From:

Marty Eisenberg

We were roommates at NYU for 3 years, and we served on the NYU Varsity Rifle Team. There was lots more.

 

Both – We both majored in Aeronautical Engineering and both paid our way through undergraduate school by working 15-20 hours a week at the NYU Solid Mechanics Research Lab. Our boss was Herb Becker.

 

When I reported to work at the lab, I would say – “Good afternoon, Herb.” Becker was also our instructor in our Aircraft Structures class. I would always greet him upon entering class  – “Good Morning, Dr. Becker.” It never would have occurred to me to do otherwise in the given circumstances. 

 

Becker challenged his class – “Submit a proposed exam question and the solution. If your solution is wrong, don’t show up for the exam - you flunked it. If the solution is correct and I use it, don’t show up for the exam, you have earned an A. If the solution is correct and I don’t use your question - thanks – show up for the exam.” 

 

I never took an exam in Becker’s class. Because we were trusted colleagues, Becker would show me his drafts of the upcoming exams to get my feedback. I always wished that Jack and our other buddies would ace the exams but feared that if they did too well, he would suspect that I had broken his confidence.

 

In the Solid Mechanics Research Lab, Jack got to hone his draftsmanship skills by preparing the illustrations for our technical reports to our sponsors – the most important being Wright-Patterson AFB. I earned a semesters pay on my first day on the job. I was tasked with proofing a progress report. I pointed out that there were “two t’s” in Patterson.

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Our norm was to screw around until midnight, then do our schoolwork until 3 AM. Jack and I tried to avoid early morning classes, but one semester we had no choice but to register for a class at 8:00 AM. Every day, we would show up 10 minutes late and the instructor would stop his lecture and say, “Eisenberg and Morris - late again.”  One morning, half-way through the semester, when we were about to enter the classroom, I told Jack, “Let’s perform an experiment. You go in. I’ll wait outside.” Jack agreed and was greeted by the instructor with – “I give up. Which one are you? Morris or Eisenberg?” In his mind, we had no separate identity.

 

Jack and I commuted from our respective homes in Manhattan and Brooklyn in our Freshman year. Our Sophomore year we roomed together; then, in our Junior and Senior years we moved to a triplex dormitory suite and Miles Miller joined us. 

 

One day, my dad came to visit. Jack, Miles, and I spent hours cleaning the place up so he would not get the true impression of our lifestyle. Dad walked in, looked around, and delivered his summary judgment: “What a pig pen!”

 

Jack, I, and our buddies invented Frizbee.  We would toss steel beer trays. It was very painful if you didn’t properly catch it. We also discovered the process of freeze distillation. We would buy unpasteurized apple cider and let it ferment. Then we would put it out on the windowsill on a January night and, in the morning, throw out the ice – then repeat the process night after night. By the time it came to celebrate our birthdays (more about that soon) we had a very potent Applejack liquor.

 

We also dabbled in miracles. Ira Berkowitz had a single room across the hall from us. He had a pet hamster named Lysistrata. One day, when Ira was gone, Jack, Allan Pifko, and I introduced into her cage a horny male hamster. We removed it before Ira’s return. I think Pifko gave it to a cousin. Anyway, it was never to be seen again at NYU. But, Ira was left in puzzlement at Lysistrata’s immaculate conception of a litter.

 

Amanda, you might be interested to know that Allan sang for four years in the NYU Glee Club. He continues his singing career in a NYC Chorus that performs annually in Carnegie Hall. At NYU Allan wore the traditional Black Tie and Tails and the non-traditional Keds sneakers. He was tall, so he was in the back row and could get away with it.

 

At the last minute, at the end of the Sophomore Year, when it was time to commit to Advanced Corps ROTC training, the Air Force raised the tour of duty for pilot candidates from training + 2 years to training +6 years. In part, because I was in lust with Linda Mantovani, I chickened out. Jack and Miles went on to distinguished USAF careers. Jack as an Engineer; Miles as a Pilot. 

 

The AFROTC had two honor societies – Sabre Air Command (SAC) for the Lower Division and Arnold Air Society (AAS) for the Upper Division. I was Commander of the SAC; Jack, the Comptroller of SAC; and Jack graduated as Commander of the AAS.

 

Jack was a victim of age discrimination. The norm was, upon graduation from ROTC to be granted a Reserve Commission as 2nd Lieutenant, but the select few (Jack and, I think, one other guy) who were “Distinguished Military Graduates”, received Regular Commissions. Jack and I were graduated from NYU at age 20. The USAF gave him a Reserve Commission because he was not an “adult”. They converted his commission to “Regular” on his 21st Birthday. It mattered because USAF seniority rules measured your status from the date of your Regular commissioning.

 

Jack’s first tour of duty was to get a MS degree at the University of Colorado. Meanwhile, I, on the rebound from a “Dear Marty letter” from Linda, married, Myra. As a 20-year old “kid”, my dad had to sign the Marriage Certificate. He could have saved me some grief had he declined. 

 

I spent another year at NYU’s Solid Mechanics Research Lab before moving on to Sikorsky Aircraft designing helicopters. We lost touch until sometime between April ‘64 and April ‘65 when we ran into each other at the NY World’s Fair. We re-bonded immediately and enduringly.

 

BTW, Joe Onne majored in Biology, was in our graduating class, and also was a member of the Rifle Team. Joe was the old man, Jack the youngster. Joe was born in February, Alex Kocsy and I in March, and Jack in April of 1940. To be graduated at the age of 20, meant that we each had to have skipped a grade in K-12. I was enrolled in a Special Program (SP) that enabled high IQ participants to complete Grades 7, 8, and 9 in two years. I assume that the others participated in the same program. It was an era before the advent of the International Baccalaureate (IB) in which smart kids were challenged to do more, rather than be graduated early. 

 

FYI, our NYU was not the 50,000 student university in downtown Manhattan high rises. The College of Engineering and a small Liberal Arts College were in the NYU Heights Campus in the Bronx. It was an Ivy-covered 250 acre campus that looked and functioned as an elite private small college – graduating classes of a couple of hundred, small classes in which the professors knew every student by name (except our 8:00 instructor) – all male, as was the tradition then in Ivy League schools. We were spoiled rotten, but soon to be academically orphaned. In 1971, NYU sold the campus in a real estate deal to the City. NYU merged the engineering school with Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute to create the Polytechnic University of New York (PUNY). Around the same time, all of the New York City colleges were merged into City University of New York (CUNY), and all the state universities were merged into the State University of New York (SUNY). 

 

Thus was created the institutions that came to be called “Sue-knee,” “Cue-knee, “ and “Puny.”