So when I was a senior, this was out of the blue, he said to me, which was later interesting to me because neither of us had a clue what he was talking about, he said, “You know, I think that maybe you might want to be an investment banker.”

I said, “What’s that?”

He said, “I’m not really sure. But there’s this fellow who was one of my students previously and he’s one. Maybe you should go down to New York and meet with him and see what he does.”

So I said, “Oh, well, that’s fantastic,” because seniors are always looking for jobs. So I went down to Dillon, Read and I sat in this fellow’s office and all he did the whole time was talk on the phone, really small office, and talked about utilities in Tokyo or somewhere.

Then I went back up to Williamstown and Gaudino said, “How did it go?”

I said, “Well, I think it went O.K.”

And he said, “Well, what does he do?”

And I said, “I’m like you, I don’t really understand because he just talked on the phone the whole time.”

He said, “O.K.”

Bill Loomis '71, moved to Santa Barbara, Calif. after having served as CEO and Managing Director of the investment bank Lazard Freres & Co. and now divides his time between there and New York while sitting on various corporate boards. He recently visited prisons holding suspected terrorists in Afghanistan as part of a delegation from the California-based Pacific Council on International Policy