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Merry Pranksters All

Jack’s departure from campus was instantaneous. He spent the balance of Saturday evening and early Sunday morning in the McKinley Library, which was closed from 3:00 on Friday until noon on Sunday. He joined Timm, Jenny, and Rose Marié at church around 10:00, then spent Sunday afternoon and evening rearranging his attic and study to accommodate the contents of his two offices at Busiris. He spent Monday the 11th away from home and away from school, while Stella parlayed procedural lapses and violations of the University Policy on Racial and Sexual Harassment into an additional twenty thousand Busiris bucks for Jack and $4,000 for himself. Not until 4:45 Monday afternoon did Stella deliver Jack’s typed letter of resignation to Old Main. The cover note, written in Jack’s own hand, read, “Bert. Here it is. Are you sure you want it? There’s still time to compromise. A great deal depends on your reaction. Do you want to make a deal? The Invisible J. C.”

Reich read Jack’s note as something between an appeal for mercy and another idle threat, the same combination of weakness and bullying he’d come to expect from Professor Charles Creed ever since the summer school contract episode. Mildly amused, he dismissed the idea of compromise without a second’s thought.

Jack, however, was not offering a deal but issuing a warning. And he knew as he wrote that the Vice President would misread both the note and the situation, until long after he found himself out on the street.

After dark on Monday, Jack returned to the campus and, by the light of security lights shining through his office window, filled approximately two dozen cardboard boxes with books, manuscripts, and personnel effects. Twice footsteps down the hall, and the presence of persons outside, interrupted his labors. At one point there were female voices, one black and the other white.

“He’s not here. Dr. Tucker said he wasn’t here all day.”

“What should we do?”

“I tried calling his home. His phone been busy all day.”

“Dr. Tucker thought he’d be in touch with us.”

“I can’t believe he never gonna see us ever again.”

“Leave him a note.”

After the persons had disappeared, Jack moved the boxes to the freight elevator, and thence to the rear basement entrance of Busiris Hall. At 10:15 p.m. he made his first trip home; at 11:30 p.m. his second. Keys to the office, elevator, mail room, and building he left in his desk, where they were discovered three months later by Vice President Reich and Chairman Jones. By midnight, February 11, 1985, Charles Creed was on his own.

Jack was far less precipitous about vacating his library carol. Few on the library staff and almost no students knew about the room. Those who did were Jack’s friends and not in a mood to talk so loud. Roger Holmes had left Busiris in 1984, four weeks to the day after the Board of Trustees rejected for the third time his proposal for a new building. He had either failed to mention the carol, or his hurriedly appointed successor had forgotten its existence. Not until September did somebody at McKinley Library wonder aloud about the mystery room in the basement. Not until October was the room identified as Professor Charles Creed’s former study. When no key could be found, the new head librarian (ignorant as well of the room’s subterranean fire escape) ordered the door broken down with a fire ax. Jack had long ago removed both his personal effects—and the IBM Selectric—leaving in the top desk drawer the red plastic flashlight and keys to office and building.

So Jack became a complete unknown at Busiris during the daylight hours, although his invisible ghost haunted the campus at night and on weekends, when he continued to make after-hour use of the library. The difference between 1984 and 1985 was, in this regard, negligible.

Those who called for Jack at his home were told simply that he was out, or that he could not come to the phone. Colleagues and students quickly caught on, and in a matter of days quit phoning. In February and March, Lou and I saw very little of Jack ourselves.

Both Hauptmann and Reich expected Jack’s resignation to precipitate a real uproar along the lines of the art students’ boycott: letters of protest, demonstrations, perhaps even subtle threats. They knew of Jack’s popularity among some students and faculty, of his animosity for the institution, and of his reputation for pranks. Reich was in fact surprised to receive Jack’s letter of resignation on the 11th. He had anticipated a more prolonged battle. I have seen evidence suggesting that Reich was not as sure of himself as Michael Stella suggested to Jack on Saturday. The Big Damned Mess card, if played, might have saved Jack’s job.

Especially Reich was surprised at the quiet on campus the week of February 11-15. At a hastily called department meeting on Tuesday, while the campus buzzed with the most libelous gossip, Ted Jones announced only that Jack had resigned, effective immediately, for personal reasons. He said he had done all he personally could do to try to save Jack’s position, suggested that the circumstances were very delicate, and appealed to the English faculty to hold together. He circulated a sheet on which those interested in spring term overloads could indicate their preferences. The only person indicating such a willingness was Victoria Nation.

“Busiris continued to pay him a lot longer than he continued to teach for Busiris,” Jones told me as we left the meeting.

“Jack Creed was the best teacher this place had,” I said. “His loss is a great loss to the institution and the profession. He taught students, faculty, and administration. By his words and by his example.”

“Follow his example, and you will end up exactly where he ended up,” Jones responded.

“Is that a threat, Jeremy?”

“It’s a statement of fact,” he said flatly. “How many times did I warn Chas to beware? He thought I was just kidding him. Now I’m telling you fellows. It’s nose to the grindstone from here on.”

“That this school had ten people like Jack Creed!” rhapsodized Lou Feracca. “Would to god we had a faculty of Jack Creeds. Busiris would be incontestably the best school in the States.”

“A faculty of Chas Creeds? Be serious. Absolute anarchy. No direction at all. An educational disaster.”

“Quit making alibis,” Victoria said. “Charles operated in a political vacuum. He thought he was clever, but he was naive. He was a dinosaur, who could not understand the new order and had no role in it. He empowered no one but himself, and he was completely insensitive to the needs of people from marginalized races, genders, and cultures. He is now . . . an unknown.”

“He was a man who loved and read books, and who taught students to read and love books. What else should we be doing?”

“He knew a few texts,” Victoria responded, “but they were old texts. His ignorance of theory was . . . laughable. In literary theory as well as academic politics, Chas was a clown. He taught the students not practical power but naiveté.”

“I take it you will be scabbing this spring, Victoria?” Lou challenged.

“Jack resigned,” Victoria said. “Face it, guys. Your big macho stud hero—who is, off the record, not much of a stud—walked out on the students, and he walked out on you. He disappointed—I will not say disgraced—the institution and the profession, my institution and my profession. I’m still here, in one of the finest schools in the country, doing my little part to rid the discipline and the country of patriarchal prejudice and bias. I got it made. Should I commit suicide because Charles Creed couldn’t adjust?

“Here’s a secret for you,” she added. “I feel no sympathy and no guilt. I had nothing to do with his departure.”

“That’s not exactly the word on the street,” Feracca told her.

“Charles Creed, if you will pardon the expression, made his own bed. Or tried to. Tried too hard, from what I understand, in more than one case. He finally got what he’s been asking for all these years.”

“Tell us about Jack’s bed,” Lou said with a cold look at Victoria. “You’ve been hot to climb into it ever since you met him. What do you know about Jack’s bed, Miss Vicky?”

“You three can put it all to bed right there,” Jones ordered. “Charles’ situation is resolved in Old Main, not in this department. Anyone who divides this department is in deep trouble. That goes for you, Victoria, and you too, Lou and Andy. I don’t want a divided department.”

“You have a divided department. Will the chair be teaching overload this spring, Jeremy?”

“Those sections have to be covered.”

“Nobody picked up Professor Nation’s sections when she was off at Bryn Mawr.”

“We’re already into the term. These classes have already met.”

“My personal guess is those classes will be pretty empty pretty soon.”

“No matter what anyone does,” Victoria insisted, “Jack Creed is not returning to Busiris. Someone ought to profit from the situation.”

“Scab for $1200?”

“Who better to fill Charles’ shoes than Charles’ friends?”

“That ain’t you, babe.”

Jones shot Lou another hard look.

“If faculty can teach five-course loads,” Feracca told Jones, “we should all be teaching five courses a term instead of four, at 125% of our present salaries. If we can’t handle five courses without doing our students an injustice—and I personally believe we can’t—then Max and Moritz do the students a disservice in asking us to take five classes. Or in trying to bump class size limits up another five or ten students.”

“These are extraordinary circumstances,” Jones said. “Whatever occurred between Reich and Creed, we have an obligation to help the students. At the moment that means getting them the instruction they need.”

“If Busiris can’t give students what they deserve, which means quality teachers in reasonably sized classes, then they are best served by transferring to U of I, or Southern, or Wesleyan. Even Bradley, for chrissake. Or by taking an honest job at the Pizza Hut. And don’t go blaming me for the students’ problems. Or Jack either. Blame Reich and Hauptmann. They don’t give a flying fuck for students, or for Busiris either. Or for principles, for that matter. They are strictly careerists who go with whatever ideological flow they think will further their careers. . . which I personally hope that this mess terminates. They dumped Jack two weeks into the term. Let them teach his fucking courses.”

“You’ve been hanging around Chas too much lately.”

“He’s a friend of mine, Jerry—a word you might not understand.”

“Watch your toes.”

“I’ve been watching my toes for a decade. All I see is the moss growing.”

“And tell that Pollak or Russian or whatever the hell he is to keep his nose clean. None of us really know what went on. Not I and not you.”

“And not Gruppenführer Hauptmann or Oberführer Reich. You can bet on that.”

“Leanna Robertson, one of my advisees, is very upset about Jack’s resignation and what may come out of it,” said Victoria. “So are many of the other women on campus.”

“And well they should be,” Feracca said.

“Admit it, Lou. Charles Creed is a chauvinist of the worst order. His language . . . his whole behavior around women . . . just demeaning to their whole personhood. Jack Creed has caused many sensitive women on this campus severe emotional distress.”

“Including Ms. Doctor Associate Professor Victoria ‘Tits’ Nation?” Feracca wanted to know.

“Your language is over the edge, Lou,” Jones warned.

“You start giving me that raised consciousness crap,” Feracca told Nation, “and I’m going to give you a few pieces of your own history.”

“Watch yourself.”

“Jerry . . . fuck you,” I said. “And fuck Victorian Vicky as well.”

I’ve always been glad I said that.

Beyond this small altercation in the English faculty, the explosion administration feared never developed. The old faculty advocates of academic freedom and free speech scurried like roaches for the nearest crack in the wall. Student-staff reaction to Jack’s resignation was nonexistent. No demonstrations, no letters, virtually no protest.

All of us lamented the apparent betrayal. Every indication was that Old Main had grossly overestimated Jack’s support, which amounted to no support at all. I have seen a memo dated 2/22/85, issued by the highest levels of the Old Main steeple, congratulating Vice President Reich on “neutralizing student reaction” by his “adroit and sensitive handling of the English Department and the situation on campus.”

“The situation on campus,” however, was slightly different than President Howard understood it. March, April and May would demonstrate that Jack had more sympathizers than anyone ever imagined.

As for mid-February, the students wanted to torch Busiris. It was Jack himself who chilled out the situation.

That story is told here for the first time.

The truth is that thirty to forty students had met on Monday evening to plan a series of actions designed to restore Jack’s appointment. “We were pretty careful about who we invited and where we met,” Paul Popowski later recalled. “We figured places on campus would be watched and maybe bugged, even the Black Students Alliance. I figured I was being watched, and Carolyn too. We were very paranoid, and probably we should have been. Like a spy movie. Finally we picked the shelter in Riverfront Park. This was the middle of February, at night. We brought weenies and marshmallows, like a picnic, in case the cops asked any questions. People sneaking in one and two at a time from cars parked six blocks away. People patrolling the perimeters, checking for spies. Like a spy movie or something. We were freezing our asses off.”

Paul explained what he knew, as did Carolyn McQuillan, Joline Harte, and Dierdre Williams. There was some discussion of Jack’s relationships with students, with Afro-Americans, and with women. Williams recounted the story of her lunch at the Heidelberger. “Shit,” she concluded; “I couldn’t make him for tryin’. Not then, not Friday afternoon. He too uptight about rules and regs.”

There was some discussion of the character of the women making complaints. All were well known. Lily Lee Martin was mentioned only as Jack’s protégé, a very hip Afro-American, and the affirmative action officer.

Apparently this meeting was not reported to or eavesdropped on by University officials. It is interesting to speculate on how Reich, Hauptmann, and Howard would have reacted to the discussion. Certainly the students’ candid assessment of Jack’s private life would have shocked them, but this group was sympathetic to Jack, his ideas and his lifestyle. These students, at least, found Jack’s behavior neither offensive nor threatening. The tenor of discussion was exculpatory . . . had Old Main been of a mind to listen.

Proposed strategies broke largely along racial lines. Everyone understood that maximum leverage could be had only from a display of maximum power, and any acceptable solution would have to satisfy all persons involved: pro and con factions of the student body, pro and con factions of the faculty, and administration. “What we really want,” Deirdre Williams said, “is to keep Professor Creed at Busiris as a teacher, and let administrators know that we don’t want no more hassles for him.” How best to achieve those aims?

Several very unbooshie Chicago blacks who knew Jack’s history proposed an immediate take-over of Old Main by black and white students, negotiations to follow. “Quick, decisive action underscores the point about no more hassles,” they argued.

A more moderate group, mostly white, proposed gradual escalation: negotiations backed by the threat of a take-over, with demonstrations or a take-over only as a last resort. “We don’t want to alienate administrators right away. This isn’t the sixties anymore.”

Popowski, claiming to represent most English majors, wanted a student strike. No attendance in any classes until Jack returned.

André Washington, starting playmaker for the Bucks, offered to lead a team boycott which, he pointed out, “would hurt Busiris where it hurts most. If we strike just one game, Professor Creed is back the following day. Probably with a big raise.”

“I thought the team was pissed about Jack and Alonzo Jackson,” somebody said.

“The nigger is strictly South side. Big fuckin’ trouble for the team and the school,” Washington told him. “We all know we’re better off without him, including Coach Miller. Professor Creed did right.”

The students settled finally on the threat of a strike followed, if necessary, by a strike itself. One subcommittee was formed to draft letters to the Trustees, another to write letters to the Sentinel, a third group to create, print, and distribute posters and fliers. The basketball team would wear black wrist bands at the next home game and let the media take the story from there.

Around 10:00 Popowski phoned Jack’s home to discuss the group’s plans. Rose Marié told Paul that Jack was at school. He, Carolyn, and Deirdre Williams drove over to school while the rest waited in the darkness by the river. Popowski found Jack’s lights out and his office door closed. He left a note, and returned to the park. Unable to go further, the group ate their marshmallows and dissolved.

Sometime after midnight the mystery tramp himself met with Paul, Carolyn, Deirdre and André. He suggested that the situation was cool, and no public reaction on their part would be necessary.

On Tuesday, all plans for letters, sit-ins, strikes and boycotts were canceled.

Conventional campus wisdom read Jack’s resignation as an admission of guilt. Most of the gossip was speculation on what crimes could be spectacular enough to fire a fully tenured, nationally recognized professor in mid-year. The students’ passivity was taken as an indication of their understanding of his guilt. Subsequent events suggest, however, that the students’ wrath, Jack’s energies, and the anger of other Busiris constituencies were redirected from sit-ins and strikes to other expressions of applied dissident politics. Creed’s dismissal signaled the beginning of the ghetto uprising which nearly closed the institution permanently.

To say this is not to imply that he, or any of his allies among students, faculty, or custodial staff were in any way directly responsible for the series of misfortunes which befell Busiris in 1985. Jack and his crowd were not alone in their almost pathological hatred of the institution. Let us admit the facts. He or anyone else looking to work the college harm would not have had far to look for help. Crimes and the pranks both were fully investigated by intelligent and competent individuals inside and outside of the University. No investigation ever implicated either Jack or his friends. At a decade’s remove I can add nothing to their reports.

Nor would I if I could.

I can say only what we all quickly learned: Vice President Reich had not been anywhere near as successful as President Howard thought in neutralizing the situation.

For one thing, it soon became apparent that Jack had anticipated his departure long before the meeting in Reich’s office. The first intimation of this came as we left the office of Stella, Corwin, Purdue and Holz. I was fretting aloud about employment for Jack in 1985-86. “Not to worry,” he said confidently; “next year is taken care of. And the year after that. I’m safe through summer of 1987. Maybe longer. After that . . . I get another job or I write another book. Maybe both.”

I assumed at the moment he was referring to the year’s salary offered by Reich, plus unemployment insurance, plus whatever else Stella had negotiated by way of a severance package. But Jack’s confidence about 1985-86 was based on an imminent appointment as senior Fulbright lecturer in American Studies at the University of Swansea, Wales. He had applied for the Fulbright (without Rose Marié’s knowledge) shortly after returning from his first European venture, using academic references from individuals off campus and a teaching reference, oddly, from Roger Holmes in the library. In addition, he had arranged an invitation from the American Studies chair at University of Swansea, Wales, whom he’d met during the winter of 1983. With his Pulitzer Prize and his publications record Jack probably needed neither the recommendations nor the invitation, but the combination of book, prize, experience, invitation and previous residence in Wales gave him a lock on the assignment every American academic covets: one year abroad, lecturing and traveling, in the United Kingdom.

Jack left word of the Fulbright unannounced, even to his friends. We read about it in the Standard-Republican in early March.

Although I felt vaguely wounded at being out of Jack’s plans, the news left me curiously elated. Once again Creed had stuffed himself down everyone’s throat. He’d been injured not at all by Reich’s bullet. To a full year’s salary and additional Busiris pay-offs, he added his Fulbright stipend. As for working conditions, there was no comparison.

Once announced, the event was celebrated over burgers and beer at Tookey’s. Midway through my second beer, a light went on in my head. I asked Jack about application deadlines for Fulbright appointments.

“Well, Tucker, now that you ask, the application deadline for a 1985-86 appointment was August 31 of 1984.

“August 31 of 1984,” I repeated stupidly.

“August 31, 1984.”

“You son of a bitch.” Feracca nearly choked on his beer.

“And the actual decision date?” I wanted to know. “Just when do applicants get the good or bad news?”

“Well, Andrew old buddy, let’s just say sometime between September 1 and December 31.”

“You son of a bitch,” Feracca repeated again and again. “You weren’t going to give them any notice at all, were you?”

“I was going to give Reich just about as much notice as he gave me,” Jack laughed. “I’d have given him . . . a weekend.”

So the Charles had been more in control than any of us expected. The Jack of Hearts had managed a most satisfying escape out the back door.

Joining him were fourteen undergraduate majors and five graduate students, who transferred or withdrew from the Busiris program before September 1985. Five faculty members followed. By fall of 1986, every significantly published member of the Busiris English faculty save Jeremy Jones had left, including two males whom we had never counted as especially pro-Creed. Jack took from the department—and the university—everything, everyone he could steal. Four of the five, to our surprise and their own, found better positions at larger and wealthier institutions. The fifth dropped out of teaching entirely. He was picked up by a graphic arts outfit as a sales-public relations person. In five years he was pulling down more than any of us, and at least twice what he would have made had he been able to hang on at Busiris.

Resignations in other departments also ran heavy in 1985-86, although the Great Retrenchment of 1986 made them more a benefit to the institution than a curse, and it was sometimes hard to differentiate resignation from retrenchment.

Perhaps Charles Creed’s departure had nothing to do with the general exodus from Busiris. Perhaps the students and faculty both had, like Jack, long inclined toward departure, needing only the revelation of handwriting on the wall to push them out the door.

Perhaps it did. The events of February 1985 demonstrated that Vice President Reich could indeed, as he often boasted, “fire anyone I want to, at any time I want to, for any reason I want to.” That was the message we all heard, loud and clear. Those who could, cleared out. Whether Jack’s departure was part of or cause for the great departure, it signaled the gutting of the English program at Busiris Technical University.

Perhaps Jack had nothing as well to do with the series of pranks and disasters which reduced Busiris nearly to bankruptcy during 1985 and 1986.

Perhaps he did.

The pranks began in late February. They ranged from high jinx to embarrassing annoyances to serious criminal activity. They came from everywhere and targeted everyone.

Chronology is difficult at a decade’s remove, but one of the earliest came in the form of a series of bogus memos and phone calls, back and forth among Hauptmann, Reich, Howard, and their assistants and staff. The memos set nonexistent meetings, proposed absurd projects, criticized someone’s mishandling of a nonexistent crisis, protested in strong and earthy terms the termination of programs that had not been terminated, threatened dire consequences, warned of imminent falls. One even requested Hauptmann’s resignation. Each bogus memo begat legitimate responses, which made no sense to their recipients, who fired off angry responses of their own. The responses created more confusion. Old Main was, by all reports, a regular circus.

The memos were typed on the letterhead of a dozen appropriate offices, carried all the proper secretarial significations, read and looked for all the world like every other legitimate Hauptmann, Reich or Howard memo. The first few false directives produced anxiety, suspicion, and animosity among thieves. When discovered to be false, they created a period of confusion, of constant checkings and verifications. Every piece of paper resulted in a dozen phone calls. How else to differentiate the legitimate from the illegitimate? Then came the realization that people outside the Old Main inner circle might be receiving copies. Or memos of their own. Better check everything. But how, without sounding incompetent or paranoid, do you phone someone and ask, “Have you received any suspicious sounding notes from me?”

While Old Main was awash with memos, the Busiris Maintenance Plant began receiving deliveries of supplies and equipment ordered by fraudulent purchase orders. A whole new realm of anxieties and confusion opened up.

In March, Reich instituted, at no small expense of time and money, a completely revised system of purchase and communication, with elaborate checks and sign-offs. But the new system did nothing at all to reduce the flow of bogus communications. It’s fair to point out that Jack could never have known the new system. Neither could other faculty or students. Besides, the memos referenced discussions and documents unknown to outsiders. Reich concluded that his problem was internal and launched an internal investigation. Charles Creed was not even questioned. Questioning Jack in an internal investigation would have been impossible anyway, since he was never around campus and no longer a Busiris employee.

Reich’s inquiry came to nothing. In the end, the Old Main secretarial staff was held collectively responsible for the false memos, and maybe they were. Jack had many friends among the blue-collar employees of Busiris, and most Old Main secretaries detested their bosses. They also knew where the skeletons hung. Not a single secretary lost her position as a result of the March Memo Blizzard.

The memos diminished in March, then ceased as mysteriously as they had begun. When the smoke cleared, the main damage was wasted time in Old Main, and resentment from unhappy suppliers, who lost what they thought were pretty big sales. Busiris absorbed shipping charges on returned merchandise.

One uncaught memo from the Vice President for Business Services cost the Women’s Studies Program $15,000 of its 1985-86 speakers and consultants budget. Victoria discovered the prank in the late fall of 1985 when she filed a travel-and-honorarium request for one of her old Bryn Mawr pals and was told her account was in the red. By the time she straightened things out, Busiris was in a world of financial hurt which would have cost her the $15,000 anyway.

As the secretarial corps took the memo heat, the custodial staff took flack for the vandalism in upper level administration offices.

While offering raises well below cost-of-living increases to staff or faculty, Vice President Reich had been treating himself and other high-level administrators to an additional 15-20% annually. For his office he had ordered a new mahogany desk, an enormous chrome-and-leather recliner, an assortment of mahogany chairs for guests, plus a new white leather sofa, plus other furnishings, plus new gray wall-to-wall carpeting. Jack had been one of the first to cross the gray carpet on the afternoon of February 8. Sumptuous new furnishings had been ordered as well for the offices of other administrators, including President Howard. Each day during the spring of 1985 Physical Plant received some new extravagance from Potter and Palmer, Interiors, Inc., to be wrestled by the resentful proletariat to the offices of their betters. Most faculty and staff were well aware that while they were gimping along on a banged up manual typewriter, the Vice President was sitting on his chrome horse and juicing it up with visiting diplomats and potentates.

On March 11, Reich—and half a dozen other bigwigs, including Lily Lee Martin-Oliver—arrived in their recently refurbished offices to find the new furniture, and the new carpet, inscribed with magic marker messages. “This sofa represents the 5% raises Professor Douglas did not receive this year or last.” “This desk represents a 7% raise to Professor Kinney.” “The money spent on this room would have provided a 2% Christmas bonus for every secretary at Busiris Technical Institute.”

The clean-up bill alone would have provided a 5% raise for everyone in Physical Plant, none of whom expected a bonus anyway, all of whom were glad to see a point made.

Cleaning up the offices was nothing compared to cleaning up the campus after some person or persons spread 2, 4-D instead of or mixed with fertilizer in the April 6, 1985, Clean Up, Spruce Up, Fix Up Busiris Day. Hundred-year-old trees died in that disaster, a prank that was no prank. The campus browned to a crisp. First the bedded annuals, then the shrubs and ivy, finally the grass. Unaware of the cause or extent of the problem, the grounds crew attempted first a number of small landscaping projects: a flower bed there, some reseeding there. The new plants never took. Instead, more of the old foliage died. The re-landscaping grew more intense, still without success. Somebody suggested that the problem might lie in the soil, and sure enough, much of the soil around Busiris was so badly poisoned as to make cover unlikely for years.

Then the trees started to go, including oaks, which dropped like elms afflicted with the Dutch Elm Disease. In a matter of months, the pastoral Busiris campus was stripped bald as a cue ball. It did not recover any semblance of greenery until spring, 1986, and it lost, probably forever, whatever it possessed of the ivy-covered elegance of an old Midwestern college.

A police investigation began on April 30, nearly a month after the fact. Several male faculty members were questioned, including Lou and me, and several students including Paul Popowski. The security staff took a lot of heat, although in all fairness the small Busiris security staff was focused more on monitoring Old Main memos than on guarding the Busiris grounds. The grounds crew came under intense scrutiny when four spreaders were found to contain traces of the herbicide. Fertilizer residue, however, was much stronger than 2, 4-D, and the official police report suggests the spreaders were contaminated after the fact, by someone covering his tracks. Suppliers of farm chemicals throughout Central Illinois were questioned, but the source of the herbicide was never found. By the end of April, of course, containers were long gone, and fingerprints and footprints had long ago been obscured. Riverton Police even questioned crop-dusters and retailers of anything that could have been used to spread herbicides.

Riverton Police also questioned Charles Creed. They were delighted to have an excuse to grill Creed at last. They spent two full days with Jack and his family, trying to fix his whereabouts hour by hour, day by day over several months. “If they’d had it their way, they’d have gone back to the Laird demonstration,” Jack told me. “They had FBI files and everything. I never threatened a lawyer, but I was a very non-cooperative son-of-a-bitch. Told them that the trauma of being fired had just wiped me out. Most days I just lay around the house wondering how I could support my family. They told me to quit being a wise-ass. I told them to try being fired sometime. They told me they’ll be on me like chewing gum, so I better watch it. I said something about police harassment, and they backed off a little.”

Jack’s home, garage, clothing, and cars were all tested for traces of the herbicide, for contaminated work gloves or coveralls.

Police found nothing.

That particular prank (the defoliation could not possibly have resulted from an honest mistake) produced a tremendous backlash among a community grown somewhat concerned for Busiris’s future. We all understood that the sins of Bert and Ernie were not to be visited upon the innocent fauna and flora of the BTU.

Jack was generally held incapable of a crime against Nature. He condemned the prank as roundly as anyone. “Ethics must prevail,” he agreed. “An unethical system of quid pro quo is unacceptable.”

Still, many held him generally responsible for letting his students run out of control. “I’m not in control of anyone except myself,” he pointed out. “Not students, not Buildings and Grounds, and certainly not administration.” Fall 1985 brought four pink slips in Buildings and Grounds, although the cuts were attributed to economic hardship, not environmental sabotage.

Other pranks were more amusing. The exterminator who showed up one afternoon in Vice President Reich’s office claiming to have been contacted about “some skunk loose on the premises” provided laughs for a week.

The Commencement Day Prank of 1985 left parents and friends of the graduates befuddled and the podium contingent profoundly embarrassed.

Beneath the false stage erected for commencement on the floor of the Busiris Convocation Center someone hid a portable tape recorder (property of the BTU Audio Services) which he or she plugged into an unused floor outlet below the podium. In the absence of power to that particular outlet, the recorder, punched to “play,” lay silent and unsuspected through the processional, through the singing of the National Anthem, through “Alma Mater B,” whose lyrics were printed on a program insert for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the song. The honored guests, parents, graduates, and those faculty who, being only moderately familiar with the song, thought to check their memories against printed copy were startled to read not the old familiar “Lift up thy voice and sing,” but

Those who knew the song cold and sang from memory had no idea what the chuckles and gasps were about. Neither did the Vice President, who, although he knew not a line, tended to mumble along with the crowd.

Some time after the singing of “Alma Mater,” however—about the time students, teachers, parents and honored guests were noticing various defacements of “Busiris Bucks” on gymnasium banners (“Busiris Sucks” proclaimed several; “Busiris Fucks” read others; “Busiris Un versity” read the institutional seal on the podium)—the unknown perpetrator tripped a circuit breaker, providing power to the outlet . . . and the tape recorder.

The tape unwound silently below the stage until in the middle of Vice President Reich’s welcoming address it emitted a very audible “Bert Reich sucks dead water buffaloes.” Several individuals on stage looked at each other, then behind them. The voice fell silent and the speech continued. A few minutes later the voice proclaimed, “Fred Timberman is a fat capitalist pig.” (Timberman’s honorary doctorate, being presented for “magnanimous support of the arts and sciences,” had cost him something like a million dollars in contributions to Busiris.) Again the dignitaries on stage looked around. Again the voice fell silent.

“Bert Reich is a fascist,” the voice asserted.

“President Howard died five years ago.”

“Busiris is a rip-off.”

The voice, louder and louder, was picked up by the stage microphones, amplified throughout the gymnasium. A technician hurried to the stage, whispered to Dean Hauptmann, and checked behind the heavy maroon curtain. The voice fell silent. The technician reported to Dean Hauptmann. Commencement continued.

Ten minutes later the voice was back. “Hauptmann farts in airlocks,” it announced. “Reich is an Auschwitz swine.” “Busiris Sucks.” More twittering among parents in the bleachers, students and faculty on the gymnasium floor. More consternation on the podium. Reich interrupted his presentation of the honorary degree to request that a technician check the amplification system. Into the ensuing silence broke the voice, unmasked, uncluttered, clear as a bell, amplified perfectly now throughout the Field House: “Bert Reich is a Fat Texas Asshole.” Confusion reigned.

And then more silence. Reich conferred with Howard, who conferred with one of the trustees. “We will now hear a musical selection from the Busiris Chorus,” the Vice President announced. “During this selection, would a technician please shut off and check the Field House sound system?”

Finally the hidden tape recorder gave itself away by playing at top volume Jimi Hendrix’ Woodstock rendition of “The National Anthem.” It got in nearly two minutes of heavy metal anthem before someone could locate the source of the noise, crawl beneath the stage, and pull the right plug.

The students had a field day.

The tape, the recorder, the electrical chord and even the circuit breaker were fingerprinted. The voice on the tape was analyzed: white, male, possibly adolescent, probably downstate Illinois. Not a voice anyone recognized. The musical selections were analyzed—the Woodstock recording, and further down the tape, which students never heard, “Maggie’s Farm” and “For What It’s Worth.” Distortions on the records used to make the tape did not match the distortions on the records in Jack’s collection.

During the investigation—the third or fourth to bring Riverton police knocking on his door—Jack filed a formal complaint of police harassment. Nothing came of the complaint, except that the Riverton police were, for a time, more circumspect in questioning Jack.

Other pranks were less amusing, and even more devastating economically than the defoliation of the campus. The basketball program suffered tremendously when De Paul, UCLA, and Notre Dame canceled their basketball games with Busiris, effective with the 1985-86 season. The cancellations stemmed from a series of miscommunications with the Busiris sports information office, beginning with letters from Busiris in March seeking to change dates in the 1985-86 schedule and complaining about unfair financial arrangements.

Responses from the three universities brought confusion similar to that attending the Old Main memos. Oddly—and unfortunately—the athletic department took such care to conceal its problem from administration that Reich did not include the athletic department letters in his investigation of forged memos and bogus purchase orders.

“We never said that,” Busiris told Notre Dame. “Who complained about what?” it told DePaul. “What are you talking about?” it asked the fellow from UCLA. A few phone calls calmed the waters, but then another series of calls muddied the waters, and next thing we all knew Busiris basketball was facing an NCAA investigation and probable sanctions.

Finally De Paul, Notre Dame, and UCLA all decided to replace the Bucks with somebody who had their act together.

Possibly Busiris would have lost UCLA and Notre Dame anyway. In the 1980s Division 1 college basketball programs reached levels on which Busiris could never have competed. But very lucrative home-and-home games had been confirmed for 1985-86 and 1986-87 with all three schools. The Busiris Athletic Department estimated loss of ticket and television revenue from those three games alone at about $1,000,000 per year. The disappearance of three major opponents from the Bucks schedule certainly contributed to the collapse of Busiris Bucks basketball, from a team once ranked regularly in the nation’s top twenty Division 1 teams to an also-ran in a conference that is close to Division Two.

The main reason for the program’s demise, of course, was the NCAA investigation of basketball recruiting violations between 1982 and 1985. The report of that investigation remains absolutely confidential, and to read the Standard-Republican, one would think the fellows from Kansas were a bunch of pinkos. Stories in the Chicago newspapers, however, reported a number of minor recruiting violations and major irregularities regarding Alonzo Jackson. Charges included illegal pre-signing contacts, both off- and on-campus, payoffs in the form of jobs and gifts, and fixing Jackson’s high school transcript and college records. The minor violations would probably have cost Busiris a slap on the wrist, but any one of the Jackson allegations would have fried the school . . . and Marty Miller, who left Busiris in the summer of 1985. The Busiris Athletic Department estimated that its voluntary three-year abstention from television and tournament basketball play cost upward of $5,000,000—and at least a million more in tickets, concession and memorabilia sales, and contributions if the Bucks had made the NCAA Tournament field in any one of those years.

The impact on recruiting of the suspension and of Coach Marty Miller’s departure was immeasurable. The Bucks have not won a conference championship since their suspension. They have not been ranked in the top twenty since 1980. They have not appeared in an NCAA tournament since their suspension, and lost the opening round of their only NIT appearance (1989).

Then there was the Jean Dixon business. In March 1985, the famous psychic was reported to have predicted “a major disaster, involving at least a hundred deaths and millions of dollars in damages sometime in 1985 at a large private college in downstate Illinois.” The college could have been any one of a number of institutions, and although a spokesperson for Ms. Dixon denied such a prediction had ever been made, Howard and Reich delayed fatally in publicizing the denial, being distracted by other matters and fearing that denial would only spread the rumor. They need not have worried. Rumors spread like influenza across an already jumpy campus. Fifty students left Riverton in one week, and transfers out of Busiris for academic year 1985-86 were up a total of 803, an increase of 215%, over 1982-83. (This number included disaffected English majors and persons leaving the Institute for reasons yet to be described.) Transfers into Busiris, on the other hand, were down by approximately 300. At $10,000 apiece in tuition and fees, times up to three years a student, Busiris lost millions.

Clearly Jack had nothing to do with the Dixon prediction. Probably he had nothing to do with the NCAA investigation, although representatives flew all the way to Wales to confer with the former faculty representative on the Bucks Booster Association. Jack always liked Coach Marty Miller and was nearly a surrogate father to several Busiris basketball players.

Jack’s role in the letters to donors, students, and prospective students was less clear.

This was an enormous prank executed right under the nose of Bertholt Reich. It involved 35,000 pieces of mail in three separate mailings. All three came out of Old Main in the atmosphere of enhanced security following the phony memos and purchase orders, possibly concurrent with the campus defoliation. None of the mailings were inspected or even questioned. Large bulk mailings out of Old Main were common enough, especially from Student Relations, the Foundation, and the Admissions and Recruitment Office, so there was no reason to question the contents of all those out-going envelopes. Besides, all were processed through the university post office and came with crosschecked authorization forms, routine handling instructions, and Busiris bulk mail clearances.

Because they involved the U. S. Postal service, the mailings brought a federal investigation not only of Jack but of several members of the staff (including Lily Lee Martin-Oliver), faculty (including myself and Lou Feracca) and student body (including Paul Popowski). The investigation took months and nearly delayed Jack’s departure for Wales. It established that all three began as legitimate mailings, materials planned and printed by each respective office as part of its on-going recruitment, fund-raising or student service operations. The letters and brochures that were to have been included in those envelopes were indeed printed, folded, and delivered to Student Relations, Admissions, and the Foundation. Workers in each office testified under oath that they had prepared each mailing using appropriate materials, and bundled and bagged each mail sack with the appropriate letters. Busiris postal service workers testified they did not check the contents of envelopes in any of the three mailings, as they were not required to do. U. S. Post Office clerks testified that each mailing contained approximately the number of letters indicated on the bulk mailing form, and that the letters weighed approximately what the forms said they did. Since Busiris postal services did not keep duplicates of the forms which accompanied the mail bags to the Riverton Post Office, they had no way of knowing whether someone substituted bags and forms, opened bags and substituted envelopes, or opened bags and unfolded each envelope—a tedious process indeed—and substituted new letters for old.

Workers who prepared the original mailings testified that the labels and envelopes were, as far as they could tell, pretty much what had left their offices. Duplicating Services had no runs of mailing labels for which it could not account.

Inspectors were able to determine that the bogus letters had been produced on the Alumni Office typewriter and photocopied on the Admissions Office photocopy machine.

Intriguingly, the investigation revealed that someone at some time or times might, after somehow gaining access to Old Main itself, have reached most offices, including Admissions, Development, and Alumni Records—by crawling between the true and suspended ceilings, removing acoustical tiles, breaking a hole through the cinder block wall between Admissions and Alumni Records, lowering him- or herself into the rooms. Possibly, however, the tiles had been dented by authorized maintenance workers, from whose clothes several blue and green cotton threads may have come.

The investigation also established that only the central supplies depot in the Old Main basement would have contained 35,000 BTU envelopes. The office would not have been accessible except with a key. The only fingerprints positively identified on tiles, letters, envelopes, drawers and equipment belonged to Busiris staff.

The most puzzling feature of the case was records. Shadow marks of flaws on the machine glass clearly proved the bogus letters, or a master photocopy, had been produced in Admissions. The counter on that machine, however, recorded no unusual surge in usage during February and March of 1985. Copy machine usage had increased by about 10,000 copies per month beginning in September, 1984, an increase attributed at the time to normal increased usage at the start of the school year. When investigators sought, in May of 1985, to audit the Copy Request forms required by Admissions procedures for photocopy orders over 500 copies, they discovered that forms from academic year 1984-85 had disappeared.

Or been misplaced.

Likewise the Central Supplies clerk could identify no request for 35,000 envelopes, and no sudden disappearance of 35,000 envelopes in February. “That’s half a dozen cases of envelopes,” she told investigators. “You notice when six cases of anything suddenly goes missing.”

Nor could duplicating services find any suspect requests for labels, or any sets of mailing labels unaccounted for by known bulk mailings.

Nor could diligent investigations find the printer of a new brochure, or the remains of old brochures and letters.

In the end, although Reich was screaming for blood, especially Jack’s, no suspects were charged. The only logical inference was that this too had been an inside job, months in preparation, which antedated by weeks, probably months, the events of February 8.

Investigators estimated the time needed to print and prepare 35,000 pieces of mail—even using BTU self-adhesive, presorted mailing labels—was something like two hundred man hours. To unbundle, empty, refill, and rebundle 35,000 envelopes would have taken even longer. This was a prank of enormous proportions. And of enormous, and disastrous consequences.

As there were three mailings, there were three letters.

The first was a letter to students and parents of students announcing an as-yet-to-be-determined tuition increase of up to 50% for 1985-86. “As you know,” this letter began, “the eighties have been a time of skyrocketing costs in all areas. During this time, Busiris has done more than its share in keeping student expenses low while sustaining high quality instruction. Today, however, Busiris finds itself in the unfortunate position of coming to terms with the inflation that its students, and its student’s parents, have helped create by their own rising incomes. . . .”

The increase in tuition and fees, the letter explained, was necessary to pay increased salaries in the areas of Busiris administration, student services, and support personnel, and to underwrite the remodeling of Old Main. It pointed out that such increases were not out of line with those at comparable institutions like Northwestern, Washington University, and Illinois Wesleyan. It offered statistics to show that Busiris students and parents could, thanks to their new eighties affluence, “easily afford” the increases. It expressed confidence that students and their parents would be more than happy to “pay more to get more: more administrative services, more counseling services, more recreational activities.”

Finally, students on grants and scholarships were directed to “reapply for financial aid, as strained Busiris resources necessitate reconsideration of all awards, announced and pending.”

This genuinely insulting letter brought an instantaneous uproar from irate recipients. It took two days for administrators to understand fully what had happened. Then the Institute hired six faculty wives, including my Linda, to work full-time for a week in a telephone campaign which contacted individually each student and each parent, explaining the letter had been a hoax, tuition was not being raised 50%, and financial aid was not being reallocated. How effective the phone campaign was in neutralizing the letter, no one will ever know, but transfers out of Busiris increased three fold in 1985-86. Matters were not helped when in the summer of 1985 the Board of Trustees, responding to dramatic declines in projected fall enrollment and the economic impact of disasters already described, did in fact raise tuition for 1985-86. But only by 24%.

The second letter contributed significantly to the decline of students by scaring off incoming freshmen. The mailing it replaced left Admissions almost concurrent with the Student Service mailing to enrolled students. The original mailing was to have been a recruitment tool targeted at high school juniors and seniors who had scored well on ACT and SAT examinations. Colleges commonly purchase such lists from the testing agencies for recruiting purposes. Those students, who come usually from affluent families prejudiced in favor of private education, are heavily recruited in elaborate mail and telephone campaigns. Busiris had purchased such a list for Chicago, for downstate Illinois, and for the entire states of Indiana, Wisconsin, and Iowa. To those names it had added the names and addresses of top area and state prospects culled from a variety of other sources, and, of course, students who had already expressed interest in Busiris. The master list of over 22,000 high school seniors represented the core of its hopes for the 1985-86 freshmen class. Busiris had already sent each student on the list a letter of introduction (November), a view book and catalog (December), and an invitation to visit the campus (January). The February mailing was a blanket clean-up: “Don’t forget about us, we haven’t forgotten about you. And we still have unclaimed financial aid.”

That’s not what the high schoolers received.

At approximately the same time enrolled students and their parents were being notified of tuition increases of up to 50%, prospective students were reading a similar letter alerting them to similar increases. The increases were justified by claims so inflated as to collapse upon themselves. Busiris engineering was compared to the program at MIT, its physical facilities to those at Notre Dame, its faculty to the faculties of Stanford and Harvard. President Howard was quoted as promoting a “new vision of Busiris” in which “only the best of the best would play a role.” “Busiris is in a position to be very selective,” Admissions warned high school seniors. “The mediocre should apply elsewhere,” a Busiris professor of sociology was quoted as saying. “There’s no room in my class for anyone with an I. Q. under 135,” said a psychology professor.

The letter was Busiris boosterism propelled to absurd heights, and its net effect, fully intended by the author, was to insult and discourage. Accompanying the letter came a bogus BTU recruitment flier. “Are You Smug, Middle-Class, Middle-Brow?” it began. “The New Busiris is looking for you.” After four pages highlighting fraternity/sorority life, bars, basketball, and the red light district of Riverton, the brochure offered the concluding observation that “four years at Busiris are excellent preparation for a college education.”

The faculty wives had not finished phoning enrolled students and their parents when they were augmented and assigned to phoning prospective students and their parents. Their supervisor was none other than Leanna Robertson, hired even before she graduated as an admissions counselor . . . at a salary only slightly below that of an associate professor of English.

Again, however, the damage was done. Of the 22,000 prospective students who received that mailing, only 442 enrolled at Busiris in fall 1985. The freshman class of 1985 was 824, its smallest at Busiris since World War II. Before those letters were mailed, Admissions was predicting a freshman enrollment of 1,750, based on over 1,100 students committed by March 1. Busiris actually lost incoming freshmen after March 1. The net loss to the institution of 1,000 students, each paying $10,000 per year over four years, was nearly forty million dollars.

Between spring and fall of 1985 Busiris lost 1,000 freshmen, 1,100 students who transferred out, and 300 students who did not transfer in. The loss of one third of its enrollment was a crisis of major proportions. That crisis was statewide news. Publicity, of course, exacerbated the crisis. Busiris has never fully recovered.

The third letter played its role as well. It was the spring pre-commencement letter addressed to principal donors and Century Club alumni, those who donated $100 or more each year to their alma mater. This letter announced no increase in tuition. Instead it requested—no, it demanded—increased donations. “You’ve been generous in the past,” the letter informed its recipient, “but let’s face it: you can give lots more. We want to see you give until it hurts. Kick a digit: if you’re giving in the three figures annually, kick to four. If your giving is in the four figures, kick to five. Show us again what we already know: Bucks donors are no cheapskates!” “The campaign was called “Bucks for the Bucks.” It would have insulted even a fat capitalist pig.

The result was, naturally, hundreds of angry phone calls and letters announcing hundreds of thousands of dollars in canceled donations and who knows how many millions in deferred gifts. Yet another telephone campaign reclaimed some of the lost contributions, and may have actually solicited additional sympathy money, but the long-term effects were negative. Even Fred Timberman took his honorary degree and went into a corner to sit things out for two years. Donations from alums and outside sources to Busiris dropped steadily through the late eighties: $4,400,000 for 1985-86, $2,600,000 for 1986-87, $2,300,000 for 1987-88, $2,100,000 for 1988-89. The letters had created an impression of an institution not entirely in control of itself. In business circles, confidence, once shaken, is not easily replaced. Only after a major administrative restructuring in 1988-89 (which cost Hauptmann, Reich, and Howard their jobs) and another corporate initiative did restricted and unrestricted gifts approximate their pre-1985 levels.

Busiris responded to the crisis of 1985 the only way it could. All programs were trimmed to the bone, including the Women’s Studies Program, the Black Studies Programs, and Global Studies. Library acquisitions were frozen, as were equipment budgets. Restricted opening hours were posted for almost all campus buildings. Four dorms were mothballed. A moratorium was ordered on all construction projects. Support staff took big cuts. In return for a promise of no cuts, faculty raises for 1985-86 were rescinded. But when projected enrollments for 1986-87 rebounded only slightly over 1985-86, reductions in faculty became unavoidable. All non-tenured faculty, including those who had come replacing Jack and the five other resignations, were given notice in spring 1986. Senior faculty were retired early. Absolutely no replacements were authorized, and for once the edict was enforced. Global Studies was mothballed.

Then in the fall of 1986 came three major disasters which broke the moratorium on construction and nearly broke the University. The first was the collapse of the radio-television tower, Radio Busiris, which blew down on November 3, 1985, in high winds. Corrosion of one of its three concrete footings had gone undetected in the previous inspection, which, in violation of federal regulations mandating annual inspection, had been way back in 1979. Had the tower itself been structurally deficient, it would have buckled like a collapsing jackknife. Had either of the other two footings been weak, the tower would have fallen innocuously into the quadrangle, taking out a few maple saplings at best. The tower, however, fell intact in the direction of and directly on top of Busiris Hall, slicing through the upper two stories of the main building and the north wing. Cost to the Institute of replacing the tower and repairing the building: $750,000.

$750,000 was peanuts compared to the cost of replacing Old Main. Old Main—the oldest building on campus, the very symbol of Busiris, the cover photo on all Busiris promotional material and, incidentally, an edifice registered on the Illinois Registry of Historical Buildings—went on November 25. It collapsed into a sinkhole eroded, investigation revealed, over a period of many months, possibly a year or longer, by water gushing through a broken water main deep below the building.

We all watched it go. The sinkhole began manifesting itself on the afternoon of the 24th in the form of a series of cracks in the earth, one directly through the parking lot where Jack had noticed Lily Lee’s vehicle back in February. By the time employees were notified to move their cars, pavement was already buckling. Most employees refused to return to the building. Late in the afternoon, as cracks widened and new fissures appeared, city engineers were called in. Their instruments told the tale. Hastily President Howard recruited a bucket brigade of students, faculty, administrators, and staff to rescue documents and records from the doomed building. Within thirty minutes, police declared the building in danger of immediate collapse, padlocked all doors, and cordoned off the parking lot. “CAVERN BENEATH OLD MAIN,” ran the headline in the morning Standard-Republican. “Only a Matter of Time” proclaimed the subhead.

The sinkhole widened and deepened. The clock tower slumped, cracked, and fell. Its century-old bricks disappeared deep into the ground, how deep we dared not come close enough to see. We bought into pools on when the building would go: date and hour. At 3:13 p.m. on November 25, the earth opened beneath Old Main and swallowed it nearly whole. The scene was unforgettable. The entire building began listing badly to the library side, like a doomed ocean liner. At the opposite end, the foundation actually rose above ground level. The other end dropped below first floor windows, then second floor windows. It was like watching the Titanic go down. The building just kept sinking and the mud kept rising. Then everything crashed into a great heap of bricks, cement, glass, furniture, fixtures, twisted pipes, mangled office machines. It all disappeared into the mud, fifteen feet below ground level. Even with the water mains shut down, it took weeks for everything to settle.

Over five hundred trucks of earth and gravel were needed to fill the sinkhole. Patching the earth was a delicate operation indeed.

Insurance denied payment on the coverage, claiming that defective heating pipes in the University tunnel system had corroded the water main and caused the rupture. The University was negligent, as regular inspection and maintenance would have avoided the catastrophe entirely. But Busiris, in a false economy similar to that which permitted the radio tower collapse, had last inspected pipes and tunnels in 1975. As far as anyone could determine, the last time a BTU maintenance worker had actually set foot in the tunnel was 1972. Litigation was still going on when the new administration complex was opened. Finally Busiris accepted a settlement offer of fifty cents on the coverage dollar.

Of the fire in the Busiris Library, little need be said. The building caught fire on the night of December 17, 1986, and burned nearly to the ground. The blaze was attributed to faulty wiring. Part of the collection stored in the basement survived: the applied sciences, special collections, government documents, Jack’s old study carol. The rest was gone, including McKinley’s holdings in Victorian novel, augmented since 1971 by a decade of modest but carefully selected purchases. And the reserve room, with its loans from private faculty collections, including mine. Estimated replacement cost of structure: $8.7 million. Estimated replacement cost of those portions of the collection which could be replaced: $5.3 million. Estimated replacement cost of furnishings: $2.1 million. The building and contents had been insured to a total of $8,000,000.

The McKinley Library fire, coming hard as it did upon Old Main’s collapse, convinced everyone the Apocalypse was upon us. One morning it was posters: “Reich, Repent: The Day of Judgment Is At Hand.” Then bumper stickers: “Will the Last One Out Please Shut Off the Lights.” “Tell Charles Creed All Is Forgiven,” pleaded a Busiris Sentinel editorial in an attempt at humor. Most of the campus was not laughing . . . and despite the exculpations of one investigation after another, we could not help reading, in the very back of our minds, the wrath of Jack the Invisible in the widening sea of disaster.

If Jack was in any way involved with the disasters of ‘85 and ‘86, he protected himself, and his family, and his friends completely. He was formally interrogated by police at least four times. Beginning with April 1985, he was under almost constant surveillance. The only indication anyone recalls of any possible complicity is a remark to Timm in the summer of 1985. Excusing himself from a Little League game, Jack mentioned “having to clean out a nest of skunks” somewhere. None of us can explain that remark.

In 1995, during pretrial maneuverings in Wisconsin, I spoke to Jack concerning the events of a decade earlier. I was concerned that disclosure might prejudice a jury. We were alone, and I felt Jack could speak candidly.

He denied any involvement. “They were on me like sweat on a race horse. I couldn’t piss without hitting a plainclothesman. Even in Wales they were calling me.”

“Not a thing, Jack?”

“Not a thing.”

Something in my face indicated disbelief.

“It’s not hard, Tucker,” he explained. “You cast a curse over your shoulder on the way out, and you don’t have to lift a finger. Sooner or later something goes wrong. When it does, credit is laid at your door. One thing I learned in my years at Busiris: don’t try to take more than a situation offers. You get burned every time.”

“Jack,” I insisted, “those were not accidents. Some may have been . . . the radio tower, the fire. Most were pranks. Sabotage.”

“Of course they were pranks,” Jack laughed. “And of course I was capable of any or all of them. It would not have been difficult, Tucker, to duplicate my keys before depositing them in my desks. That tunnel system gave me access to virtually any building on campus, including Old Main—to virtually any room in any building on campus. I could have written those letters. I could have substituted 2, 4-D for fertilizer. I could have weakened the appropriate leg of the broadcast tower and torched the library. I could have leaked the dope on basketball recruiting to the NCAA. If it makes you happy, think that I did it all.

“But I didn’t.

“Maybe some friends of mine did it. Not Lily Lee, of course, but others. Maybe I knew what they were up to. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe Bert and Ernie so pissed off a whole lot of people at Busiris that the holocaust was spontaneous. I’d like to think that. Fuck, maybe Jerry Jones and Victoria Nation pulled all that shit to make me look bad. Maybe President Howard crunched his own office to collect insurance and build a bigger one. I don’t know.

“All I got to say is this: it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving institution.”