John Shelton Reed, mischief maker (the prequel)

“When John dropped out of high school to join the Navy, my father hunted him down and shipped him north [from Kingsport, Tenn.] to Deerfield and then to MIT, where he… orchestrated such pranks as planting a large cardboard missile from a military recruitment display nose-first in the floodlit MIT dome and then painting a crack down the dome as though the missile had crash-landed there.”

— From “Kinfolks,” a 2007 memoir by Lisa Alther, younger sister of John Shelton Reed, retired Kenan professor of sociology at UNC Chapel Hill