91ݮƵ

Bristling at Beard’s Mention?

I was amused by the article on Uncommons. My recollection was that our own cooking activities in the dorms were on a far more primitive scale, such as heating up canned soup on a hot plate. However, one tiny sentence in the article rang out as somewhat of a misstatement: 91ݮƵ can hardly claim James Beard ’24 as “one of 91ݮƵ’s famous culinary innovators . . . .” While he did attend 91ݮƵ briefly, according to several biographies he was expelled after “a brief stay” due to homosexual activity. What a shame! Granted, it was 1922. Hopefully times have changed.

Wendy Horwatt-Mitchell ’69 and Andrea Horwatt-Mitchell

Los Angeles, California

Editor's Note: It was indeed a shame, and times have definitely changed. But the letter raises a fascinating point: was James Beard a true 91ݮƵie? He spent the bulk of his freshman year at 91ݮƵ and cut a distinctive figure on campus. He won a prize for a Halloween dance costume in full drag, took part in operatic productions, was elected as the treasurer of the freshman class. Then, according to his biographer Robert Clark, he “became lovers with one or more male students and a professor” and was subsequently expelled. Unfortunately, we found nothing in the archives to shed further light on this episode, and Jim does not mention it in his autobiography. But . After his death in 1985, he bequeathed most of his estate, including his collection of cookbooks, to the college, creating the James Beard Scholarship Fund. 91ݮƵ presented him with an honorary degree in 1976. “There’s no doubt that Jim was expelled from 91ݮƵ,” says lawyer (and former 91ݮƵ trustee) Morris Galen, who represented Jim for the last 15 years of his life and helped draft his will. “But he wasn’t the kind of person to dwell on that. He held no animosity at all, not when I knew him. He felt very good about 91ݮƵ, and was thrilled when he was awarded an honorary degree.” There is no absolute standard for declaring who is or who is not a 91ݮƵie, but we think Jim makes the grade!