Charles A. Reich, who as a 42-year-old Yale Law School professor swapped button-down Brooks Brothers shirts for hippie beads and vaulted to intellectual celebrity by venerating the counterculture in his manifesto, “The Greening of America,” died on Saturday in San Francisco. He was 91.
Had any of us been thinking 50 years ahead as we graduated, we probably would not have guessed that one of the defining issues of the next half century would be the challenging relationship between people and the planet. It turned out that 1969 marked the beginning of what is commonly thought of as the modern environmental era. Since then, many of our classmates have been directly involved in addressing environmental issues in a variety…
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…
The ClassBook was a big hit, with the accent on big! Over 800 pages, 8 pounds, 530 personal essays, obituaries, and 12 longer essays offering broader, deeper looks at our experiences over the past 50 years. Yet, sadly mistakes were made.
John Waldman was one of the first classmates to submit his essay online, and yet, …
Everyone Contributes – Let’s Document What Just Happened.
We need to document what happened at the reunion, mainly for the many classmates who could not attend for medical or other good reasons. Volunteers are writing up reports on events like Classmates In Concert and the Class Survey presentation. But we need MORE of you to volunteer and help document the …
The final numbers are in from the YAA, and Silliman outpaced everyone, holding off late surges by Morse and Branford. Final results (classmates attending divided by living classmates per college):
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,…
Editor’s Note: Bill Newman was one of the reunion co-chairs. For so many classmates who attended our reunion, the event was a beginning for us and even more so a celebration of that beginning. We collectively kicked off a new phase for the Class, one where there are new friends, and we rekindled old relationships. It was an opportunity to catch up with people we may have seen relatively recently, say, over the past 25…
YALE UNIVERSITY has elected its first-ever black student body president.
Kahlil Greene is the first black person appointed to the role in the prestigious university’s 318-year history.
As the president of the student body, Greene will be responsible for addressing issues faced by undergraduates on campus.
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…
Don’t pack that 8-pound ClassBook for the Reunion! First, we’ll have some copies in the Davenport Common Room. And second, all of the essays are now online.
If you want to read anything in the ClassBook, just whip out your phone/tablet/laptop, log in to Yale1969.org, type the name 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 …
![Reunion: Everyone’s A [Photo-]Journalist!](https://yale1969.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/selfie-300x245.jpg)
Hey, after the reunion, Yale1969.org will publish pictures, reflections and memories captured at the reunion. So, if you attend, please take pictures! If you get some good ones, please send them to us. (Attach a note with the names of any people in the pictures.) See below for tips and how to send them. Even better, if you have a “memory or observation” that you think other people would enjoy hearing about, please write it…
As the organizer of the Reunion Book Exhibit in Sterling, I had an epiphany: Yale trained us to write. Some of us write as a career. Some write only for the love of it. These days, we’re at a point in life where we SHOULD be using our writing skills to advance our life’s loves. Here are some examples that will inspire you.
The Reunion Committee wants you to have the latest/greatest info on transportation, housing, weather, an updated copy of the program, etc.: Connecticut Limousine, RIP. For those of you planning on using Connecticut Limousine (vans) to get from NYC airports to New Haven, you’ll have to make other plans. They just went out of business. Here are some alternatives. Leave a comment below with what alternatives you’ve found and cost. Click on “follow comments” if you…
From his widow, Anita:
After graduation, Bill took a job as an apprentice blacksmith at Mystic Seaport (it was the sixties after all). An MME at U Mass Amherst followed, then a 3-year stint with Bell Labs in Atlanta doing fiber optic cable research. Unhappy with being a miniscule cog in a huge corporate …
Use this list to browse through ALL of the 50th reunion essays. Scroll down to your name — start there. Then click the next one and the next one and so on. Each one will open in a separate window. And after you’ve clicked on a link, it will turn a different color (indicating you’ve “visited” that link.) Please let me know if you find any errors. (See also, 50th Reunion ClassBook Now Online.) Enjoy! Paul…
