An Encore for the Marching Band

I was glad to see that the mystery of the identities of the marching band members was solved (Letters, Fall 2022).

I must take exception to the statement by Fenton Williams ’73 that the band was not on the field after 1970.

I, too, played sousaphone during the years 1973–77, and we definitely were on the field doing our precisely choreographed and perfectly executed formations. We were not Ohio State but we tried hard. “If you can’t play and march, MARCH,” we were admonished.

Good times and good memories.

Richard Rubin ’77
Slingerlands, New York

Prompted by alumni memories and questions about the marching band, University Archivist Melissa Mead offers a brief history of the marching band in this issue’s Ask the Archivist column. Suffice it to say, the band marched on beyond the 1970s.—Scott Hauser

Remembering Excellent Teachers

I was very sorry to read about the deaths of two of my professors in the early 1970s (In Memoriam, Fall 2022). Both were excellent teachers, and were memorable in different ways.

Political scientist Peter Regenstreif taught my very first class as a freshman—Poli Sci 101. At that time—in the late summer of 1970—the country was dealing with the Vietnam War. Earlier that summer, I had read about something called the “National Petition Committee” that hoped to collect millions of signatures to pressure the American government to withdraw from Vietnam.

I was vaguely aware that Rochester—where I had been accepted earlier in the year—was somehow involved. In the first class that September, Dr. Regenstreif spent the first half hour giving an overview of the course and a summary of curriculum. He then announced that he would spend the remainder of the class talking about the National Petition Committee. He assured us that any who wished could leave the room at any time with no repercussions, and that the subject would not be brought up again during any subsequent classes.

He kept these promises—and taught the remainder of the semester sticking to the textbooks and the curriculum. I learned a lot about the political systems of other countries that semester, and would never have known anything about his own political perspective except for that first class.

Economist Ronald Jones taught a class in international economics, his specialty, in my senior year. The textbook was one he had just finished writing (with a coauthor). He gave us all xeroxed copies of the book—which was not in print until several weeks into the semester—and taught us a great deal about the theory behind the benefits of international trade, and how it was applied in the real world in the 1960s and 1970s. He also told us what was different about his book compared to the one used in previous years; there were some points of theory that had been known to the economic community for some time but had never made it into the undergraduate textbooks.

While most of my professional career revolved around IT, I will always be grateful that, as an economics major and poli sci minor, I benefited from the instruction of Professors Regenstreif and Jones, as well as many of their other outstanding colleagues.

Bob Kimmelfield ’74
Shaker Heights, Ohio

Corrective Measures

We owe apologies to two faculty members from the Department of Chemistry whom we misidentified in the Fall issue. In an item noting a ceremony to celebrate inductees of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the photo showed William Jones, the Charles Houghton Professor of Chemistry, with President Sarah Mangelsdorf and University Trustee Cathy Minehan ’68. The item misidentified Jones as Richard Eisenberg, the Tracy H. Harris Professor of Chemistry Emeritus who, along with Jones, Mangelsdorf, and Minehan, is also an inductee of the academy.