I spent from Friday afternoon through midmorning today on the campuses of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges for the 40th reunion of my 3rd and final class at Haverford. I joined the class as a 25 year old junior, and thus did not get to know quite as many people through the normal freshman bonding process. Similarly for our sister class at Bryn Mawr (in those days Haverford was still officially single sex), I had met relatively few of them - those that lived on the Haverford Campus, those that dated (and in some cases married) guys I knew, and a few in some of my classes, most notably a class at Bryn Mawr on the History of Women in America. Over the recent cycles of every 5 years I have come to know more people from both campuses. What I offer here is a set of impressions reflecting on both the weekend and the passage of time.
As those who follow my Facebook posts know, there were a number late-night conversation, some well lubricated with alcoholic beverages. Those were important, but there were three events that stood out - meeting with some of the faculty from our days at the college (some are still around, at least one still teaching), our traditional class meeting where people sit in a circle and we go around people sharing key things since the last saw us - for many 5 years, for some, for the first time since graduation (and this always includes a certain amount of quips and spontaneous humor), and what was intended to be an all-classes dance with three bands that overlapped my time at the College, the first with people through the classes of 68 and 69, and the later two with people raning from 71 through I think 74.
Actually, two of my classes were there, because when I got out of the Marines I was briefly in the class of 68, at least for the length of soccer season. They had been freshman when I was a sophomore and I still know a fair number of them, although not that many came back for their 35th. By contrast, I think we had close to half the class of 73 make an appearance at some point during the weekend.
I want to start with the ending, the dance. It was after we had had a cocktail hour with our Bryn Mawr sisters, and then a dinner in their alumni house, Wyndham Hall. We had chatted, caught up with one another. A few of the Bryn Mawrters had been at some of our other events (there were a number of marriages, including more than a few still going along decades later). What was notable at the dance is that very quickly those from later classes decided to go elsewhere - after all, it was the music to which WE had listened, danced, and done other things. For those from the 50th and earlier reunions, it was not their music and they did not show. A few from 68 danced, but the dance floor was dominated by those from '73. Most are in their early 60s now. At 67 I am the oldest although there were several others who started with other classes and then joined '73, one because he did alternative service in lieu of being drafted. What was interesting was to see how enthusiastic so many were. Some could still dance up a storm, although I suspect there will be more than a few aching bodies today. Still, it was in a sense a chance to reconnect physically with a part of one's younger self. I remember observing in particular a woman who is a distinguished university professor who also has done a lot of work with certain government agencies. I wondered what those agencies and her students might think had they seen her on the dance floor?
While we had gathered for informal conversation and drinks on Friday night, Saturday morning we sat with a number of very distinguished professors. Marcel Gutwirth arrived at Haverford in 1948. After he retired he commuted to NYC for a while to teach at CUNY for a few years, but he has been connected with the campus for 65 years. Roger Lane, who won the Bancroft Prize in History, arrived when I did in 1963 - amazing to think I have known him for now going on 50 years. He offered the historian's perspective. In some ways 1973 was a very interesting class - students going to DC to protest the invasion of Cambodia, somehow avoiding official class structure, not having a yearbook, and probably having as much experience with substances regulated now by the DEA of any class in Haverford's history. But as Roger pointed out, the class with which he arrived in the Fall of 1963 may have had the most traumatic period: after all, we were in our first semester when JFK was shot, and many of us were watching when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Some had participated in Civil Rights before arriving, many participated in the first major demonstration against Vietnam in our 2nd semester, a demonstration organized by a person a grade in front of us, and we helped elect a Maoist as President of the Student Government.
What was clear in the session with these our mentors is how fortunate they felt they were to teach at an institution which valued teaching even as it expected serious professional work in research and writing. They felt supported in being willing to go in non-traditional ways in their professional careers. And because so many of the faculty either lived on the campus or just off the campus, we were able to form the kinds of relationships that last for years after college.
When I arrive at the College in 1963 it was 450 men. Now it is co-ed, around 1150-1200 students, with more women than men. It does not have that much of larger male population.
But there was more to the experience of '73, and I had been there for part of it. We had a strike by the Black Students Association, one that stretched the College's understanding of itself, and did result in an increase in diversity. One of the dorms caught on fire one night and we lived through the impact of that. We saw the beginnings of increase in the diversity of the faculty, both in race and gender.
It was interesting to hear what the professors had to say about life post-retirement, because many from '73 are at that point. When we had our class meeting we heard about those who had retired to follow other passion, we heard from those who had no intention of retiring. We had in the morning heard from a psychology professor who has followed the men from one class at Haverford for now 5 some odd decades, and their wive (my freshman year my campus job was to assist him with organizing his early data). He had commented about the high number of divorces among the class he followed. We had some of that in '73, but it is amazing how many relationships have lasted. One classmate had married his high school sweetheart before coming to college: they have now been married going on 44 years. Other got married at the end of college, or perhaps after graduate or professional school, and thus have had the same partner for well over 3 decades.
A fair number of the men have found time to serve on boards of various non-profits, or in some cases professional association. One has served on the Board of Managers of the College, another just joined the international board for the College, which meant that he came to us from Santiago Chile where he resides via the Orient (Japan?) where he had just attended a meeting of that board.
More than a few have changed careers along the way. I think of one who was a career prosecutor in Philadelphia who now teaches freshman composition at a local Catholic College as one example. I am of course one who falls into that category, having turned to teaching less than two decades ago after more than 2 decades with computers.
It seemed like almost half of those there were or had been doctors or lawyers, with some of those overlapping with others who taught colleges/universities/professional schools. There is one other classmate who retired from teaching Social Studies when I did, last June. More than a handful of us someplace along the way became Quakers.
For many, arriving at Haverford had presented them with their first real challenge. It is a very different thing to be one of the intellectual elite at one's high school, then to arrive at a college where all your classmates are intellectually elite, at least in their potential. We had some truly brilliant professors, people who had been Summas or Magnas at Ivy League or other elite institutions. We were challenged by that intellectually, but we were equally as challenged by the ethos of the College - morality, ethics, responsibility for a world much larger than ourselves.
Our historian had expressed how much he fears for the future - it is so many things, from the concentration of wealth into fewer hands to the unchecked and unaddressed environmental challenges. He spent his career studying violence, and wonders if we will not see even greater episodes of violence as entire populations are displaced by rising sea levels, or changing weather patterns that change the patterns of agriculture on which people depend to feed themselves. I can say some of his words entered into some of our face to face conversations over drinks or dinner.
Haverford has probably been the institution with the greatest impact upon my life. Certainly I view my short time in the Marines, in between my 1st and 2nd times at the College, as important, as something that broadened my perspective. Many in my original class had served in the military, because there was still draft. Few in my final class of '73 did, because the draft had been eliminated. At least one who was very anti-war had a child attend one of the service academies.
I was also shaped by 8 summers at what was then National Music Camp at Interlochen Michigan.
And yet, I have very few ongoing connections from Interlochen, and realistically none from people I knew solely from my Marine Corps experience. I have ongoing connections with many from Haverford. Part has been from my continued relationship, serving as an admissions volunteer, for example. Social media has been important - well over 100 of my Facebook friends are people with whom I became connected to through the College. Thus it was quite common this weekend that the first thing I would be asked was how my wife was doing.
We have classmates who have survived serious illness. We have classmates who have lost children. Our sharing encompassed both the sorrows and the joys of what for those who started together as freshmen is now almost 44 years.
Our physical appearances may be very different, although most of us were still recognizable to one another, and in other cases it was the voice, as one person who had not seen me to graduation said he realize who I was when he heard me talking.
I am of an age where I ponder about many things. I have retired, unretired, then had to step aside to care for my wife. Now she is doing so much better that I am very close to going back into a classroom, and even had one extended phone conversation about that during the weekend.
It was a reunion.
We came together.
We reflected back upon our shared past.
We shared with one another what has happened since then.
We explored hopes and dreams for the future, for some through their children and grandchildren. One classmate has a 9-year old so he expects to keep working until that child is through college.
I did a lot of reflecting driving home this morning.
I have not as yet processed it all.
I know this - Haverford College was a generous institution to those in its care. We heard that from the professors, and I known from my times in and out of the College how much difference that care meant for me.
I reconnected with some people I have not seen for years.
Many of us have made plans for other get-togethers, not waiting another 5 years, when some may be less mobile, and when a few more will have passed on.
Some will not come back to the College or have anything to do with it. They still bear scars and bitterness, and we have to accept that.
As we reach yet another cross-roads in our lives, it was good to reconnect with who we where, to share the paths we have traveled since, to partake of the wisdom and insight of our mentors and of each other.
I am not the 17 year old who arrived as a student in 1963. I am very different even from the 25 year old who returned to finish his last two years in 1971.
And yet, who and what I am is very much a product of the time spent at that small College in suburban Philadelphia. For most it was a time of 4 years. For a few who joined the class later it was as few as 2 years. For some of us it was more, in my case covering a span of ten academic years before I finished. I began not only to grow up, but more importantly, to grow as moral person as a result of my connection with Haverford College.
That probably came to completion in October 2002 when I announced to a friend at Quaker Meeting that I wanted to join. He had been my roommate in 1963-64 and said that maybe after 39 years I was ready.
For many of us, there was a desire to go back into the classroom with one another, and with our mentors, to show that we had learned and to continue learning.
I am getting older.
I do not know if I am getting wiser.
But I do know this - as the years go by ever more quickly, taking time to revisit reminds me of how lucky I was for my connection to Haverford College.
In that I am also not alone, as our class funds a scholarship - we are up to having to a half scholarship, and we hope in the next few years, by the time of our next reunion, to have it up to a full scholarship.
We received so much from Haverford.
We pay it forward by making that possible for others.
Just some thoughts after a college reunion.
Peace.