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INSIDE ARCHIVE


Marketing and
University Communication
UW-Green Bay, CL 815
2420 Nicolet Drive
Green Bay, WI 54311-7001
(920) 465-2214

E-mail: matzken@uwgb.edu

Rev. May 13, 2008

 

Quest for Vonnegut was a real trip

For some 1970s graduates of UW-Green Bay, memories of an unlikely, spur-of-the-moment field trip flooded back last April with news of the death of a legendary American author and satirist. Here’s the story:

Crammed in a red Ford pickup with a camper on the back and a spare tire rolling up and down the aisle, a group of UW-Green Bay students headed to New York City in March 1974 to visit their favorite novelist, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Participants in their new university’s “Experimental Learning Community,” they were living the ideal of innovative education.

“I saw in that community some of the best learning I’ve ever seen and also some of the worst,” recalls Dave Galaty, professor emeritus, who puts the memorable road trip among the former.

The small group, a subset of the larger community, chose to study the works of Vonnegut, a prolific writer in the 1960s and ’70s who by then had published the likes of Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle and Breakfast of Champions. The students had questions and boldly decided they should go directly to the source, and seek a meeting with the popular Vonnegut for the answers.

“With too much coffee and too little sleep, the next thing you know we’re on the phone putting it together,” says Lisa Simonds ’77.

Earl Madden ’75 got hold of Vonnegut’s agent by phone and a meeting was arranged. One student had a brother with the pickup and another was from nearby New Jersey: transportation and lodging, check. Stoked with coffee and rolls, the group headed east to meet Vonnegut in his lower East Side brownstone.

“He was chain-smoking Pall Malls the whole time,” says Madden, who remembers snacking on Wisconsin cheese and cheap wine the group brought along. “He was incredibly personable. Great sense of humor. He asked us many questions. We were all probably a little too naïve to be in awe.”

Simonds remembers Vonnegut’s unique slants on life. “That has stuck with me for a long time. I can still see myself there sitting and listening to him.”


That’s Earl Madden, top left, and Lisa Simonds, lower right, among the road-tripping UW-Green Bay students posing with their literary favorite, Kurt Vonnegut, outside his New York City home. This snapshot, incidentally, was obligingly snapped by Vonnegut’s future wife, the noted photographer Jill Krementz.

Recognize anyone else in this photo? Call and let us know at (920)465-ALUM.








Click here to download a PDF file of the entire May 2008 issue of Inside magazine.