Gene Carson Buzzard – 50th Reunion Essay

Gene Carson Buzzard

College: Pierson

Immediately after graduation, I married Christine Jacobs in Princeton. It was a good wedding, attended by several Yale friends. We had, between us, two bicycles and about $300. Having declined to seek a college deferment during my senior year, I was drafted that winter, passed my physical (handily) in New Haven and was declared to be 1A. My local draft board kindly postponed my induction until after graduation. Chris and I lived in various lodgings in Princeton, including the basement of the Princeton Theological Seminary, until early July when I was inducted. I reported to Ft. Polk, Louisiana, on July 28 and took basic and infantry training at “Tigerland.” I arrived in the Republic of Vietnam on January 1, 1970, and spent 11 months as a personnel clerk and a truck driver. I was then assigned to Fort Ord, California, on the Monterey Peninsula, where we spent a very nice six months. My roommate Tom Buccello was working in Los Angeles and we had a couple of good visits.

I graduated from Washington University School of Law in 1974 and we moved back to Tulsa, where I practiced law for 33 years. By that time, I was tired of the practice and took a year off to decide what to do next. I then taught eighth grade reading for five years at a public middle school in Tulsa. It was a lot of fun, but I was glad to retire in 2013. Chris, who is a speech pathologist, retired at the same time. Later that year we bought a second home in Port Townsend, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula, where we now spend about half our time.

I still open books with “Gene Buzzard, 1412 Pierson College” written on the inside cover. I recently bought a book by Vincent Scully about the pueblo cultures and architecture. I can still hear William Sloane Coffin thundering about racial equality and the War. I still feel the tension and camaraderie of extended discussions of the draft and the War and life in general. I carry on with the confusion of trying to figure out who I am and who I should be. I have not been associated with an institution that was as dedicated to rigorous thinking and self-examination and criticism as Yale was. Yale didn’t provide the answers, but did convince me that the questions were important, indeed unavoidable.

My Yale years were not, for me, “the shortest, gladdest years of life.” I thought Yale was hard. For example, the philosophy classes I took were way over my head; I kept thinking I’d reread the texts later in life and understand them. I tried Husserl the other day and it isn’t much better now. Luckily, I had good friends whose remarkable generosity, humanity, intelligence, humor and kindness made the hard times bearable and the good times memorable.

A mountain guide once told me that you don’t always have to have fun to have fun.