I have long since stopped counting the number of times I have driven the roads through Pennsylvania and upstate New York on my way into the Finger Lakes region to Ithaca. i’m the third generation of my family to travel these roads and there are at least two more generations after me that have begun racking up the same miles. It began when my maternal grandfather got off the boat and processed through Ellis Island in the late 19th century. He headed north from New York City on these roads in search of a promised job in the salt mines beside Lake Cayuga. There he found a job, a wife and an entire life. He prosper through whatever means he could and raised a family a five children who made it to adulthood. My mother was raised on the shores of Lake Cayuga and started what has become a family tradition by attending Cornell University. My oldest sister was born in Ithaca in 1951 and I first visited and lived in the area at my grandfather‘s house in 1958. After that I kept returning to Ithaca with my mother during the 1960s, first from our home in Wisconsin and then from our home in Maine. In 1968 my mother had to choose her next career move and rather than opt for a professorship at Cornell, she chose to work for the UN in Rome Italy. I next returned to Ithaca in 1971 to matriculate at Cornell and I’ve been going back to Ithaca regularly for the last 55 years.
All three of my children matriculated at Cornell, and all three have their own special relationship with Ithaca. My oldest son Roger met his wife Valene in Ithaca. She grew up on the outskirts in the town of Dryden. My daughter Carolyn graduated from Cornell in 2008 and married John, who was a proud member of Cornell‘s class of 2001 (celebrating his 25th reunion this year). My youngest son Tom and his wife Jenna are graduates of the class of 2017. All of my children and my two grandchildren, Charlotte, and Evelyn, spent many years going back-and-forth regularly to spend days and sometimes weeks at the home I kept in Ithaca for 26 years. I don’t know whether granddaughters Charlotte and/or Evelyn will attend Cornell, making them the fourth generation of my family to do so, but if they don’t, it won’t be for lack of familiarity with Ithaca.
I still have a number of relatives who live in Ithaca, including five cousins and quite a few more extended family members. My grandparents are buried there and I spread some of my mother’s ashes in the waters that feed Cayuga Lake. I have 2 degrees from Cornell and was a faculty member there for a decade, so I’m actually considered a part of the retired faculty contingent and still receive benefits from the University. I was very active as an alumni of both the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Johnson business school for many years. I have been designated by the university as a Foremost Benefactor and Builder of the University, and as such have my name engraved in stone on the terrace at Uris Library. I was so active in the business school for many years that my face is captured in bronze and is one of 15 displayed in the Hall of Honor in Sage Hall (the very place where my daughter was married). I think all of this history explains that I am deeply connected to Ithaca and Cornell University.
Tomorrow I will drive from the Delaware shore up to Ithaca another time. I am going to attend the 50th reunion of my business school class. I will stay at my cousin Pete’s house on South Hill as will my daughter, her husband and my granddaughters. I will start my visit with a dinner at cousin Pete’s house that will include Joe and Marney Thomas, Joe is the professor who taught me my first business school class in 1975, and then, when he was Dean of the school, hired me to join the faculty. On Saturday I will spend the entire day on campus meeting with my classmates and members of the faculty and staff at Sage Hall, join the luncheon being held at the adjacent Wee Stinky Glen, meet up with old fraternity brothers who are members of the class of 1976 over in Statler Hall and then finish off the day with a celebratory dinner in that same Dyson Atrium at Sage Hall. For some who rarely returned to Ithaca over the years, such an intense visit might be overwhelming, but for me it will all feel very familiar because I stayed so strongly connected to Ithaca and Cornell for the last 55 years.
Now that I live on my hilltop in California, 2700 miles from Ithaca, I find myself wondering how many more times I will retrace these steps back to Ithaca. I no longer have a home there. I really have only one close relative left there. There are fewer and fewer faculty and staff friends from my days of teaching. And while I still have a good number of classmate friends, I tend to see them more in other places than just on campus. In fact, I just visited with one in Annapolis and I will stop for lunch with another one in Philadelphia tomorrow on my way to Ithaca. I see some in New York City, some in Florida and even some occasionally in California. But Ithaca is a remote spot hidden in the mist of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York and you truly have to have a reason to go there. As strong as my connections have been, they are fewer and farther between with every passing year.
Ithaca holds a very special place in my heart and always will. But I’ve been there and done that a lot in Ithaca for many many years. It has been a road well traveled. Reunion means less to me than it does to some others, perhaps because I chose to stay so strongly connected to Ithaca and the University for so many years. There is also something that feels a bit like an endgame in attending my second 50th reunion in two years. After this, it feels like being a returning alumnus is more of a novelty then a member of a cohort. Do I really want to be wheeled on stage at some future gathering and applauded as one of the older members of the Cornell community? To be honest, I cannot decide if I’ve had enough or if I will feel compelled to keep traveling the road to Ithaca. No one is forcing me to decide right now, so perhaps I should just enjoy the weekend, enjoy the beauty of campus, enjoy seeing old friends and acquaintances and family members, and let the next reunion take care of itself in its own time.