as an artist with a different, far more precious kind of clay, which I too must mold but be satisfied with results far less tangible than Fairbanks. In the space of 45 minutes he had shaped the head and face in unbelievable detail. The whole concept of art took on that day a new meaning and power Ive never been able to forget. That assembly so many years ago has become one of the greatest spiritual experiences of my life. It was almost as if one were watching God at the moment of creation fashioning man from the dust of the earth. Here was a modern Ezekiel breathing life into this clay which he took out of a suitcase in strips, draped them about the wooden frame and then subdued them to his will. Since, as a student, I wasnt robust enough to play football or basketball for the Purple and White, I elected to take the life guard class. I passed in everything but floating. They gave me minimum points on form before I sank languidly to the bottom. But I was really proud of that beautiful Red Cross life-saving patch my mother sewed on my swimming trunks. I then got a job guarding the pool Tuesday nights from seven to nine when the women came in. I earned most of my tuition during my sophomore year that way. I knew all of the holds and was a bit disappointed to discover that virtually anyone could have handled the job because whenever anyone was in trouble you just handed him or her the end of a long bamboo pole lying alongside the pool and pulled him or her out. And I only had to do that once during the entire year. I think it was Howard Coray who got a little too rambunctious and suddenly found himself in the ten-foot deep water. I detected a panicky look and handed him the pole. He grabbed at it like a trout going for a sauteed angleworm. I pulled him to the side and helped him out. He hadnt even swallowed enough water so I could do artificial respiration on him. There was no mouth-to-mouth in those days. I probably wouldnt have done it on Howard anyway. But I may very well have saved one of Webers top debaters that night. Carl Belliston taught us the course, by the way. Tall, handsome and probably an easy grader. But however that was, Ive never forgotten a single life-saving hold he taught us. I could still handle any fear-crazed swimmer. Theres the critical test of a real instructor. As a student Ill always remember the annual fall gridiron clash between Webers Wildcats and McKinley High School from Honolulu. Theyd always have a barefoot kicker and, incidentally, they always beat the pants off Weber, even with Merlin Stevenson coaching. But then, while weve often dreamed fondly of Weber as the Harvard of the West, McKinley gave us nothing but nightmares. Looking back almost half a century is almost as scary as peering over the rim of the Grand Canyon. I think Weber probably never will be the Notre Dame of the West either. Of course, you have to be well along to remember when the Fighting Irish could do just about anything with a football except eat it. A few years ago they even did that. We finally quit playing McKinley High and signed up Compton (California), rash indeed. I remember one game played on the old baseball diamond south on Wall when Compton had Eddie Anderson, Jr. (son of Jack Bennys Rochester) in the backfield. We kicked off to Compton. Their man caught it on the five-yard line and darted223 toward the side line on the left. The entire Weber Team, including Merlin Stevenson and Reed Swenson, swarmed over to nail him good. Suddenly, just before the horde of purple and white jerseys got there Anderson sprang from nowhere to zip behind the catcher, who turned and slipped him the ball. When the vaanguard of the Weber phalanx smothered the catcher he, of course, no longer had the ball and Anderson was on the far side of the field streaking like a turpentined cat toward the goal line some 80 yards away. There wasnt a Weber man within 40 yards. Anderson crossed over in just under eight seconds. If you think that would take the starch out of a team, youre dead right. I dont recall the score but Compton could have doubled or tripled whatever it was that night. We finally got rid of Compton but teams like Boise, to name one, continued to grow boils on our muffins. That particular night Weber waited for the Anderson opening play all night but it never came again. They couldnt use up all their tricks as it was. Well, so much for football. A word of advice to Mike Price. Put Steve Nadauld in at quarterback. Hes not fast but he has a lot of friends. I was a student of Professor J. G. Lind, the dean of geology in these parts back in the early years of this century. Professor Lind emigrated to this country from Germany and came to know practically every rock and gully on the Wasatch Front by name. What I didnt realize then was that I was sitting in the last class hed ever teach at Weber, at least I recall it that way. What I also didnt realize was that here was one of those storied professors in the real, honest-to-gosh tradition of the great German universities. I think few in Weber County realized this. Even when I was in his class in the basement of the Moench he still spoke with a strong German accent. He became ill during the quarter and we finished with a black-haired young teacher we all came to idolize named Walter Buss. But to return to Professor Lind. He was very emphatic about our taking notes (take a note, take a note, as he put it thickly in his rather stiff professorial manner) on certain parts of the lecture. Here and there in the class, sitting on tiers rising above the lecture platform, someone would now and then whisper hoarsely, take a note, take a note! Professor Lind never seemed to be aware of this loutish mimicry. Then there would always be a lot of suppressed giggling, snuffling, and gruffing. Translated, it meant Man, we got another one on the old boy then, didnt we? Peer pressure virtually forced a late teenager to join in, or at least appear to. Looking back across a vast expanse of years, I am probably more ashamed of those graceless lapses than anything else. Here was a man who shared with us not only an encyclopedic knowledge of his specialty but allowed us daily glimpses of what it meant, and still does, to be truly human in the best sense. Here was a man of immense culture, knowledge, and breadth of character before whom we sat for nearly an hour a day, five days a week and hardly anything rubbed off. We cheated on his tests, mocked him behind his back, and thought him a colossal bore. But he was from another world, one we were never exposed to in our public school years. We just werent ready for him. I never saw him again after he became ill, but I can still see him hobbling up and down the stairs from the main floor to his basement laboratory and lecture room,