Howard Dean, Friends Recall Howard Dean's Intensity, Worldly Ways

NEW HAVEN — Howard Dean came to Yale a year older than most of his colleagues, a little more worldly, better traveled and just generally ahead of the curve.

With the turbulent ’60s as a backdrop, what his friends remember most are the good times and Dean was at the center of that — a fun guy, quick to organize a mixer and hang out for a card game.

"He was just somebody, and it remains true, that people liked to be around. You sort of feel good about yourself around Howard. I think it has something to do with his unpretentiousness," said David Berg of New Haven, his good friend from Yale’s Pierson College.

Dean was at Yale from 1967 to 1971, as the war escalated in Vietnam, the civil rights movement advanced, the National Guard patrolled New Haven on May Day and the first women came to the Ivy League campus.

"He was seldom, if ever, a loner. He was always the guy who was getting a group of people together, and he was very inclusive," said Bill Kerns, who is now a family physician in Virginia.

Dean was also the guy who invited you back to his room to finish off the keg that was left over from those socials he helped organize, said good friend Richard Willing, a national correspondent for USA Today.

Classmates, contacted across the country, remember his stamina and the intensity he brought to those late night bull sessions on Old Campus during freshman year and later at Pierson.

"Howard had a huge amount of energy and you would be coming back from lab, ticked off at the world, and Howard would go by singing and buzzed and you couldn’t help but laugh," said Kerns.

His intramural gridiron feats — Dean was an offensive lineman — also came to mind, mainly because he was game enough to take on much bigger players.

"I was impressed that he dove in there and did it because you take a beating playing football like that," said Jeffrey Knight, 53, a marketing consultant in California.

There were oblique references to some "outrageous" things happening in the freshmen dorm, but no one was elaborating.

"He did some interesting things as a freshman I’m not going to tell you about, but I mean, hell, didn’t we all?" Kerns said.

Peter Brooks, 63, sterling professor of comparative literature and French and former master of Pierson, found Dean a "delightful person. Though he was very much of a bon vivant, he also had a serious side which came out a few years later" when he bailed out as a stockbroker and went to medical school.

Dean, the former governor of Vermont and a retired doctor, has surged ahead as the biggest fund-raiser in his grass-roots campaign for the Democratic nomination for president.

The election is to a large extent a Yale affair, with Dean slugging it out with Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, class of ’66 and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who graduated in 1964 from Yale College and from the law school in 1967.

Holding up the opposition is President George W. Bush, class of 1968, and while he was a senior when Dean was a freshman, it’s unclear if their paths ever crossed.

Past generations of the families, however, traveled in the same circles. Bush’s grandmother served as a bridesmaid to Dean’s grandmother.

As for politics, there were no indications the guy from the upper East Side in New York was headed for a career in government.

"He was political, but he certainly wasn’t thinking about being a political office holder, let alone a president," said roommate Ralph Dawson, 54, a lawyer with Fulbright and Jaworski in New York.

While the Oval Office wasn’t on his radar screen, Brooks, as the Pierson master, said Dean always had leadership qualities.

"He was a very, and I’m not going to say charismatic, because he wasn’t that, but a very powerful personality," Brooks said. "He had a great deal of curiosity about the world."

On some of the bigger social issues of the day, Dean, like his friends, was anti-war, but not in the vanguard of the movement.

"Although he certainly had his political opinions," remembered Larry Horn, who runs a patent business in the Washington, D.C., area.

"He found amusement in people who pontificated and didn’t have much patience with that sort of thing," said Knight.

"It was certainly interesting to see him in the middle of a heated discussion. That was a very cool thing," said Kerns.

"I can remember us spending three or four hours one night, totally destroying a bridge game we were part of because we were arguing about some sort of moral relativism," said Berg, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Yale Medical School, who has remained close to Dean.

One of the other things that made Dean stand out was his request freshmen year to room with African Americans.

"That was not something I knew at the time," Dawson said. "I think that it’s good that he did that. I learned a lot from him, and I think he might have learned a thing or two from me." He said Dean was never a "patronizer. If you happen to be a person of color, you don’t feel that he is dealing with you in any special kid gloves kind of way," Dawson said.

"Race continues to be an issue in America that has not been resolved and the only way that one can contribute to its resolution is to be sensitive to people of different points of views and races and that’s something that Howard always had," said Dawson, who is helping Dean’s campaign when he can.

Willing said Dean "was aware that there was a world beyond the (Phelps) gate," while Berg remembers him talking to the gardeners on campus the same way he would talk to Yale President Kingman Brewster.

"He was able to cut across those distinctions and just talk to folks," Kerns said.

One year older than most freshmen, Dean was comfortable with the academic demands of Yale.

While Willing struggled to prepare his first paper well in advance of the due date, Dean pulled his off the night before, while four other roommates smoked and played cards, listening to the stereo in the same small room.

He remembered "Howard typing with one hand and having a fan of about three books all open along his left arm taking the quotes … right in the middle of it all, completely non-pulsed."

"He looked like Little Richard up there, you know, playing with one hand," Willing said. "I think we got the same grade." Willing, who talks to his friend about once a month these days, said Dean was a "preppy in spite of himself in a very unself-conscious way."

During their time at Yale, the college had a good football team, although the quarterback in their senior year was shaky.

At one game he overshot a wide open receiver by about 10 yards, and while everyone else just groaned, Willing said Dean stood up and pointed to the guy from atop the bleachers. "That’s inexcusable," he declared.

"It just struck me as such an endearing and extremely blue chip kind of thing to say — and indeed, it was inexcusable," Willing said.

This is so PREPPY! It has little thought or originality to its composition and it is extremely shallow. All the traits that I see projected in Dean - he is a very deceiving person who knows how to ingratiate himself. I see many parallels between Howard Dean (who I can see rising to the top in Germany in the late 1930s) and others at the art of deception. Cnsider the following article in juxtapostion to the Dean article:

But he was good to his mother: Murdering for militant Islam by Daniel Pipes (Jerusalem Post) December 2, 2003

The news last week that police had arrested Sajid Badat at his home in Gloucester, England, shook many Britons.

The charges against him concerned his training with al-Qaida in Afghanistan and his possessing PETN explosives, the same substance would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid had tried to set off. Police believe Badat intended to carry off the very first suicide bombing in the United Kingdom.

But not everyone was shaken by this news. Gloucester's Muslim community esteemed Badat too much to credit the charges. One admirer called him "a walking angel" and "the bright star of our mosque."

Another described him as "a friendly, warm, fun-loving character." A cousin insisted Badat was "nothing more than a friendly, sociable, normal young lad, who had lots of friends and did not hold extreme views in any way."

Interestingly, a similar gulf in attitudes recurs almost every time a supporter of militant Islam has either been arrested on terrorism-related charges or engaged in an actual terrorist operation.

Consider three other European examples:

"He was a very nice person. He used to train our kids. He was very jolly and always laughing." This eulogy by a mosque leader describes Wail al Dhaleai, a British immigrant of Yemeni origins who carried out a suicide attack against US troops in Iraq. Another mosque figure called Dhaleai a "jolly fine gentleman" and a neighbor noted how he went "out of his way to help the children." Dhaleai's martial arts coach added, "He just made you laugh. – I cannot say enough nice things about him. He was such a nice guy."

"He was just a big teddy bear – honorable and very polite – a well-liked and respected pupil": those are some of the depictions of Asif Hanif, a Briton of Pakistan origins who blew himself up in a Tel Aviv pub, killing three.

"He was smart, clever and kind, a really nice boy." That's Zacarias Moussaoui, sometimes known as 9/11's "twentieth hijacker," as described by his older brother.

The same admiration for accused terrorists also gets expressed in the United States:

"He was the nicest guy. He didn't mess with anybody," said Iyman Faris's former employer right after Faris, an Ohio trucker of Pakistani origins, had pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to provide support. Faris's stepson spoke endearingly of his stepfather's "very good sense of humor."

"Just a normal, good-natured young man who dreamed of a family of his own, whose young adult years in [Florida] were filled with driving children to school, buying groceries and taking college courses." That's the Miami Herald paraphrasing his family talking about Adnan Gulshair El'Shukri-jumah, a Florida-raised Saudi suspected of being an al-Qaida member who helped with 9/11, and someone the FBI considers "a very, very, very serious threat."

"She was an educated person, concerned with educating people about Islam." She here is Aafia Siddiqui as portrayed by her imam, a Pakistani woman sought for questioning about ties to al-Qaida.

And similar responses are found in the Muslim world – for example this case from Thailand's Muslim-majority south:

"Friendly and charming – a kind person," someone beloved by villagers for offering free health checks and cheap medicine; that's how a religious leader described Waemahadi Wae-dao, a medical doctor arrested on charges of planning to bomb embassies and tourist spots in Thailand.

Such high regard for terrorists has several important implications. First, it points to the adherents of militant Islam being indeed "normal, good-natured young" people, and not misfits. In common with other totalitarian movements, militant Islam finds support among many accomplished, talented, and attractive individuals – which renders it all the more dangerous a threat.

Second, the fact that those who murder on behalf of militant Islam often enjoy psychological soundness, educational attainment, sporting success, economic achievement, or social esteem suggests that Islamist violence cannot be reduced by adopting the "root causes" approach of addressing personal poverty and despair. The phenomenon needs to be fought head-on.

Third, that terrorists are (unsurprisingly) skilled at hiding their intentions has the unfortunate consequence of making them harder to discern and therefore spreads suspicion to the larger Muslim community. This in turn points to that community's heightened responsibility and incentive to ferret out potential terrorists in its midst.

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