Fooled by the Fins

On Page 39 of the July 2014 Bulletin, the photo shows the alumni college tour group having fun surrounding a pink convertible they discovered in Havana. The caption mislabels it as a Cadillac.

I know that car well. In 1956 I was a very car-conscious 16-year-old high-school senior. In January that year my friend Lester Neidell’s dad won a new red and white Ford Fairlane in a charity raffle. About a month later someone totaled it while Lester was driving. Everyone walked away from the wreck, but his Dad was so mad that for the next three months Lester lived at our house because he was afraid to go home.

In the fall of that year Lester went to Lehigh, and I went to Swarthmore. The beautiful ’56 Ford Fairlane lives on in our rite of passage.

—Bob Gurfield ’60
Los Angeles

Editor’s Note: A half-dozen or so ’50s and early ’60s alums sent us notes like the one above and this anonymous one: “You have a lot of super brains at Swarthmore—but you don’t know cars. That is a FORD!!”