Wood's Words: From Dinners to Dishes to Dams
Jim F. Wood ‘64
The attached piece was just published in the 2018 President’s Report. The back story is Gus is the cousin of Gerald Schult (‘65,) a DU brother from Clarkson. Gerry asked me if there was any chance I could get Gus a sweater. Tony ran with the idea, and the attached story tells the tale.
"We lost every game that year, and Coach Hodge decided not to award any varsity letters."
—Gustav Diezemann ’48
It is 5:30 p.m. on a cool fall evening. Wind sweeps bunches of leaves into bushes and gutters. Dusk approaches as a lanky teenager from Brooklyn, New York, descends the rooming house front steps, crosses the street and heads toward the rear of the big house on the southeast corner of Pierrepont and Bay. He holds the collar of an old baseball jacket tight to keep out the chill.
The trip from Grand Central to Potsdam took 12 hours, including stops in Albany, Syracuse and Watertown. Passengers joined or left the train, and coal and fresh water were added to the locomotive’s tender. In July 1945, a one-way ticket cost $15, food not included.
Gustav Diezemann ’48, a graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School, or "HS 430" to New Yorkers, knew little about the Thomas S. Clarkson Memorial College of Technology before 1945. Occasionally, he would hear it mentioned on the radio when weekend college football or baseball scores were recited, but when a teacher told him it was a very good engineering school and reasonably priced, the "reasonably priced" got his attention. The 1941 wartime economy made planning for postsecondary education expenses a nontrivial exercise. Of less import, HS 430 was a short distance from 1720 Bedford Avenue, known in those days as Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers; Gus was a Giants fan.
The house on Pierrepont and Bay was leased by an Ogdensburg family and used as a boarding house for women attending Potsdam Normal School, which was created in 1869 pursuant to a legislative commission formed to "establish normal and training schools for the education and discipline of teachers." Potsdam Normal School would become SUNY Potsdam; its principal building, Snell Hall, would be gifted to Clarkson in 1958.
Gus enters the kitchen by the rear door and hears the large dining area full of coeds — something noticed by a first-year student attending an all-male college. He puts on an apron and sits at the kitchen table to eat dinner.
On the train from Brooklyn, Gus chatted up a passenger and learned there might be accommodations at 36 Bay Street, where single rooms rented for $3 per week; there were three single rooms and one double for rent, a common practice in those days. His first night was likely spent in the now-gone American Hotel. On a warm summer morning, he schlepped his bags to Bay Street only to find all the singles were rented, and only one bed in the double room was available. He grabbed it for $2.50 per week, food not included. If you had a radio, add 25 cents per month for electricity. He moved into a single after the first trimester and occupied it until graduation. Laundry services were not included; dirty clothes were mailed back to Brooklyn weekly to be cleaned, ironed and returned by mail.
Gus was accepted into Clarkson’s trimester program as a civil engineering major ($8 per credit hour) and chose to attend without first visiting campus. This meant he could complete coursework by December 1947 ($18 per credit hour), take his finals in January 1948 and graduate in February. Many classes were held in Old Main, an "easy walk through the field just behind us. I never missed an 8 a.m. class or a Saturday lab," Gus says with a wry smile, as if thinking about legions of underclassmen who would later trudge downtown from the Hill dorms and cross over a very frozen Raquette at 7:30 a.m. in a nippy -30° F.
An all-male college with about 125 students, including a dozen WWII vets, struggled with social activities. Four Greek social fraternities were on campus in 1945, and Gus pledged Karma, the youngest, founded November 11, 1929. The name comes from Sanskrit, meaning "to do or to act." But, it was baseball that really interested him. Henry Hodge was in the midst of a 38-year professional career at Clarkson. He would coach 516 baseball games to a 296-220 win-loss record and 27 winning seasons. In 1971, Coach Hodge was inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association. In 1945, Gus made the team as a utility infielder, but it would not be one of those winning seasons. "We lost every game that year," Gus recalls, "and Coach Hodge decided not to award any varsity letters."
Eleven of the 66 students entering the 1945 trimester program graduated in February 1948. Gus spent several months looking for a job. The economy grew quickly after the war; the U.S. retooled factories, and the country entered a period of low inflation and balanced federal budgets. In the spring of 1948, Gus met Clarkson alumnus Howard McCarter ’28, who worked for a small engineering company in New York City and who hired Gus because they were both Clarkson alumni. McCarter left the company in 1950 to join Ambursen Engineering and took Gus with him. In 1903, Nils Ambursen, a Norwegian-American civil engineer and founder of the original parent company, developed and patented an innovative concrete slab and buttress dam that was a significant engineering advancement and cost reduction compared with the typical gravity dam. Ambursen put Gus’ Clarkson education to good use as a designer and resident field engineer in Maryland.
Now into retirement, Gus and his wife, Ruth, live on the South Shore of Massachusetts, enjoying its seasons, arts and music, as well as visits from relatives, including his cousin Gerry Schult ’65. If you visit, you will hear stories of attending Clarkson reunions and local summer send-off picnics for new Clarkson students. Their life is full. Although prior commitments intruded on his 70th reunion, at the July 14, 2018, alumni dinner, President Tony Collins awarded (in absentia) a Varsity C sweater to Gus Diezemann, class of 1948. Gus is "delighted" with the sweater.
His dinner finished, Gus walks into the dining area, now quiet and empty of coeds, and buses and cleans the tables; hot water and soap fill the sink. It is a fair trade: dishes, pots and pans washed, dried and put away and the dining area cleaned and set for the morning meal, all in exchange for a home-cooked dinner. Finished before 9 p.m., he walks back to his room to complete his homework assignments.