On opposite walls in my room on the top floor of Gifford in the fall of 1991: a world map with National Geographic pastel borders and a somewhat pretentious Kandinsky poster.  Between them was a dormered window through which I could crawl out onto the building’s slate roof for a crystalline view of the Adirondacks. The mountains were visible from within the room, too, but I preferred sitting on the roof, sky overhead, feeling the wind move through the valley.

Other transformational places on campus: David Napier’s anthropology class, where we debated the authenticity of Carlos Castaneda’s vision quests, and John Bertolini’s Modern British Drama class, where we lurked at the edge of Beckett’s eternal abyss. Every Tuesday at 3 am I sequestered myself in the WRMC studios for a jazz show featuring Art Blakey, John Coltrane, and Thelonius Monk, deejaying for (at best) a handful of Addison County insomniacs.

At the top of our hill, with Rt. 125 ribboning off to the east and west, we had Kerouacian amounts of time and space for reflection and introspection. It was as though the breadth and serenity of the valley demanded it. You read To the Lighthouse, and you could linger within Woolf’s consciousness for as long as you wanted and needed—the purple mountains weren’t going to distract you. You read King Lear, and you lived with it in the quiet of those long pathways of the quad. It became harder and harder to hide from a book’s implications. Each book had room to breathe. Sometimes I’d take these ruminations to the Long Trail, whose lush leafiness was only a few miles away.

There were days when I would be walking alone up the hill from Twilight and the face of a classmate or teacher would pop into my mind. Seconds later, that very same person would emerge, in the flesh, from behind Warner or down the steps from the offices in Old Chapel. Initially I was alarmed by this. But then I realized that coincidences like this happen all the time amid the churnings of a small campus.

Mostly, I liked this coziness. For a while my girlfriend and I walked into town every Friday morning for breakfast at Steve’s Park Diner. Each week we invited a different guest. Many of our professors came. Even President McCardell came once, and he chronicled the history of Middlebury football for us.

What we didn’t seem to have, though, was a political culture. My older brother was at Wesleyan, where you couldn’t walk from the library to the dining hall without encountering a sit-in or picket line.
We at Middlebury, on the other hand, seemed mostly subdued and conflict-averse. At the outset of the Gulf War, I witnessed a few dozen students assemble outside Proctor in protest. They marched with banners until someone in Gifford pointed their three-foot Bose speakers out a window, anonymously blaring “Born in the USA.” The protest dwindled, and afterwards, campus was especially quiet.  We lived in such a beautiful, peaceful place, the problems of the world felt remote.

There came a point when I needed a break from this feeling of remove. David Napier had introduced me to an ambitious group of doctors in London who shared a flat and provided free medical care to homeless people throughout the city. I took a term off and lived with them, shadowing them in their clinics. When I returned to Middlebury, I was eager for one last round of intense academic rabbit-holing. This was the perfect time for Elizabeth Napier’s transcendent class on neoclassical and romantic poetry. It helped to have a somewhat more world-wise frame of reference. Exploring the mysteries of Pope and Wordsworth in a high-ceilinged Twilight classroom for 90 minutes felt both luxurious and, if I paid close attention, relevant and essential.

That fall, I lived in a Ripton farmhouse with four friends. The land was adjacent to Forest Service property connected to the Bread Loaf ski trails. There was a pond out back where we swam every day until it froze, and I only went to campus for class and work. Arriving at Middlebury four years earlier, I’d been wary of the school’s pastoral calm. I was worried I’d get bored. That winter, snowstorm after snowstorm, our top priority was to sit by the fire and write our theses, coffeemaker nearby. We shoveled off the roof when necessary. We cherished the quiet, hardly knowing it wouldn’t last.

Lewis Robinson ’93 is the author of the short story collection Officer Friendly, which won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and the novel Water Dogs. He is a writer in residence at Phillips Academy in Andover.

What does it take to rebuild from the largest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded?

Keelah and Harry Helwig lived on a dirt road in Far Rockaway, New York. When Hurricane Sandy struck, and their house broke away from its foundation, and the waters of Jamaica Bay sloshed against the living room windows, they decided they would have to swim. Harry’s mother, Dora, was in a two-story house nearby. The upper story was above the water. But then, fortunately, the boat in their driveway detached from its trailer and drifted close enough to their house that they could climb into the rocking hull. They survived the storm, but their home and all their belongings were destroyed.

“There’s our house,” Helwig said one evening in August. He was pointing at a square on a giant satellite map taped to a wall in a brightly lit school gymnasium. “Or what’s left of it.” The square was on a nub of land that stuck into Jamaica Bay, which separates the Rockaway Peninsula from the rest of the borough of Queens. “Now we’re waiting for demolition,” Helwig said. He and Keelah planned to rebuild, and they were hoping the city would help them.

The Helwigs had come to the gym for an information session about the city’s flood recovery program, run by Mayor Bloomberg’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations, which was established after Hurricane Sandy. Morgan Jones ’04 is the senior adviser for outreach for Housing Recovery in Queens and was one of the event’s organizers. He helped launch the program, Build It Back, on June 3. Its $648 million budget was allocated from the $61 billion federal Sandy recovery bill that Congress passed in January.

“The idea tonight is for people to meet with developers and find out their rebuild options,” Jones told me. A big part of Jones’s job is to make sure that people like the Helwigs apply to Build It Back. He publicizes the program citywide, mainly through social media, e-mail blasts, and events. More than 17,000 people have already applied. His work never ends. “I have a Blackberry that follows me everywhere I go,” he said. “And my wife loves that.”

Over the last year, Jones has helped hundreds of people navigate the aftermath of the violent flood. Immediately after the storm, 150,000 New Yorkers had to find temporary housing or get immediate home repairs. More than 20,000 households still need help—whether they need to rebuild entirely, make repairs, or get reimbursed for work already done. Some homeowners will be able to sell their property to the government, particularly those in the worst flood-hazard areas. So far, such buyouts have been sought only in Staten Island.

Recovery work is not for the one-dimensional. Jones became a mold expert. He learned how to start a generator. He arranged with a real-estate developer to move a wheelchair-bound boy trapped for months in his fourth-floor apartment (the elevator was broken) to a ground-floor unit. He read the fine print contained in flood insurance plans.

Sandy was the largest hurricane ever recorded over the Atlantic Ocean, with tropical storm-force winds spanning 1,100 miles, roughly the distance from Manhattan to Miami. It was the second costliest storm in American history, after Katrina. A storm of such magnitude has countless impacts and meanings. For Jones, its impact is redefined daily by its human toll. For many people, Sandy has become a historic event, a natural disaster, and a regional tragedy whose details slowly fade.

But for some people, Sandy has been a stark illustration of the changing climate and a call to arms. They believe there must be new coastal-development policies, new measures to slow greenhouse gas emissions, and adaptations to protect people from the next storm. Mark Mauriello ’79, the former commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), is among those inspired to rethink priorities. He has been a vocal critic of Governor Chris Christie’s approach to Sandy recovery. “There are two sides to the Sandy story. One is technical, and the other is human,” Mauriello explained. “And the human side is always compelling. Listening to testimony of the trauma and misery that storm victims experienced really highlights the importance of considering the increasing coastal-hazard vulnerability that we face. Shame on us if we fail to learn the lessons of Sandy and repeat past mistakes as we rebuild.”

It’s not all in the history books, but 1936 was a year to remember. Germany occupied the Rhineland. Italy annexed Ethiopia. The Rome-Berlin Axis was proclaimed, and in Schenectady, New York, in ideal weather conditions, a Middlebury football team, in new Yale blue whipcord pants and navy blue jerseys, beat Union, 7 to 0. Captain Bill Craig blocked a fourth quarter kick, John Kirk, sophomore end, fell on it in the end zone, and George Anderson kicked the extra point. On the Middlebury sideline, Coach Ben Beck suppressed signs of satisfaction, while across the field, Union assistant coach Duke Nelson struggled with mixed emotions.

Leon Trotsky was exiled to Mexico. The Pulitzer Prize in drama was won by Robert L. Sherwood for Idiot’s Delight; in fiction for something titled Honey in the Horn. In the Berlin Olympics, Jesse Owens won four gold medals. In Waterville, Maine, early in the first quarter, Bud Seixas broke through right tackle to block a kick on the Colby 20-yard line and carry it in. Late in the third quarter, from his own 2-yard line, Craig punted 96 yards to the Colby 2, the ball traveling more than 70 yards in the air—this 21 years and one day before Sputnik—as Middlebury won, 6-0.

The Spanish Civil War began. Japan moved against China. Joe Louis was knocked out by Max Schmeling. In Middlebury’s home opener at Porter Field, Kirk caught a 40-yard pass from Bobby Boehm in the Coast Guard end zone, and John Van Doren capped a 60-yard drive with a delayed buck as the Panthers won, 12-0.

In Germany, work was started on the Siegfried Line. In the United States, Henry Luce started Life magazine. A fat fellow named Farouk became King of Egypt. The New York Yankees beat the New York Giants in the World Series, four games to two, and in Troy, New York, Kirk grabbed a 10-yard pass from Johnny Chalmers in the RPI end zone in the third period, and late in the last quarter scored again, intercepting an Engineer pass on the RPI 10-yard line as Middlebury won, 13-0.

In England, George V died, to be succeeded by his son, Edward VIII, who would soon trade a kingdom for the woman he loved and be replaced as monarch by his brother, George VI. Japan and Germany signed an anti-Commintern Pact. At Northfield, Vermont, Middlebury—not only undefeated and untied, but also unscored on—finally gave up points, 6 of them to Norwich following a fumble. Paul Guarnaccia and Boehm scored for the Panthers as they won, 13-6.

 In Germany, Hitler got 99 percent of the vote. In the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, confounding the Literary Digest pollsters, and helping to fold that magazine, won re-election by the largest popular victory ever. Of the two states to go for Alfred M. Landon, James A. Farley said: “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.”

At Porter Field, Middlebury faced its toughest opponent in its sixth, and make-or-break, game of the season. St. Lawrence had lost, 26 to 6, to Colgate, one of the best of the big teams of the East, but it had rolled over Wagner, 82-0, and at halftime, it led the Panthers, 8 to 0. In the third quarter, a Chalmers to Craig pass put the ball at the 1-yard line, from where Guarnaccia took it in. After an exchange, a holding penalty again put the ball on the St. Lawrence 1, and Chalmers lofted a pass to Kirk in the end zone. Another Chalmers pass to Craig made it Middlebury 19, St. Lawrence 8.

In France, Dr. Alexis Carrel, assisted by Charles Lindbergh, developed a perfusion pump, or artificial heart. In the United States, Margaret Mitchell published a heart-throbber titled Gone With the Wind. Maxim Gorki died. So did Rudyard Kipling and G. K. Chesteron. In the mud at Porter Field, Guarnaccia scored two touchdowns; Connie Philipson and Craig scored one each as Middlebury beat Ithaca, 27 to 7.

Boulder Dam, to be renamed Hoover, was completed. Eugene O’Neill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Americans were listening to, and sometimes dancing to, “Night and Day,” “Pennies from Heaven,” “Blue Moon,” “Heartaches,” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”—which, as the Surgeon General will point out, is the least of the problems.

 At Porter Field, on November 14, after a scoreless first period and with a minute left in the first half, Boehm faded back to his own 28-yard line and threw one up for grabs. Kirk grabbed it out of the hands of three University of Vermont backs on the UVM 32-yard line and ran it in from there. At halftime, the visiting stands emptied onto the cinder track to break up the freshman “P-rade.” In the third quarter, Boehm, who did most of the carrying, scored through right guard from 27 yards out, and in the final period Chalmers, who had been returning punts like Albie Booth, ran through right tackle from the 7 to make the final score 20 to 0.

Larry Kelley, the Yale end, won the Heisman Trophy. The Green Bay Packers beat the Boston Redskins, who were on their way to Washington, D.C, 21 to 6, for the National Football League Championship. Jock Sutherland’s Pittsburgh Panthers would beat the Washington Huskies, 21 to 0, in the Rose Bowl on the first day of the new year, but who cared?

Outscoring opponents 117 to 21 in eight games, a Middlebury football team had gone undefeated for the first time. Kirk was the highest scoring end in the East and received All-American recognition from the Christy Walsh newspaper syndicate. Kirk, Jack Cridland, Randy Hoffmann, Seixas, Craig, Chalmers, Boehm, and Guarnaccia made the Campus All-State team. Anderson, John Golembeske, and Swede Liljenstein made the second team.

Those who also served were Stretch Winslow, Red Williams, Tom Murray, Sherb Lovell, Len Riccio, Ken Kingsley, Ray Stiles, Warren Rohrer, John Lonergan, Ron Meserve, Ken MacLeod, Frank Casey, and George Farrell. Never before had the Old Chapel bell rung as often, as long, or as loudly—not even when Middlebury had tied Harvard, 6 to 6, 13 years before.

W. C. Heinz ’37 wrote “And Then There Was Football” on the occasion of his class’s 50th reunion in 1987. It is printed here with permission from his daughter Gayl Heinz. Widely considered to be one of the greatest American sports journalists, Heinz died in 2008 at the age of 93.