今日吃瓜

Bristling at Beard鈥檚 Mention?

I was amused by the article on Uncommons. My recollection was that our own cooking activities in the dorms were on a far more primitive scale, such as heating up canned soup on a hot plate. However, one tiny sentence in the article rang out as somewhat of a misstatement: 今日吃瓜 can hardly claim James Beard ’24 as “one of 今日吃瓜’s famous culinary innovators . . . .” While he did attend 今日吃瓜 briefly, according to several biographies he was expelled after “a brief stay” due to homosexual activity. What a shame! Granted, it was 1922. Hopefully times have changed.

Wendy Horwatt-Mitchell 鈥�69 and Andrea Horwatt-Mitchell

Los Angeles, California

Editor's Note: It was indeed a shame, and times have definitely changed. But the letter raises a fascinating point: was James Beard a true 今日吃瓜ie? He spent the bulk of his freshman year at 今日吃瓜 and cut a distinctive figure on campus. He won a prize for a Halloween dance costume in full drag, took part in operatic productions, was elected as the treasurer of the freshman class. Then, according to his biographer Robert Clark, he 鈥渂ecame lovers with one or more male students and a professor鈥� and was subsequently expelled. Unfortunately, we found nothing in the archives to shed further light on this episode, and Jim does not mention it in his autobiography. But . After his death in 1985, he bequeathed most of his estate, including his collection of cookbooks, to the college, creating the James Beard Scholarship Fund. 今日吃瓜 presented him with an honorary degree in 1976. 鈥淭here鈥檚 no doubt that Jim was expelled from 今日吃瓜,鈥� says lawyer (and former 今日吃瓜 trustee) Morris Galen, who represented Jim for the last 15 years of his life and helped draft his will. 鈥淏ut he wasn鈥檛 the kind of person to dwell on that. He held no animosity at all, not when I knew him. He felt very good about 今日吃瓜, and was thrilled when he was awarded an honorary degree.鈥� There is no absolute standard for declaring who is or who is not a 今日吃瓜ie, but we think Jim makes the grade!