Did you know that Holden Caulfield’s namesake, Holden Bowler, went to the University of Idaho? 

It’s true! Holden Bowler, a track star at the University of Idaho in the early 1930s, and J.D. Salinger met while working on the same cruise ship. When Salinger finished Catcher in the Rye in 1951 he wrote to Bowler, telling him that the book’s protagonist, Holden Caulfield, was named for him. Ann Bowler, Holden’s wife, later recounted that Salinger told Bowler: “what you like about Holden is taken from you, and what you don’t like about him, I made up.” (source: wikipedia.org)

From the Gem of the Mountains Digital Yearbook Collection