Seven Webfoot Way: Memoir of a Radical Average Person

By Bob Spohn

An exhilarating experience with six African American teenage girls changed the life of a white guy from Jersey who had grown up with an outhouse until he was eight years old. He left a successful career with a Fortune 500 company to become a dynamic college professor and art collector, eventually living in a charming little house at 7 Webfoot Way on Cape Cod. You will get some inside information about the corporate and academic worlds and witness the ending of a long-term monogamous marriage and the subsequent exciting life as a single person. The expository writing and storytelling is intended to inform and entertain. It is laced with humor, mostly self-deprecating. You might want to use this memoir as a model or template for telling your offspring your life story, just as hes done for his grandson, Aidan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543432114

Bob Spohn

Bob Spohn is Professor Emeritus, Northwestern Connecticut Community College. He has a bachelor's degree from Colgate University and an MBA from the University of Connecticut. His previous writing includes textbooks published by Reston Publishing ( then a subsidiary of Prentice-Hall) and McGraw-Hill. He's also had articles entitled "Art in Sports" and "American and Soviet Art in Buffalo" published by Connecticut's Litchfield County Times.

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Preface

It’s been years since I’ve done writing intended for publication. Decades ago, I wrote a couple of textbooks, one for Prentice Hall and another for McGraw-Hill, and a couple of articles about art entitled Art in Sports and American and Soviet Art in Buffalo for a Northwest Connecticut newspaper. As I approached the final stage of the life cycle, I began to think about how important it might be for my grandson, Aidan, to know something about his grandfather’s journey through life. This project was initially intended to be a long letter to Aidan, who is at a single-digit age, but as it progressed, it appeared to have a broader appeal.

Through the years, I’ve heard many people say they would like to write a book, and I’ve heard others say to a friend who had an unusual experience, You should write a book about that. Writing a book, or in some way getting published, seems to be high on the list of desired accomplishments for many people.

The textbooks I wrote required more discipline than creativity. They involved giving a new slant on an established topic and generally trying to differentiate the product from that of the competition. Unfortunately, neither book fared all that well, thus negating the possibility of my receiving a lifetime annuity in the form of royalties. For some reason, Canadian colleges and universities were more favorably impressed with my effort than those in this country. In fact, a professor at Algonquin College in Ottawa was given permission to turn the first book into a Canadian edition with a maple leaf on the cover.

My writing earned me a few thousand dollars in royalties (much less than I had hoped for), an adjunct teaching appointment, and a seat at the table with the editors in the Hudson Room of the McGraw-Hill building at Rockefeller Center. In one of those meetings, the building was like a ghost town because a flock of employees had journeyed to MIT to celebrate the sale of the millionth copy of Paul Samuelson’s iconic Economics 101 textbook. Now there’s someone who is clearly a lot more than average.

As I get back into the process of writing, I’m having fun and getting satisfaction. I don’t know where it will take me. If nothing else, for Aidan, this will be a chronicle of his grandfather’s journey through life. The subheading is Memoir of a Radical Average Person. The reason for this is that I’m not famous and I’ve never done anything important enough to write home about. It’s a step above the Seinfeld episode where George had the idea of trying to convince a producer to accept a sitcom about nothing. Most memoirs are written by nationally known people or by someone who has had a life-altering experience, has had an abusive childhood, or has been involved in some other event that might be of interest.

This story about an average person should encourage readers to embark on a similar path, to let even a limited audience know who they are and where they’ve been—somewhat of a template for telling their own story. And it will fulfill the dream of seeing their name in print. In the current publishing environment with all kinds of self-publishing venues, almost anyone can get published, even if it’s not with a well-known publisher.

Some of my motivation for thinking that my rendition of a memoir might have merit come from what has been published and has later been found to be specious or questionable and what has been published and has received less than complimentary reviews. The specious would include James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces and Augusten Burroughs’s Running with Scissors. Frey’s memoir was an Oprah Book Club selection and was highly acclaimed until it was revealed that his hard-luck story about reprehensible treatment at an addiction center wasn’t all that truthful. His appearance on Oprah’s show, where he had to face the music, was much anticipated.

Burroughs’s publisher had to reach a settlement with the real-life family that claimed he had unjustly portrayed them. As an aside, a few years ago, I attended the Florida Suncoast Writers’ Conference and signed up for his memoir-writing workshop. After hearing about the controversy, I switched to poet laureate Billy Collins’s poetry workshop. It didn’t make me into a poet, but it did expose me to a first-class presenter and a delightful person.

Two memoirs that have come out in recent years and not been well received are Margo Howard’s Eat, Drink & Remarry and Andrew Lohse’s Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy. Howard spends most of the book impressing about her celebrity connections. She is the daughter of Ann Landers, and her third husband was Ken Howard. I’ll refer more to this in a chapter where I relate my connection to the Howards.

The Lohse book is a rather disgusting and overstated view of fraternity life at Dartmouth. I’ll give the scoop on fraternities in a few paragraphs rather than the 310 pages Lohse consumed. The very first word in the Frat Boy book is vomit, and there are more than thirty additional references to vomit. That might give you a clue.

Seven Webfoot Way depicts the exhilarating experience of how six African American teenage girls changed the life of this white guy, originally from Jersey, who was on a career trajectory with a Fortune 500 company and gave it up to go into college teaching.

The first words are Brown v. Board of Education, and the last are a quote from Maya Angelou. They flank about eighty-five thousand words within thirty-two chapters of expository writing and storytelling. The reader will get inside information about the corporate and academic worlds and learn about how an art collection is assembled. The reader also will witness the ending of a long-term monogamous marriage and the subsequent exciting life of a single person. The overall intent is to inform and entertain. It is laced with humor––mostly self-deprecating.

Let’s hope that something more than insomnia keeps you awake as you follow the journey of a guy who advanced through the years from a little shack with an outhouse in New Jersey to a charming little house within smelling distance of Cape Cod Bay. As I say in any biographical sketch I’m asked to submit, Had I been more successful, I’d have a view of the bay.

Chapter 1

THE RADICAL EGG PEDDLER

Brown v. Board of Education had an important impact on me. I was a junior at Ramsey High School in North Jersey, near the New York Thruway. The Supreme Court ruling rightfully ended discrimination in schools. It also engendered an understandable feeling of the need for redemption in the students at Ramsey High. They reacted by voting in by a large margin, as president of the next year’s senior class, an African American. I received the second most votes, which placed me as vice president.

The president-elect was a nice guy with modest qualifications as a student, athlete, and leader. On the other hand, I was captain of the baseball team, a student council member, and a member of the National Honor Society. At graduation, I ranked number three in a class of 230. In the coveted Mr. Ramsey High School voting in our senior year, I lost again.

Before you start assuming the wrong thing, I have to tell you that I went on to champion all kinds of activism, including promoting the rights of African Americans. Now I’ll continue with a couple of stories that might enhance your understanding of this soon-to-be-radicalized Bobby Spohn, a bus driver’s son from Wyckoff, New Jersey. Later you’ll find how my interaction with six African American teenage girls changed my life.

My radical bent began at Ramsey High. Like most classes back then, and probably so today, we collected dues from our classmates. It seemed as if every time you turned around, you had to shell out more money for what was primarily to be the class gift. I found that the money I was receiving from peddling eggs and poultry in the shadows of the George Washington Bridge was being overly consumed. I brought my concern to the attention of Susie Cahill, the class treasurer, and asked her to check into it. She did, and reported at the next meeting that she had made a mistake, albeit it a happy mistake.

The money had been mistakenly entered into her father’s account instead of one of those accounts that banks set up for these kinds of things. Her solution was that we leave the school a larger-than-normal gift, which would include new draperies for the principal’s office. My solution was different: we get refunds.

After a close vote, my solution won. It amounted to each classmate getting two bucks (maybe twenty or so in today’s dollars). Tables were set up in the gym, where teachers were passing out crisp dollar bills. I should note that some of those who voted against the winning solution did not hesitate to cut in line to be sure of recovery. Surely, for me, it was an early success in activism.

Still in need of money for the class treasury, proposals were made to have car washes, bake sales, and those other pedestrian events. I had another idea that was accepted by my classmates: we would have a talent show and charge admission. We would invite performers from high schools from the surrounding towns, and I would be the master of ceremonies. The response was overwhelming.

This was at the time when The Ed Sullivan Show was at its prime, so I decided to use that format, including recognizing a celebrity in the audience. The celebrity I heralded was Ms. Margerie Brundage, the leader/coach of the not-so-famous local Brundettes. When I acknowledged her presence, this slight, elderly music teacher stood and seemed to wave to the applauding audience endlessly. Sad to say, Ms. Brundage died shortly after her moment of celebrity—happier, we hope, because of her affiliation with the Brundettes.

Ms. Brundage was an adorable person who, like many music teachers in those days, was known more for her pitch pipes than for her success in gaining respect from rowdy students. One afternoon, four of us approached her to tell her we wanted to form a singing group and that we would like her to help us. She was ecstatic over the request. Our foursome comprised captains of four sports: Jack Wiley (wrestling), Ron Sussex (track), Joe La Vigna (football), and me (baseball). We had decided that we would sing music rounds, such as Down by the Riverside, for class night. It sort of began as a lark, but soon, as dear Ms. Brundage became so serious about our almost-prank, we started to bond and become more serious. Jack Wiley, when not drinking Narragansett longnecks, still sings in a church choir. And I’ve been told that I sing a melodious Happy Birthday, as I always do when I phone those greetings to my friends on their birthdays.

In my senior year, I began my battle with the guidance department. It was manned (primarily wommaned) by people for whom guidance seemed to be a second language. Let’s say that they proved to be a bit disengaged. I probably needed their help as much as anyone in my class. Neither of my parents had gone beyond grammar school—now called elementary school because there ain’t no grammar teached no more. And no one in the history of my family had ever set foot on a college campus.

In my first foray into the room of incompetence, I was asked why I was there. I said that I wanted some help in getting into a college. I was told that the shelves were filled with college catalogs and that’s where I should look. I then asked if they could suggest which catalogs I should consider. They then informed me that it wasn’t their responsibility to do that. I then naively asked what, in fact, they did do, and was told that they sent the student’s records to the college selected. I told them that I would hope that the records of my outstanding achievements at Ramsey High School would be forwarded. Before exiting, I said, This guidance department stinks. Using that s-word back then just might be equivalent to using the f-word today. It was far from the end of the story and my lifelong interest in the role of guidance departments.

The bell rang, and I was off to Ms. Salmon’s Spanish class. She was extremely pretty and considered sexy by the boys in her class. I wasn’t aware of that until it was a major subject of conversation at our fiftieth reunion. About five minutes into that class, there was a knock on the door. It was Mr. Moore, the principal. Ms. Salmon opened the door, and he said, I want to see Spohn, not Bob, not Bobby Spohn, not Bob Spohn—just plain Spohn, in a raised voice. The message was clear: the guidance department had spoken. Surely, they couldn’t be criticized for deficiency in rapid communications. Out in the hall, he swore at me and never talked to me again. Before then, I had been his fair-haired boy, owing partially to his having been a pretty good ballplayer in his day and respecting my baseball prowess.

The ostracism didn’t end there. The guidance department, represented by Mrs. Stewart, sought revenge toward this troublemaker. She was an English teacher who was also a part-time guidance incompetent. She was also responsible for assisting the students who would be delivering the graduation speeches, which were by the valedictorian, the salutatorian, and me—the third ranked and the essayist. She offered help to the other speakers in developing their themes but completely ignored me. Fortunately, my skin had grown thicker. So once again, I was on my own. But not quite.

Nancy Ackerman, a teacher in nearby Ridgewood High School and a Ramsey High classmate of my brother’s ten years before, called me. She had been following my baseball playing in the Ridgewood News and wondered what my college plans were. She said, having experienced the Ramsey guidance department, that I wouldn’t get much help, and she asked if I would like to have her boyfriend set up an interview at his alma mater, Harvard.

On the train to Cambridge, my first time on a train and my first time to Massachusetts, I began to write my speech. I felt so much like what I thought Lincoln must have felt as he wrote on his way from Springfield to Washington. When I returned, I completed the speech without any help. Soon, it was time for the three of us to practice our speeches in front of Mrs. Stewart. She proved to be better at vindictiveness than at guidance. She continually criticized my enunciation. When I said that, she said it’s thaat. If there was in fact a Jersey accent being emitted, I’m sure we all had them.

We had a very special high school class, and that’s probably why the graduation ceremony was covered by the local press. One newspaper wrote, Bob Spohn, third in his class, enumerated on America as a land of opportunity. He said encouragement was needed to make high school and college graduates see the danger of Russia’s ‘industry plus’ plans for the future. One can just imagine how pissed she must have been that I had been quoted and was the only one photographed delivering a speech.

The salutatorian was Bill Widnall, son of New Jersey sixth district congressman William Widnall. I mention Bill for two reasons. After my confrontation with the guidance department, Bill came to my defense by seconding my accusation. It was so important for my confidence that this brilliant guy of notable lineage would see things my way and would stick up for me. Bill went on to MIT, where he eventually became a professor and married Sheila, who also became a professor at MIT and subsequently secretary of the air force in the Clinton administration. Here’s what Bill wrote in my high school year book, The Nugget: To one of the few people in Ramsey High who was an individual in his thoughts and criticisms and was still able to be one of the most popular boys in our class. Best of luck! Bill.

The dean of admissions at Harvard was on sabbatical, so I was interviewed by Associate Dean Glimp, Fred Glimp. He made me feel comfortable and apparently saw this conservatively coiffed kid as a welcome exception to the hippies that were being groomed (or in another sense, not groomed) on liberal college campuses in that era. This influx drove many buttoned-down administrators to early retirement.

He asked me what I thought of the people I had seen as I traversed Harvard Yard on my way to his office, and in my guilelessness, or lack of diplomacy, I said I thought they were weird. It seems as if he enjoyed my reaction because I was accepted and received a personal note from Dean Glimp expressing his concern that I might be choosing Colgate, where I had already received a lucrative financial package. The Harvard package might have been substantial if I hadn’t blown off the head baseball coach. He might have gone to bat (excuse me) for me had I accepted his offer to attend Harvard’s game the coming Saturday, the day of the week that I had peddled eggs and poultry for seven years without absence.

Edward J. Gass was my egg boss who relied on me to a fault. When I was ten years old, one of my best friends was Bobby Rogers, whose mother bought eggs from the little chicken farm in the middle of a residential neighborhood up the street from my house on Franklin Avenue. One day, on his way to get eggs for his mother, he stopped by my house to ask me to go along with him. I introduced myself to Mr. and Mrs. Gass and became engaged in conversations with them. On my way out, they offered me the job of peddling eggs and selling poultry on commission—a nickel a chicken. Every Saturday thereafter, and Thursdays when school was not in session, for the next seven and a half years we took off from Wyckoff and headed up Route 17 toward Teaneck and vicinity with about two hundred dozen eggs and as many fully dressed chickens as I had taken orders for the prior week.

It was at this job that I first became aware of fringe benefits. Mr. Gass loved sports, and I was the only person he had to share this with him. So I went to many hockey games at Madison Square Garden and baseball games at Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds, where the Giants played before they moved the franchise to San Francisco.

In my senior year, when I was being ignored by the guidance department, Mr. Gass was plotting to pay for me to go to Rutgers University, the state university of New Jersey. Reason: so that he could have me in his employ Saturdays for another four years. I respectfully turned down his offer, and he never spoke to me again.

Thomas Boyd Campbell also lived down the street from me. A bunch of us kids used to play ball in an improvised field adjacent to his house. One day, he yelled, The first two to get over here will have a job while we are away! In hearing job, the dollar signs lit up, and speed was transferred to my feet.

Alan Peia and I were the first ones there to get our job description for while he and his wife, Jane, were away. It involved primarily watering the gardens. When they returned, I was offered ongoing employment at forty cents an hour. This was a welcome supplement to my egg money and was to turn out to be a springboard to my future.

He had been a captain in the navy during World War II and had gone to Colgate University, after which he went into advertising, where he became president of an advertising company. Rather than calling him Tom or Mr. Campbell, it was decided that I would call him Captain Tom, an appellation that remained for the duration of his life. Jane inherited gobs of money, which enabled them to move into a spacious house in nearby Ridgewood. That was the end of my job, but not the end of the friendship.

He had told me that if I continued to do well in school, he would do what he could to have me go to Colgate. Years later, I called him and reminded him of what he had promised. He invited me to his house, where I was welcomed at the door by their butler and then led to the patio for afternoon tea. Shortly thereafter, this Colgate fanatic began to follow through on his promise. Sometime later, I got a call from Red O’Hora, the varsity baseball coach, and ultimately was admitted with a favorable financial package included.

The college decision still had to be made because Colby College was still in the picture. My baseball coach before Seelig Lewitz took over in my senior year was Dick Murray. His half brother was John Winkin, who had been the baseball coach at Englewood High School in New Jersey. He had just been named head baseball coach at Colby for the coming year and was recruiting an entire Jersey infield; I was his choice for second base. I went to Colgate, however, where, owing to a back injury, I never made it beyond the freshman team. Winkin became one of the most successful college baseball coaches ever.

John Winkin went on to become one of the greatest college baseball coaches ever, even without the services of Ramsey’s Bob Spohn. He remained at Colby for more than two decades and was named national coach of the year in 1965. He then went to the University of Maine, where he led the Black Bears to the College World Series in Omaha six times. He died in 2012 at 94.

Later I’ll tell you about Edwin Artz, who became CEO of Procter & Gamble without the benefit—or the distraction—of having Bob Spohn on his team.

At the end of my senior year, I received a letter from the Brooklyn Dodgers organization, inviting me to Ebbets Field to try out for the Dodger Rookie Stars of Tomorrow. This was the first time I had been to Brooklyn and, of course, Ebbets Field. I had batted .420 and had been named to the Newark Star Ledger’s All-State (NJ) Team and had been scouted for some time. The ballplayers invited by the Dodgers were from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. It didn’t take long for me to realize that, when stacked up against the competition encountered, I wasn’t as good as either I or the Dodgers had thought I was. Halfway through the audition, I went to the dugout (which was not as idyllic as you might think from seeing it on TV) to pack up my gear and head back home and commit to going to Colgate.

The event held at Ebbets Field was possible because the Dodgers were on a road trip, specifically at Crosley Field in Cincinnati on that day. Jackie Robinson had been there at second base a few days before. It’s ironic that all these years later, a white guy is boasting about having played in the dirt that a black guy had played in.

CHAPTER 2

Behooves and Other Misunderstandings

This bus driver’s son from New Jersey had no idea that not liking Jews was an option. At Colgate, I joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. As a sophomore brother, at a rush meeting of what turned out to be some overt bigots, I recommended a real nice guy to be considered for inclusion into what turned out to be the exclusionary brotherhood. Brother Bill Bullion, a rather unattractive little guy who was best at drinking and attaining a minimal grade point average, proclaimed, He’s a Jew. His great grandmother was a Jew. I, not aware that I had joined a group that discriminated against blacks, Jews, and others, responded, Bullion, I’d rather have a Jew in this house than an asshole like you. There was silence in the room as the next nominee was presented.

Some respected my conviction; others thought my tirade disrespectful. Some boycotted the hamburger business I launched the next year with another brother, Arnoldo Pablo de Jesus Quiros Cespedes.

This kind of narrow-mindedness was in the charter of many Greek fraternities during those times. And, unfortunately, it was also in the hearts of many of the members, many of whom had come from lily-white suburban America. I’m not sure how many were aware of the discriminatory clauses when they joined. Surely, I had no idea. In fact, I had no idea that Colgate was not an Ivy League school—not that it mattered one way or the other. It was all about the financial package.

Even today, people often think Colgate is part of the Ivy League. It is probably because Colgate’s intercollegiate sports schedule often includes Ivy schools such as Yale, Cornell, Brown, and Columbia. Also, its policies for recruiting student-athletes are similar. Colgate and schools with similar high academic standards are often called Ivy-equivalent.

In the Loshe book, Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy, he paints a lurid picture of what he experienced at Dartmouth College. According to his depiction, the fraternities at Dartmouth would make Animal House (which was partially based on Dartmouth’s fraternity shenanigans in the seventies) look like a supper club. He chronicles the binge-drinking and drug-overdosing exploits that led to obnoxious behavior and medical emergencies that, according to him, were the norm—not the exception.

It can’t be denied that fraternities have had warts and still do. Despite what I’ve just revealed about my experience with prejudice, the transgressions revealed in Frat Boy were not rampant. Yes, there was a lot of drinking, but unless I was as clueless as I might have been, drug use was not prevalent. The dangers and humiliations of hazing varied from school to school and among fraternities.

Through the