The beachfront property was rented, the guests were invited and an ever-organized Brett M. Kavanaugh had some advice for the seven Georgetown Preparatory School classmates who would be joining him for the weeklong escapade.
In a 1983 letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times, the young Judge Kavanaugh warned his friends of the danger of eviction from an Ocean City, Md., condo. In a neatly written postscript, he added: Whoever arrived first at the condo should “warn the neighbors that we’re loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers among us. Advise them to go about 30 miles...”
More than three decades later, the elite, privileged high school world that Judge Kavanaugh inhabited is the focus of international attention. He has been accused of sexual assault during his time at Georgetown Prep — claims that have delayed, and threatened to derail, his confirmation to the Supreme Court. Judge Kavanaugh denies the allegations.
Recent interviews with more than a dozen classmates and friends from that time depict Judge Kavanaugh as a member of a small clique of football players who dominated Georgetown Prep’s work-hard, play-hard culture. His circle celebrated a culture of heavy drinking, even by the standards of that era.
Now several members of that group — still tightknit decades later — are caught up in the controversy surrounding Judge Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.
With the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s
background check into the judge reopened, two of his closest high school friends, Mark Judge and Patrick J. Smyth, have been interviewed by F.B.I. agents. Another, Tim Gaudette, was named in Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony as the host of a July 1982 gathering, around the time that Christine Blasey Ford says she was assaulted. Mr. Gaudette has hired a lawyer to represent him and was interviewed by the F.B.I. on Tuesday, the lawyer said.
A different classmate, who was friendly with Judge Kavanaugh and requested anonymity to protect his business interests, said he had reached out to the F.B.I. because he believes the judge misrepresented the extent of his drinking during his Senate testimony last week.
Even the faculty adviser to Georgetown Prep’s 1983 yearbook —
a publication littered with debasing comments about women and references to drunken debauchery — has been wondering whether he will hear from the F.B.I., a family member said.
The judge has said that he attended high school parties. “Sometimes I had too many beers,” he testified, adding that he has “cringed” at some
As Judge Brett Kavanaugh faces an F.B.I. investigation into the sexual assault accusations against him, his remarks about drinking have come under scrutiny. Here’s what he has said.Published OnSept. 19, 2018CreditCreditImage by Pool photo by Erin Schaff
Parties, in the backyards of classmates’ suburban homes when their parents were away, would often attract hundreds of students from nearby private schools, his classmates recall. Five or 10 kegs would be procured and, if all went as planned, drained by the end of the night.
One night during his senior year, according to classmates who witnessed it, Judge Kavanaugh triumphantly hoisted an empty beer keg above his head, in recognition that he and his friends were well on their way to reaching their goal of polishing off 100 kegs during the academic year — an achievement they later boasted about in their yearbook.
Four Georgetown Prep classmates said they saw Judge Kavanaugh and his friends partake in binge-drinking rituals many weekends in which other partygoers saw them inebriated, even having difficulty standing. Three of those classmates signed
a July letter, along with more than 150 other alumni, that endorsed him for the Supreme Court.
Through his lawyers, Judge Kavanaugh declined to comment for this article, other than to say of his letter: “This is a note I wrote to organize ‘Beach Week’ in the summer of 1983.”
Kerri Kupec, a White House spokeswoman, said: “It seems The New York Times is committed to embarrassing Judge Kavanaugh with three-decade-old stories of adolescent drinking.”
Judge Kavanaugh, an only child and sports fanatic, surrounded himself in high school with athletes. Among his closest friends, classmates said, were Mr. Judge, Christopher C. Garrett and Don Urgo Jr. Other members of the clique included Mr. Gaudette and DeLancey Davis.
“Academically, athletically and socially, we all became literally almost like brothers,” Mr. Urgo said in an interview with The Times in July. He got to know Judge Kavanaugh as a fellow altar boy in elementary school. “We had a particular esprit de corps, a zest for life, as a group.”
They played basketball and board games. They also drank.
“It was part of the social life,” said Tobin Finizio, now a radiologist who was then the football team’s quarterback. “In the late ’70s and early ’80s, if you look at the statistics, underage drinking was fairly prevalent. We look at it now and say, ‘Oh my God, that was crazy.’”
Judge Kavanaugh — nicknamed “Bart” after a Georgetown Prep teacher garbled “Brett” — sometimes acted as a restraining influence. One night, a friend named Sean Feeley was out of control. Judge Kavanaugh pulled him aside and whispered three words: “Come on, Sean.” Mr. Feeley today credits Judge Kavanaugh with knowing how to calm classmates without them losing face.
Judge Kavanaugh and his friends had their own language and traditions. There was Mr. Garrett, nicknamed early on as “Squee” because of his resemblance to an upperclassman with a similar last name.
When he drank, Mr. Garrett would stutter words that began with the letter F. It became such a joke that many football teammates, including Judge Kavanaugh and Mr. Garrett himself, had “FFFFF” references in their personal yearbook pages. Mr. Garrett, now a middle-school teacher in Georgia, sometimes hosted gatherings, including one when the Washington Redskins won the 1983 Super Bowl. Classmates said some seniors were too hung over to attend school the next day.
Another football player, Mr. Davis, was the heartthrob of the bunch, classmates said. They thought he looked like the singer Rick Springfield. Judge Kavanaugh, who didn’t have a car, often car-pooled to school with Mr. Davis, now the president of a Colorado water-distribution company.
Mr. Urgo — “Donny” — had been friends with Judge Kavanaugh since childhood, biking around the neighborhood and trading baseball cards. After high school, he and Judge Kavanaugh remained close, cramming for the Maryland bar exam and attending Washington Nationals games together. Mr. Urgo now helps run his family’s hotel business.
Judge Kavanaugh — a standout student, captain of the basketball team and a master of the quip, according to one teacher — was especially close to Mr. Judge, a fixture of the school’s party scene. Dr. Blasey said that Mr. Judge was in the room and jumped onto the bed during the alleged 1982 assault.
Mr. Judge was widely perceived as a goofball with a big mouth. “He was a clown,” said Richard Holtz, a classmate and friend of Mr. Judge’s and Judge Kavanaugh’s. Once, before a home football game, Mr. Judge and some classmates chugged beers and then dressed up in blue-and-white cheerleader skirts and pranced around the field, a moment that was captured in the school’s yearbook.
Timothy Don, who car-pooled to school with Mr. Judge, said he would sometimes stop at 7-Eleven on the way home to buy a beer. “He was one of these kids who you could wind up and set off like a top and watch him go spinning out,” Mr. Don said, recalling Mr. Judge’s nervous laugh and how he would spontaneously jump onto his friends’ shoulders.
In a 2005 memoir, “God and Man at Georgetown Prep,” Mr. Judge said the school was “positively swimming in alcohol, and my class partied with gusto — often right under the noses of our teachers.”
Along with two classmates, he wrote an underground student newspaper, The Unknown Hoya, which documented the scene. They viewed the official student paper, The Little Hoya, as too stiff.
The stapled-together pamphlet also printed a running tally of the number of kegs consumed at various house parties as the seniors pursued their 100-keg ambition. Three football players who hosted parties accounted for 14 of the 38 kegs the class had finished at one point.
The newspaper also jabbed at neighboring schools, including the all-girls Holton-Arms, where Dr. Blasey was a student. The newspaper claimed that a public library card was “all it takes to have a good time with any H.H. (Holton Hosebag),” using slang for a promiscuous woman.
In June 1983, Judge Kavanaugh’s crew embarked on its annual trip to Maryland’s coast for “Beach Week,” where the region’s high school students would swim, drink and party.
Judge Kavanaugh had arranged to rent a condo on the 14th floor of an Ocean City high-rise. The building had an outdoor swimming pool and beach access.
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In the handwritten letter, Judge Kavanaugh told his friends that he would be on a family trip to Ireland when the lease started, so they would have to pick up the keys and settle the outstanding $398 bill. He reminded them to bring their own towels and bedding.
“One of you has to grab the bull by the horns and take charge,” he instructed.
“I think we are unanimous that any girls we can beg to stay there are welcomed with open....,” he wrote, his ellipsis at the end leaving certain things unsaid. He noted that the boys should kick out anyone who didn’t belong: “The danger of eviction is great and that would suck because of the money and because this week has big potential. (Interpret as wish.)”
Judge Kavanaugh signed the letter: “FFFFF, Bart.”
In an interview, Tom Kane, a classmate and regular “Beach Week” participant, dismissed the letter as “a couple of harmless jokes.” He added: “It sounds like the script of ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ really.” He said he couldn’t remember details of the partying.
