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- We toured the new Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA), on the Boston Waterfront.
- We held a dinner dance in the new Brain and Cognitive Sciences building, which straddles the railroad tracks north of Vassar Street.
- We dined at the MIT Museum, after hors d'oeuvres in the new Mark Epstein ('63) Gallery of Innovation (Mark Epstein himself was present, and said a few words).
- We had our our Sunday farewell brunch in the Stata Center, designed by the renowned architect Frank Gehry. There we greeted our two '63 crew teams, who arrived after one of the boats won the Reunion Row. Click here and scroll down for a report on the race by Jack Lynch, with pictures. You can then use your "Back" button to return here.
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A highlight of the reunion weekend for our class was a surprise visit from MIT president Susan Hockfield. She dropped in unexpectedly during our Saturday evening dinner at the MIT Museum. She went from table to table chatting with members of the class, and then stayed and continued to converse as we moved downstairs for dessert and coffee.
The photo shows president Hockfield on the left, Class of '63 president Larry Krakauer center, and Larry's wife Margie on the right. Click on the photo for a larger version. |
During a brief business meeting at the museum, our class officers were re-elected, to serve for another five years. We are:
| President: yours truly, Larry Krakauer
Vice president: Paul Abramson Treasurer: Steve Bernstein Secretary: Mike Bertin Ron Young will continue as our Webmaster, a position appointed by the president. |
Another position appointed by the class president every five years, before each reunion, is that of Gift Chair. It was ably filled this year by Martin Schrage. At the Technology Day luncheon, Martin announced the Class of 1963's 45th reunion class gift of $7,200,000, with 47% participation! Thank you to all who contributed.
Our previous class president, Peter Van Aken, once characterized the main job of a class president to be, "See to it that the next reunion happens." My job is made easy by the fact that whenever a reunion year arrives, I'm always able to quickly pull together an enthusiastic and effective Reunion "Events" Committee. I just make a few calls to "round up the usual suspects," and in no time, the committee members are hard at work.
I'd like to thank the committee members who worked to make our 45th reunion a success. Although members in the Boston area did things like making site visits to prospective venues, other committee members participated remotely, as all our "meetings" were conducted via conference calls. The committee members for our 45th reunion were:
| Paul Abramson, Jr.
Steven Bernstein Michael Bertin Raymond Carroll Robert Havlin L. Robert Johnson |
Karen Langrock
James Latimer II John Lynch Shamoon Mamnoon Philip Marcus Richard Merrill |
Kenneth Millett
Robert O'Donnell Richard Trilling Peter Van Aken Donald Yansen Ronald Young |
I'd like to thank the Alumni Association, and particularly their representative to our class, Robert Dimmick, for all the help they gave us in planning and carrying out this reunion. Although I wasn't elected class president until our thirtieth reunion in 1983, I served on reunion planning committees well before that. Over the years, I've watched the reunion planning assistance given by the Alumni Association get better and better, until it became a well-oiled machine. For this reunion, the Reunion Planning Committee picked a theme, and layed out the general outline of events. We made a few site visits, and approved the venues, caterers, and menus, but Robert Dimmick and his assistants took care of all the details.
Reunions are a great opportunity for our class secretary, Mike Bertin, who went around talking to classmates, taking copious notes. I'm sure he's collected enough material for quite a few columns in Technology Review. I'm also sure that he still would like to hear from more of you! Don't hesitate to write him at MCB1@aol.com. He'll even be happy to take care of the actual writing himself! Just call him, at (949) 786-9450.
At our Sunday brunch in the Stata Center, a couple of books deserved mention:
Since we billed this event as a "Victory Brunch" for our Class of '63 crew (which it turned out to be), Jack Lynch mentioned his recent book, Nice Row, MIT. Click on the title to go to Jack's web page on the book, which says in part: This memoir, written by Jack Lynch, a Junior Varsity oarsman from the class of 1963, relates how a squad of unathletic kids at a non jock school carrying the normal heavy academic work load that all MIT students carry somehow managed to live up to a legendary sprint and in their senior year became the "lightweight crew to beat." Jack's page also contains a link you can use to buy the book from Amazon.com.
It was noted that the class web pages have a great deal of material on rowing at MIT, including Bob Vernon's Henley Memoir.
Finally, classmate Phil Marcus's son Gary has recently written a book, Kluge, on "The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind ". It's gotten many good reviews, and a great deal of press recently, including a review in the New York Times.
If you didn't make it to the forty-fifth, I hope to see you at the fiftieth.
Larry Krakauer
President, MIT Class of '63