Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Class of ’59, at the launch of the Athletics Hall of Fame showing off her Wellesley blue running shoes
A few years before my father’s death, he attended his 60th college reunion at Cornell. It was a highlight of his old age, shared with some three dozen other alums — mostly men, of course, since few women attended college in the early part of the 20th century. On his desk sat a picture of the smiling assemblage, decked out in striped blazers and straw hats like a covey of barbershop quartets.
Under the spell of my Dad’s obvious pleasure, I vowed on the spot that I would attend my own 60th college reunion were I still around and able when the time came. This summer, some thirty-five years later, it finally did. And though my father had never gone to a class reunion before his long-delayed hegira to Cornell, I’d been returning to Wellesley at fairly regular 5-year intervals over the years*.
Two Secretaries of State, Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright, are among the luminaries who graduated from Wellesley. They also happen to share my reunion ‘cycle’, which includes all classes ending in ‘4 and ‘9. Mrs. Albright graduated five years after I did; Mrs. Clinton, fifteen years. Together they generally suck the oxygen out of other reunion events on campus, but nobody seems to mind, even when the former First Lady’s Secret Service detail disrupts traffic.
Hillary and I, you might say, go back a long way on the reunion circuit. I happened to attend her graduation, back in the days when Wellesley reunions and commencements took place on the same weekend. As the spokesperson for her graduating class, Hillary Rodham caused quite a stir when she delivered what was most likely the first of a lifetime of political speeches. But that is a tale for another time.
Fast forward to my class’ 60th reunion this summer, attended by about 80 octogenarians. I will admit from the outset that the hardest thing for me to process was the palpable evidence of accelerated change. I suspect my own father was better able than I to cope with this at his 60th, because the classmates he encountered were virtual strangers to him.
Well, what can one expect of ladies who have been officially ‘over the hill’ now for more than half their lives? We are grateful to be on the side of God’s earth where the grass grows. Aging reunion attendees are survivors who are willing to confront present realities in order to revisit past pleasures. We find reassurance in our mutual company; we take pride in our college roots. Most of us bear scant resemblance to the graduation yearbook photo that dangled from our necks throughout reunion weekend. Yet we know in our hearts that we are the same people in ways that matter most.
Wellesley Alums from Celebrating Classes of ‘4s and ‘9s at their reunions, June 2014; Wellesley College photo
Perhaps the hardest pill to swallow – and we take plenty of those, too — was the recognition that some minds, that had been in full flower during our college years, are now inexorably closing shut. One recognizes this in fixed smiles and tentative stares. Yet how can it be possible when once upon a time we were all of us considered the brightest and the best?
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