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The Class of 1974 50th Reunion
Save the Dates: May 24-27, 2024
January 4, 2024
Dear College and Conservatory classmates from 1974,
This month we write to update you on our 50th reunion plans for May 24-27, 2024, and to ask your help in choosing discussion topics for sessions like those we held for our 25th reunion – small, informal conversations with a specific topic. We’d like your feedback on what discussions you’d be interested in joining. Here’s what we’ve come up with so far.
-Oberlin and Its Impact on My Life
-Finding Post-Career Purpose
-Managing Physical, Emotional and Social Health As We Age
-The Marie Kondo Effect: Managing Possessions after a Lifetime of Acquisition
-Caregiving, Caretaking: Our Folks, Ourselves
-Technology: Age Helpful, Age Phobic?
-The Arts in My Life
-Life as a Student of Color at Oberlin in the Early 70s
-Coop at Oberlin: How It Helped Form Us
-Elon Musk: Tesla, Space X, X & Beyond
Use this survey link to rank order 1, 2, 3, 4 the topics you’re most interested in. There is also a place for you to suggest additional ones. You’ll also find a link to the survey, which will close on January 31, on our reunion website www.oberlin74reunion.com.
Again, we urge you to log on our reunion website and create or embellish your profile. Be relentlessly anecdotal. Don’t just tell us about your career--tell us what jazzes you up, what brings light to your life. It’s not what we are but who we are that we’re hoping to discover. Dredge your memory for tales of your exploits at Oberlin. For examples, see Ralph Hamperian or Chuck Ettelson’s profiles. See the exchange between John McLean and Willie Katzin about a Grateful Dead concert on Willie’s profile.
To prime your recollections this January, we’re sharing some classmates’ memories of Winter Term projects.
Claudia Ribet: “In January 1972 I worked for the New York City Commission on Human Rights, and it changed my life.”
LaPearl Logan: “1971 Oberlin Black Ensemble, learning to crochet and taking piano lessons in the Con.”
Wayne Lei: “Was the still photographer for a super 8 film project in NYC Chinatown (after a month there, I was reasonably conversant in Cantonese again -- which surprised me to no end)."
Allyssa McCabe: “They were some of the best experiences I had at Oberlin – learning to scuba dive in Jamaica was outstanding in particular.” Sue McGarry, Jan Heininger and Laura McDonald were there too.
Allan Prochazka: “French House was a great place with a wide range of typical Oberlin characters. It led to my first winter term learning French at the Verbier ski resort in Switzerland.”
Susan Macaulay: “My junior year I went on a solo trip to Tanzania and Kenya, where I met up with my mother's cousin and her husband and five sons…on multiple trips to remote villages where they ministered, both medically and spiritually….I won't even try to describe how that experience changed me.”
Fred Bidwell: “I photographed (badly) objects from the Allen Memorial Art Museum collection."
Donn Ginoza: “I also did a Winter Term with the college photographer. Never used a 35 mm camera before. Spent two weeks snapping pics around town. Turns out the film wasn’t properly spooled and so I had nothing to develop and scrambled to finish the project. Learning from failure! Lol.”
Pat Checkel: “I did a reading project my junior year, which left plenty of time to play Monopoly every night in the Burton lounge. It really seemed that Monopoly was my project that year. Ha!”
Eric Goldman: “At Mt. Sinai psychiatric ward in NYC, in 1971, they had no exercise class so I started one. Perhaps inspired by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the basically zombied out became magically alive.”
Vijay Seshadri: “The first was a seminar David Young conducted, in which he brought three writers--Galway Kinnell, John Barth, and Kenneth Koch--to campus….That month confirmed my secret ambition to become a writer.”
Casey Cook: “My project was bread making. I thought of it as a bachelor survival kit. But as I proceeded I thought it may make me more attractive to women, which would offset my manifold deficits. I met my future wife at a party and later invited her over for some homemade bread. It turned out that she wanted a lifetime supply and we have been married for almost 44 years and I’m still baking bread based on what Nancy Rosenbaum taught me from the Tasahara bread book one winter term.”
Marcia Hoskins Fardella: “Mine ran the gamut from serious (studying French, interning for Congressman in Washington DC) to silly (living in a motel to simulate life after college, or something like that). But I've always believed in the wisdom of leaving the campus during January!”
For further information on reunion logistics, check Oberlin’s reunion weekend website.
See you in May.
(678) 438-4385 cell (703) 585-5232 cell
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