RIP General Odom

For the past eight years and change, I have had a problem a lot of people would probably welcome, and which I find I can't complain about too much. I'd rather have it than not have it, I suppose, but there are times when it can be irritating all the same. The problem: inability to refer to where I went to school by name without people accusing me of snobbery or worse. My friends can refer as casually as they like to "a friend of mine from GWU/Georgetown/Duke/etc.," and nobody will bat an eye. But the minute you refer to Yale, you're a pretentious, namedropping blueblood.

I got a taste of it even before I actually started there...in that otherwise great spring and summer of 1999, I recall any number of times I told people I was going back to school "up in Connecticut," whereupon a friend in the know would say, "Stop being so modest, he's going to Yale!" So after a while, I went ahead and said that...but no matter how low-key I tried to be about it, it was never enough for some people. It was a no-win situation if there ever was one. Surprisingly, that doesn't seem to apply to all of the other Ivy League schools, as I knew long before I had anything to do with Yale. How did I know? Anybody who went to Grinnell will tell you, 95% of the time when you tell people you went there, they think you said "Cornell." Annoying as heck, but nobody ever gave me a hard time about that one. (If anything, it was the other way around..."No, Grinnell, in Iowa...no, not the potato state...no, it's hundreds of miles from Cleveland...") No, it's something about Yale that makes people think you ought to keep your fond memories for the tables down at Mory's - wherever that may be - to yourself.

Of course, some of them were probably just jealous. Which is okay. But still, it could be annoying, and still can.

But there are times when it's only right to refuse to let such things bother you. Sadly, such a time is upon us, with the passing of Gen. William Odom. If you've followed the anti-war movement over the past few years, you've probably heard of him. Such are the perks of Yale that, fair or not, he's not just a name on the blogs to me. I had the honor of sitting just a few seats down the table from him once a week in the spring of 2000 in a class on security policy. And what an honor it was!

I did not look upon it quite so kindly at the time, I must admit. To be honest, I can't even recall exactly why I was interested in the class in the first place. Yale has what they call a "shopping period" during the first week or so of the semester, during which you can go to as many classes as you like and make a more informed decision on which ones you want to take. Odom's class was one of several that I sat in on during that particular shopping period in which far more people showed up than there were spaces in the class. He therefore had everybody fill out index cards with their contact information and a paragraph or so on why they wanted to take the class.

Although his lecture was quite interesting during that first session, I was somewhat indifferent about taking the class by the time it was over. Then, just after it was over, something happened that made me decide I definitely didn't want to take it: a female undergrad approached Odom and made a direct appeal to be allowed into the class even though she was a freshman (and thus at the biggest disadvantage of all for getting in) because she was hoping to transfer to West Point after that semester. Odom, himself a West Point grad, let loose with a barrage of just about everything short of "machine guns and PMS don't mix" (and I imagine he was thinking that too) about why women shouldn't be going to West Point. Anybody who knows me can imagine what I thought of that.

Nevertheless, when I unexpectedly got into the class, I ended up enrolling. Like I said, I don't remember exactly why. It might have been something as mundane as how it fit with my other courses, most of which were rather tedious that semester. In any case, I took the class and ended up loving it. He was blunt (in the "I can laugh about it now" department, I made an incorrect point about Clausewitz in my first paper for him, and he wrote "Poppycock!" in the margin), but not as unreasonable as that outburst the first day had made me expect. I did end up locking horns with him on women in the military and some other issue that was near and dear to his heart - I can't recall what it was, but I do remember there were two incidents that made me conclude I'd never get an A but it was worth it to stand up to the guy. As it turned out, I got an A anyway, or maybe even because of that. And yes, there were war stories, including some tales of Oliver North and how Odom knew he was trouble years before any civilian had even heard of him.

Along the way, I picked up that, gender issues aside, he was anything but your typical career military guy politically speaking. Nice surprise! So it wasn't such a big surprise when he emerged as a voice of opposition to the war. Every time his name has popped up since then, I have gotten a kick out of imagining Bush's cabinet sitting around his classroom table and him letting them all have it. (Odom was not at Yale back in the '60s, by the way - he was at Columbia then - which is too bad, as the idea of Dubya himself as a "student" in his class is just priceless.)

Getting back to my earlier point, when I've seen his name in the news since the war, I have often been tempted to mention that I studied with him, but have mostly restrained myself to avoid any accusations of wearing Yale on my sleeve. But not today. Thanks for the memories, General, and thanks for doing what you could to get the truth out about the war!

I'm sure he'd be disappointed in me if I didn't add that I still think he was a sexist pig. But what an education.