It sounds something like a scene from "Animal House." A partying Dartmouth senior throws up on a dean and is promptly thrown out of College.
However, for Dartmouth alum and Yankee magazine editor of 40 years Judson D. Hale Sr. '55, that story is part of his personal history and one of the pivotal moments in his life.
During his senior spring, Hale vomited on Dean Joseph McDonald and his wife at a variety show held in Webster Hall. He was then expelled from the College.
Hale credits the time away from Dartmouth, which he spent in the army, as a turning point in his life.
"You could call me a lousy citizen of Dartmouth, but a very loyal alumnus to make up for that," Hale said in a phone interview with The Dartmouth. "You can paint me green from the top of my head to my tiptoes."
However, Hale characterized himself as a "very immature" student during his Dartmouth career, an English major who only wrote and read when he had to.
The "jolly little prank" of throwing up on McDonald was the last straw for Hale at the College, he said.
Earlier that year, McDonald had watched Hale drive his car over the lawn of McNutt Hall and promptly asked Hale for the car keys. Hale gave him instead the key to the room where his fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, held meetings and called that his car key.
The deans discovered Hale's deception when they arrested him for speeding in White River Junction, Vt. and McDonald read about the incident in the paper. They then put Hale on probation.
Hale started the fateful evening of the variety show at a cocktail party at his fraternity. In past years, he said he always gotten too drunk at the pre-party to attend the show. But since it was his senior year, he insisted on going, and his life changed from there.
Hale did not get to graduate with his friends and instead the U.S. drafted him and he traveled to Germany. The administration denied his initial requests to return to Dartmouth after his time in the army, as Hale was cited as a "bad influence on the College."
However, after Hale wrote McDonald detailing a bout with tuberculosis, McDonald said he would try to get Hale readmitted when he became healthy.
Hale returned in 1958 and said he spent the entire term in the library or Topliff Hall. He never went to his fraternity and graduated in 1958.
Hale called both getting thrown out of school and being allowed to return "benefits to his life" and said that for 20 years it bothered him that he never thanked McDonald for those gifts.
"Twenty years later, I wrote him saying I didn't think he'd remember me, but I wanted to thank him," Hale said. "He wrote back immediately, and he wrote 'I remember you,' and it was underlined eight times."
Hale said he met with McDonald for lunch and shortly thereafter McDonald died. "It was like a little angel was telling me to thank him," Hale said. "And I'm so glad I did, because time was limited."
Born in Boston, and raised in Maine, Hale chose Dartmouth over Harvard, even though his father was an alumnus of the Cambridge school.
"I chose Dartmouth because of the location and the outdoor activities, the outing club," Hale said. "I couldn't wait for my freshman trip."
But once at the College, Hale said he failed to capitalize on its opportunities. "I never went fishing, or canoeing. I played poker all night and drank beer."
"My one regret in my entire life is that I didn't take advantage of my time at Dartmouth," he said.
From premed to publishing
A premed student originally, Hale switched to English, a move that would play a pivotal role in his future career.
After finally finishing his College career in 1958, Hale sought jobs in New York City with publishers and advertisers. Turned down for lack of experience, his mother suggested he call his uncle, the publisher of Yankee magazine and the Old Farmer's Almanac.
His uncle founded Yankee Magazine in 1935 with the mission of "the expression and, perhaps indirectly, the preservation of our New England culture," and bought the Old Farmer's Almanac, the oldest continuously published magazine in North America, in 1939.
Hale started as an assistant editor with the "four or five person" operation in Dublin, New Hampshire 41 years ago.
"I was planning on staying there a year, making some contacts and then returning to the real world," he said.
His army disability pay supplemented the $50 a week his uncle offered to pay him.
Hale's first jobs included inventing letters to the editor, "since the real ones the magazine received weren't interesting enough," and in the afternoon, taking the mail room trash to the dump.
"In those days, everybody did everything and it was great, great fun," Hale said. By the 1960s, he was managing editor and writing photo captions, taking photos, writing articles, designing layout and even writing Christmas cards to subscribers.
Hale took over as the editor-in-chief of both publications in 1970 when his uncle died, and has truly watched the magazine flourish.
Yankee has a readership of 2 million people monthly, and the corporation also publishes a travel guide to the New England region.
"It's gone from a family, amateur business to a truly professional organization, with top editors and publishers from all over the country," Hale said.
Hale said comparing today's Yankee to that of the 1960s is like comparing Time Magazine with a high school yearbook.
The magazine retains some homey qualities, though. Hale lives 4.5 miles from his office, and one of his three sons is now a publisher with Yankee.
An active alumnus
Hale said he keeps in touch with "four or five" of his fraternity brothers, and that he and his roommate married a pair of Skidmore roommates. Both couples will be celebrating their forty-first anniversaries this year.
A participant in many Class of 1955 reunions, Hale was honored as Dartmouth Club President of the Year in 1977 for his work with the Dartmouth Club of Southwest New Hampshire.
Everyone knows of his exploits while at the College, he said, and laughingly admitted to "making a living off of it."
"It's not to say I don't wish I hadn't done it," Hale said, but said that he mentioned his incident with Dean McDonald in his autobiography "The Education of a Yankee: An American Memoir."
Hale said he has kept up with possible changes President James Wright and the Board of Trustees want to make for student social and residential life.
"I am a great supporter of Dartmouth and I feel with various moves made by the administration, Dartmouth has been made so much better," he said.
Hale criticized alumni who question the administration's decisions about Dartmouth. "The administrators involved with education there know what they're doing. People used to complain about bringing in women, and women have uplifted Dartmouth to the heavens."
"I feel that my class and some earlier than that, they want Dartmouth to be like their memories of it, and for me it is like that but so much better," Hale said. "I'm sure that there are students there now who screw up just like I did, but the school's general atmosphere, and students' ambition and creative intelligence is so impressive."
