Reminiscing Glassboro State College
by Jay Dubya

The lucky thirteen-mile April 1, 2004 drive from Hammonton to Glassboro, New 
Jersey was pleasant and almost inspirational. As my merlot-colored Nissan Maxima 
passed through downtown Williamstown and onto Route 322, I pondered the four 
years I had spent at Glassboro State College preparing to become an idealistic 
New Jersey public school teacher, a career which I had diligently pursued for 
thirty-four years until my very happy retirement in June of 1999.

But many important fragments of my past have been erased by circumstances beyond 
my control, further adding to my general quandary that often hypothesizes 
whether those four incredible years between ages nineteen and twenty-three had 
really occurred or not, for my entire life has been dangerously lived "on the 
cusp." Let me explain the basis for my current rumination.

I had attended Bishop Egan High in Levittown, Pennsylvania from 1957-'59 but now 
the former parochial school is boarded up and its identity no longer exists. And 
then in 1960 I managed to finally evolve out of Edgewood Regional High School in 
Atco, New Jersey, but the name of that institution is now Winslow Regional High 
School. And consistent with that strange coincidence of my educational past 
being eradicated, the Glassboro State Teachers College of 1965 I had known and 
often reflect upon has now been transformed into Rowan University.

But for some remote inexplicable reason, I seldom revisited my former Glassboro 
State Alma Mater, but now I felt driven by a strong compulsion to re-connect 
with my past escapades. Perhaps it was pure nostalgia, or maybe I was motivated 
by fanciful memories that still haunted my delicate psyche, or perhaps my 
impulse to visit Glassboro was a desperate measure to recapture the essence of 
my youth. 'April is symbolic of the rebirth of nature and plant life in the 
Northern Hemisphere,' I rationally considered, 'and just like daffodils 
sprouting out of the ground and deciduous trees miraculously forming new green 
spring foliage, my soul too is being rejuvenated this April Fools Day by the 
wonderful annual spring regeneration.'

Upon crossing two-lane Delsea Drive, which also masquerades as Route 47, I 
ambitiously entered the small college town. I figured I would tour some 
exclusive sights to determine if any of my old haunts were still around and 
viably functioning. My eyes instantly recognized that Mazzeo's Bar and Lounge on 
High Street on my right was now the Study Hall Coffee House, a defunct boarded-
up business that obviously had seen more prosperous times. Across the street and 
a block west was the former splendid Glassboro Movie Theater, now a mere empty 
bankrupt business with a huge "For Sale" sign hung in its ancient window, but 
back in 1964 the cinema was the site of a raucous fraternity shindig. That 
particular violation along with other high jinks almost got my Greek brothers 
and me expelled from the school of higher learning for the final time, our fifth 
ultimatum from the college's beleaguered administration. 

Joe's Sub Shop further down on High Street now had the creative appellation 
Little Beef's Hoagie Shop, a true indication that nothing is really permanent in 
this ephemeral life in an ever-changing world. I recalled that the Glassboro 
Police Station had formerly occupied the space behind the town bank situated at 
the central intersection of High and Main Streets, but now I observed that a new 
police building occupies the corner opposite the prestigious financial 
institution. The town's gendarmes had moved a fantastic hundred feet away from 
the address where I had known them to operate and practice their brand of law 
enforcement back in the early '60s.

I felt my heart pound a little more robustly when I stopped my vehicle to study 
the upstairs rooms of 38 South Main Street, where my roommates and I hibernated 
for three fabulous coming-of-age years. Our sophomore-to-senior residence was 
located right next to a funeral home, which no longer exists as a family 
business. 38 South Main now appeared old with its light green siding fading as a 
result of four decades of wear and tear and exposure to Mother Nature's 
indiscriminate cruelty, but nevertheless the aging house still represented the 
space I had shared, a little smaller than I appropriately remembered it being as 
my "home away from home" from September of 1964 to June of '65.

Back in the early-to-mid '60s Seedy's Bar was a popular hangout for my 
unauthorized non-sanctioned off-campus fraternity, the Lambda Phi Sigmas, a 
social group of Greek wannabe's more interested in chugging Budweiser and 
hustling pretty girls than engrossed in the actual pursuit of academic 
excellence. Ironically Seedy's suds and sandwich hangout was just down the 
street from St. Bridget's Catholic Church, which predictably held its Sunday 
services on Church Street. But now the site where Seedy's was situated back in 
1965 is now a barren vacant lot.

I slowly navigated my Maxima down Oakwood Avenue, which I used as a back 
approach to the rustic and still handsome college campus, and while passing over 
the familiar railroad tracks I noticed the old Glassboro Train Station and 
Depot, empty, boarded up and depressingly decrepit-looking. That ramshackle 
edifice also brought back several sentimental memories that I'll never forget as 
long as Alzheimer's disease doesn't completely evaporate my recollections. But 
the dilapidated condition of the once vibrant train station made my heart feel 
melancholy and had my sixty-two-year-old body suddenly feeling worn out and 
tired too, for both the train station and I had seen better days.

I took Whitney Avenue past #501, Hollybush, the Glassboro State College 
President's residence back in 1965, but today the structure proudly stands as a 
historic building dedicated to commemorate the famous 1967 Summit Meeting 
between President Lyndon Baines Johnson and the U.S.S.R. Premier Alexei B. 
Kosygin, which coincidentally had transpired on the Glassboro State College 
Campus and the great international conference remains today the venerable Jersey 
sandstone college mansion's greatest claim to fame.

I made a right on 322 wanting to view the historic Franklin House, which was an 
inn dating back to the aristocratic fox-hunting days of the early 1790s, but I 
was disappointed in discovering that the building had been renovated and 
converted into the Landmark Americana Tap, Grill and Liquor Mart. Across from 
the former Franklin House was State Street, which formed a Y two blocks down at 
New Street where Academy Street began. So being a little sad and disappointed at 
the Franklin House's demise, I turned around in the Landmark Americana's parking 
lot and returned west on 322, which now divides the old campus from the new 
building additions, most of which have been constructed since my graduation in 
'65.

Only Bosshart Hall, Winans Dining Hall and the Esbjornson Gymnasium were 
situated on the north side of 322 my senior year, but now a grand Student Union 
Building, Robinson Hall, Mimosa Hall, Rowan Hall, Wilson Hall, the new Savitz 
Library along with six massive co-ed dormitories have been added to the north 
322 campus scenario. Winans Cafeteria has been renovated and ingeniously 
converted into Winans College Bookstore, and so the Glassboro State College 
campus (now Rowan University) like the rest of the universities on the planet 
continues its new growth and its unique chameleon retooling of older facilities.

Glassboro's residential streets west of Glassboro State attempt to confirm and 
promote a college-town atmosphere theme. Girard Road parallels the railroad 
tracks that happen to form the campus's western perimeter, and the remembrance 
of our Lambda Phi Sigma initiation immediately surfaced from my subconscious and 
managed to rekindle my flagging spirit. Princeton, Pennsylvania, Columbia, Yale, 
Harvard and Lehigh Roads horizontally followed in succession to the west after 
Girard, and then Georgetown, Dickinson, Villanova and Swarthmore Roads run 
vertically west forming a characteristic lattice pattern with the aforementioned 
west-layered streets, which traditionally have housed many off-campus students 
from back in the '60s up to the present time.

University Road is the main residential thoroughfare that parallels Dickinson 
and Villanova in the well-conceived interlacing pattern. Many of the University 
Road homes that I considered mansions back in the '60s now appear in need of 
repair and rather mediocre in appearance. But it was not University Road's 
stately oak and elm trees nor the architectural grandeur of its aging palaces 
that prompted me to desire re-exploring the remainder of the serene boulevard.

At the very end of the avenue was Peaks Horse, Apple and Peach Farm', which is 
now fenced in and designated off limits to strangers. But despite the three 
prominent "No Trespassing" signs, I felt a need to exit my Maxima and traverse 
down a familiar rural trail a hundred feet into the woods where I intended to 
re-discover a shallow stream. I rushed along the still-secluded path, now 
tangled in dense brush until I came to the "Sacred Oak," majestically towering 
above me and deeply rooted amidst the woods' briars and thick brambles and wild 
vegetation.

The old severed "Tarzan jungle vine" still dangled from around the still-
dignified oak's third revered limb and the fallen but decomposing elm tree 
footbridge still spanned over the fifteen-foot-wide brook that remains today a 
rather imposing sight, but absolutely ravaged by time, rotted through its 
decayed bark and trunk and in its present flimsy condition totally incapable of 
holding a sixty-two-year-old male of average weight. 'That's the third of nine 
major memorable scenes I wanted to see besides the railroad tracks and 38 South 
Main,' I evaluated. 'The fourth through seventh items of interest are on the 
old-side of the college campus and the eighth and ninth can be found two miles 
south of Glassboro in Aura.'

I then carefully ambled back to my Nissan', gingerly entered the vehicle, 
cautiously backed up, turned around and drove the mile-distance to the still-
attractive countryside campus. 'I wish I had phoned a classmate fellow graduate 
friend of mine to accompany me on this ramble,' I thought. 'My Buddy Jim Amari 
would relish this nostalgia as much as I am fondly recalling it right now.'

I halted my auto in the makeshift parking lot owned by the Pennsylvania 
Railroad. 'It's safe during the daytime,' I reckoned while recalling that once I 
was taking a graduate night course at the college, arrived at the campus a bit 
behind schedule, hastily parked my wife's green Pontiac in the same lot and 
returned from class finding the car's battery stolen. 'My brother-in-law was not 
too keen on driving from Hammonton to Glassboro with a replacement battery in 
the middle of a wicked January snowstorm,' I imagined with a naughty grin.

Although it was an early spring day, fallen leaves cushioned my steps to the old 
campus buildings I wished to observe. The bright golden dome still formed a 
cupola above the main academic building erected in 1923, then College Hall up 
until '65 but now renamed Bunce Hall after a revered college dean. I stopped to 
marvel at the majestic spectacle as students less impressed with its essential 
existence chatted and rushed to their next scheduled classes.

I detoured to where the Student Co-op snack bar used to be, a unique 1960s malt-
shop carryover from the previous less hostile '50s decade. The mammoth Student 
Union across Route 322 had replaced the Co-op (and its attendant lounges in 
nearby Memorial Hall) as the campus nerve center, and the entire Memorial Hall 
complex was now a suite of specialized offices being utilized for student 
organizations, clubs, the Whit newspaper, the Avant Literary Magazine, and for 
individual student counseling.

I passed by several groups of garrulous preoccupied students, oblivious to my 
intense scrutiny of their taken-for-granted physical environment. The walkers 
were laughing and exchanging gossip en route to their next destinations. Four 
decades before I had shared their youthful vim and vigor, their enterprise, 
their great expectations for individual accomplishments and a vision for a more 
peaceful world, along with their rosy hopes and dreams for prosperous futures, 
but then I felt myself' being quite out of place standing there, a realist and 
modern-day cynic among those that were still vulnerable to professors' unbridled 
entreaties and idealistic optimisms. Forty years separated their same enterprise 
from mine as a student trekking down that same well-worn asphalt path, and my 
skeptical mind appreciated and rehashed the salient fact that I did not have to 
relive those forty years from 1965 to 2004 over again.

I next strolled to the old magnificent dorm' Quadrangle consisting of Laurel 
Hall and Oak Hall, originally constructed parallel to each other in the 1920s to 
accommodate the women attending the two-year "Normal School" to earn teaching 
certification, and to the far end of that most beautiful sector of the scenic 
campus was Linden Hall, built in the late 1950s to complement the more 
distinguished twin dormitories. Oak Hall was just a short saunter from 
Hollybush, where several asphalt paths lead to Evergreen Hall, where Joanne 
Battaglia (my future wife) once cheerfully resided. And next to Evergreen is 
Mullica Hall, a men's dormitory back in '65.

I peered across Route 322 at the numerous building additions supplementing what 
I had known in '65, and the edifices now stretched all the way to Carpenter 
Street, which in my senior year seemed to be in another county. Behind the new 
dormitories and brick-faced academic buildings are numerous parking lots, tennis 
courts, softball, hockey, la-crosse and soccer fields, intramural fields, and 
finally the rather outstanding Rowan University Football Stadium.

I cut back across the area next to Memorial Hall and jaunted through a nice 
clean pristine-looking park that was once a student parking lot for "commuters." 
Hawthorn Hall was now altered into an administrative office building and no 
longer was the men's dorm I had recalled from '65. The Campus School, where many 
of my colleagues had completed their Student Teaching and fundamental Practicum 
experiences was now called Bozarth Hall, named after another college dean of my 
era. Next to the former Campus School was the old baseball field where Ralph 
Crenshaw and I used to broadcast the games for WGLS-FM, the college radio 
station, which was now housed in Bozarth Hall and no longer was situated above 
the old Savitz Library building (now an administrative building) on the entrance 
oval next to what is now Bunce Hall.

I stood gazing at "College Hall" for a full minute on the pitcher's mound as the 
April 1st wind swirled dust and the remains of the autumn leaves about my black 
leather shoes. Forty-five years had elapsed since I had played gym-class soccer 
for Coach Sam Porch on that same verdant field, and only the passage of time 
separated my present memories from those past happy experiences that had 
occurred in that exact same place.

'Now that I've seen the railroad tracks, the vine, the elm tree bridge and the 
creek, the College Hall Golden Dome, the Quadrangle, the former Co-op, and 
Evergreen Hall there's only two more essential memories to see on my April Fools 
Day Glassboro State excursion,' I pondered as I slowly stepped around the corner 
of Bunce Hall to the oval drive before it, now blocked off to local traffic. 
Arriving at my parked automobile in the dirt and stone railroad parking lot, I 
decided to motor south two miles to Aura to complete my day's personal 
itinerary.

I anxiously drove through downtown Glassboro on High to Main Street, looked left 
and smiled upon seeing that Angelo's Diner was still in business, and then 
traveled south until Main became Gloucester County Road 533. Soon I crossed the 
railroad tracks a mile from the college town and then crossed County 610. 
Another mile or so on County 533 I arrived at good old Gloucester County Road 
608. After turning left, my right foot stepped more heavily on the accelerator 
as I wondered whether or not my fraternity's old original Lambda Phi Sigma party 
place was still standing.

I halted my Nissan to obtain a closer inspection of the structure I was so 
anxious to see. Yes, there it now stood, painted red, but still in the exact 
shape I had remembered it being. The ultimate objective of my Hammonton-to-
Glassboro excursion was Steve "Hoppy" Cassidy's chicken coop, but in 1962 the 
commonplace building had been imaginatively converted to a swinging college 
student attraction, the infamous Lambda Phi Sigma fraternity house.

On the way back to Delsea Drive following County 608 I passed by the picturesque 
Academy Street Lake in the rural town of Clayton. Feeling satisfied and renewed 
from my morning trek, I then motored back to Hammonton.

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