What going to Yale has meant to me
by Clifford Wright, '49
clifford.r.wright@worldnet.att.net

I've never thought much about this matter; but In reflecting I imagine that the most important thing I have received from Yale has been friendship.

While at the university I did not participate in the many aspects of the college which would have made me contact a large number of students. This was largely due to my getting married at the end of my freshman year; and the fact that the university was a rather strange place right after the Second World War when I attended. "Get rid of this hoard of GIs as soon as you can, so we can get back to education" was the attitude of Yale.
Clifford Wright and his wife
Eleanor live in Montecito.
He is Treasurer of the YCSB.
However, I did join a fraternity and a senior society; and with the many friends which I had through these sources, and the many who were on the campus from Andover, I knew quite a few people — even though my spare time was spent working on a house we bought in Hamden, due to the housing shortage for married couples (there were over 750 in this group).

Since leaving Yale (where I got a BA degree in political science, nut don't feel I learned much of anything), I have retained many of the friends I knew there. They are scattered all over the U.S. Many I see every year, and many I communicate with via Christmas/Valentine cards.

Because I grew up in Cincinnati where my father and his friends were strong Ivy League adherents, I have always been exposed to the Eastern part of the country. Even though I have been in California for almost 40 years, I still go back "East" every year just to see many of those friends I made when I lived and went to school and college there.

I have even come to grudgingly accept those poor souls who ended up going to Harvard, Princeton, and other such places.