"So there I was in the fall of 1964"

I never took a course from Ted Lowi. He was a legend during my freshman year, and then he left for the University of Chicago, only to return after I graduated. I knew him later, first in the spring of 1985, when I took a leave from CBS News to serve as a visiting professor in the government department, and then in the summer of 1993 as a faculty member at the Telluride Association Summer Program. He was a neighbor.

But I have one undergraduate memory.

As a freshman, I joined The Cornell Daily Sun Sports Board. This was a long time ago, when Ivy League press boxes were male-only. So I covered sports like squash, tennis, women’s athletics and the occasional feature. One day, Joel Kaplan ’66, the Sports Editor, told me to report on a Government Department football game between the faculty and the department’s honors students. And how was I to report on this? Oh, just call Ted Lowi, he said, handing me a phone number. Well, that was terrifying.

So there I was in the fall of 1964, nervously sitting on the hallway floor of Clara Dickson Hall, on the corridor phone (the only phone available in those days), asking the famous and utterly charming Ted Lowi for details of the game. This was the third year of the challenge series. It began in the middle of the Kennedy Administration -- when football games were highlights of Kennedy family gatherings.

The faculty team included Clinton Rossiter and Walter Berns, aided by history professors Donald Kagan and Walter LaFeber. Berns and Lowi had both played football in high school and college and apparently provided most of the muscle, with Berns “the fearful one” (according to Lowi) of the faculty backfield.

Lowi said to me that it all began with “some frivolous remarks and some superficial comparisons of physical strength, but once we were on the field, it was clear we were there to win!”

Faculty won the first match in 1962, but lost the second (Lowi said that was only because he and Kagan were on sabbatical that year). Clinton Rossiter complained that the “substitutions” were the reason for the faculty loss. In 1964, the faculty was redeemed, and beat the students 12-6. Lowi’s departure at the end of that academic year probably put an end to the challenge matches.

Perhaps someone knows whether or not they continued without one of their star players!

[Article can be found in The Cornell Daily Sun, December 10, 1964, p.15, “Students vs. Faculty…Gov. Gridders Mean Business”]

Kathy Frankovic

Cornell Class of 1968