“Rusty Day ’74, a Williams-at-home student, was a close friend. Rusty and I would often drop by Gaudino’s house in late afternoons to hang out with him. Gaudino was a huge tease. I loved it. I remember sitting in his kitchen, Gaudino slumped in his chair, his back supported by the wall. Most of all, I remember that he laughed at his own observations and jokes and how he referred to so many things as “bourgeois” with amusement. One of the things he used to talk about was “bourgeois babies.”

He said “You’re all going to grow up and have your bourgeois babies and live in suburbs.” He said it was nice for us to be at Williams and questioning all these things but at heart he wondered whether we were all bourgeois.

The fall after graduation Rusty and I drove up to Williamstown to spend Thanksgiving with Gaudino. One of the reasons we went up was that they wanted to make sure somebody was with Mr. Gaudino and Dick Slade was going to be with his family in Connecticut for Thanksgiving. So I drove up from Washington, picked up Rusty, and we arrived Wednesday night. We probably stayed up for an hour or two talking in the kitchen with Mr. Gaudino and he was in a great mood. I remember one of the things he mentioned was that an old friend from Boston and his new wife were joining us for dinner the next day. Gaudino was expecting this friend George Johnston who he had known when he was studying in Sweden in 1950. And George had just married this woman Peggy. So he was expecting George and this new wife to come to Thanksgiving dinner and looking forward to seeing someone he had not seen for several years. I think I felt a little envious that we were going to share our time with someone else.

Rusty and I slept in the basement. It was ink black — you could not see your hand. The next morning, probably because it was so dark, we slept late. And I came upstairs and I was really disappointed Mr. Gaudino had not yet gotten up. And Rusty had gone in to check on him. So Rusty went into the bedroom and he came back out and he was sort of laughing and saying, “Oh he’s sleeping on the bathroom floor,” which may sound a little bit insensitive but in fact that was not an unusual thing for him to do because he often fell asleep. Gaudino would often nod off during conversations, probably the L-dopa. He was self- deprecating and made light of his disease and symptoms. I went off to see a friend. I returned to find the ambulance at the house.

–Margie French '74