The best student I… I had there I think was a great big thug named Rodzevic, who worked for Ford in a pickling plant. They pickle metals in… in acid, and what had happened was that his wife was dying of cancer and he was,  boy he was really feeling it, and so he had to have something else to think about, so he came to this poetry class. And he… when… when we talked about a poem, you… you know, he… he said things that were so brilliant but they were so couched in this thuggish language, that I think most of the people didn't realize he was the real sensitivity in that room. He… one day he said something so bright I had to send the class home. I thought: I can't… I can't rephrase that, I can't cap it; I can't do anything with it. I said: 'Go home and think about that!' I… I mean, I… I had to find a whole new way to teach there, which was that I wouldn't prepare. I could take a poet I did not understand at all, like Hart Crane. I would go in and I… I’d  just read this poem to the class and the fight would start, and it started every day, and it was marvelous… you had older people, you had people who were working full time at this, that and the other thing.

There were three… three girls in there who were models, people who worked in auto plants, people who… well, these… this school had been started by the Unions so that they could… that, you know, so that there would be a place for these people to go to college, and it was so much more fun and so much… I learned so much more. I… I really loved it there until this guy got a hold of it and started trying… he… first he threw out all… all the students who weren't… what's — I… I can't remember the term for it — who aren't going to finish a degree. They're just taking one class because they are interested in this. Those are people you want, for Christ's sake! He threw them all out. It was only people who were going to matriculate, and then he wanted dormitories and then there was to be a football team. We'd never had a football team; you know, these people are too busy, they are doing other… they are doing other things; they are working at every kind of job.

We had… one of our students was a bouncer at a gambling house, and when he got out of the… well, and also it was a great help… this was right after World War II, which was the great moment of American education. When he got out of the Marines, those of his friends who could, got on the police force. The other ones who couldn't, joined the mobs, and soon these guys who had been fighting side by side were now fighting each other. Some were… some were with the mobs and some were in the police force, and you… you got students like this, and that… it was marvelous. You were really learning something.