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Class Fall Retreat Draws Grateful Reunion-minded CrowdBy Stu Rickerson '71, SWLF Chair, and Chris Connell '71 In what is likely to be the largest multi-day Class Alumni/ae gatherings on and near the Princeton Campus during all of 2021 (and possibly 2020 as well), 119 Classmates and guests participated in ‘71s 50th Reunion Princeton Fall Retreat on October 15 and 16, 2021. Events included an in-person Class Memorial Service and Celebration of Life in the University Chapel led by Dennis Macaleer and Greg Winsky. Read the names of those remembered and hear the recording of the service at this link. The Class followed parts of the historic route as it P-raded from 1879 Arch to the front of Nassau Hall where Locomotives cheers were heard and we sang “Old Nassau," as part of our continuing 50th Reunion celebrations. The event converted 1971’s award-worthy virtual Reunions of May into a classic in-person Reunion gathering. The Class Reunions Committee produced 6 well-attended forums on a variety of topics ranging from creating biography (Scott Berg) or art (David Chamberlain), to the current state of foreign affairs (Chris Connell, Terry Pflaumer, Mark Mazo, and Kathy Molony), free speech on college campuses (Kevin Baine and Prof. Keith Whittington), Einstein's brain (Fred Lepore) and on the Olympics (Dale Neuberger and Rick Ostrow). There were also 71-only “behind the scenes” tours inside and out of Campus buildings including Firestone Library and the Faculty Room of Nassau Hall. Live entertainment was abundant with student a cappella singing groups, Tigerlilies founded in 1971 and The Nassoons co-founded by Bill Felch’s father in 1941, and traditional Taiko drummers to ward off any remaining evil spirits left by the global pandemic and to help open the Campus to future gatherings. Rob Slocum performed several of his original compositions after dinner. Using the many images and videos in the Class Photo Gallery, Henry Barkhorn produced a music video highlighting our lives from undergrads to today. All this was done safely, meeting or exceeding the University’s health protocols. We wish to thank you all who helped 1971 pull this magical feat off. To highlight just one of the many enjoyable events, Chris Connell provided this summary of Scott Berg's keynote address: At Princeton clubs and alumni lunches and dinners across the country, Scott Berg has regaled audiences with the remarkable tale of not just the American legends captured in his best-selling biographies, but his own life, set in course after his mother named her son after her favorite author, F. Scott Fitzgerald. No audience has listened more raptly than his classmates, gathered by the score on a sunny Saturday morning in mid-October for our mini-reunion. Scott recounted the thrill of his discoveries in the Fitzgerald archives in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Room of Firestone Library; in the office of Professor Carlos Baker, who gave him access to Ernest Hemingway’s papers; in the vaults of Hollywood mogul Samuel Goldwyn for that Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, and in Sterling Memorial Library at Yale, where he plumbed the 2,000 boxes holding the papers of Charles and Ann Morrow Lindberg, before settling at last to write a magisterial biography of his boyhood hero, Woodrow Wilson 1879. Scott closed the talk with Wilson’s parting words in a Baccalaureate Address to the graduating Class of 1910 after the departing president lost his battle against the eating clubs, including the one in which we gathered: “I do not have to imagine what you feel. I know for I have felt it in days which will never seem to me very long ago. I have lived here now 20 years as a member of the faculty and the work of Princeton has become part of the very warp and woof of my life. But it has never in all those years been for a single moment the same Princeton for me that it was in the magical years that ran their cheerful course from the exciting autumn of 1875 to the gracious June of 1879. The four years of college can never be repeated or reconstructed. They stand unique in every person’s experience to whom they mean anything at all.”
Be sure to visit the Photo Gallery for more photos and videos of this terrific Class event. Thanks to the many classmates who uploaded the photos they took during the retreat.
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Upcoming EventsClick on date for more info
Class Virtual Forum - AfricaDecember 5, 2024 at 4PM ET Alumni DayFebruary 22, 2025 San Diego Mini-ReunionFebruary 21-23, 2025 Return to Baja and the Sea of CortezFebruary 25 - March 6, 2025 54th ReunionMay 22-25, 2025 Future Class Reunions55th Reunion, May 21-24, 2026 56th Reunion, May 20-23, 2027 57th Reunion, May 18-21, 2028
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