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By Root 2611 0

shameful given the circumstances. No one had seemed very torn up by his disappearance, even in those grim final days when it seemed that the news when it came must certainly be bad; nor, in the public eye, had the search seemed much besides a massive inconvenience. But now, at news of his death, people were strangely frantic. Everyone, suddenly, had known him; everyone was deranged with grief; everyone was just going to have to try and get on as well as they could without him. “He would have wanted it that way.” That was a phrase I heard many times that week on the lips of people who had absolutely no idea what Bunny wanted; college officials, anonymous weepers, strangers who clutched and sobbed outside the dining halls; from the Board of Trustees, who, in a defensive and carefully worded statement, said that “in harmony with the unique spirit of Bunny Corcoran, as well as the humane and progressive ideals of Hampden College,” a large gift was being made in his name to the American Civil Liberties Union—an organization Bunny would certainly have abhorred, had he been aware of its existence.

I really could go on for pages about all the public histrionics in the days after Bunny’s death. The flag flew at half-mast. The psychological counselors were on call twenty-four hours a day. A few oddballs from the Political Science department wore black armbands. There was an agitated flurry of tree plantings, memorial services, fund-raisers and concerts. A freshman girl attempted suicide—for entirely unrelated reasons—by eating poison berries from a bush outside the Music Building, but somehow this was all tied in with the general hysteria. Everyone wore sunglasses for days. Frank and Jud, taking as always the view that Life Must Go On, went around with their paint can collecting money for a Beer Blast to be held in Bunny’s memory. This was thought to be in bad taste by certain of the school officials, especially as Bunny’s death had brought to public attention the large number of alcohol-related functions at Hampden, but Frank and Jud were unmoved. “He would have wanted us to party,” they said sullenly, which certainly was not the case; but then again, the Student Services office lived in mortal fear of Frank and Jud. Their fathers were on the lifetime board of directors; Frank’s dad had donated money for a new library and Jud’s had built the science building; theory had it that the two of them were unexpellable, and a reprimand from the Dean of Studies was not going to stop them from doing anything they felt like doing. So the Beer Blast went on, and was just the sort of tasteless and incoherent event you might expect—but I am getting ahead of my story.

Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally believed to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petrie dish of melodrama and distortion. I remember well, for instance, the blind animal terror which ensued when some townie set off the civil defense sirens as a joke. Someone said it was a nuclear attack; TV and radio reception, never good there in the mountains, happened to be particularly bad that night, and in the ensuing stampede for the telephones the switchboard shorted out, plunging the school into a violent and almost unimaginable panic. Cars collided in the parking lot. People screamed, wept, gave away their possessions, huddled in small groups for comfort and warmth. Some hippies barricaded themselves in the Science Building, in the lone bomb shelter, and refused to let anyone in who didn’t know the words to “Sugar Magnolia.” Factions formed, leaders rose from the chaos. Though the world, in fact, was not destroyed, everyone had a marvelous time and people spoke fondly of the event for years afterward.

Though not nearly so spectacular, this manifestation of grief for Bunny was in many ways a similar phenomenon—an affirmation of community, a formulaic expression of homage and dread. Learn