50th Reunion Essays Now Online!

ByHarry Forsdick

Yes, the 50th Reunion ClassBook is pretty awesome, but let’s face it: At 8 pounds, it’s a bit, um, unwieldy.

Don’t pack it for the Reunion!  First, we’ll have some copies in the Davenport Common Room.  And second, all of the essays are now online.

So, if you want to read anything in the ClassBook, just whip out your phone/tablet/laptop, log in to Yale1969.org, type who or what you want to read about into the search bar at the top and proceed.

If you want to see your essay online, just go to your profile page.  It’s linked there under “Classbooks.”

Browsing vs. Specific Searches

That “search” process works for specific queries — things you are knowingly looking for.  But how about casual browsing?  Well, I have two ideas, one for Invited Essays (the longer essays on specific topics) and the Personal Essays that everyone wrote:

Invited Essays

I’ve created a new section called “Invited Essays.”   All the Invited Essays are summarized there.  But to make it easier, I’m linking to them here.  Just click and read.

  1. Group Portrait in Broad Strokes by Thomas M. Guterbock
  2. Class History: 1969 to 2018 by Reed Hundt
  3. For Whom, for Country, and for Yale? by Michael H. Baum
  4. The Meaning of Yale for the Class of 1969—One Man’s View by Richard S. Tedlow
  5. Notes to Self
  6. Time and Change by Tom McNamee
  7. Yale and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, Then and Now by Jim Sleeper
  8. Black at Yale Fifty Years Ago by Roger Collins
  9. The High Rider of the Gay Divide by Jeff Wheelwright
  10. High School Harry; West Coast; Negro; “Achieved Success at Yale” by Wentworth Earl Miller, Jr.
  11. Healthcare in America: One Physician’s Perspective by Arthur I. Segal, MD
  12. Fifty Years of Change in Book Publishing by Arthur Klebanoff
  13. The Yale Daily News excerpts with commentary by Alan Boles
  14. That 29-29 Game by Tom Reed

Personal Essays

Many people report that simply reading the essays, one after the other, even from people they didn’t know at Yale, was informative, entertaining and interesting.  That’s easy to do with a physical book — you just flip pages.  But how can you do that when all the essays are on separate web pages?

Here’s the plan:  I’ve made a page with a list of all 1,050 entries, each linked to the 50th Reunion ClassBook entry for that Classmate.  Note: only 530 of the 1,050 have real essays; the rest are missing, deceased or chose not to submit anything.  Then:

  1. Go to the page with the list of all Personal Essays.  If you use bookmarks, then bookmark this page so that it’s easy to get back to.
  2. Start with your name … click on the link and re-read it.  When you are done, close the page. That will take you back to the page with all the links.
  3. Click the next link (the one following your name), and continue as you see fit.  I started with “Willis.” and I’ve gone thru Z and have done a few “A’s” too.
  4. Leave a comment if you find another way to do this easily.
  5. If you find any broken links, please let me know asap.

Enjoy!

 

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