Snowshoe Shenanigans at UNH in ’63

These coeds appear to be having a blast during the Winter Carnival at the University of New Hampshire. The year was 1963. The carnival theme was “Snowshoe Shenanigans.” Here campus queen Carolyn Neill, 18, of Arlington, Virginia, was putting the final touches on a giant snow bunny just outside Thompson Hall in Durham, NH. Miss Neill was attended by her winter courtiers Valerie Feher, 19, of Allendale, Virginia, and Cathy McKay, 18, of Reeds Ferry, New Hampshire.

I fear my generation missed all the UNH fun. During my freshman year, hundreds of students were clustered on this very spot in front of T-Hall shouting ‘Strike! Strike! Strike!” Prof. Paul Brockelman was shouting back to the striking students. “We have to be careful of those National Guardsmen,” Brockelman warned the crowd. “We must be sure as we can be that we do not allow them to get into a position where they can pull the trigger.”

It was May 1970. Pacifist David Dellinger with “Yippie” activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were scheduled to speak at UNH only one day after four college students had been killed by National Guard troops at Kent State during an anti-war demonstration. Tensions ran high. The “Chicago Three” spoke, ranted, swore, and smoked dope onstage as the Manchester Union Leader fumed. Classes were in chaos. Final exams were canceled and we all went home dazed and confused.

That story survives thanks to filmmaker Gary Anderson (NHmovies.com) who rescued reels of historic news footage from a dumpster outside the University of New Hampshire media center. Anderson crafted the footage into a half-hour documentary entitled “Mayflowers.” Edited during the campus riots of the very early ’70s, “Mayflowers” captures the spirit of the student protests from the inside out. The film documents that riotous week in May at UNH where student reaction and political polarization reflected the mood of the nation.

The shadow of the 1970 campus strike and the war in Vietnam haunted my entire college era. My UNH classmates shivered in fear that our draft numbers might be called. We struggled to eke out an education and graduated in the thick of the Watergate scandal. It was no fun. This all comes to mind, half a century later, as we enter another new decade of political turmoil. Will this year’s freshman class enjoy the frivolity of a winter carnival? Or will they find themselves embroiled in the next campus protests amid a chaotic world of partisan politics?

Copyright J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved.