library, but he never got a diploma from Berlin High School. Regardless, there was an admission certificate that read, “University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. The student named herein has been accepted for a full course of study.”
Where the F1 immigration form asked the applicant to identify “the person most closely related to me who lives in the United States,” Gerhartsreiter gave the name and address of the Berlin woman of German descent with the lake house. “We had one phone call from him,” she told me when I asked if she had ever heard from him after he left Connecticut. “He said his mother had just gone through a cancer operation and needed a place to recoup, and could he use the cottage.” He was referring to the family’s lake house. “He was trying to tell us that he was attending university. He kept talking about stocks and bonds. I just remember it was October and after that he never called again.”
Chris Gerhart listed his major field of study as political science and stated that he intended to stay at Stevens Point for the full four years required to obtain his bachelor’s degree. By August 1979 he had moved to Wisconsin and was living in a dormitory called Baldwin Hall, which housed many of the university’s international students. They were encouraged to participate in social activities aimed at fostering their language and cultural skills—a perfect environment for Gerhartsreiter, who, despite all he had learned, was still working at becoming American.
I contacted the university administrators whose names appeared in the paperwork in my file. No one seemed able to provide any information about the young man. “We wanted to help but have no records in the foreign student office (where I once worked) and have no memory of this guy,” Gerhartsreiter’s college adviser e-mailed me. Finally, I found his first roommate, Chris Newberg, who had an indelible memory of the freshman, who arrived in the dormitory with new black luggage, a set of golf clubs, and an aristocratic air. “Supposedly his mother or father was an ambassador who had come from back east,” said Newberg. “He said he was from Boston, Massachusetts.
“I had a wall where I put my posters and I had a big American flag that was tattered on the end,” Newberg continued. “I thought it looked cool, that it represented what our country had been through with battles.” But Christopher thought it looked tawdry. “I’m sorry but you’re going to have to burn that. It’s in disarray,” he told his roommate in his formal English accent.
He buttressed his image as the son of a Boston ruling class family by regularly practicing his golf and by what he ate and drank: Irish coffee, exclusively, and Boston cream pie, not on occasion but every single day. “We all thought his dad was in the FBI or the witness protection program because he was so secretive about his family,” recalled another fellow student, Richie Riddle. He was so secretive that he insisted that his name and biographical details be blacked out from the book that listed Baldwin Dormitory’s students—and their emergency contact information—at the dorm’s front desk. One night, at a party in the girls’ wing of the dormitory, Christopher so adamantly refused to leave when the party ended at midnight that the girls had to call the resident assistant to force him out. “Do you know who I am?” Christopher snarled. “I don’t have to take orders from you.”
“That was the last time we saw him,” said Richie Riddle.
In fact, he spent only one three-month semester at Stevens Point. In January 1980, he transferred to the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, where, he wrote in his application papers, his education objective was “a B.A. degree in Communications.”
Filed about the same time as his University of Wisconsin transfer application was a flurry of other documents—Application for Change of Nonimmigrant Status, Application by Nonimmigrant
Where the F1 immigration form asked the applicant to identify “the person most closely related to me who lives in the United States,” Gerhartsreiter gave the name and address of the Berlin woman of German descent with the lake house. “We had one phone call from him,” she told me when I asked if she had ever heard from him after he left Connecticut. “He said his mother had just gone through a cancer operation and needed a place to recoup, and could he use the cottage.” He was referring to the family’s lake house. “He was trying to tell us that he was attending university. He kept talking about stocks and bonds. I just remember it was October and after that he never called again.”
Chris Gerhart listed his major field of study as political science and stated that he intended to stay at Stevens Point for the full four years required to obtain his bachelor’s degree. By August 1979 he had moved to Wisconsin and was living in a dormitory called Baldwin Hall, which housed many of the university’s international students. They were encouraged to participate in social activities aimed at fostering their language and cultural skills—a perfect environment for Gerhartsreiter, who, despite all he had learned, was still working at becoming American.
I contacted the university administrators whose names appeared in the paperwork in my file. No one seemed able to provide any information about the young man. “We wanted to help but have no records in the foreign student office (where I once worked) and have no memory of this guy,” Gerhartsreiter’s college adviser e-mailed me. Finally, I found his first roommate, Chris Newberg, who had an indelible memory of the freshman, who arrived in the dormitory with new black luggage, a set of golf clubs, and an aristocratic air. “Supposedly his mother or father was an ambassador who had come from back east,” said Newberg. “He said he was from Boston, Massachusetts.
“I had a wall where I put my posters and I had a big American flag that was tattered on the end,” Newberg continued. “I thought it looked cool, that it represented what our country had been through with battles.” But Christopher thought it looked tawdry. “I’m sorry but you’re going to have to burn that. It’s in disarray,” he told his roommate in his formal English accent.
He buttressed his image as the son of a Boston ruling class family by regularly practicing his golf and by what he ate and drank: Irish coffee, exclusively, and Boston cream pie, not on occasion but every single day. “We all thought his dad was in the FBI or the witness protection program because he was so secretive about his family,” recalled another fellow student, Richie Riddle. He was so secretive that he insisted that his name and biographical details be blacked out from the book that listed Baldwin Dormitory’s students—and their emergency contact information—at the dorm’s front desk. One night, at a party in the girls’ wing of the dormitory, Christopher so adamantly refused to leave when the party ended at midnight that the girls had to call the resident assistant to force him out. “Do you know who I am?” Christopher snarled. “I don’t have to take orders from you.”
“That was the last time we saw him,” said Richie Riddle.
In fact, he spent only one three-month semester at Stevens Point. In January 1980, he transferred to the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, where, he wrote in his application papers, his education objective was “a B.A. degree in Communications.”
Filed about the same time as his University of Wisconsin transfer application was a flurry of other documents—Application for Change of Nonimmigrant Status, Application by Nonimmigrant
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