More good old days; more pranks at URI

[hoosier]

A true Golden Grad

01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, June 7, 2005
CHARLESTOWN -- URI alum enjoys marking 75th anniversary of his graduation
The brothers of the University of Rhode Island's Delta Alpha Psi fraternity were bored. Here it was a crisp Saturday afternoon in the fall and the Ram football team had a bye week.
What to do? What to do?
You might think party and a keg of beer.
"We couldn't have alcohol," Richard "Dick" Howes recalled. It was a different era. "We couldn't even have women in the fraternity house above the first floor," he added. "That's how strict it was."
So, the brothers of Delta Alpha Psi decided to raid URI's melon patch.
It would be a melon and ice cream party.
One group of brothers was assigned to get the ice cream. Howes led the melon raiders. He was a good choice. He had the only student-owned car on campus, a Model T Ford, circa 1920.
This was no ordinary melon patch. At the time, URI was a major agricultural school, with a well-respected research center. URI's melons -- hundreds and hundreds of them -- were research specimens. URI's professors were trying to grow ever-larger, ever-more-succulent melons.
"A kid named Price was an aggie student," Howes said. "He said, 'It's late in the fall. They've done all their research. They've got all their data. The melons are just sitting there.' "
For the taking.
The raiders drove the old Model T to the patch and quickly filled it with melons, about 40 in all.
Two 10-gallon containers of ice cream were awaiting the raiders when they got back to the frat house.
"We assumed the other guys took up a collection for the ice cream," Howes said. "The punch line came the next day when papers reported Ned's restaurant had been broken into and ice cream stolen."
Two 10-gallon containers to be exact.
Howes can rest easy. The statute of limitations long ago passed on The Great Melon Patch Raid.
Dick Howes told the story Friday at his summer home in Charlestown, on the eve of URI's annual "Golden Grads" day for its oldest alumni.
The Golden Grads -- at least 50 years removed from their graduations -- were treated to a lunch Saturday at the Dunes Club in Narragansett.
Those celebrating their 50th anniversaries Saturday are mere babes compared with Dick Howes.
Howes, soon to turn 97, went to "Golden Grads" to celebrate the 75th anniversary of his graduation, as a member of the Class of 1930.
He is not the oldest living URI graduate. The university has a handful of alumni from classes that graduated earlier than Howes, a URI spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman also said the university is "relatively certain" that Howes is one of five alumni still living from the Class of 1930.
At 96, Howes can easily be mistaken for someone much, much younger. He is sharp. He is witty, with a hardy laugh. He's also nimble. He was sitting in an easy chair last Friday when the phone rang on a desk across the room. He rose quickly, darted across the large room and had the phone to his ear by the third ring.
He told how he entered URI while living in Springfield, Mass. "I was an out-of-state student. I had to pay tuition." Then came a pause, followed by that hardy laugh: "One hundred dollars a year."
Today, URI is a 20,000-person town within a town. Howes said that back in his day, the university boasted about 500 students. He said there were about 100 in his graduating class. Actually, the URI spokeswoman reported, the Class of 1930 numbered 140.
Howes had the Model T to get back and forth to Springfield. He frequently made the trip with three other students from the Springfield area. "It was 107 miles one way, and we did it even in the winter," Howes said.
Ford, like other car manufacturers, had just changed from solid rubber tires to pneumatic ones. The tires weren't yet perfected. It wasn't unusual for the Model T to blow four or five tires getting to Springfield and another four or five on the trip back to Kingston.
"We got so we could take off a tire, pull out the inner tube, patch it, and be back on the road in 10 minutes," Howes said.
He went to Springfield every chance he got. Howes was an unusual student. He was married. He wed the former Ruth Little in 1928. She was 19 and lived in Springfield.
"Nobody got married in college," Howes said. "In fact, some colleges would dismiss you." The thinking was married students had too many distractions; that they didn't make for good students.
Today's students can relate to why Howes' car was the only one on campus back in the late 1920s. Students today complain that URI doesn't have enough parking lots. In Howes' day, there were no parking lots. He parked on the grass at his fraternity house.
Students today also complain from time to time about crowded dorms. Try Howes' era: URI had only two dorms -- one dormitory for 35 women and another for 50 men.
The school's trustees made a deal with national fraternities to alleviate the housing crunch. If they came to URI, the university would add the fraternities' fees to the students' tuition bills. The "automatic deduction" guaranteed the fraternities could pay off their mortgages.
"Freshmen could come right in. You didn't have to pledge," Howes said. "You went right into the fraternity -- that was your dorm."
It's how URI's Fraternity Row came to be.
Howes was co-captain of the URI football team, playing under coaching legend Frank Keaney and his assistant at the time, Fred Tootell, another URI icon.
"In football, Keaney was more innovative than any other coach in the Yankee Conference," Howes said. "He had to be, with his 'miniature' teams."
He was talking about both the size of the team and the size of the players. Little URI could only field 17 varsity players. Howes was a pulling guard on the offensive line. "They listed me in the program at 162 pounds, but I was never over 155."
Howes gave this example of Keaney's genius:
The 17-man URI team once drove to the University of New Hampshire in a convoy of Buick taxis. "Six guys per taxi," Howes said.
In Durham, they faced a big UNH team that, in effect, could field three teams. The UNH game plan was to bring out its big bruisers to batter and tire the Rams. Next, the UNH coaches planned to bring on their "speed" team to try to take advantage of the tired Rams. Lastly, they wanted a middle-sized, fresh group of 11 to take to the field -- to hold what they thought would be a big lead.
UNH didn't count on Coach Keaney, however.
"Keaney was unique because he knew with the material he had he wouldn't win a game all year," Howes said. "So he got innovative."
As they did to other Yankee Conference teams, the Rams that day razzled and dazzled UNH with lateral passes, spread formations and the like. "These are formations the pros have trouble mastering today," Howes said. "Keaney got us to do what the pros can't do."
And they beat UNH that day.
"It was Keaney's desire to do something different that made his teams great," Howes said.
Howes graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering. But he graduated in the Great Depression. There weren't many jobs for mechanical engineers in the early 1930s.
But his degree and experience allowed him to become certified in Connecticut as a trade school teacher. He would spend his career with Connecticut's state-run trade schools, which today we would call voke-tech schools. He started as a teacher and ended up as a top administrator.
"I'm a mechanical engineer who never spent one hour in mechanical engineering," Howes said.
He and wife Ruth raised six children. They always needed a big house. In Connecticut, they lived in a former inn.
In 1963, they purchased a large former restaurant in Charlestown and converted it into a summer home.
The house, at Narrow Lane and Matunuck School House Road, features a huge yard. It was here that the Howes started a summer camp for kids that has since morphed into Charlestown's recreation program.
Ruth died in 1973. He married the former Irene Tripp in 1977. She passed away last year.
The Golden Grads day last weekend was the first time he had been back to URI since his 70th graduation anniversary five years ago, also on a Golden Grads day.
He was accompanied to the luncheon Saturday by nine family members, including his six children, one named Richard, and a namesake grandson. "There were three Richards there," he noted yesterday, with pride.
"With my family gathered around me, it was really something special," Howes said. And, he added, "I was the oldest guy there." He was the oldest alumni at the Dunes Club period, guy or gal.
He was glad to be back.
"I think the University of Rhode Island still has a lot of charm," Howes concluded. "They still have a lot of fine personnel, and Rhode Island has done well to maintain a high-caliber faculty down through the years."