8.02
If these had been normal times
back then, we should have graduated in our high schools' classes
of 1946 and entered MIT in September of that year. But these were
the days of World War II; the times were far from normal; more
than half of us entered not from high school but from intervening
military service. We were a varied lot; differing ages, differing
backgrounds.
Karl T. Compton was MIT's President
when we entered, he who in the 30's and 40's had attracted so
many fine faculty to MIT and who himself was one of the scientific
leaders that would marshal the nation's technologists to the tasks
of World War II.
We gathered outside the President's
House on Memorial Drive to wish the Comptons well with a chorus
of He's a Jolly Good Fellow when word of his coming
retirement came over the radio one night in 1948.
In our final year, a new Senior
House opened for us on Memorial Drive, soon renamed, sadly, Baker
House, as memorial to warmly popular Dean Everett Moore Baker,
who lost his life in a plane crash shortly after we graduated.
Baker House
It was James R. Killian who next
took MIT's reins; the transition was accompanied by the great
"Mid-Century Convocation" in April, 1949; its procession
of educators may have been the most colorful assemblage of academic
regalia ever seen in one place. Presiding at our commencement
in June, 1950, Dr. Killian observed that our senior year had been
his freshman year (as a new college president).
Five Years Go By: Our First
Reunion...The first of our five-year reunions was held at Coonamessett Inn on Cape Cod. By the time of the second (in 1960), Dr. Killian had been summoned to serve the nation as President Eisenhower's Science Advisor, the first to hold this new office created by concern over the Russian Sputnik and the Cold War implications of a possible U. S. lag in technology.
Then Ten...then Fifteen...Our ten-year reunion took place in Lenox, Mass.; Dr. Julius A. Stratton was now MIT's President and would be as well at the time of our 15th (in Harwich, Mass.). His name is borne by the new Stratton Student Center on West Campus, appropriate for the many benefits to student life at MIT that arose in his time: Burton House, McCormick Hall, and others.
Now Twenty...Our 20th (in 1970) was held at Edgartown; Howard Johnson, MIT's President by now, was guiding the Institute with a steady hand, firm but not harsh, through the troubled times of that uneasy period.
Twenty-five and Thirty
Fly By...Our 25th and 30th were held on campus with day trips respectively, to George's Island and Marblehead. Jerome Wiesner, a young MIT professor in our student days, was Institute President by now. Former Presidential Science Advisor, he had, by this time, gained international respect as disarmament expert and advocate.
Before We Knew It...Thirty-five
& Forty...It had to happen eventually: an MIT President younger than ourselves. It was, at least one of our own: MIT graduate, advanced degrees here as well, and MIT Faculty from the start. Those of us here in grad school in the early '50's probably passed Paul Gray in the Main Corridor many times, unaware that we had just encountered the future MIT President who would one day greet us at our 35th (Bermuda) and 40th (Chatham) reunions. His decade as President was marked by the notable broadening of the diversity in race, gender and social background of the entire MIT family, while intellectual commitment remained ever strong.
Forty-fifth Reunion: the
Dress Rehearsal...By the time of our latest, the 45th (at Newport, RI), Charles M. Vest would succeed Dr. Gray and begin to restructure the Institute to meet the changes occasioned by the Cold War's end and altered patterns of support for research and science. Chaired by Mal & Sue Green, our 45th was well attended and held to be one of our finest. Still...the Reunion Committee was aware the 45th was but a dress rehearsal of sorts...
Fiftieth Reunion As we once walked with the Class
of 1900, we walked again on a warm June morning, this time
with the Class of 2000. Dr. Vest, still President, spoke
with enthusiasm of a surging ahead at MIT: new buildings, major
gifts & grants, the building of promising alliances with corporations.
Following three days on campus, the Reunion, chaired again by
Mal & Sue Green, adjourned for three more days at Mohonk Reservation
in New Paltz, NY.
Agreeable footnote: Mrs. ("Becky")
Vest, recovering from recent cardiac problem, was out and about
and visited several reunion venues.
Disconcerting footnote: Building
20 is gone!