1953–54 Volume 78 No 1–5 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

396 THE SCROLL of Phi Delta Theta for May, 1954
type of slang," Pete says admiringly.
In the case of Hope, Pete thinks he regarded
himself as somewhere between a
collaborator and an interviewee. He made
fewer changes and corrections than Crosby,
and fewer additions. He made no change
at all in at least two of the Post articles.
"His main concern," writes Pete, "was
to throw out any passage which he thought
might hurt anybody's feelings or which
would make him sound too egotistical. And
this, in the face of the fact that part of his
stock in trade as an entertainer is sounding
cocky, brash and bumptious."
The Crosby assignment Pete considers
the most fun he ever had, since it involved
a trip to England and France with "a most
enjoyable companion."
There is little, if anything, in Pete's background
as a student at the University of
Pennsylvania which forecast the career to
come. Pete came East to Penn because he
had heard that it had a good track coach,
and also because he mistakenly thought that
the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts was
in some way connected with the University.
Pete had an ambition to be a commercial
artist, an illustrator, or a cartoonist.
The Penn Zeta News published in the
Fall of 1923 reported that upon Brother
Martin "Nature . . . has bestowed an eye
for art and fingers that wield a brush and
pen most cleverly." The News further records
that Pete was Art Editor of the
Punch Bowl, the Junior Annals, the Red
and Blue, and cartoonist on The Pennsylvanian.
Later he became Editor-in-Chief of
Punch Bowl.
Along with all this display of creative
talent, Pete had time to be a Varsity cheer
leader, a member of the Glee Club, a letter
winner in track, a member of $ K B, junior
honorary society, and later Sphinx, senior
honorary.
In his senior year at Penn, Pete and his
roommate, Frank Bailey, were freshmen advisers
in the freshman dormitories.
Brother Ben McGiveran [see SCROLL,
Nov., 1952, page 100] recalls with some
humor how Brother Ed Altemus of the
class of '22, now a Washington real estate
tycoon, posed behind closed doors for a
Tarzan picture that Pete was drawing.
Altemus was an All-American La Crosse
player, and, according to McGiveran, "had
a terrific physique."
Before Pete found his niche as a track
performer in the sprints, he did pretty well
in the hurdle events, despite skinned shins.
He won individual events in meets with
Dartmouth and Cornell. But the hurdles
took their inevitable toll. Brother Mc­
Giveran recalls how in one meet Pete took
a very bad fall, which ground cinders into
too large an area of his exposed flesh. "As
a result, the University Medical School
rigged a new glass contraption for collecting
the sun's rays that were most beneficial,
and Pete was forced to spend a good many
hours under the apparatus on a little-third
floor balcony above the busy traffic of 34th
and Walnut."
After four years at Penn, since he couldn't
go to Paris with the Olympic team, Pete
joined the rest of the student world in a
tour to that city and the Montmartre.
When he returned to the States, he got his
first full-time job, that of an art editor on
College Humor magazine in Chicago.
While the College Humor job was the
first full-time employment Pete enjoyed, he
had spent his summer vacations working
as a stevedore, a logger, a backshotman for
a survey party in the Cascade Mountains,
and as a helper delivering cars from Detroit
manufacturers to California dealers. He
became an over-the-road trucking addict,
and once wrote a serial about the men who
drive the big ones. It later became a book
under the title Hell on Wheels.
While he was working for College Humor,
he was urged in 1925 to return to Pennsylvania
to run on a one-mile relay team
the university was sending over to England
to run against two other teams: one representing
Oxford, the other Cambridge. Because
of a fibroid sarcoma operation, Pete
had not competed as a track man in his
sophomore year. Also because of that operation
Pete had merely put in the usual four
years, and had not formally graduated.
Therefore he was technically eligible for
one more year of athletic competition.
He told the track coach at Pennsylvania
it was a deal if the school would help him
get another job as good as the one he'd be