Stuyvesant High School - Indicator Yearbook (New York, NY)

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Jw' aa! MLW A legend has grown up that Stuyvesant graduates easily become Big Wheels on any and all college campuses on to which they may roll after graduation. This is a legend easy to believe because practically every Stuy- vesantian becomes a Big XYfheel here on Fifteenth Street before he gets his diploma. Uust look at the Class of SSD! How did the Big XVheel come into being? How did he manage to become a GO. politico, a team captain, an editor, a committee chairman, a class officer, a social lion sought after by the fair sex? The answer is less of a mystery than his appearance, description of which has steadily defied the most erudite of soci- ologists, who have been confounded by his incalculable intertia. He rolls so swiftly from the Spec room to the GO. office, from the Senior Council to the gridiron to the fencing strip to the chess board, that all anyone can see is the wake of air whistling as he passes and the trail of papers scattering from his frantically clutched clip board. Many have claimed that they actually have seen him, but no two descrip- tions agree, for each is a reflection of-and upon-the beholder's image. The athletes who have seen him say that he is that epitome of the Greek form characteristic of Stuyvesant's champions. Able to leap five stairs at a time. faster than a tardy freshman, and more powerful than any combination of seniors at dismissal time, he races out the Sixteenth Street exit at the hnal bell. whips off his glasses, throws out his chest, and stands revealed in the dazzling splendor of the Superhumanist Stuyvesant All-City Champion. Cheered on by the entire student body, he sweeps forward to battle the enemy. the roar of his schoolmates ringing in his ears. The intellectuals who have seen him picture him somewhat differ- ently. They describe the Big XWheel as a slim figure in Deans List gray flannel, his horn rimmed glasses shining as if they were revolving propellors about to lift him into the stratosphere. He keeps both feet on the ground. however, as he treadmills from class to class and from club to publication, a copy of The Organization Man in one hand, a ponderous social studies text A

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in the other, and peeping neatly out of his coat pocket the Amsco text without which he could never have achieved his modest 93.15792 average. The school writers and editors describe him as something in between the athlete and the intellectual-a literary wheel who spurns the expanded biceps at one extreme and the high-domed data-digester at the other. To these fact- minded fellows, the Big Wfheeln of the Class of '58 is a crew-cut, pipe-smoking chameleon, now turning out subtle and efrervescent poetry, now penning a bitterly realistic story, then again setting down in equally lucid prose the behavior of a freshly split atom or the victory-at the last minute-of our tennis team. He is athlete enough to quarterback our hard-pressed eleven from the press-box, and intellectual enough to turn out 101 extra credit papers, complete with footnotes, at the drop of a third mark. Wllenever he races by, intent on making a deadline that was passed two hours back, he trails behind him, like the tail of a kite, sheets of copy, galleys, half-tones, and page proofs, all strung together on a pungent thread of printer's ink. To the official of our student government, the Big XXfheel of Stuyvesant is a voice-a deep, resonant, 15O-service-credits-per-term voice that reaches its heights via campaign speeches and exhortations to support the A.A.A., but that outdoes itself in keeping the students informed of the G.O.'s many accomplish- ments. This year, the voice told of Sophomore Dances, Exec Council meetings, junior Dances, constitutional amendments, Senior Dances, Cabinet Meetings, and dances for the entire school. And as any Big Wfheelu is always glad to do it let the fact be knon that hard work, loyalty, the capacity for getting along with others, and, of course, maintaining that 95.15792 average, is what led to his advancement in our many-faceted student government, as it did on teams and squads and publications. No wonder, then, that our Blue and Red Big Wl1eels go on to outdistance other cycles in every college quadrangle. There, as here, he will captivate all by his subway-developed social graces, his knowledge of the world past and present, his gourmetys knowledge of fine food sharpened by the lunches he has eaten in and out of school during his Stuyvesant days, and his ability to meet the challenge of any moment, on the playing field and on the rostrum, in the editor's chair or on the student's hard bench, bent over the Blue Books that wind up every college semester. We may not know how our Big Wfheeln looks, but we can appraise the finished product. Let's turn the pages, now, to see what made him the free- wheeling paragon that he is. 5