatives remain remarkably stable after fifty-plus years, while the “archival” paper sleeves in which they’re stored have started to crumble. Thanks for the superb level of preservation go out to Stiles Darkroom Aide (and classmate) Peter M.C. Choy ’69, who encouraged — I mean gently enforced — the highest standard at every step of traditional wet processing. Three cheers for legacy storage media!
Great shots, Andrew! I’m about to embark on scanning old negs, and would love to chat with you about your experience. I’m at 408-204-4967, accessible most times now that I’m retired.
I’m not sure how good a guitarist Coffin was, but he was reputed to be a very fine pianist. I believe that at the time of the photo, he was married to the daughter of Arthur Rubinstein. I recall walking past the chaplain’s house one day and seeing the two men together at the front door.
It’s worth repeating an old Coffin story here. When his fiancee, Rubinstein’s daughter, told Coffin that her father had said that he wasn’t sure he wanted Billy Graham as a son-in-law, Coffin is supposed to have said, “Well, tell him I’m not sure I want Liberace as a father-in-law.”
Thank you – Not being a photog, my first hand images of the two remarkable gentlemen had notingvtovdo with the hand, only eyes and mind, now much diminished. So the thanks are big ones , for making them bevimmediately in front of me again.
Thank you Andrew, for your contributions, and thanks to Peter M.C. Choy too for quality control! All four of you touched my life.
Thanks for the wonderful shots. I was in “his” entryway as a freshman and wish I had availed myself of him more! Read a couple of his excellent books since. One big event of our time was the Buckley -Coffin debate in the Yale Law School auditorium. I have wondered recently when in these times of “limited speech” on campus if such a debate could take place. Started doing a little research and found that a recent Chaplin had “resigned” after having the audacity to suggest a West Bank Palestinian solution should be considered. TImes are changed, but unfortunately not all for the better. Happy to talk to anyone with interest in similar issues. I am in WA now on Bainbridge Island.
Paul Lozier 973.886.9912
Coffin and a guitar! Who’d a thunk it? The hangout for folkies and such when the class of 69 was in New Haven was the Exit coffehouse– first near Silliman college, then on Chapel Street, then in the basement of the First Methodist Church. I am not aware of Coffin’s ever darkening its door. The Exit (with graphics showing that Trudeau had its incarnation in the basement of First Meth in mind) plays a small role in “Doonesbury.” The “Reverend Sloane” who runs it in “Doonesbury” owes his name to Coffin, but is bearded, unlike the clean-shaven Coffin: I think he owes a lot to the actual director of the Exit for much of our New Haven time, Edmund (“Russ”) Warne, a former YDS student and later a Ph.D. student in (the philosophy side of) the Religious Studies program. Who did play a guitar well enough to head a folkie hangout.