the goRtons And sLAdes 21
says. “Then in 1952 when I was just about ready to leave home, my father
and I had a passionate disagreement. He was for MacArthur. I was for
Eisenhower.”
A tudentos Lid s , Slade was conflicted about
college but ended up at one of the best. “I
wasn’t going to go to Louisiana State where
my mother went. My father had not gone to
college at all, but we kids were damn well
going to go. I went to Dartmouth because my
older cousin was sent there for his Navy
training. He became an officer and said it
was a great place. I was admitted to a couple
of smaller schools, but Dartmouth was cer-
tainly the only Ivy League School that I ap-
plied to and an easy choice when I was
accepted.”
He started college right after high school
graduation in 1945 and finished his freshman year in January. Even though
the war was over, the draft was still active and college deferments had
ended. Slade was drafted in April of 1946. After basic training, Private Gor-
ton was sent to the Army’s Weather Observer School learning to tell cumu-
lonimbus from nimbostratus. Then the demobilizing military decided to
discharge draftees early. Gorton served 11 months and five days, which was
fortuitous in two respects: The G.I. Bill paid most of the rest of his last
three years at Dartmouth “and when Korea came along if you hadn’t
served a year it didn’t count.”
“I liked college,” Slade says, “and I did well—Phi Beta Kappa—but I
didn’t have any idea what I was going to do next. In fact, I made one of the
dumbest decisions I’ve ever made.”
Slade at Dartmouth College,
1950.