In the fall of 1903, two years after being accepted at Harvard, my grandfather found his way to Cambridge, took up lodgings,  met his professors and discovered, with his new classmates,  that they would now and forever be branded as members of the Harvard Class of ’07.  So, now he was one with his idol Theodore Roosevelt– class of               .

He had graduated high school in Waterville  in June of 1902.  I am unclear why did not enter as a freshman a year earlier than he did.

What ever he did during that winter of 1902 he had spent the past three Summers at the Preston Hotel.

Life at the Seashore was pleasant.  The work was undemanding.  He was popular with the guests.  He had become a handsome fellow.  I imagine him as the collegiate young man in magazine ads drawn by J. C. Leyendecker  for Arrow Collars.

Ray Carroll rowed in a Harvard shell and played basketball until he broke an ankle.

But I was wrong.  He aspired to  the athleticism.  But he didn’t have the robust physique of a Roosevelt, whom he seems to have considered a role model for a young man entering the 20th century.  Indeed he broke an ankle playing basketball and had a bit of a limp thereafter.

This pattern of feeling not able to make the ‘cut’ athletically, was to come to be reflected in his not feeling capable  of fulfilling the  expectation of others in other areas as well.   The  ‘spells’ and nervous disorders that  my grandfather felt defined him  for the rest of his life began here.  Indeed, The first such breakdown would occur before this freshman year was out.