The long-deferred 50th Reunion finally transpired June 9-12, 2022. With two years of reunions delayed, we had three 50th Reunions in one gorgeous weekend, plus the first ever 50th Reunion for Kirkland College, our sister school that survived ten years before dissolving into Hamilton in 1978.  Our class was the first to see co-education on the Hill.

Note that the roadside sign credits Samuel Kirkland with the founding of Hamilton, yet he had to wait 156 years to get his name on a college, a women’s school that preserved his name for ten years. Hamilton is named for its illustrious trustee Alexander Hamilton, because the name had a little more visibility. Below center, Kirkland’s tombstone reveals that Samuel was a missionary to the Oneida tribe; the tombstone beneath memorializes his protege Schenando, who helped found the struggling mission in Clinton, NY.  Class annalists (narrative historians) claim that the mission never gained solvency or credibility, until founded as an academic institution “Hamilton-Oneida Academy” in 1793.

 

 

The Hamilton Chapel (above) remains the symbol and anchor of the campus. When the steeple and walls were found deteriorating, the College raised $3.1 million almost effortlessly, because of alumni (ae) devotion to this prominent and significant structure that can be seen lighted from the NY Thruway at night.  The renovation considered the oldest records of the construction of the Chapel going back to 1827. The renovation story is summarized at https://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/preserving-chapel-steeple-history-refurb

We witnessed a “ribbon-cutting” to recognize donors and include alumni in the opening of the newly preserved Chapel. Kind of anti-climactic for those who might have lived through the decapitation of the steeple and other more dramatic stages.

I tried to capture the inscription in the third floor library, a new addition to the structure. It says “Send forth your light, O God,” backed by a half-moon window that projects sunlight on the table in the foreground of my photo. To me, this  was one of the significant renovations.

Of course, reunions are really about meeting people who have aged dramatically, while you remain ageless. Below are some of my dearest friends: Bruce MacIntyre (coat and medallion) my musical roommate for three out of four years; He might well be singing at the left; Ray Boggs (coat, tie and medallion), first freshman I met on LI, where we lived; and Dave Klein, below (in the coat and tie), another Long Islander, who endeared himself with massive letters sent through the U.S. mail over the last ten years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The medallions were passed out to all members of the Class of ’70, probably for surviving this three score and ten and managing the journey to College Hill another time.  With the exception of these individuals and Bob Frazee, whom I failed to capture on film, I could not recognize any of my former cohorts at Hamilton.  We were severely dependent on the hanging name tags worn at the belly button and sometimes even needed a little narrative to remember our connections.
The final remembrance took place in the chapel on Sunday morning, when our own Charlie Hambrick ’70 delivered a sermon on the importance of remembrance and inclusion, followed by a reading of names of those deceased since we met last. I recalled some of them as hall mates in the freshman dorm–men too young for this inclusion.

Victoria and I made this journey as a road trip, so there are many more stories to link to this trip.

But this is what we want to remember as the Reunion.