50th Reunion

We are heading into the last few days of our trip. We’ve made the crossing without incident and will spend a day in Brooklyn to see the granddaughters and daughter Carolyn and John. We’ve booked a local hotel within walking distance from their duplex and will launch our roadtrip to Ithaca on Thursday. I’m going up for my 50th undergraduate reunion and will spend several days communing with all my college friends. The inner circle of that group is about a dozen from my college years, with another 8 or so spouses who were acquired after graduation in one place or another. Most of that core group of friends were in my fraternity, good old Phi Sigma Epsilon, one of the least notable of the 54 frats on the hill at the time (it no longer exists at Cornell at all). It’s a good sized core group and should be a fun gathering. There are several who are a year ahead or behind but still went to Cornell, and one (my friend Cliff’s wife, Linda), who went to a nearby school but almost deserves a Cornell degree given all the time she spent on campus during those four years.

There are four members of our gang back then that died along the way. One died shortly after graduation. One died about 7 years ago, and two have died in the past five years. Two of those were particularly close friends of mine for many years. I’m sure we will be toasting them at some point over the weekend. What we are probably really toasting when we do that will be equal parts honoring their lives and honoring the fact that we are still here to give such a toast. Demographically speaking, I image that in ten years (the 60th reunion) the herd will dwindle considerably more, but these days with constantly increasing longevity, it’s hard to say for sure when the falloff in attendance will come the most. Will it be after 80, 85 or 90?

I also suspect that there will be waning interest in gathering for reunions down the road as the sentiment about those of us who have attended “elite Ivy League Universities” has taken a decidedly negative turn. I’m not sure any of us could have predicted that higher education in general and Ivy graduates in particular, would be so denigrated by our own government. It will be interesting to listen to the University President’s address this year to hear what he (Kotlikoff) has to say about all this battling with Trump and fighting to retain federal funding and tax exemption. I’m curious how he sees Cornell surviving this mess.

It will also be interesting to see who among our fellow attending classmates still lean left (as we most all decidedly did back in our collegiate days). It seems hard to imagine anyone from our generation who went to Cornell being anything but liberal, but time and circumstance can do funny things to people to be sure. There were two ROTC guys from our class at our fraternity and two others that went the military route afterwards on their own. One (not in our fraternity and a few years ahead of us) rose to be a 4-star Marine Corps General (the highest ranking military graduate in Cornell’s history) and I think it’s safe to say he has always been and remains non-partisan, as the military is supposed to be. One was a flight surgeon and, as a public health care professional to this day, is certainly very much the liberal he always was. One was in the nuclear power program, and while in his day he might not have been so liberal (other than while growing his own supply of weed), he has spent a lifetime in the Pacific Northwest and has two daughters who I’m sure have kept him on the liberal side of life. The fourth ROTC guy has, unfortunately, joined the ranks of those four who have not lived to see the 50th.

It is one thing to not come to reunion for health or death reasons, but it is far stranger to see people who very conspicuously avoid coming to reunions, especially momentous ones like the 50th. It doesn’t take a degree in clinical psychology to figure out that there is something going on for such people that keeps them away. We probably all have limits to how much we enjoy reminiscing about old times. I know that I have generally found that two days of reunioning is my limit, but to not come at all, especially in a show of obvious abstinence, is to openly flaunt either your disappointment in yourself or your displeasure with your old college gang. I am both proud of my post-graduate life and very pleased about the friendships I have maintained with my college friends. I do not see any of them very often, but I retain a sense of closeness and fondness with many of them. We have all had our ups and downs over our lifespan, but we mostly remember our times on the hill with great fondness.

I enjoyed my time at Cornell and freely admit that it contributed greatly to the best parts of the life I built for myself in one way or another. I have a stronger link to Cornell than most of my classmates. My mother (who grew up in nearby Myers in Lansing) attended Cornell, as did my stepfather. I have two degrees from Cornell and am numbered as a retired faculty member, having been a Clinical Professor of Finance for a decade. I maintained a house on the edge of campus for 26 years. And, all three of my kids attended Cornell, as did both one daughter-in-law and my son-in-law. To say that Cornell and Ithaca have played a BIG part in my life would be an understatement. And yet, I do not return to revisit the campus or town, I’ve done enough of that over the years. I don’t return to past glories, since I’m not sure I can claim any, either academically or socially. I return to be with old friends (including cousins Pete & Nancy, with whom we are staying this weekend), not just to reminisce, but also to honor our time together and to acknowledge that none of us knows how many more times we have left to us to see one another. When we say goodbye to one another at the end of a 50th reunion, I think we all know there is a chance it may be the last time we see one another. I’m not sure that’s a feeling we all have had before this.

My mother reconnected with my stepfather after the 55th reunion and I threw them and their class (‘37) a 60th reunion party at my Ithaca house. So, it is fair to consider that life does go on after the 50th, it just seems like such a big number to get past. I will be careful what I write about the reunion, because knowing my blogging foot-in-mouth tendencies, I do not want my potentially last great gathering with these special friends and classmates to be anything less than memorable in a positive way.

Oh, and by the way, next year will be my 50th business school reunion. I will need to think about that reunion a bit since I have fewer friends from that group, but as a member of the Wall of Honor of the business school, it might be churlish to do anything other than attend yet another 50th reunion.