Today I spent the day talking to my son about which colleges he should apply for, and the subject of large vs. small schools came up. My wife commented at dinner tonight that “it’s easy to get lost in a big school, especially as a freshman,” and I agreed that was certainly the case.
However, I also pointed out that even in a big school it was possible to connect with a few friends who could make a difference.
This led me to reminisce about my freshman year at Berkeley, where the relatively urban and “crazy” environment proved a big shock for this suburbanite from the San Fernando Valley. I remember arriving on the bus and eating a hot dog at Top Dog on Durant St., realizing that I knew almost no one out of the 20,000 students that were out to cut each others’ throats and somehow get into medical school or wherever it was that they were headed. But the bright spot in my recollection about Cal was my freshman roommate who made me feel so much more at home and comfortable than I otherwise would have. And who was this guy? — Dennis Lynn.
So after dinner tonight I googled “Dennis Lynn” + Brentwood, because that’s where he was from – just like my grandparents who lived on Anita off of Sunset when I was growing up. I wanted to see if I could track Dennis down, but sadly discovered via this website that he had passed away almost exactly a year ago.
I met Dennis my first week at Cal. We looked more or less like twin brothers back then in 1974. Both of us were freshmen from Southern California; about the same height, dirty blond hair and sporting good tans like we had just driven in from the beach. Each of us born at St. Johns Hospital in Santa Monica, we were a natural fit to share a room on the second floor of the Delta Upsilon house on Waring St where we had just pledged.
Dennis was one of the kindest people I’ve known, and very even-keeled in contrast to my own volatility. I don’t think I ever heard anyone say a bad word about him. His social skills and ability to get along with virtually everyone made him a popular guy.
There are so many stories I could tell about our outrageous adventures together in 1974-5, but many of them might not be fit to describe in much detail on a site like this 🙂 Suffice it to say we had a lot of incredibly good times. Our fiasco on “hell night” where I got arrested for all of half an hour (and he escaped without notice), our evening with 2 very friendly overnight guests from our sister sorority at Stanford, and the Grateful Dead concert we were incapable of driving to on account of our overly exuberant pre-concert partying that left us incapable of even walking down the stairs to the parking lot.
I ended up leaving Berkeley after my freshman year, joined a commune for a number of years, and in the process fell out of touch with Dennis. Recalling now what a great guy he was, I consider this a real missed opportunity. I ended up relocating back to Southern California, and could have easily reconnected with him. Regardless, I am leaving this post in order to add to those already here, confirming with one more voice that Dennis was a great guy who touched a lot of people during his life in ways that made a difference.