Georgetown history would not be complete without the class of 1974. You may ask why … there is no extremely good answer, but it just makes sense to say so. The Voice decided to contact random alumni from the class that graduated 27 years ago to see where they are now. Everybody hears about the Henry Hydes and the Bill Clintons of Georgetown, but for this report we talked the average Joe and Jane Hoya to find out what they thought of Georgetown then and now and to learn what they are up to now.
Maidie Oliveau admits to being a trouble maker in college. Suspended once for refusing to leave during a fire drill, she is still totally unapologetic.
“They told us in advance there was going to be a fire drill,” she said. “What kind of fire drill is that?”
Describing herself as a “gang leader” she showed movies about atrocities in Vietnam, helped feed protesters who came to D.C. to protest the war and refused to adhere to the University’s dress code at breakfast.
“I’m definitely not one to accept authority without question,” she said.
Oliveau is a lawyer now, but she’s quick to point out that she’s “not a normal lawyer.” She works in sports and marketing and represents clients from the Sugar Bowl to Fox Broadcasting to world chess master Garry Kasparov.
Last fall, Oliveau was one of twelve lawyers worldwide working as an arbitrator for the Olympic games in Sidney. She and her colleagues had the final say on disputes arising out of the games. She said she hadn’t planned to work in the job she’s in now.
She said she hadn’t planned to in the job she’s in now. “When I was in college I didn’t think too much about the future,” she said. “I never thought I’d be this old.”
After leaving Georgetown, Oliveau said she went to law school to avoid going out to find a job. After that, she combined her law degree with her love of sports.
The Voice asked her if she thought she was cooler in college or now.
“I probably thought I was cooler then,” Oliveau said, “but only because I was stupid. In college your perceptions are so narrow.”
Oliveau said she enjoyed her time at Georgetown, but racial and gender differences were not as accepted here as she was used to in Santa Monica. She played Volleyball and talked about the poor condition of the athletic facilities in the 70’s.
Now, Oliveau interviews applicants for Georgetown even though she hasn’t been back the campus in awhile.
“My sense is that it is much more competitive than it used to be,” she said. And the athletic facilities are better, too.
And of course, she readily admits to having read the Voice. Not that we want to label people, but that makes her pretty cool in our book.
John Baldoni left Georgetown with an English degree, and now he is an independent consultant in leadership communication and a lecturer at the University of Michigan. He has recently published two books, Personal Development: taking control of your work life and 180 ways to walk the leadership talk.
Despite being very happy with his life, his current profession is one he never imagined in college.
“I absolutely did not see myself doing this,” he said. “I was going to be a filmmaker.”
During college he was the original photographer of the Voice, and the editor of a literary magazine, theThree Sisters. “We called it literary,” he said. “I’m not sure how literary it was.”
He said he wrote for the newly founded Georgetown Voice?because it was formed to respond to the lack of anti-war coverage in the Hoya.
“From 1968 through 1974 or 5 there was a rebellion going on in Georgetown, the Voice responded to the [anti-war] movement,” he said. “Is the Hoya even still around?”
After college, Baldoni went to film school in London then moved to Hollywood. The filmmaking career never took off, but Baldoni used the connections he had made in Hollywood to begin a career in corporate communications.
Now married, he lives in Ann Arbor, Mich. He has a 17 year-old son and a 12 year-old daughter. The Voice wanted to know if he was cooler now or in college.
“I’m sure I was a lot cooler in college,” Baldoni said. “I’m an old married guy with two kids and a morgtage.”
Baldoni said he has only been back to Georgetown once since 1974 and he doesn’t remember when, but living near the University of Michigan, he has never been far from students.
“Honestly, [students] are a lot smarter now than we were,” he said. “They are helping to redefine the workplace and I admire their exhuberance. [Students] are more consumerist then I would like, but I could be wrong about that.”
Baldoni may be an old, married guy with two kids and a morgtage, but he seems pretty cool to us. And we’re not just saying that because he wrote for the Voice.
During his time at Georgetown, Larry Gordon worked at The Hoya as the arts editor, mainly writing theater reviews. While Gordon feels that he got a good education at Georgetown, he was not happy with the social scene. He had thought about transferring, but decided that the acedemics, location and small classes made it worthwhile to stay at Georgetown.
“It was great to be in Washington at that time,” said Gordon. During his first-year and Sophomore years there were war protests and moratoriums on campus. Watergate followed, and many students went to the impeachment hearings.
Gordon said that while the administration was loosening up a bit in 1974, the campus still had the feel of the early 1960s. “Huge groups of students came from the same high schools. It felt like a private prep school,” Gordon said. All of the women lived in St. Mary’s.
“Women were not treated equally?they had only been integrated into the school a couple of years before,” Gordon said.
Gordon said he used to read the Voice, but he had joined The Hoya because friends asked him to. “I had a really good time at the Hoya,” Gordon said.
Now, Gordon is an assitant metro editor at the L.A. Times. When he’s in the mood he also writes about higher education and urban affairs.
Camella Broderick has been interviewing prospective GU students since graduation, and she loved Georgetown; she loved it before she came here, she loved it while she was here and she still loves it. Still single and living in her hometown of Los Angeles (she could never handle the D.C. weather), Camella practices law with her father. He went to Georgetown too: Class of ‘37.
While things might have been a little different during his time, Camella’s reflection is surprisingly similar to a modern-day view of the University. Coming from the West Coast, she found east-coasters, which composed the majority of the student body, to be very formal, an observation we still hear today. Camella lived in St. Mary’s as a first-year, followed by Copley’s 5th floor and a townhouse on 36th Street.
After graduation, she said she had a lot of trouble choosing a career. While the business school was popular she chose to major in English. Uncertain about the future of an English major, she once went to see Father Yates (yes, that Yates) who gave her the confidence to study what she loved. Come graduation, she rejected job offers from General Electric and attended Loyola Law School in L.A., a career choice she said has its ups and downs.
She did sail to Hawaii in 1985.
Twenty years later, signs of the time, like protests and peace pipes, don’t seem to stick out in her mind. It was the days when her and her teammates on the first women’s volleyball team had to fight for gym time with the boys that still make her giggle (Georgetown had just gone co-ed, so you can imagine the excitement!). That and fond memories of lifelong friends are what made the ‘70s special to her.
John Hurley thought that Georgetown wasn’t a hotbed of antiwar protest, but there was an antiwar undercurrent that manifested in protests at major events. “It was the first wave of youth conciousness during the late ‘60s, early ‘70s,” he said.
“We wore blue jeans, Brook’s Brothers shirts and had long hair,” Hurley said. “We weren’t crazy hippies with tye-died shirts. Maybe that was our mental aspect, but it didn’t show.”
“The school was steeped in tradition, and it didn’t keep up with the times, which were changing quickly,” Hurley added.
Hurley liked the fact that he was in D.C. during Watergate. “You could see the Washington Post write a novel on American History,” said Hurley.
When asked if he enjoyed his time at Georgetown, Hurley replied, “It was OK. I liked the area, but the school seemed cloistered. The school hadn’t reached its modern potential.”
Hurley noted some of the problems of the school were that women had only been integrated a few years earlier, and athletics were not a large part of the Georgetown experience.
Hurley thinks that Georgetown has much more to offer now. He thinks students have more choices for campus activities and have the option to study abroad. “Before, the international aspect of the school wasn’t promoted,” Hurley said.
Now, Hurley is the president of a wholesale distribution comany in Buffalo, NY that sells pipes and valves.
James Carangelo didn’t demonstrate, but he did remember when finals were canceled in 1971 due to war protests. According to Carangelo, Georgetown did not have many hardcore protesters; most of the protesters were outsiders who ended up hanging around the D.C. area.
Carangelo said the name Georgetown is a great benefit in the business world and has helped his career. “The school was competitive, and I was exposed to a lot of good ideas because a lot of smart kids went there,” Carangelo said.
Carangelo now interviews prospective students for Georgetown and commmented that it is a lot harder to get into the school now. “A lof of really smart kids that I have interviewed didn’t get in,” Carangelo said.
Carangelo now works for a Travelers’ Insurance city group and has three children.
Kirby Yarbrough experienced a different Georgetown than most of us do today. The northern Virginia native lived off campus for his entire time on the Hilltop and studied abroad in Switzerland during his junior year. Even so, the software consulting manager has the utmost admiration for Georgetown.
“I really respect the education I got there,” he said. “They attract top notch people for both professors and students.” Yarbrough’s only regret, in fact, is not getting more involved in campus life. But that’s not to say he didn’t have a life of his own back in the ‘70s.
As a drummer, Yarbrough played the Georgetown bar scene as a member of a few school bands. He noted that live music is something lacking in today’s Georgetown nightlife, especially since The Bayou located near Water Street closed a few years ago. He was also an avid anti-war protester, and wasn’t afraid to say that he “headed down to the Mall more than a few times” to stand up to the Vietnam conflict.
Yarbrough majored in International Affairs but realized upon graduation that he didn’t want to work for the State Department for the rest of his life. He set off to California for two years and attended UCLA, where he got an MBA in International Business. Kirby then got a job with an international computer firm, which afforded him the opportunity to travel to London, Rio, Belgium and Switzerland.
Today, he lives in Chantilly, Virginia with his wife of ten years, whom he met in high school. Yarbrough is a consulting manager at a computer firm that builds and delivers custom software to businesses and the government. He’s still drumming, too, and you can check him out at the Kennedy Center’s Millenium Stage next Monday, where he will be performing behind Kerry Colvin.
When asked if he read the Voice, Yarbrough replied, “Oh yeah! It was the daily rag!” We really like this guy.
