[Editors Note: Originally published on 26 May 2019; This is fifth in a series of re-published Essays from the 50th Reunion ClassBook.] Back again, your whilom class historian here reviews our half-century of adulthood by examining the world and American culture at the milestones of our graduation in 1969, the 25th reunion in 1994, and the date of this writing, 2018, a year before our 50th reunion. At each of the three points, I review…
[Originally published on 26 May 2019; This is fourth in a series of re-published Essays from the 50th Reunion ClassBook.] Even if most of us weren’t thinking of getting into foreign-policy as we entered Yale in September, 1965, foreign policy would get into us, and the consequences would rattle Yalies not only on campus but also in State, Defense, the CIA, and the White House. Now that the word “foreign” eclipses more than it catches about the United States’ increasingly…
Why is it that the four years from our arrival at Yale early in September 1965, to our graduation on June 9, 1969, have proven so important to so many of us? Most of us will be seventy-two years old in 2019, the year of our fiftieth reunion. Those four years we spent in college constitute a mere one-eighteenth of our lives. Why so important? Why is it that today you can initiate a conversation with a classmate with whom you may not have spoken in a half-century, and it will be as easy to talk to him as it was when we were undergraduates together?
As I think back fifty years since our graduation from Yale, I’m fortunate to have one significant artifact to help jog my memory. That artifact is a thin, worn, paperback volume on my bookshelf entitled Black Studies in the University: A Symposium edited by my fellow students, Armstead L. Robinson, Craig C. Foster, and Donald H. Ogilvie, published fifty years ago by the Yale University Press. Sadly, Armstead and Don of the Yale Class of…
Editor’s Note: The “Invited Essays” in the ClassBook were released in a blizzard 3 days before the reunion and many people missed them. So, I’m gonna re-release them, one at a time. This one addresses a silent reality of our years .. what it was like to be gay at a pre-Stonewall Yale.
The 1969 Class Survey included the following question: “If you could write a note to your 1969 self, what would it say? (50 words or less, please)” Herewith is a small sampling of your advice to your 1969 selves… For a small-town boy from the Texas Panhandle, you did all right, in large part because you married over your head. Leave Yale and find a college more suited to you. Yale is little more than…
Time and change shall naught avail To break the friendships formed at Yale. We learned a lot in class, for sure, and in the books we read—both those we were assigned and those we found on our own. In our research, a discovery narrowly sought led us down dim corridors toward unimagined illuminations. We learned that learning is a labyrinth, and our teachers taught us, offering themselves in example, the exhilaration of exploring it. That…
How Yale enabled a confident naif to game “success.” Above descriptions proposed as applying to me were suggested to merit a class essay of broader scope. This being somewhat a soapbox—irresistible to a Yalie, no?—, here goes. If nothing else, material to guide one into the precious (love mine!) late afternoon nap. First, from perspective of one who’s thus far fended off two episodes of the Big C, if reading this, you’re successful! You probably…
When we graduated in 1969: We had spent four years with assigned reading from books available only in printed form. We probably bought those books at the Yale Co-op, an independent store owned by the University. New Haven had few other bookstores we would frequent and no chain bookstores. The immense resources of Sterling Library meant that we could do pretty much any research we could imagine on campus. We could not research or access…
(with all due deference to Poe’s The Raven) Ah distinctly I recall, 50 years ago this fall, just when we thought we’d won it all, in the Game that turned to lore. All the years have not erased, not removed, not effaced the memories of what took place: that outcome and that score! Yale was winning, charging, leading, Crimson was retreating, bleeding. The Yale side cheers were overheating, building to a deafening roar. It seemed…
Class surveys have been a regular feature of 50th reunions for years, and—as we have with so many traditions—Yale ‘69ers might well wonder what purposes this elaborate group ritual might serve. The reunion committee had several purposes clearly in mind: to gather information that would inform several invited essays planned for this volume; to activate interest in class affairs as a prelude to the reunion itself; and to take the measure of where we stand…
excerpts with commentary Although freshman year could have been justifiably regarded as an oasis of calm, our subsequent undergraduate years (along with 1970) probably constituted the most tumultuous period at Yale (and many other American college campuses) since World War II. The controversial and escalating Vietnam War, the prospect of compulsory service in it following our college careers, the fervent political activity to “dump Johnson” and end the War, the black (and to some extent)…
I practiced medicine for forty years before retiring in the spring of 2017. I had flourished in my work, enjoying the challenges even in the most demanding moments. I loved virtually every phase of my career and felt privileged to have the opportunity to care for patients. Beyond the long hours and perpetual sleeplessness, and despite the insatiable demands of the healthcare bureaucracy, I found an inner sense of purposefulness, honor, and responsibility in having…
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Proverbs 9:10 “Urim and thummim.” Yale seal (Hebrew script meaning either “lights and perfections” or “curses and blessings” depending on translation – see Exodus 28:30) “Acquire the Holy Spirit, and a thousand around you will be saved.” St Seraphim of Sarov “Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.” Camus (“One must imagine Sisyphus as happy.”) In a way, this essay reflects a journey of discovery….
