Married to his high school teacher and a newly made father, Newt Gingrich was anything but a typical Emory undergraduate student.
Ben Shapiro, a former College Council president, remembered Gingrich as precocious and eager to contribute to class discussions from a political science class they took together with Ronald Howell.
“[Gingrich] had black hair and he wasn’t as heavy as he is now, he was just like a regular guy. By his physical appearance, he did not stand out in any way and was just another student in the class, but I do remember him making good comments in class discussion,” Shapiro said as he recalled Gingrich, the current presidential candidate best known for coauthoring the conservative Contract with America in the 1990s.
Despite knowing him in class, Shapiro said he never saw Gingrich at social functions such as parties or sporting events, which he believes was due to Gingrich having a young family at the time.
Howard Cramer, who taught geology to Gingrich during his freshman and sophomore years at Emory, recalled that Gingrich was less interested in social gatherings and more driven to pursue politics even as a student.
In 1962, Gingrich founded a Young Republicans club at Emory during his sophomore year and convinced Cramer, who had been raised as a staunch Democrat, to become the club’s faculty adviser.
Cramer, who was brought up during the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s, explained that his mother instilled in him his strong Democratic values.
“My father was not a very good man and left mother with three boys. FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) provided her with a job and the sun suddenly rose,” Cramer said before adding, “My mother deserves to be knighted or sainted.”
Gingrich assembled the Young Republicans during the volatile 1960s when historical events such as race-related riots in Harlem and the assassination of John F. Kennedy were still fresh in people’s minds.
At the time, Georgia was still a solidly Democratic state and had been for a number of years.
“At the time, Georgia was a one-party state, and I thought we had a lot of corruption. I thought it would be good to have a two-party state. And it was a great way to meet people who, like me, were interested in politics,” Gingrich explained in a 2009 interview with Emory Magazine. “We had the Cuban missile crisis and all kinds of things going on. It was an interesting time — in 1964, you had the whole Goldwater movement, which was very exciting. That was the breakthrough year for Georgia.”
After graduating from Emory College with a Bachelor of Arts in history in 1965, Gingrich went on to earn a Ph.D. in modern European history from Tulane U.
Despite two unsuccessful bids for a Congressional seat in 1974 and 1976, he eventually won the contest to represent Georgia’s sixth district in 1978.
Shapiro said that even years later and potentially poised to be the next president, Gingrich still gives cause to pause and reflect on his contributions.
“He is a smart, I don’t care if you’re Democratic or Republican, you have to admit that he’s a very smart guy,” Shapiro said. “He and Clinton worked out a program to make welfare more efficient otherwise people would just lay around and have babies and collect welfare. You got to work, and that is a good thing … He did a lot of good things in his heyday, so I respect the man.”
After interviewing Gingrich for an Emory Magazine piece in the fall of 2009, Associate Editor of Emory Magazine Mary Loftus recalled that Gingrich’s behavior was meticulous and well-rehearsed.
“I think he has an incredible amount of information stored in his brain that he can pull out at will, which comes in handy while campaigning I’m sure,” she wrote in an email to the Wheel. “Everyone I talked to said he loved to argue a point, but did so respectfully and really enjoyed the give and take of a good informal debate.”
Loftus pointed out that Gingrich’s identity elicits strong reactions. In fact, she claimed that the interview actually led some readers to rip off the Emory Magazine cover, which featured Gingrich, and return the torn pieces to the University.
“But you can’t argue that he isn’t a historic figure as former Speaker of the House, and definitely is among Emory’s most well-known alumni,” she remarked. “I think we are a diverse community, a ‘big tent’ university, if you will, and Newt Gingrich is a part of that diversity.”