Man on Board, for the Long Haul

As the tanker that would haul oil to Bahrain by way of Aruba and Naples picked up its crew in the slicing wind off Brooklyn Flats, Robert Brustein thought, “I’m going to be the loneliest man in the world.” It was 1945, and although the war had ended, his hitch in the service had a year and a half to go. He was 18 years old.

Robert Brustein, a central figure in 20th-century American theatre, joined Suffolk University's College of Arts Sciences in 2006 as a Distinguished Scholar in Residence, a permanent faculty appointment.

Following an accelerated course of study at the High School of Music and Art in New York City with a final year at Columbia Grammar School, Brustein graduated at 16 and entered Amherst College in 1943. The war had swept most of the students from the pristine New England campus, leaving only the underage and the 4Fs, those deemed physically unable to serve. “We ruled,” he says. “We were the football team, the baseball team, the drama club. One hundred-fifty kids.”

Enlisting for service in April 1945, he entered the Merchant Marine, which capped four months of basic training in San Mateo, California with six months at sea, eight months at the Merchant Marine Academy at King’s Point, Long Island, and the rank of Cadet-Midshipman in the Naval Reserve. On one of his seven-hour monthly leaves from basic training on August 15, 1945, Brustein witnessed V-J day in San Francisco. “It was orgiastic. Women tore their clothes off in the street. People climbed to the top of huge statues. I’ve never seen a city go so berserk. And all I did was watch. The envious observer.” Read more