Education: The Buzzer

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At 8:40 a.m. one morning last week, a white-haired gentleman of 68 strode into his lecture hall at Princeton University and, as was his custom, headed directly for the platform. As he neared it, the 700 students rose to their feet, and the whole room resounded with cheers. As everyone at Princeton agreed, it was an appropriate tribute: the inimitable Walter Phelps Hall, member of the Princeton faculty for 39 years, professor of history for 24, was retiring, and this was his last appearance in class.

Over the years, thousands of students have known him as a hearty man who hated automobiles (he often drove a horse & buggy), carried a cane, and wore a hearing aid that sputtered so much he was affectionately called "the Buzzer." But in class, students forgot everything except the Buzzer's fiery way of teaching. Sometimes he stamped his feet, sometimes he brandished his cane, sometimes he even hopped up on a desk in the heat of describing a battle. Once, drenched by the rain, he whisked off his suit and conducted the class in his underwear.

Though he took a perverse pleasure in scheduling most of his classes at 7:40 a.m., they were always jammed, and his course on modern Europe was the most popular elective in Princeton's history. Once a student did fall asleep—after having taken the milk train in from Manhattan. The Buzzer spotted the sleeper, tiptoed to his seat, bent down, and let out a bellow: "Princeton Junction! Change for Princeton!" The student never dozed again.

Though he wrote many books (British Radicalism, 1791-1797; The Course of Europe Since Waterloo; Mr. Gladstone), Hall never cared much for footnote scholarship. He was primarily a teacher, always cheerful and always ready to chat with anyone who happened by. "Just a minute till I turn on the electricity," he would say as he fumbled with his hearing aid. But teaching, to him, was more than reviving the past, and he could never talk about a favorite era or a favorite hero without drawing a moral. One of his favorites was the 18th century ("More broad-minded cusses were around then"); another was Garibaldi, who gave up so much for his country. "The rock bottom thing about life," the Buzzer would say, "is to keep on going when we don't want to keep on going, and to be willing to give up what isn't necessary."

Last week, as he finished his last lecture, the Buzzer did not stage his usual exit to the fanfare of the class bell. This time, Joseph R. Strayer, chairman of the history department, detained him and said he had an announcement. In the Buzzer's honor, said Strayer, past & present members of his classes were setting up 1) a fund for an annual Walter Phelps Hall prize for the best senior thesis in European history and 2) a fund for a series of annual lectures to be given in his name.