46th College Reunion
I'm in Middletown for my forty-sixth college reunion. I spent Thursday painting and decided I'd gone as far as I could on a three-year project having to do with Mom and the nursing home garden where we spent so many hours connected to eachother in her last years. As usual, I am stuck between my limited powers of draftsmanship and pretty good sense of color and decoration. It's too late to start all over again and yet I'm not sure what I would do differently.
Friday, I dropped by the reception for the Class of 1974. It's not my graduating class but it was a small college back then and I knew plenty of people in the classes just before and right behind mine. Bob Blum was the first person to walk up to me who I looked ore or less like he did when he was 18. Color his hair black and he was the ame person. Others were more of a struggle, but, a glance at their name tags conjured up Rick Gilberg, Barry Lenk and Andy Char none of whom I had seen in 46 years.
It was a good turnout and particularly welcome compared to my own classes paltry turnouts over the space of the last ten years or so. To top it all, Amy Bloom the author read excerpts from her fictionalized book about Eleanor Roosevelt and her putative lesbian lover, Lorena Hickcock. It has every indication of being a very touching book. Later, quite by accident I found myself introducing myself to Ms. Bloom's husband, Brian. What a warm and gentle human being! A self-styled, fly-fisherman by calling, he exudes masclinity and yet, one look into his eyes and one sees suggestions of an actor's reactivity, some psychoanalysis, a good many encounter groups, and perhaps pieces of a "woke" feminist all rolled into one sensitive brow. We wound up exchanging cards.
Speaking of encounter groups, Saturday, started early with an 8:30 breakfast class breakfast arranged around the idea of sharing parts of our lives post-graduation and how we thought Wesleyan may have changed us. I had to remind myself how uncommon this sort of thing was among men of my generation.; that even in the swinging sixties not everyone was down with the idea of intimacy and sharing. One class member only stayed long enough to grab a bagel and some orange juice, confiding that the rest of the agenda was "not my cup of tea."
Nevertheless, about two dozen geezers (of both sexes) jammed a conference room of the newly re-purposed squash courts (now, The Gordon Career Center) and went fairly swiftly around the room, comparing their young, tween selves with the men and women they became. It revealed a wide variety of college experiences. Many people gave Wesleyan credit for allowing them to attempt things they never had done before, including physical things like different sorts of sports. And, after forty-six years, it was fairly easy for me to talk about my sexuality, something that would have been a matter of complete ignorance and confusion for me as a twenty year-old, but I credited Wesleyan for providing as non-judgmental a group of peers with which to be confused with and about as funny and fun-loving as anyone could wish for. I received a lot of knowing nods of agreement when I finished.
About six people had yet to share when, after an hour and a half, the group paused to give people a chance to make other discussion groups. I made my apologies as I rose to attend the Class of 1969 - the so-called, "Vanguard Class" - panel discussion.
Nineteen-sixty-five was the year Wesleyan admitted its first class of African-Americans in any number, 13 men or about 5% of the class. Some fifty-four years later, one of the assistant deans at the time would admit that the decisions around the occasion were utterly guileless and steered more by good intentions than by any sense of strategy or a roadmap. For at least a decade, Wesleyan and perhaps one or two other elite eastern colleges would be strangely bracketed while their peers cast a cold and clear eyed cost/benefit analysis at what would eventually be called, affirmative action. And, because they felt like guinea pigs, the men themselves would come to be called, the Vanguard Class.
And, as it happened, I was in Middletown the day in 1969 when the back students occupied the main classroom building, Fiske Hall. It was the weekend of my college interview. Now, fifty years later, we were all together in Fisk Hall. Oddly enough, the panelists were divided in half, two whites and two Blacks, all over the age of 70. Apparently, age and the wisdom that comes with hindsight had conferred the honorific "Vanguard" on all members of the class, regardless of race.
I was running late because of the earlier panel across the street from where we were now, so I am not sure of how much I may have missed. But, the discusson seemed truncated somehow. Basically, the whites confessed to how segregated their childhood lives had been prior to their coming to Wesleyan while the Blacks simply congratualted themselves on their pluck and good fortune. My sense is that a half century goes a long way in mellowing a lot of the harsher judgments people may have harbored as twenty-somethings.
After that was the parade of the classes which I narrowly missed. I spotted Jon and Harold walking in the opposite direction as the rest of the march. No time to lose. Time to head for the Kevin Roche designed Crowell Recital Hall for the presentation of the Distinguished Alumni Awards.
Friday, I dropped by the reception for the Class of 1974. It's not my graduating class but it was a small college back then and I knew plenty of people in the classes just before and right behind mine. Bob Blum was the first person to walk up to me who I looked ore or less like he did when he was 18. Color his hair black and he was the ame person. Others were more of a struggle, but, a glance at their name tags conjured up Rick Gilberg, Barry Lenk and Andy Char none of whom I had seen in 46 years.
It was a good turnout and particularly welcome compared to my own classes paltry turnouts over the space of the last ten years or so. To top it all, Amy Bloom the author read excerpts from her fictionalized book about Eleanor Roosevelt and her putative lesbian lover, Lorena Hickcock. It has every indication of being a very touching book. Later, quite by accident I found myself introducing myself to Ms. Bloom's husband, Brian. What a warm and gentle human being! A self-styled, fly-fisherman by calling, he exudes masclinity and yet, one look into his eyes and one sees suggestions of an actor's reactivity, some psychoanalysis, a good many encounter groups, and perhaps pieces of a "woke" feminist all rolled into one sensitive brow. We wound up exchanging cards.
Speaking of encounter groups, Saturday, started early with an 8:30 breakfast class breakfast arranged around the idea of sharing parts of our lives post-graduation and how we thought Wesleyan may have changed us. I had to remind myself how uncommon this sort of thing was among men of my generation.; that even in the swinging sixties not everyone was down with the idea of intimacy and sharing. One class member only stayed long enough to grab a bagel and some orange juice, confiding that the rest of the agenda was "not my cup of tea."
Nevertheless, about two dozen geezers (of both sexes) jammed a conference room of the newly re-purposed squash courts (now, The Gordon Career Center) and went fairly swiftly around the room, comparing their young, tween selves with the men and women they became. It revealed a wide variety of college experiences. Many people gave Wesleyan credit for allowing them to attempt things they never had done before, including physical things like different sorts of sports. And, after forty-six years, it was fairly easy for me to talk about my sexuality, something that would have been a matter of complete ignorance and confusion for me as a twenty year-old, but I credited Wesleyan for providing as non-judgmental a group of peers with which to be confused with and about as funny and fun-loving as anyone could wish for. I received a lot of knowing nods of agreement when I finished.
About six people had yet to share when, after an hour and a half, the group paused to give people a chance to make other discussion groups. I made my apologies as I rose to attend the Class of 1969 - the so-called, "Vanguard Class" - panel discussion.
Nineteen-sixty-five was the year Wesleyan admitted its first class of African-Americans in any number, 13 men or about 5% of the class. Some fifty-four years later, one of the assistant deans at the time would admit that the decisions around the occasion were utterly guileless and steered more by good intentions than by any sense of strategy or a roadmap. For at least a decade, Wesleyan and perhaps one or two other elite eastern colleges would be strangely bracketed while their peers cast a cold and clear eyed cost/benefit analysis at what would eventually be called, affirmative action. And, because they felt like guinea pigs, the men themselves would come to be called, the Vanguard Class.
And, as it happened, I was in Middletown the day in 1969 when the back students occupied the main classroom building, Fiske Hall. It was the weekend of my college interview. Now, fifty years later, we were all together in Fisk Hall. Oddly enough, the panelists were divided in half, two whites and two Blacks, all over the age of 70. Apparently, age and the wisdom that comes with hindsight had conferred the honorific "Vanguard" on all members of the class, regardless of race.
I was running late because of the earlier panel across the street from where we were now, so I am not sure of how much I may have missed. But, the discusson seemed truncated somehow. Basically, the whites confessed to how segregated their childhood lives had been prior to their coming to Wesleyan while the Blacks simply congratualted themselves on their pluck and good fortune. My sense is that a half century goes a long way in mellowing a lot of the harsher judgments people may have harbored as twenty-somethings.
After that was the parade of the classes which I narrowly missed. I spotted Jon and Harold walking in the opposite direction as the rest of the march. No time to lose. Time to head for the Kevin Roche designed Crowell Recital Hall for the presentation of the Distinguished Alumni Awards.