Dear College and Conservatory classmates from 1974,
This month we write to update you on our 50th reunion plans for May 24-27, 2024. Registration will open on February 15. Information and instructions will come from Oberlin, not from us, so be on the lookout for an email from the college. Please do register.
In case you missed it earlier, here’s information on hotels. The college has reserved blocks of rooms at the two hotels below; complimentary shuttles will run between them and campus. (Elyria also has a Hampton Inn, Courtyard by Marriott and Best Western, but shuttles will not serve them.)
24601 Country Club Blvd, N. Olmsted 24901
Reserve online or call (440) 617-6306 by May 12
Country Club Blvd., N. Olmsted 24901
Reserve online or call (800) 321-2211 as Oberlin College Alumni by April 25
It’s time to give you a sense of the programming our class will be providing during the reunion weekend. When it’s ready, we will send you a final schedule that includes our programming along with meals and other commencement/reunion events. We are committed to plenty of time for informal catching up (we will have a reunion headquarters for hanging out). There will be small discussion sessions on topics you will have ranked of interest in January, and we are putting together a variety of sessions, all led by our fellow classmates, on the following topics:
- Creativity in the Performing Arts
- The State of the Supreme Court and the US Judicial System
- Free Speech on Campus
- The Bittersweet Truth about Chocolate: Experience with Ivory Coast Cocoa Farmers, with Tom Neuhaus
- Remembering Tom Frank’s Hesi Expedition, with Jeff Blakely
- Hallmarks of Oberlin Culture, moderated by Bob Fuller
- Words and Music in Warner Concert Hall
- Memorial Service at First Church
Because we are gathering to reflect on our years at Oberlin half a century ago, it is incumbent upon us to remember those who are no longer with us. Steve Samuels wrote the following memorial tribute to Rick Goddard on our reunion website:
“Rick was one of my freshman quad-mates. Extremely intelligent and intellectually curious, he deceptively played the naive flower child from the Indiana frontier. His relentless wit could be biting, self-deprecating and downright hilarious and farcical, and was an integral part of his personality. He might be the only person I have known who could be cuttingly perceptive, incisive, poetic and downright funny simultaneously, and all the while pretending his tongue was in his cheek. He was a Francophile, who was arguably the finest freshman French conversationalist on campus. I would wager that he was the only freshman to ever have prepared snails in garlic sauce in the Price dorm kitchen.
Post-Oberlin, this ostensibly happy-go-lucky, somewhat hipster personality evolved into a highly respected attorney, intensely devoted to his closely-knit family, a patron of the arts and literature, and a community leader. A renaissance man of sorts, who continued to love French cuisine.
If ever a person benefitted from a liberal education, it was he.”
Thanks to everyone who has filled out their profile. We encourage all of you who have not yet done so to log onto our reunion website, www.oberlin74reunion.com and fill yours out with effusive narcissism (and photos), not Midwestern humility. What lights a fire in your belly today? Include not just your career path, but recollections of your time at Oberlin, memories of classmates, faculty, concerts, activities, time overseas and Winter Term projects. To give you a sense of what we’re looking for, here’s an extract from Chuck Ettelson’s profile:
“I recall that I saw Norman Mailer speak at nearby Baldwin-Wallace College. Several of us English majors somehow got a ride to Berea. We sat on the floor near the side of the stage in the basketball gym. At one point, Mailer (speaking without notes) lost his train of thought and asked for help from the crowd. I yelled out his last spoken line. Mailer turned toward me and asked my name. ‘Chuck Ettelson’ I yelled. With a flourish, he loudly said ‘thank you, Chuck Ettelson.’ After the 45-minute speech, Mailer met with undergraduates in a large lounge/room. I had a hardcover copy of his recent essays (Existential Errands), and I was able to ask Mailer to sign it. He said: ‘Chuck, how do you spell your last name?’ Then, he wrote: ‘To Chuck Ettelson, in partial payment of the favor.’ See the uploaded photos. The brilliant part of what he wrote is that the inscription requires an explanation. A simple autograph gets a shrug. His inscription gets a story.”
Better yet, go to Chuck’s profile and see the photos he posted of the Mailer book and inscription. He’s also uploaded a copy of his Oberlin diploma, because it is a Bob Fuller-signed Class of 1974 diploma—unlike most of ours. As Chuck noted in his profile, “Many people forget that some of us graduated mid-year. My diploma is dated February 1, 1974.”
See you in May!
Tina Graf, Class President Jan Heininger, Reunion Chair
tina@goflourish.com janet.heininger@gmail.com
