Memories

Life Magazine published an article in June of 1969 entitled “The Class of ’69 – With eloquent defiance, top students protest right through commencement.”   It reported on the campus unrest then roiling on campuses, including Yale. 

The speeches and remarks from student leaders, speaking at commencement and other formal assemblies were included verbatim.  Rebuttals from adult leaders of the day were also quoted. Our own Mac Thompson was featured, with Life commenting …

Kudos to the Reunion Committee (Bill Newman, Derry Allen) for putting together an excellent, interesting and informative array of “Class Only” events.  For those of you who could not attend, here are some materials and related items from each of the Class Only lectures: Yale Class of 1969 Survey Redux: New Information About the Class as It Turns 55 Our classmates Tom Guterbock and Mike Baum, who presented the main survey results in 2019, will…

Editor’s Note: This set of remembrances was compiled by Dick Mackay’s colleagues at Mt. Sinai.

I asked people to share their thoughts and memories with me last night.  We live in a world where we often get the message that you have to be assertive and boisterous, sometimes to the point where being self-serving seems to be encouraged.  Richard Mackay proves that even in a place like New York City and in a field like […]

I was surprised and saddened to learn of the death of John Nelson.  At the 50th Reunion, I was with John on the Yale golf course and at the dinner table.  Others have said that John told them of his cancer, but he never said anything of the sort to me.  He was the same John Nelson that I’ve known since freshman year – overly good-looking, athletic, intellectually sharp. John and I were in the…

Do you ever recall looking at the weekly “Yale Bulletin and Calendar” while we were students?  It was a 6- or 8-page newsprint tabloid that listed ALL the events at Yale, e.g., political figures speaking in a Common Room, a visiting prof giving a presentation on some research finding, a concert, something at the Med school that I couldn’t understand, a poetry reading in JE, a demonstration of the carillon, a guided tour of some…

Shortly after he watched White House Counsel Pat Cipollone tell the Senate on Saturday that “the president did absolutely nothing wrong,” a friend sent me an archived copy of Yale President Kingman Brewster Jr.’s 1969 baccalaureate address. Somewhat surprisingly, Brewster’s response —and Yale’s — to the crisis of that time is as urgently needed now as it was then.

The recent passing of Charles Reich and an experience in Claudia Rankine’s poetry seminar during our 50th Reunion a few weeks ago prompt these thoughts.

The Charlie Reich seminar of which I speak actually occurred in the law school, but undergraduates had the run of the campus, and it was widely attended by them.

Several discussions at our 50th Reunion touched on two memorable themes from our senior year:  the Black Power movement and the football team. These themes intersected in historic fashion at the Dartmouth game at Yale Bowl on November 2, 2018, when our two black cheerleaders stood at the front of the cheerleading squad during the national anthem with heads bowed and arms raised in a black power salute. See also the brief discussion about this…

My contact with a broad swath of Yale ‘69 preparatory to our 50th revealed widespread unease with what Yale now appears to “be.”   This disaffection was repeatedly invoked as the source of decisions not to attend the Reunion – prompting our Reunion Committee to assert that the Reunion would be about renewing connections between classmates, not an expression of loyalty to our alma mater. This estrangement has little to do with how much we loved,…

Classmates, Those of you who attended our reunion dinner heard me interrupt Steve Schwarzman’s rambling, self-aggrandizing talk by shouting, “That’s enough Steve: You’ve dispossessed tens of thousands of people out of their homes…” Undoubtedly I should have risen magisterially from my seat and addressed a few more temperate but still-critical words to him and the rest of us. But: 1. Steve had just insulted President Salovey as the latter stood (almost obsequiously) a dozen feet…

Reading through the bios in the class book alphabetically, I was stunned by more than a few revelations.  One that really brought me up short came near the end, at V, namely Hal Valeché, who dropped this bomb:  “The conceit that ‘I’m not not old’ goes straight out the window when you sit down to put something in a 50th reunion book.  Just imagine how we felt about the 50th reunion class when we were…

I have read all of the class essays.  I thoroughly enjoyed each one of them, and I especially enjoyed them collectively.  They tell a compelling story of dreams fulfilled and partially fulfilled.  Of tragedies and recoveries.  Together they represent a cross section of humanity that happens to be the Yale Class of 1969.  I was impressed by the candor and self-reflection.  I learned a lot from reading them. These life stories also reinforced my recognition of  how fortunate I have been…

Editor’s Note: Because many of you won’t be able to read the entire 50th Reunion book cover to cover, Michael Folz has helpfully condensed all of the submissions into one short, generic, personal essay. 😉