'Capre Diem': Remembering Princetonians who fought for freedom

September 11 may be a date that will be remembered by many after this year's events, but Dec. 7 was the original day of infamy in American history.

On that faithful date in 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked, precipitating the deaths of thousands at the U.S. military base and American participation in the destructive global conflict that was World War II.

For those old enough to remember the attack, it is a day to revisit the memories of old friends.

Whitney Seymour, Jr. '45 lost classmates to the war — friends who sat across the table from him at Cap & Gown Club meals; young men with whom he'd play an impromptu game of football on Sunday afternoons in Holder Courtyard; and classmates in his politics classes who had lived down the hall from him freshman year.

But the names of those 23 undergraduates, their faces and a small piece of their personalities, continue to live. They live not only in the memories of those who — like Seymour — made it home after the smoke had cleared, but also in Carpe Diem, the booklet Seymour published in 1995 commemorating Princeton students of the Class of 1945 who never came home after the war.

John Kauffmann '45, secretary of his class, first gathered the information contained in Carpe Diem soon after the war ended. Seymour decided to revisit it at the class's 50th reunion, when he was a member of the class reunions committee.

"I reprinted those pages as a reminder for our class, and for others," Seymour ex-plained, adding that he knew most of the men who are remembered in the booklet. "It's as applicable today as it ever was."

One of the things Seymour hopes readers will take away from the book is the importance of the cause for which those deaths occurred.

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"Freedom is worth fighting for," he emphasized, "and you've got to fight for it to protect it."

Seymour, a native of New York city, was born in Huntington, W. Va., where he was delivered by his maternal grandfather — a doctor — in July 1923. He came to Princeton as a member of the Class of 1945, but his studies were interrupted by the war.

In the middle of his junior year, he left the University and went into what would be a three-and-a-half-year service with the U.S. Army, fighting in New Guinea, the Admiral Islands and the Philippines.

When the war was over, Seymour returned to Princeton. He was a Phi Beta Kappa, and he graduated magna cum laude in 1947 with an A.B. in politics.

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In 1950, he received a J.D. from Yale Law School and has been practicing law since then. He has also served in a variety of public and community service positions, including 10 years in federal law enforcement.

Currently, Seymour does pro-bono public interest work at the small firm of Landy and Seymour in midtown Manhattan. His wife Catryna and he have two daughters and live in the Greenwich Village district of Manhattan.

Included in Carpe Diem is a column that Seymour wrote, reflecting on some of his thoughts about going to fight in a war, then and now.

The article expresses a sort of lack of awareness at the time regarding the importance of the cause for which he was fighting. More so than not, many of the young men had gone simply because the government had told them it was what needed to be done. They believed that without hesitation, the column explained.

Now, Seymour is far more understanding of the reasons for such a struggle. "It's not until you get older and you realize how much freedom is challenged that you realize how important it is to fight for it," he said.

The men who did fight for freedom — many as young as 20, only one having reached his 24th birthday — are also remembered in Firestone Library, where, in one room (C-11-K), their pictures, names and biographies are framed and displayed.

In this room, one can learn about Navy fighter pilot John Stevenson, Jr., 19, the polo player from Elizabeth City, N.C., killed in an air collision two weeks before he was to receive his Navy wings; Stockton Bartol, 20, a highly decorated lover of flying, killed in his 26th air mission over Germany, when he had been eligible for release after his 25th.

There is also 1st Lt. John Putnam, Jr., 23, of Cleveland, Ohio, who wrote in his journal that courage is not the lack of fear, but the ability to face it; aspiring writer Robert Crawford, 20, an aerial photographer killed in Yugoslavia, leaving behind his parents, his sister and his wife.

And perhaps in the small room one will find some small part of Whitney Seymour himself, there among his classmates, in the pages of Carpe Diem, and on some distant, almost forgotten battlefront, fighting a war that ended over 50 years ago — a war for freedom that is still being waged today.