Word: coffin
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...never happened to see a reverend with a madras tie before Bill Coffin. But then, most things about Yale's galvanic chaplain don't quite match the stereotyped trappings of the traditional man of the cloth...
...robust six-footer, beginning to succumb to a follicle defoliation and a corpuscle accumulation, Coffin radiates a certain bon vivant, I'll-lick-any-man-in-the-house love of live. Whether charging long at full speed, cracking a joke, or intently explaining his latest scheme to some vaguely conspiratorial group, his leg slung over the side of the armchair, this exuberance oozes from...
Graduated from Andover in 1942, Coffin spent a year at the Yale School of Music, then entered the wartime Army, where after 1945 he served as liason with the French Army, until he left in '47. Returning vet Coffin promptly whooshed through Yale in two years, zigged to Union Theological Seminary for one, zagged to the CIA as a Russian specialist for three (by now we're up to 1953); at last he decided that Yale Divinity School was where the right questions were being asked, and was ordained a Presbyterian minister...
...starting point of their ministry. Church services, says the Rev. Larry Rouillard, Episcopal chaplain at California's Claremont Colleges, are primarily a means of nurturing those who are already committed, not of reaching out to students. Most ministers agree with Yale's Protestant chaplain, Presbyterian William Sloane Coffin, that "liturgy doesn't carry the freight it used to," and they freely experiment with different worship forms. At M.I.T., chapel services have included everything from jazz Masses to a dance by a Radcliffe girl in leotards. Episcopal Father Malcolm Boyd, a "chaplain-at-large" to U.S. college students...
...stool where a newcomer is inevitably seated. Slowly, very slowly, it sinks until the guest suddenly notices his companions towering over him and his neck straining to keep up with the conversation. A cocktail table unobtrusively revolves, mixing up drinks and drinkers. A "dead body" glares from an open coffin. In the gilded-cage elevator, a monster rattles and bangs the bars. And then there is Irma...