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October 17, 2004 It's Hoya Lisa versus Eli TonyPROFILE: College years, choices helped shape Senate candidates. By NATE RAYMOND University of Alaska Fairbanks Sun Star
What exactly Knowles, 61, might have discussed with the president is unknown. But it likely had little to do with politics given the nature of their meeting: a Yale class of 1968 reunion. A few months later in September, a late vote caused U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski to be an hour late for an appearance at Georgetown University. Murkowski, 47, arrived at Riggs Library and spoke to students about Alaska, energy and the environment. She is the first female Georgetown graduate to serve in Congress, according to the campus newspaper The Hoya. College was two decades ago for Murkowski and almost four for Knowles. They attended different schools with different crowds and had different experiences. But somehow their paths have found them face-to-face in Alaska's high profile U.S. Senate race. Murkowski and Knowles' college experiences share only a few similarities. Both graduated with bachelor degrees in economics, and both were part of a Greek social society. They both took time to travel, though under notably different circumstances. Aside from these similarities, the candidates' paths were marked with different obstacles and choices that shaped who they became. TONY KNOWLES: YALE AND GEORGE W. BUSH
Where to go for college was not much of a
question for Knowles, whose Yale alumnus father had hoped his son would
continue the legacy. After graduating from Millbrook School, a New York
boarding school, Knowles entered Yale in 1959 at age 16.
He had a "bumpy road," he said, with a tough first year and
a problem with authority. "That was sort of what my attitude was
when I went to school, and I wasn't really in it for the right reasons
in terms of getting an education and working hard."
His attitude led to trouble with the school on a few occasions. He
was kicked out of Yale for a period after dropping water balloons from a
window, according to campaign spokesman Matt McKenna. Yale dismissed him
a second time for academic reasons, Knowles said.
Unable to attend school, Knowles worked for about a year in an oil
field, and then joined the Army in 1962.
At the time, he thought enlisting was "the thing to do."
Spc. Knowles spent two years with the 82nd Airborne Division, the
nation's largest parachute force, and did military intelligence in
Vietnam in 1964, studying maps and photos, according to McKenna. He
voted for Barry Goldwater that year, the last time he voted for a
Republican presidential candidate.
Looking back, Knowles said the army helped him gain the maturity and
discipline he had been lacking. "That really helped me get my act
together."
Honorably discharged, Knowles said he felt ready to try Yale again.
Knowles says he focused intensely on his studies this second time.
"Figured I had three strikes and you're out," he said. He
discovered economics, and often gave up entire weekends to studying.
He did leave some time for fun. He took part in extracurricular
activities, including intramural sports. He also joined Delta Kappa
Epsilon, a sports fraternity that's suspected as being the partial basis
for the 1978 film "Animal House."
In what even Knowles describes as ironic, the frat's president was
none other than future Republican President George W. Bush. Their
brotherhood has been an occasionally noted trivia bit for years, and the
two have had no problem making light of it, such as when Bush spoke to
an Elmendorf Air Force audience in 2002.
"I don't know whether your governor has admitted it or not, but
he went to Yale," Bush joked. "He probably slurs his words so
it sounds like 'jail.' " Laughter ensued before Bush wrapped up,
saying, "I'm glad to be here with my old friend, Tony
Knowles."
Under Bush, Knowles acted as pledge master at least once. And there
were parties, of course. In an article in the New York Times online last
April, he is quoted as saying, "There were, uh, social
activities." Then he lifted his right fist to his lips, according
to the account.
Bush and Knowles remained friends after college, usually meeting up
at governors' conferences and occasionally talking over the phone. There
was even talk after Bush was elected president that Knowles might join
Deke brothers Clay Johnson, Don Ensenat and Clark T. Randt Jr. as part
of the administration.
Fellow Deke and classmate Gregory Gallico remembered Knowles as a
"nice guy." Gallico, a Harvard physician and strong supporter
of Bush, joked via e-mail, "I'm sorry his critical faculties have
so deteriorated as to be a Democrat."
Still, as much as journalists and politicians play up Knowles' frat
days, it "really wasn't that big of a deal," he said.
"(The fraternity) was not a central part of life there as it is in
some universities," he said. "It was really just a combination
of social and sideline activities."
Don Schollander, a Deke brother, agreed. "The fraternities at
Yale aren't like the ones on the West Coast," he said. At the time,
the fraternity did not even live in their fraternity house.
Knowles may not have been one of the best-known brothers, either.
Schollander did not remember Knowles, and Garry Trudeau, who knew Bush
when he was at Yale and frequently mocks DKE in his strip "Doonesbury,"
had never heard of him. Gallico only knew him as an acquaintance.
Despite their friendship, Knowles and Bush have had no problems
making distinctions between themselves politically. "He's still got
his sense of humor and he can poke fun at himself," Knowles told
the Washington Post in 2002, "but he's totally preoccupied by the
war."
Women were not admitted to Yale until the year after Knowles
graduated. But that didn't deter Knowles and his friends from having a
good time, as they would sometimes head out on weekend road trips, the
"best way to meet young ladies," Knowles said.
It was during one such road trip to the all-girls Vassar College in
Poughkeepsie, N.Y., that Knowles met his future wife, Susan Morris. The
two were set up on a blind date, he said, and hit it off.
They remained college sweethearts afterwards, despite the 78-mile
distance between them. They married the summer after graduation, but not
without a little surprise: Three days before the wedding, Knowles
announced he had found a job roughnecking on the North Slope.
"My parents were aghast," Susan Knowles later told the
Juneau Empire, "We were young; it was an adventure."
Most everybody lived on campus their freshman year, and she got to
know people well, she said. She joined the Pi Beta Phi sorority and
lived in its Mill Street house.
The future senator originally considered becoming a teacher, but
never declared an education major and gave it up after her first year.
She went home every summer to work, she said, bringing her Oregon
roommate to Fairbanks after freshman year to be timekeepers for
firefighters during the wildfire season. The two got trained and bought
steel-toed boots, but she said their plan "fizzled like a
firecracker being rained on."
"It was the wettest summer that Fairbanks had ever had,"
she said. Her friend landed a job at McDonald's while she worked as a
cashier at Pay-N-Pack Hardware Store.
As a sophomore, Murkowski enrolled in a macroeconomics class. She
struggled with it, and midway through, her professor pulled her aside
after class.
"He didn't seem to have a lot of confidence in my ability to
pass his course and suggested that, you know, I just drop it," she
said.
"I was so incensed that he had that little faith in me and my
ability to get through his course that I kind of did one of these,
'Well, I'm going to show him.' "
She dug into her books and passed the course. She declared an
economics major later that year.
During her junior year, she became an exchange student for a semester
at the International College of Commerce and Economics outside of Tokyo.
"They didn't speak very much English, and I spoke limited
Japanese," she said. "So I learned the language pretty
quickly."
With the exchange winding down, Murkowski looked at transferring to a
different school. She said her high school adviser had spoken highly of
Georgetown University, a Jesuit college in Washington, D.C., so she
transferred there the following semester.
Her decision had less to do with politics than location, she said.
Although Murkowski was politically active at the time, managing Wally
Hickel's Fairbanks office during his failed 1974 gubernatorial campaign
and interning for Sen. Ted Stevens after high school, she said she moved
to Washington, D.C., to break her Western ties for a while and to try
the East Coast.
Her credits did not transfer well, causing her to need another year.
But she loved the school and didn't regret the move.
"It was exactly what I was looking for," she said. "It
was a young person's scene in every sense of the word, but yet it was
safe."
The first year, she lived in Harbin Hall in a suite with four rooms
and a living room. She shared the space with six others, including her
New York roommate.
Her Alaskan heritage was a bit of a shock to her suitemates.
Murkowski later wrote in a piece for The Hoya that the Alabaman didn't
understand why an Alaskan would travel so far just for school, and it
took Murkowski an entire month to convince her that she was from Alaska,
not Arkansas.
She moved off-campus senior year with some friends. They would joke
that they had "covered all the coasts," Murkowski said, since
the others were from California, Rhode Island, and Florida.
Politics entered Murkowski's life in a big way after Georgetown. The
year Murkowski graduated was the same year her father, Frank, was
elected to the U.S. Senate. She took a job as a legislative aide in
Juneau before returning to Willamette for law school.
She remained politically active at Willamette, where she was elected
to a student government position and served on the moot court board. Her
father also spoke at the commencement.
Doug Luetjen, a Seattle attorney, dated Murkowski during their three
years of law school. He said she frequently attended events with him
where political figures were present. He remembered her as "very
poised" and "comfortable" around politicians.
She took interest in policy topics as well, trading opinions with
Luetjen on term paper topics ranging from U.S. banking to natural
resources. He remembered that one of her major papers dealt exclusively
with Alaska.
She was fairly social, Luetjen remembered, maintaining a careful
balance between her schoolwork and extracurricular activities. He noted
that in law school, the workload is so heavy that most students, like
him, had little time for any social life. She also reserved time to eat
with her undergraduate sister, he said.
Their relationship ended with school on good terms, as Murkowski
wanted to return to Alaska while Luetjen was headed for Washington, he
said. But both consider each other good friends, and Luetjen said he is
a big supporter of her campaign.
Yale was more than 36 years ago for Knowles, and Murkowski left
Willamette's law school in 1985. Today, Knowles' son Luke is a junior at
Yale. Murkowski wrote in The Hoya earlier this year that maybe her sons
would enroll in Georgetown someday.
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