Thirty-five Years Later
Barclay Rives
I looked forward to my 35th Harvard reunion with pleasure and anxiety.
I would see beloved lifetime friends.
I knew from my 25th reunion what enjoyable events our alma mater (literal translation: nourishing mother) would provide. However, the list of my classmates includes a Supreme Court Chief Justice (did not attend), a world class cellist (attended and performed), famous and successful leaders in every field. I thought about my simpler country life in comparison.
At the first party event, I realized I'd been harder on myself than anyone else was going to be. I remember noticing at my 10th high school reunion that people who show up at reunions generally have a positive attitude. The disaffected stay away. Talking with my fellow 35th reunioners, I realized that others question their life choices and contend with insecurities. Our big nametags were helpful and in some cases essential for identification purposes.
During commencement exercises the following morning, members of my class of ’76 processed down walkways flanked by the class of ’11. Those in caps and gowns applauded us. Ahead of our class were members of the 25th reunion class of ’86 who were behind the class of ’61. At the front of the procession was the oldest alumnus attending, Donald Brown, 102, of the class of 1930. Behind the alumni came the president, officers and faculty of the university. Band and choral music competed with thousands of excited conversations as the mass flowed into rows of empty chairs. I felt the euphoria of the graduates, the nostalgia of the alumni, the grandeur of 375-year-old Harvard tradition, and I was thrilled to be connected to it all.
Others have experienced this sensation. American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson graduated from Harvard in 1821 when he was 18. In 1836 he attended Harvard’s 200th Jubilee celebration and wrote a journal entry now engraved beside a Harvard Yard entrance gate:
Cambridge at any times is full of ghosts, but on that day the anointed eye saw the crowd of spirits that mingled with the procession in the vacant spaces, year by year, as the classes proceeded; and then that far longer train of ghosts that followed the company, of the men that wore before us the college honors and the laurels of the state, the long winding train reaching back into eternity.
Classmates now with us only in spirit were recognized during a memorial service the following day. It featured Bible readings, hymns, the Kaddish (Hebrew prayer for the departed), and a recitation of John Donne’s “No man is an island… And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” After names of our departed classmates were read, the great bell in Memorial Church tolled for several minutes. Years ago I was pulling the rope to ring my local church bell at a memorial service when an elder explained to me that I was pulling too hard and producing a double note with the clapper hitting both sides of the bell: ding dong, and that a gentler pull would produce the desired mournful single note.
There’s nothing mournful or modest about Harvard night at the Boston Pops. The event at Boston’s Symphony Hall featured cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the most acclaimed member of the my class. Also performing were guitarist Tom Morello (class of ’86), and the orchestra conducted by John Williams performing movie scores from Jaws, Star Wars, ET, Superman and others all composed by Williams himself. Besides buying the whole hall for the night, Harvard arranges a police presence at every intersection so that the motorcade of alumni-filled buses breezes non-stop through Cambridge and Boston.
The evening at Pops and other scheduled events were fun, but just as during my undergraduate days, some of the sweetest and most illuminating moments happened during impromptu conversations in the dining halls. This reinforces my belief that the internet will not render college obsolete. Place remains important, especially when it facilitates interaction of diverse, brilliant and talented students.
A lady on the Winthrop House Dining Hall staff asked if she could help me find anything as I made my way through the buffet.
“My youthful vigor?” I suggested.
“Then you would have to give up your wisdom.”
“In that case, no thanks,” I replied.
Unencumbered by fame or fortune, with nobody asking for my autograph or hefty donation, I enjoyed every minute of my reunion. Playwright and actor Wallace Shawn of the class of 1965 was not so lucky. When he attended his 25th reunion in 1990, he had recently appeared in the movie The Princess Bride as the character Vizzini. Children of his classmates constantly kept recognizing him, pointing and shouting at him his character’s signature line: Inconceivable!
The recent movie The Social Network depicts the rise of former Harvard student and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The Harvard scenes were not filmed at Harvard. Since sustaining damage to its buildings during the filming of Love Story back in 1970, Harvard has declined all Hollywood invitations. I doubt Harvard social life presently includes decadent orgies like those depicted in The Social Network. It did not in my day except in imaginations.
A ’76 classmate named Bob Greenberg can be seen at the center of an often-reproduced photo of the bearded founders of Microsoft, sometimes captioned: “Would you invest?” At one of our 35th reunion lunches he related how he had won a Royal Frontier Studio family photo portrait in a 1978 contest. He told the studio that he didn’t have a family and asked if they could photograph his company. He pitched the idea to his now-famous boss Bill Gates, suggesting that the photo would be a unifying event after recent arguments over the company’s impending move from Albuquerque to Seattle. Bob wishes he had gotten royalties from that photo.
After four nights and three days of parties, panel discussions and entertainment came bittersweet goodbyes. I felt stimulated, humbled, encouraged and exhausted. The reunion seemed like a wild dream as I rode around my Virginia farm the next morning. Blooming honeysuckle perfumed the air. Broccoli and snow peas were ready in the garden. I would not trade places with any of my classmates.
Barclay Rives lives on a small portion of his grandfather’s estate and foxhunts with the Keswick Hunt Club in Keswick, Virginia.