Harvard Business School

"I was assigned for my first class to a small room in the old Seaver Hall," William Cunningham told an interviewer in the early 1950s.  "I was very nervous.  I had never had any college instruction and had never given a lecture.  I had spoken, of course, but had never given a lecture.  When the three [students] sat down, I was very, very nervous.

"I had just gotten nicely off to a start when the door opened very suddenly and a large person burst into the room.  He looked around with a scowl and said, 'What's going on here?' And I said to him that this was the class in Railroad Operation of the new department, the Graduate School of Business Administration.  'What right have they got to come into the History department room?' And I said, 'I don't know, but I assume they have a right, because I have been assigned here.' He reached over and pulled open the drawer of the desk I was at, took out some papers, and slammed the drawer, and went out and slammed the door.  Then, my heart was beating so at this kind of reception that one of the three men said, 'Mr. Cunningham, don't be disturbed.  The gentleman is Professor Merriman.' The boys called him 'Frisky.' That was my introduction.

"As a rule, the members of the University treated us tolerantly.  We had moral support in the Department of Economics.  Professor Taussig was a very good friend.  He was an especially good friend to me because he knew of my lack of academic background and he suggested things that I might read and he invited me to discuss one subject before the economics seminar, and told Bliss Perry about it, and the manuscript of my address to the seminar appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, which was quite some feat for an unknown chap!

"Taussig and Carver and Ripley, and the taxation man, [and] all of the Department of Economics were friendly.  But outside of that, we were tolerated, that was all, and they felt that they had to watch us very carefully because they thought of the old story of the camel who got his nose under the tent."