Roads not taken

I’ve been reading a biography of Pete Seeger. He attended Harvard for a couple of years, until he and the administration noticed he wasn't really committed to his classes. He suggested that maybe he should leave, and the administration suggested that might be a good idea.

According to the book, as he was leaving, he crossed paths with John F. Kennedy. They were in the same class. Pete couldn't help but notice that Kennedy's private secretary was trailing him.

Yes. When John F. Kennedy was a college student, he had a private secretary.

I told my wife that story and she said, “What? I didn't even know that was an option! That would have changed everything!” It surprised me a little, because I thought she did really well in school. I'm not sure what the private secretary would have done for her when she eighteen. And there would have been some logistics problems. She lived in the basement of a house that was a block from school, along with four other young women. The owner of the house had bought a roll of indoor/outdoor carpet, unrolled it across the bare cement, slapped up a couple of partitions, and charged enough to make his mortgage payment. Any private secretary would have had to sleep on the floor at the foot of her bed and I'm not sure there would have been room. A couple decades later, after we had three kids and she was driving two hours each way twice a week to go to night school, yes, I imagine she could have found some uses for a personal assistant.

I've never had a private secretary, so I’m not familiar with all their duties, but when I went to school, just having someone with legible handwriting taking notes would have been a huge blessing. On the other hand, I quit college myself about as far along on the journey as Pete. I remember paging through the class catalog and thinking, “There is absolutely nothing here I want to do.”

I'm not sure how a private secretary would have helped with that particular epiphany.

At Sunday dinner I ran the idea past our kids and our oldest daughter seized on the idea of having someone just attend some of her classes for her. That didn't seem kosher to me, but then she told the story of her Introduction to Philosophy class, where on the first day the professor asked, “Is it possible for God to create a stone too heavy for him to lift?” As a passionate discussion began, she sighed deeply and thought, “Here's some time out of my life I'll never get back.”

I can see how having a staff willing to attend the class and present her with a summary, her life would have been a little sweeter and, honestly, she would have gotten just as much out of Intro to Philosophy.

If Pete had had a private secretary, maybe he wouldn't have quit school. After all, giving up a Harvard education to learn how to play banjo and hitchhike across the country with Woody Guthrie isn’t a career path most guidance counselors would recommend. It did work out for him, though.

Just goes to show, even though I'm sure the private secretary helped President Kennedy along his way, it's probably just as well the rest of us have muddled through on our own.

Copyright 2025 Brent Olson