On a number of different levels, Williams-at-Home crystallized the desire to try to use some of my skills to some degree on societal problems or people, the underdog, and made me empathize more. Partly Gaudino himself in terms of his disease and how he approached it and how he basically, even though he was ill, he was by himself, the guy never stopped. He never let down. He pushed himself completely and he was demanding. He was a perfectionist. He never slacked off himself and so to me that was very inspirational. And I think then the whole issue of listening, knowing how to listen and knowing how to ask questions and then listen for the answer is a really rare art I’ve learned. It’s made me not only a better lawyer or an advocate. I think it’s made me a better parent and spouse and person.

When I got back to Williams in the fall I had grown my hair to my shoulders. I had a beard. I thought I was really different from when I left, “Mr. Counterculture.” I actually did my Winter Study, “Counterculture,” with Claud Sutcliffe that winter of ’73 and I was much more outspoken about the debate on campus. I remember talking in Mr. Gaudino’s living room and saying something to the effect of how I had changed, how different I was from when I started Williams-at-Home and, you know, etc., how great it was. And he looked at me and he said, “Mr. Thaler, you haven’t changed.” I said, “What are you talking about? How can you say I haven’t changed?” He said, “No, you’re just more of what you were before.” A while afterwards I started reflecting on that and thinking, “Well, maybe he was right to a point,” that by being more of what you were and being more self-confident and more able to express who I was up to that point.

Now, 30 years later, and being maybe a little more critical, I’m not sure he was 100% right because if we hadn’t changed during that program we all wouldn’t still be in touch with each other, we wouldn’t have a Gaudino Memorial Fund and we wouldn’t be coming back for mini-reunions. Because I think we all feel, or those of us who are still passionate about it, that it was, in the words of somebody else, a transformative experience. That means change.

Jeff Thaler '74, an environmental-energy lawyer in Portland, Me., in recent years has directed a Gaudino Fund-sponsored Winter Study in which Williams students live with families in Maine and become immersed in the lives of refugees and immigrants from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America