Suffolk University Alumni Magazine 2008/2009 - (Page 17) Bottom: Merchant Marine Cadet-Midshipman Robert Brustein (right) in 1946, with brother Martin Brustein, a Lieutenant JG in the Navy. He has taken on the role of actor, director, producer, dean of the Yale drama school and founding director of the Yale and american repertory theatres. now he has joined the faculty of the College of arts & sciences at suffolk. a life in the theatre, eventually supervising more than 200 productions, writing 15 books, and training such luminaries as Meryl Streep, henry Winkler, and Sigourney Weaver. In december 1945, however, robert Brustein was one of thousands of men aboard the tankers and victory ships that navigated the world’s mined waters in When the korean War erupted in 1951, he and other merchant mariners found themselves subject to the draft. The US government had reneged on its pledge of veteran status to the Merchant Marine, which suffered a higher percentage of casualties than any other branch of the military in World War II. This Brustein saw as a profound injustice. “I determined that I would not stay in the country, or would cut off my finger, or go to Canada, or anything to avoid being drafted into what I considered an unjust war.” Instead, he obtained one student deferment after another, including two fulbrights in england, finally earning a Phd that he had never intended to pursue. After a career that took him to Columbia University, as well as Cornell, vassar, yale, and harvard, Brustein at last arrived at Suffolk University. “Suffolk tries to maintain the purity of its original ideals,” he observes. “There’s a gritty urban honesty about it that is impossible not to admire. The more I learn about Suffolk, the more I want to moor here.” he plans to drop his anchor in this port for years to come. Lauri Umansky is professor of history and associate dean of the college of arts & Sciences at Suffolk university. TRYING TO STAY AFlOAT WOrld War ii depleted the ranks of college students on American college and university campuses, as most young men—and some women—entered the armed forces. Suffolk University was no exception. In addition to its Law School, Suffolk then consisted of three undergraduate colleges: Liberal Arts, Journalism, and Business Administration, founded in 1934, 1936, and 1937 respectively. In 1940, before the United States entered the war, the fledgling colleges had built their enrollment up to 227 students. By 1943, according to Suffolk history professor david L. robbins, that number had dwindled to only 35. With Law School enrollment down to only 63 that year, the university struggled to stay afloat. With the passage in 1944 of the G.I. Bill of rights, which awarded tuition benefits to WWII veterans, college enrollment surged nationwide. By the fall of 1946, Suffolk University’s undergraduate enrollment soared to 1682 students, 75% of whom were male war veterans. Alongside the sorrow of losing 26 alumni lives to the war, the university gained during the postwar era the foothold that has allowed it to flourish into the present. Above: Carroll Sheehan of Dorchester, MA, president of Suffolk University’s graduating class of 1949, and Suffolk President Walter Burse thank Congressman John F. Kennedy for the GI Bill. Sheehan went on to become the state commerce commissioner. www.suffolk.edu SUFFOLKARTS+SCIENCES//2008/2009 [17] Photo courtesy of Suffolk University Archives. shipman in the Naval reserve. on one of his sevenhour monthly leaves from basic training on August 15, 1945, Brustein witnessed v-J day in San francisco. “It was orgiastic. Women tore their clothes off in the street. People climbed to the top of huge statues. I’ve never seen a city go so berserk. And all I did was watch. The envious observer.” These powers of observation later fueled one of the signal careers in American theatre. defying his father, who wanted him to go into the family yarn business— “his greatest dream was to have what he called a vertical combination, in which he would have the sheep, then he would get the wool, card it and comb it, dye it, knit it, and sell it as sweaters.”—he embarked on the wake of the deadliest war in history. “I took to the sea,” he says. “There was a lot of adventure.” Crossing from the Panama Canal to Pozzuoli, passing through Casablanca, Alexandria, and Milan, he saw more of the world than he could have imagined growing up on the relatively homogeneous Jewish Upper West Side of Manhattan: narrowly navigable ports cluttered with sunken ships; abject poverty along the vanquished coasts of Italy; a humorous mutiny against the captain who tried to prevent the women on the supply boats from clambering up the sides of his vessel; a case of “yellow jaundice.” The romance of the sea ebbing by the time his tour of duty ended, Brustein returned to Amherst College hungry to continue his education. http://www.suffolk.edu
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