Rumsfeld’s Princeton
A portrait of the defense secretary as a young man
By Mark F. Bernstein ’83
Those who admire Donald H. Rumsfeld ’54, and those who do not, tend to use some of the same adjectives to describe him “words to which different meanings can be attached, depending on one’s perspective. And while it can be a risky and facile undertaking to extrapolate the adult from the undergraduate, those who knew the U.S. secretary of defense well when he was a student at Princeton describe Rumsfeld the student in terms that would be familiar to anyone who watches him on the news today.
“Serious . . . and incredibly disciplined,” says Joe Castle ’54, who roomed with Rumsfeld for three years.
“He didn’t take any side streets,” says Sid Wentz ’54, speaking metaphorically of Rumsfeld’s approach to everything from sports to politics to interpersonal relationships. “He went right up Main Street.”
“He was very determined, very orderly. Very orderly,” echoes Dick Stevens ’54, emphasizing the word to make his point.
“With Rummy, right was always right,” says Somers Steelman ’54, explaining his ex-roommate’s sense of morality. “He was a great one for ‘What works?'” Steelman adds. “There was no esoteric thinking about ‘What could be?'”
Whatever one’s opinion of the Bush administration’s defense policy, Rumsfeld has pursued it with dogged determination, conviction of the rightness of his path, and a willingness to take on critics with ferocity. In the early days of the war on terror, Rumsfeld’s crisp press briefings won him admirers and even a mention in People magazine as one of the sexiest men in America (prompting an amused President Bush to dub the 72-year-old secretary a “matinee idol.”) But as the number of American casualties in Iraq continued to rise and news of scandals such as the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison have filled the papers, calls have been issued for Rumsfeld’s resignation (although the commission investigating Abu Ghraib rejected the idea). Today, Rumsfeld is the most controversial defense secretary since Robert McNamara, an uncompromising warrior to some, a symbol of administration hubris and miscalculation to others.
It is ironic that a man so self-directed in life ended up at Princeton almost by accident. A state wrestling champion at New Trier High School outside Chicago, Rumsfeld was recruited by several of the Big Ten schools but was persuaded to apply to Princeton by his principal and several other local alumni, including fellow New Trier students who had graduated a year ahead of him, Ned Jannotta ’53, Jim Otis ’53, and Brad Glass ’53. “Don was a good prospect,” recalls Jannotta. “At Christmas during our freshman year, a few of us went back home and collared him.”
The Rumsfelds were a middle-class family. Rumsfeld’s father, George, sold real estate but joined the Navy at the age of 38 shortly after World War II broke out, instilling in his son a lasting appreciation for government and military service as well as a deep sense of patriotism. The family moved frequently during the war before settling in suburban Chicago. Money was tight (“I can’t ever remember a time when [Donald] didn’t have a summer job,” his mother once told a reporter), and Rumsfeld recalls hitchhiking to Princeton to begin his freshman year.
Rumsfeld found the transition difficult, and not only financially. Having come from a public school, and a Midwestern one at that, Rumsfeld felt he was not as well prepared as Eastern classmates from more privileged backgrounds. “Back in my day,” he says, “an awful lot of people had gone to prep school, and the first year those people had taken most of the freshman courses by the time they got there. I hadn’t.” To compensate, Rumsfeld, who majored in politics, spent a lot of time in the library, adhering to a rigorously disciplined schedule. Stevens recalls Rumsfeld chiding his friends for wasting their time reading a daily newspaper. Just read the Sunday paper and a good weekly news magazine and you’ll get all the information on world affairs you need, he told them. “I worked hard,” Rumsfeld admits. “I was disciplined and I managed my time. I got up early and worked and went to class and went to sports, whatever it was that season. And I didn’t have any money, so I didn’t have dates or anything like that. I had no reason not to be highly focused.”
His self-assurance at Princeton manifested itself even in bicker sessions, which then were conducted in the rooms of the sophomores that the clubs had decided to visit. One night, Ivy Club members stopped by to bicker Rumsfeld, but he was uninterested in Ivy and made his feelings known. Rather than put on a tie, as was customary, he met the visiting upperclassmen “wearing this gray T-shirt, a towel around his neck, [and] his hair was wet,” Castle remembers. Rumsfeld and several of his friends later joined Cap and Gown; even there, where he hung out or shot pool during rare idle hours, he struck some members as aloof and unapproachable. “Donald Rumsfeld typified the kind of person who made me nervous at Princeton,” wrote a classmate, S. Barksdale Penick III, in a Class of ’54 reunion book. “He was a jock and popular. I didn’t know how to approach him.”
Most of the defining moments of Rumsfeld’s time at Princeton came outside the lecture hall “in athletics, where Rumsfeld says he learned that “there is a relationship between effort and application and results.” Although he captained the 150-pound football team, Rumsfeld enjoyed greater athletic success as a wrestler, starting with an undefeated record as a freshman. As a junior, he finished second in the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association in the 157-pound weight classification. Elected team captain for his senior year, Rumsfeld went undefeated again during the regular season and finished fourth in the Easterns.
It is in the wrestling room, more than anywhere else, that one can catch a glimpse of the mature Rumsfeld. Defeat in wrestling can be not only humiliating (being pinned to the mat in front of scores of spectators) but painful as well, and even the victor bears scars. “Rummy always had swollen ears and mat burns all over him,” Castle says. Once, in a match against Cornell, Rumsfeld separated his shoulder, yet continued and managed to win on points.
Although the Nassau Herald called him a “speedy takedown specialist,” that phrase does not adequately describe the Rumsfeld wrestling style. He was characteristically preemptive, refusing to wait for a chance to exploit an opponent’s weaknesses, preferring instead to initiate the action and make his opponent react to him. A favorite move was the “fireman’s carry,” in which the wrestler drops to one knee, shoots under his opponent’s leg, and throws him over his shoulder before dumping him on the mat. It requires quickness and strength, and Rumsfeld practiced it often in the wrestling room, as well as on his roommates.
In an era before the popularity of weight training and aerobics, most wrestlers built themselves by doing pull-ups, chin-ups, running, and simply wrestling. (Though certainly fit, Rumsfeld came in third in voting by his classmates for “Best Body” senior year, an underwhelming honor he has frequently invoked to poke fun at himself.) The most onerous part of a wrestler’s week came on Thursday before a Saturday meet, when the time came to be weighed. Wrestlers who failed to make their assigned weight could not compete that week. Like most of his teammates, Rumsfeld frequently spent several hours before weigh-ins wearing a rubber suit and running around the boiler room beneath Dillon Gym, trying to shed the last few pounds.
Rumsfeld was deceptively strong, something he learned to use to his advantage. “Word got around that Rummy could do one-armed push-ups, but no one knew how many,” says Steelman. Challenged one night, Rumsfeld got down on the floor and squeezed off 50 of them right-handed. Sensing a weakness, Dick Stevens threw a $5 bill on the floor and bet Rumsfeld that he could not do 50 more, this time left-handed.
“He did the 50, picked up the money, and left the room,” Stevens recalls.
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