John "Lefty" Caulfield at Dillon Field House. Tom Brokaw writes about Caulfield in his new book, The Greatest Generation. Photo by Kris Snibbe.

John Caulfield '50 can't quite remember where the photograph was taken. He thinks it was Panama because that was where his refrigerator ship docked to pick up a load of bananas destined for U.S. troops in the Pacific, and because the bar where the five young sailors are standing seems to have a certain "Latin atmosphere."

There are probably photos of wartime gatherings similar to this one in albums and attic trunks all over America -- momentary respites from the terror and tedium when the drinks went 'round and somebody had a camera.

Except that this photo made it into a popular book by a famous personality -- The Greatest Generation, a tribute to America's World War II generation by NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw -- and the results have been astounding.

"I got a letter from a woman in Boswell, Montana," Caulfield said. "Her mother had been reading the book and she said, 'Oh my God, the guy on the other end of the bar is my husband!' Then another guy called from New York and said, 'I'm the guy standing right beside you.'"

Brokaw not only published the photo but interviewed Caulfield, recently retired assistant director of operations in the Harvard Athletics Department, along with a group of his friends at their monthly meeting in Charlie's Kitchen, a venerable Harvard Square eatery. The group calls itself the ROMEO Club. The acronym stands for Retired Old Men Eating Out.

Since the book's appearance in December, Caulfield and his fellow ROMEOs have been featured in stories in the Boston Globe and the Cambridge Chronicle, and in a special segment of Brokaw's Nightly News devoted to the book. Caulfield admits that the attention is "great for the ego," but he is no stranger to fame. He was a Harvard legend long before Brokaw's book hit the stores.

Until his retirement last June, Caulfield, 72, officiated at every big stadium event, directing his teams of parking attendants and ticket takers (often including members of his own brood of eight children) - - always with efficiency, aplomb, and a human touch.

"He's been a long-time friend and ambassador for us," said Fran Toland, senior associate director of athletics. "He has a great disposition, always handled parking and ticket- taking so easily, and always with a smile."

Retirement has not fully severed Caulfield's bonds with the Athletic Department. He still comes in to help with big weekend events. From his office near the entrance of Dillon Field House, Caulfield has spent the past 40 years projecting warmth and good humor toward the world at large. And that warmth has made him a beloved fixture for generations of students and staff.

"He knows the 'Ten Thousand Men of Harvard' and then some," said Toland. "I'm sure he probably bleeds tiny H's."

Ironically, this quintessential Harvard man never expected to go to college and certainly never dreamed of breaking into the Ivy League. He grew up in Cambridge in a two-room apartment on the corner of Flagg and Banks streets, across from where Mather House now stands. The area was then known as Kerry Corner because it was largely populated by people who had immigrated from County Kerry, Ireland. Caulfield's father died when John was 11, and the family was desperately poor. He came to Harvard on a Buckley Scholarship, created for talented Cambridge residents.

The war interrupted Caulfield's education after three terms. He enlisted in the Navy to avoid being drafted into the Army. "I liked the Navy because they had nice clean beds, clean everything. Then I realized who kept them that way." After the war ended he went back to school.

Caulfield concentrated in Romance languages and played on the varsity baseball team. He began as an outfielder, then switched to first base in his senior year. That was also the year he served as team captain and won an Ivy League batting championship with a .438 average, earning him a place in the Harvard Baseball Hall of Fame.

He remembers beating Yale 2-0 in 1948 when the opposing captain was another young veteran named George Bush. "If only I had known! I would have said, 'George, let me go along with you for the ride.'"

Attending Harvard as a poor scholarship student, even as a star of the baseball team, wasn't always easy. As a nonresident student, Caulfield would walk back to Kerry Corner for dinner, except when a teammate snuck him into Winthrop House dining hall as a guest. He recalls seeing his picture in the sports section of a local newspaper and thinking how strange it was to be celebrated as a Harvard sports hero and yet to be sleeping in the kitchen of a tiny, crowded apartment with blankets on the windows to keep out the cold.

After graduation, Caulfield played a few seasons of minor league baseball in northern Maine and New Brunswick, Canada, but he soon realized his true calling was education.

"I've always enjoyed the environment of a classroom," he said. "Besides, it seemed that all the people I knew growing up were either teachers or coaches."

He began his career teaching algebra and geometry at Rindge Technical High School, and later moved to the Thorndike Grammar School in East Cambridge. But the job he enjoyed most was teaching French conversation in the elementary grades.

"I've always loved words, languages. My therapy is doing the Boston Globe crossword every day."

In 1969, Caulfield became principal of the Houghton School, which was later renamed the Martin Luther King School, on Putnam Avenue. He held that job until his retirement in 1988.

Throughout his teaching career, Caulfield worked part-time for Harvard, coaching junior varsity baseball in the 1970s and directing the parking and attendance crews. He also coached Little League, officiated at sporting events, and held down numerous other part- time jobs.

Caulfield's habit of hyperactivity was a financial necessity, he claims, ingrained by his role as a youthful breadwinner and later by the burden of maintaining a large family. "I've always worked extra jobs, sometimes three or four a day."

Yet, speaking with Caulfield, one gets the impression that not even a drawerful of silver spoons or a gilt-edged trust fund would have lulled him into inactivity. It is obvious that his enthusiasm and energy come from an unquenchable source within, stimulated perhaps by the pressures of life, but not engendered by them.

His zest for life comes through in the warmth with which he greets old friends and new as they duck into his office to say hello.

"That's the best part of this job. I see everybody. Everyone comes through this door."

But it comes through as well in his enjoyment of the past, of the memories that seem unclouded by bitterness or regret.

"It's as if the intervening years have disappeared," he says of his old friends from the ROMEO Club, these Cambridge lads in their 70s and 80s who still meet at Charlie's Kitchen for their monthly get-togethers.

"Kerry Corner still lives in our minds."