Origins: the Telegrocer's son, "then-skinny," before Loach and Freer got hold of him

pivotal · fall Y.W.-Q.M.D. (letter-dated)

• When: his matriculation fall — the fall of the Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster, per the letter's own dateline; surfaced 7 Nov YDAU when Hal rereads old letters from Mario's shoebox.
• What: In a chatty family letter of Avril's full of Academy news, one line places Kornspan's arrival: "One of this fall's matriculates [*16] is the son of a man who's apparently become an immensely wealthy Telegrocer [*17] in the Upper Midwest" — the writer hoping the family's grocery-signage crusade might benefit. The letter's footnote e. supplies the name and the before-picture: "The then-skinny Eliot Kornspan, before Loach and Freer got hold of him." Three facts ride this: serious family money (Telegrocery being the era's grocery-delivery boom industry, per the adjacent footnote), a skinny arrival, and an explicit attribution of his later mass to Trainer Barry Loach and Keith Freer's project — the physique of the weight-room scene was manufactured on campus.