by Laurel | June 14th, 2010
From Left: Herbert Marx, David Moxon and Frederick Zwisler
[Note: In the 1920 copy of the Holyoke High School yearbook in my collection, handwritten by the former owner, is a note indicating Marx became a dentist and Zwisler later became a doctor having attended McGill. I assume this info is true though it is unverified.]
June 14, 1925
Marx, Moxon and Zwisler all Prominent in Aggie Affairs — Commencement Tomorrow Will Separate Them for the First Time in 18 Years.
The Three Musketeers would find competition from a trio of Holyoke boys. For 18 years they have gone to school together and remained fast friends. Tomorrow they all graduate from Massachusetts Agricultural college and for the first time since they entered kindergarten their ways will part. But perhaps, like D’Artagnan, Porthos and Aramis 20 years after will see them together again.
Herbert J. Marx, David Moxon, 2d, and Frederick F. Zwisler are the trio who set the unusual record of constant companionship from the time they entered kindergarten in the fall of 1907 until now. For not only did they graduate from the same grammar school and high school in the same year, but they have gone through the same college in the same class.
Early in the fall of 1907 the three boys entered the kindergarten in the Joseph Metcalf grammar school in Holyoke, and the following year all were promoted to the first grade. A childhood companionship which started in kindergarten began to develop in the first grade, and from that time on, all through grammar school the three boys were to be found together all the time. Each year when promotion time cam round they were all sent to the same room for the following year, so that all through primary and grammar school they boys were in the same room at all times.
Graduating from the Joseph Metcalf school in 1916, they entered the Holyoke high school and here, too, they were constant companions, taking their classes together, and enjoying their extra-curricular pleasures as a group. They all took the same course, for each was determined to go to college, and being so near Amherst, it was but natural that they should decide to enter the Massachusetts Agricultural College. Circumstances made it necessary for them to earn some money before entering college, so they decided to work a year, and here it was that the only break in their companionship occurred, for while Marx and Moxon remained in Holyoke to work, Zwisler went to Hartford, Ct., to earn the necessary financial resources.
The fall of 1921 found them registered as freshmen at the Massachusetts Agricultural college. All three roomed in the South dormitory at the college, and it was the force of circumstances that Moxon and Marx should room together, while Zwisler having lost the toss to determine who should take the odd room, took up his abode across the hall, living with another man.
When the rushing season for freshmen by the college fraternities came round, the books looked the organizations over and decided to stay together, with the result that Kappa Epsilon fraternity won all three of the men as loyal and hearty members. That winter Zwisler moved to the fraternity house and the other two remained at the dormitory. The following fall Moxon and Marx likewise moved to the fraternity house, and ever since then the three boys have been roommates as well as classmates.
When election time came around, Moxon was elected the president of his class, and held the office in both his freshman and sophomore years, Moxon was chosen as the sergeant at arms of the class.
Deciding to enter some of the student activities, the boys, who were fast becoming men, followed their natural leanings, and Marx and Zwisler joined their class football teams, while Moxon, lamed by infantile paralysis in his youth, turned to the literary field and won a place on the staff of the “Massachusetts Collegian,” the college newspaper. The fall of their sophomore year, Marx and Zwisler went out for the varsity football team and won places on the squad, Marx as first string tackle, and Zwisler, a first string substitute, losing a regular berth only because of a slight difficulty of hearing signals.
At the close of the football season of their junior year, Marx was unanimously elected captain of the team for last fall, and in that position led the football team which made such a wonderful record for Aggie teams, losing by one game out of eight and defeating Amherst by the largest score Aggie ever defeated her by. This past year Zwisler made his debut in track, running on the varsity relay team. Moxon became advertising manager of the college newspaper during the past year, and so each of the men leaves college with honors in his chosen field of extra-curricular activity, Marx with a letter and captaincy from the varsity football team, membership in the senate, the undergraduate governing body, and membership in the senior honorary society, Adelphia; Moxon with a silver academics medical for his work as advertising manager of the “Collegian”; and Zwisler with a letter from both the football and track teams.
Now with the winning of their diplomas on Monday, the boys come to the parting of the ways, for each took a different “major” in college, and so they must each enter a different line of work. Marx specialized in chemistry and proved himself one of the best chemists in the class, and he has joined the Proctor & Gamble company as a chemist, where he will report for work in Ivorydale, O., on July 1. Moxon majored in microbiology and plans to enter the public health service, but decided to get a master’s degree first, so he will return to Aggie next fall as a graduate assistant in the microbiology department. Zwisler decided to be an economist, and so he made agricultural economics his specialty, and expects to be working for the government as a marketing specialist in the fall.
From The Springfield Republican.
