Yo, Bakerites: It's the season for fundraising calls from extremely
young-sounding MIT undergrads hoping that us stodgy ol' alumni
will kick in a few bucks for the old alma mater. So don't forget:

• the M. Nafi Toksöz Fellowship Fund (3311750)
• the general Baker House fund (2720364)
• the James T. Albrecht Memorial Fund (3647005)
• and the famous (anyone want a mailbox door?) Baker House Restoration fund (3700200)

From recent Execcon meeting minutes:

• We have a piano for our piano drop!! Thanks to Babson University for donating it!
• Piano drop is on the 30th of April at 4pm!! 
• The piano drop will be advertised on dome view!
• We will have hot dogs during the piano drop

• We will have a TNK study break with a root beer keg and pizza on April 28th to prepare for the piano drop! Bakerites will have an opportunity to sign the piano and spray paint names of classes they dropped or don’t enjoy! More detail coming soon!

MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) recently created the M. Nafi Toksöz Fellowship Fund, an endowed fellowship in Nafi's honor.  Nafi and Helena were our housemasters from 1969 to 1980.

The EAPS Department has already raised about $330K.  But the goal is to raise $1 million in endowed funds, which will -- in perpetuity -- support at least one graduate student for one academic year.

The EAPS Department is hoping that students who were Bakerites during Nafi and Helena's time as housemasters will also help raise funds for this fellowship.  They invite us to join in:

"...celebrating the achievements of Professor Toksöz by contributing to the M. Nafi Toksöz Fellowship Fund. Gifts in any amount are greatly appreciated. To give online, visit giving.mit.edu and enter the M. Nafi Toksöz Fellowship fund number 3311750 in the 'search designations' box."

Please download the attached fact sheet (PDF) for more details.

The Baker House 60th Anniversary Reunion Committee has earned the MIT Alumni Association’s 2010 Great Dome Award!
 
From the MIT Alumni Association:
 
August 19, 2010
Dear members of the MIT Baker House 60th Anniversary Planning Committee:
Congratulations on being part of a group being recognized with the MIT Alumni Association’s 2010 Great Dome Award (formerly known as the Presidential Citation Award)!  This year’s awards will be presented in conjunction with the annual Alumni Leadership Conference (ALC) happening here on campus October 22-24, 2010. 
Lola M. Ball ’91, SM ’92 and Henry H. Houh ’89, ’90, SM ’91, PhD ’98 have been invited to accept this award on behalf of the committee. I hope you can be present to share in the celebration and applause.
The awards will be presented by Anne Street ’69, SM ’72, president of the Alumni Association, along with MIT President Susan Hockfield and EVP and CEO of the Alumni Association, Judy Cole.
Sincerely,
Sarah Hendrick
MIT Alumni Association
 

If you've got the cash, and you still have a fond place in your heart for Baker House, then Dava & Gui (the current Baker Housemasters) suggest that you target your Annual Giving contribution to one of the following accounts:

• Baker House (2720364)
• James T. Albrecht Memorial Fund (3647005)
• Baker House Restoration (3700200)

Prof. Norman N. Holland was the third housemaster for Baker House.

His newest book is entitled Literature and the Brain.

A website for the book is here, and the Table of Contents and first chapter are here.

 
[ From Andy Wu, House President ]
 
Enjoy!
http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/BO140620/#?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/video/23242538/index.html
http://wbztv.com/video/?id=88728@wbz.dayport.com
 
 

Greetings Bakerites!
 
The current Baker President, Andy Wu '12, wanted me to pass this along to everyone.  First, thanks to everyone who voted, the Baker Piano drop topped the MIT Museum's Top 150 vote, beating out "Hacking," "Brass Rat," and "IHTFP."  Because of this, this year's piano drop will receive a lot of media attention this year.  Andy invites you to attend this year's piano drop which is this Thursday [April 22] at 6 PM.
 
From Andy:
 
"It is at 6PM this Thursday [April 22], and because we won the MIT150 competition, there will be a large media presence. They will be filming the event for an exhibit in the MIT museum, and the piano we drop will be donated to the museum. There will also be a barbecue catered by the dining hall.

 
The piano drop is a Baker tradition that started in 1972. As the name of the event implies, it is an event in which Baker House residents drop a piano off the roof of our dorm. This event, which takes place on Spring drop date, is open to all of campus and covered by local news media. This always gets a lot of publicity for both Baker House and the dorms at MIT. This year, we have two donated pianos, an upright and a grand piano, both of which are broken and irreparable. As in the past, this year’s piano drop will be accompanied by a barbecue, provided by Baker Dining."
 
Thanks, and hope you enjoy it!
 
Henry '89

 "The History of Dining at MIT", by Michael Plasmeier '13, and current Baker VPFS

From the smithsonian.com website: 
"The Massachusetts Institute of Technology chose beavers a century ago as mascots because, like MIT students, they were skilled engineers and nocturnal workaholics."

In 1975, a group of Baker House and East Campus residents created The Twist of the Tool as a film class project.

A link to the movie is here: http://www.vimeo.com/2082612 

Roger White writes that The Twist of the Tool was "a 20 min movie where Kirk and Spock land at MIT and meet [drumroll] The Director. He unleashes The Beast and Godzilla on them while they try to rescue Coedda and the other MIT students from becoming nerds ... It was shown for many years as a short at MIT movies.  This was the first time a video game (Space War) was used to introduce a movie."

Bakerites in the cast include: Mike Balin, John Chisolm, Roger White, Jim Moody, and Phil Mandel.

More tidbits, according to Roger:

• It was shown on Boston TV that year
• It's the first time a video game was used to introduce a movie.
• It's a wonderful tour of the MIT campus as well as the students: Baker House, Building Ten, McCormick dating rooms, basements, Green building and more
• It's just as calculators are surpassing slide rules, so both are in the movie
• It was used as a short at LSC movies for several years
• It was a blast to make it, and all that were involved had a fun time and loved it

When the class of '52 started out at Tech, in '48, Baker House was under construction.  It had been only 3 yrs since WWII  ended.  They put us up in what was then called Bldg 22, a military barracks building originally built for war research, I think.  There were 8 to my room at the time.  It was more like being in the army.  Bldg. 22 has long since ceased to exist.  It was located behind another student dormitory called, at the time, Eastgate, now, I believe, the Munroe Haydn Wood Bldg.

In the spring of '49 the Administration accepted applications for the then completed Baker House and they assigned me to Room 140, which I fell in love with and where I stayed through graduation.

We formed solid friendships in those days, but, unfortunately, I have lost track of most of those guys, very particularly because I live in Brazil now. But over the years, I've been stateside numerous times, as an employee of the Gulf Oil Corporation, now a Chevron retiree.  For a couple of years, in fact, I lived in Pittsburgh, PA, working at Gulf's head office.  During my days of professional life, Gulf assigned me to various countries, mostly in South America. Although a Course II graduate, I became more of an attorney and accountant, although I started out in lube oil sector, where they needed a Mechanical Engineer.

With only two of my close friends of those days, I am still in regular contact: Marc Aelion, X, '51, whom I consider to be my "brother", now living in the vicinity of Sao Paulo, Brazil, but born in Egypt.  I talked him into coming to Brazil after he got his post-graduate Chem Engrg. degree and he tells me has never been sorry for coming to this country.  The other one is Luis A. Capandeguy, II, '52, my Uruguayan "brother", who returned to his native Montevideo, Uruguay, after graduation, where he still lives.  He comes to visit me just about every year here in Rio, spending about two weeks in my apartment.  I love those visits.

All of us, of course, are getting pretty old by now.  Marc, Luis, and I were at the campus in '02, alumni day, for our 50th anniversary of graduation. For Marc, of course, it was his 51st, but he had been there the previous year as well and talked the two of us into it.

Many of the guys on the list of student representatives in the period '49/'52 are well known to me, of course, and a number of them were good friends in those days.  Those include Seymour Weintraub and Manolo Lieberman.  I believe Marc is still in touch with Seymour, now living in the New York area.  Manolo Lieberman, whom we used to call the "mad Cuban" (he used to say "comes the Rrrrrevolution" and that was before Fidel).  When the "revolution" came under Fidel, he did not return to Cuba and settled down in Barranquilla, Colombia, where he became a wealthy businessman. Unfortunately, he passed away a couple of years of so ago.

Marc is on the list as Dorm Committee Representative in the '50/'51 period. I am sending him and Luis a copy of this message.

Well known to me also were Don Schlatter and Gerry Burns of the New Dormitory Committee in its first year, Ed Facey, Sandy Kaplan (last I know also in the New York area), and Gus Rath.  Unfortunately, I am not in touch with any one of them.  And then there were two to whom I will be eternally grateful because of the support they gave me in one of my most difficult periods of my life at Tech, after the death of my father: Robert S. (Bob) Gooch and Freddie Lehman.  The last I know of Bob is that he was living in Texas (Amarillo, I believe), but I much regret having lost track entirely of Fred.  Fred married one of the very few coeds at MIT in those days.  I may be far away, but I have not forgotten!!  And Eli Dabora, from Iraq, who became a professor at one of the better colleges on the East Coast, a very close friend then.  My sincere apologies to many of those good friends of Baker House of the early fifties whose names I might not have mentioned.

Of course there was no co-ed living in the dorms back then and, indeed, as I said, there were only a couple or so on the campus.  We had dorm parties each Saturday evening to which we could bring our dates, but they all had to be out of the building by 10PM.  At one time I was yanked before the Dorm Committee because I was "caught" perhaps around 10:30PM, with my date still there, but leaving.  Good times.  The class was already a mixed community, from a nationality point of view.  Not that different from what it is now, except practically no Chinese or citizens from India.

Things have changed so much in these almost sixty years.  I am an Educational Counselor here in Rio and I do get the complete literature about Tech every year which I can use when interviewing the candidates.  The catalogue of courses now being offered contains 95% of courses that did not even exist then (the number may be an exaggeration; my guess). Unfortunately, I have neither photos nor historical records in my files, but Marc may have some.  I have been campaigning for years now to throw out files and photos.  It is a tough job.

Well, there you have a short story of one of the guys of those days yonder.

My very special "abrazo" (Latin American style) to all of those that I mentioned here as well to those not mentioned, whose health and life, I do hope, our Good Lord has preserved for all these years.

Sincerely,

Werner Kahn

IIB, '52.

John Greene asks:

"One thing I am curious about in Baker traditions is the Grotto - remember 'beware the ides of January'? 
At the last reunion, I looked and the key ceremonial site in the west end stairway
had been cleaned up during the renovations. I wonder if this is another lost tradition..."

I lived in Baker from 62-65.

My first room was 204.5. Where is this you say? Well in the early 1960's MIT ran out of housing space. Rush Week was day 1.  Those who did not win the dorm room lottery or succeed in getting adopted by a frat were put in places that encouraged migration.

The original 4 occupants of what was intended to be a local lounge included:

Ned Notzen
Steve Teicher
Klaus Pichler
Linwood Robinson

Klaus was from Venezuela.  His desk was sticky with elixir mixers. Klaus eventually went away.

He was replaced by Stu Spitzer who is from Revere.

204.5 was unique among rooms in Baker in that it had more occupants than any other room and no sink.  

We lived in a nice area of Baker.  One of the fellows across the hall had very powerful amps and big speakers.  One day I was in the bathroom and as best I could tell from the noise a 707 flew down the hall and out a window.

One of the features of Baker was that the floors were water tight, so the night before the first freshman quiz the upper class people flooded the place.  Another nice thing about Baker is that it had the long straight staircase up the side. Until someone told the crew about underarm spray the staircase smelled like an armpit from the crew running up and down the stairs.

The 60's were the days of separation of the sexes.  One of the biggest jobs of Judcom was to penalize the students who had female visitors for more than the allotted time.

Baker House left me with fine memories.

I was Social Chairman senior year (1966-7) and have recollections of some of the parties that I can probably write up if you do not have that data.  Jeff Wiesen, I believe, was the Baker House president that last year, Joel Shwimer was the treasurer

Here are some things you should have in your records -- each a story in itself:

• Around 1965 Andy Egendorf '67 bought a pinball machine (eventually I think there were two or three).  He made a deal with the house committee where he split the profits with the house.  A lot of money.  He can also tell you about his visit from the Boston Mob and the discussions regarding stolen revenues.  Also the pin-ball convention.
• Frank Sheehan '68 bought a hot plate.  Probably a bunch of them.  Out of one of the low numbered quads (2nd floor?) he made food all weekends.  He would pick up LOTS of very fatty hamburger at maybe 40 cents/pound and sell a lot. I don't remember what he did with the fat
• In 1965, I believe, we had a Jungle Party (that was before my tenure).  We brought in trees, sand etc and turned the diningroom into a jungle.  At the end of the party we had to get rid of the sand.  As I recall Jeff Wiesen and Dave Lapin, and maybe others, brought it to dump in the Charles where they were picked up by the cops and accused of "polluting the Charles".  You had to live in Cambridge then to appreciate how filthy the Charles was before the reclamation project in, I think, the '90s.
• I ran a Tom Jones party.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057590/ This was about three years after the movie, taken from the classic Fielding book, came out.  There was a great scene in the movie where Albert Finney and Susannah York had a feast, maybe in bed, with no cutlery and ended up very sticky.  Anyway, I bought 200 small chickens, 2 barrels of apples, couple of cases of red grapes with seeds, and other stuff.  Got the dining service to cook the chickens.  Had no cutlery.  The problem was what to do with the bones after the party.  We put them into the furnace and shut it down, sending smoke all over the place.  We also build a huge four-poster bed and took pictures
• Wishing Well:  We were not allowed to sell drinks at the party.  I think the drinking age back then was 21.  So we had a Wishing Well.  You made a wish (it was either 25 or 35 cents (I believe the latter) and asked for the drink you wanted. Mixed drinks or beer.  Beer might have been a different price.
• Dating Service: Remember this was well before there were computerized dating services.  As Social Chairman I had contacts with the various social chairmen at Emerson, BU, BC etc.  I don't think this was my idea; I believe it had been going on for a few years.  Anyway, we'd get a list of the folks who wanted a date.  (age, height, religion, dating experience) and would work the phones.  We had as many as 100 fix-ups at one of the parties
• Blackout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Blackout_of_1965 The blackout was November 9th and initially no one knew what was going on. I was on house committee and remember being posted at the front door to ensure that unwelcome guests did not come in.
• Baker House, back then, was all men.  And we had parietal hours.  Someone can help me with the times, but girls were allowed (more or less)

M-Th 4-10
Fri 4-12
Sat 12-12
Sun 12-10

This was monitored by the Judicial Committee which, at least the year I remember, was run by an ex green beret (or something like that) who came to MIT after some Vietnam service.

• Of course there were no cell phones.  We had a phone booth in the center of each floor (maybe there were two) and we shared them.  So a group of us signed up for service and put a phone on a 100' cord to service the 4th floor (and maybe one other) centered in 446.  There was also someone in the dorm who figured out the tones to make free calls.  I think that for a while Harry Otoguro called Hawaii every day
• Our resident genius was Craig Fields.  He and I, as Freshmen, had 442 and 443, the only freshmen with singles.  Craig later on ran DARPA.  There are lots of Craig stories
• It is interesting that there are a large group of friends who met their future spouses while in Baker house, got married between 1967 and 1969, and who now are still married to the same person after 40 or more years.  From my circle of friends this included

Joel Shwimer (met Elaine at a mixer on my birthday)
Jeff Wiesen
Stan Rose
Ed Geltman
Harvey Newman (I fixed him up)

• We began the Baker House Snack Bar, generally known for massive scoops of ice cream and immense milk shakes (although don't ever call them milkshakes in Mass). :-)  Paul Malchodi could fairly reliably be found behind the counter.
• Some creative person [Wayne Seltzer] came up with an electronic box that interfaced the laundry room to the phone system, so that people would not have to travel many floors just to discover that all the washers or dryers were taken.  A phone extension was added for the laundry room such that when called, you would hear up to 4 high beeps and up to 4 low beeps, each beep indicating a washer (high) or dryer (low) was available.
• Steve [Leighton], one of the Resident Assistants (can't remember what we called them - the resident grad-students), began a campaign to find free or inexpensive pianos offered in the newspaper, then rent a trailer, and go pick them up and fix them, with the goal of having a (working) piano on every floor.  He was mostly successful, and the leftovers fueled the piano drops nicely.
• Miller beer started a contest which motivated us to use Miller at all house functions.  I don't think we ever won any prizes but we consumed a LOT of Miller beer.
• Circa 1977, Rich Perlstein of Baker House, who was a bass in the Logarhythms at the time (I was a tenor), left the Logs to start a new male-female group called the Chorallaries.  At the time, MIT was roughly 6:1 male:female, so it was a rather bold step. I doubt that they lasted. :-)  [The Chorallaries are still going strong...] I stayed with the Logs and didn't have time for both, but I remember loving their concerts.  The first year, the Chorallaries borrowed a few songs from the old Logarhythms repertoire, which created opportunities for the two groups to occasionally sing a tune together.  I also remember one weekend evening at Baker, after chatting with Karen Altman & Sue Hansen (charter Chorallary members), I took the middle shower of the coed bathroom, and Sue and Karen took the other two showers, and the three of us sang a cappella harmony while we showered.  We set a new quality-standard for "singing in the shower".
• Phone pinning - If you called someone's phone and they picked it up, that phone would remain "busy" forever, until BOTH ends of that connection were hung up. "Pinning" someone's phone meant going to an obscure phone somewhere (eg, the cafeteria) and calling a person's phone and then leaving the calling phone off the hook, so the callee would have to hunt all over the dorm to find the calling phone before they could use their phone again (until then your phone was "pinned").
• Door knobs - The metal shaft that went between the inside and outside door knobs on a dorm room door, almost always stayed attached to the outside knob. This meant that if you used a crow-bar to forcibly pry off the outside door-knob, the shaft would come with it and the now-useless inside door knob would fall off into the room, making it impossible for the person inside to get out. For this reason it became advisable to keep a flat-head screw driver in every room, which could be inserted for the missing shaft, and open the door.
• DOPEC - In 1973, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries or "OPEC" was a household word, because they had essentially held the entire world hostage by controlling world oil exports.  In 1974 or 5, a group of Baker guys in co-located rooms declared themselves "DOPEC". I remember some of the members included Leor Zolman (aka, Brain Damage) who went on to create one of the smallest (and therefore fastest) commercial C-compilers, under the name BDS-C, where BDS stood for Brain Damage Software, a reference to his Baker House name.  Another DOPEC member I remember was Larry DeMar, who while still in school designed some of the more famous early video games, eventually including the wildly popular (in its day) "Robotron", where you had to save the "Last family on earth" from invaders.

In an earlier version of the Baker House timeline, we repeated the long-believed factoid saying that
when Building W7 (a/k/a the "New Dormitory") was first occupied in 1949, it was restricted to Seniors.

However, Tom Jannsen wrote specifically to bust this Baker House myth:

In the timeline, it states that the New Dormitory opened in September
1949 but was restricted to Seniors. This is incorrect. I and many other
Sophomores moved into the New Dormitory in September 1949 and stayed
there for three years until we graduated in June 1952. Perhaps the MIT
administration took pity on us because for our Freshman year we were
housed in a dilapidated building [the Barracks Dorm, also known as Building 22] twelve to a room.
Tom Jannsen
SB 1952, SM 1961 

As did Werner Kahn:

I am from Class '52 and was the first official resident in Rm 140 when the Fall semester 1949 started.
I stayed in the same room thru graduation in '52.
Werner Kahn
II, '52 

An article from The Tech in that timeframe says that preference would be given to housing Seniors in the New Dormitory, 
but it doesn't say that the New Dormitory was restricted to Seniors.

In case you didn't know, yes, Baker had some "quints," i.e. rooms with 5 people in them.

Some other "titles" that may be fun to track down: Sex God and Sex Goddess, Most Obnoxious Freshmen, Father Time & Baby New Year (part of the New Year's Eve party).

I'm pretty sure MBPP (Massive Band Party Plus) started spring '85. Would be interested to know when it stopped.

Tank (class vs class speed drinking).  When did it start and stop?  I think we did that at the Octoberfest party.

New Year's Eve Party (held in February) - my guess is that stopped in '87 when we were dry and didn't pick back up.  When did it start?

Reg Day Parties

When did the Pub start and end?

Who created the Baker logo and when?

Apple picking started fall '85.

Students rebuilt roof deck summer '86.

When did faculty-invited cocktail parties start and stop?

Are lofts no longer allowed?  If so, when did that happen?  I assume with the latest renovations.

How about beer fridges? When did they disappear?  Or the alcohol closet?

Do we still do Blue Hills as part of R/O?  When did that start and stop?

 This thread is for memories and reminiscing from Baker alumni of all years...