Sending Off “Schrammbo”

Last night here in Ashland, Ohio (where I’m team-teaching an intensive one-week masters degree course on the Cold War with Stephen Tootle), we held a great sendoff for Peter Schramm, stepping down as director of the Ashbrook Center after two decades, and handing off the reins to the supra-capable Roger Beckett.  (We highlighted Peter in the Power Line 100 series previously.)

We held an old fashioned Dean Martin-style roast, featuring faculty luminaries such as John Moser, Chris Burkett, and David Foster, plus long ago friends including Chris Flannery, Ken Masugi, and Bill Allen by video (though done with, as Bill admitted, “Bill Allen’s typical opacity”).  My contribution included the following:

I won’t exactly say that Peter is fat, but when he steps on a cigarette . . . that sucker’s OUT.  And my compliments to the board of trustees for selecting Roger Beckett as Peter’s successor, who, like Peter, is a large person in every sense of the word.  You didn’t just find someone who can fill Peter’s shoes; you found someone who can fill Peter’s clothes, too.

Peter is a graduate of Hollywood High School back in the 1960s.  He wanted a career in show business, but was disappointed to find they had cancelled the planned production of Girth of a Nation.  But I did find in the Hollywood archives the shirtless photo of Peter used for casting a famous feature film.  For some dumb reason, they cast Sylvester Stallone instead.  Here’s it is:

I just know there’s going to be hell to pay for this before my week is out.

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