• Calling All Reunion Attendees!

    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 …

  • What Is This Place?

    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,…

  • Our Newest “Commencement”

    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…

  • Why I Interrupted Schwarzman

    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…

  • 50th Reunion Essays Now Online!

    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!

    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…

  • BTW: Reunion Details And Last Minute Travel/Hotel Deals

    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…

  • List of Personal Essays

    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…

  • Major Delays on I-95 Predicted for Reunion Weekend

    The bridge carrying US 1 across I-95 at Exit 9 of the Connecticut Turnpike, in Stamford, will be replaced this coming weekend, causing all traffic on I-95 to be diverted.   (Google map of the affected interchange is here.) Here is how traffic will be diverted from 11 PM Friday night thru 5 AM Monday morning: I-95.  Those familiar with how congested I-95 can get on weekends know this will cause major delays.  One classmate, who…

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    Notes to Self

    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…

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    Time and Change

    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…

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    That 29-29 Game

    (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…