After a 5 hour drive from Portland we arrived in Walla Walla, the city so nice they named it twice, where the main economy 50 years ago was Whitman college. Today, the city is the center of a thriving wine producing farming area, famous for red wines especially Syrah. The rollling hill country of the Palouse and Blue mountains, sunshine, and mild winters are ideal for this type of wine. We are staying at the Courtyard by Marriott which is near the old stately Marcus Whitman Hotel. Our hotel is relatively new.
Marcus Whitman was a missionary in this area and was killed by Indians. The school was founded in his name but is currently non-sectarian.
Whitman College is a private institution that was founded in 1883. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 1,498, its setting is rural, and the campus size is 117 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. Whitman College's ranking in the 2016 edition of Best Colleges is National Liberal Arts Colleges, 40. Its tuition and fees are $46,138 (2015-16).
Hired in 2015, Kathy M. Murray is the first female President. She spoke to us at the opening wine reception and Friday luncheon. She was very impressive and did her homework on the accomplishments of the class of '66. There are about 82 graduates with a total of 113 attending including spouses for the weekend. The reunion committee presented President Murray with a check for $330,000 from the class which came from 95 donors who are 59% of the remaining class of 66.
At registration each graduate was presented with a book which includes a list of deceased class members, class photos from 1964, classmate biographies and photos of various reunions. We attended the 25th reunion and the 40th. I am so glad we are able to make it to the 50th! The book also gives highlights of current events and lists the top 10 music hits of the era. It is interesting to see the 1966 graduation program as well. The 50th reunion attendees are invited to don cap and gown again and march behind the 2016 graduates this Sunday.
At the wine reception I met many interesting people. One tall man dressed in a cowboy shirt and hat and boots said he had always wanted to be Roy Rogers. His wife explained that they really don't have horses or live on a ranch, but he always wears a cowboy shirt. I sat next to a spouse who said they drove from Seattle but it took all day because they had to drive around rather than the shorter route through the passes to the eastern Washington area. Her husband had a detached retina on a trip and still wasn't allowed to fly or go to high elevations. It turns out they were on a pre cruise trip to Manchu Pichu when this happened. They were to board the Oceania Marina for a cruise through the Panama Canal to New York after the Machu Pichu excursion. They never even saw the ship. She was very interested to hear about our travels on Oceania and hopes to go another time. Another woman we met lives in the Walla Walla area. She married a farmer and had children and then her husband died after 6 years of marriage. She worked for the college for 20 years and knows the area and the college well. Steve Lane, our friend from Oahu, is here. From the reunion book, we learned that he was once on the Board of Trustees. Also attending is Gretchen Abbott who is from Alaska. We know her several ways, mostly through the wonderful adult education group I attended when living there, OLE. https://www.oleanchorage.org/ Another man we met introduced himself and said he was his granddaughter's nanny. Another man said he enjoyed being a Father. His daughter and first child, was only 7 years old.
Steve Bauck is here. We were excited to talk to him after so many years. He was the young minister of the Keystone Congregation Church http://www.keystoneseattle.org/ in our Seattle Green Lake neighborhood who eventually married us. My Mother wrote that their Assistant minister from Akron, OH took a post as Minister in Seattle and we should go to that church to meet him. We were totally not interested. But she persisted in mentioning him, and then we discovered the church was within walking distance, so we went one Sunday. The whole time David was distracted because he kept thinking he knew the minister somehow. Sure enough, it was Steve, and they discovered they knew each other from Whitman. The congregation was young and friendly so we started attending the church and met his family. We were happy that he officiated at our wedding in the Arboretum. His kids are grown and he has grandchildren that he spends a lot of time with now.
David reacquainted himself with some of his TKE fraternity brothers. He realizes that they were Physics majors or the like, i.e. Geeks today. David was a Philosophy major. David quit the fraternity by moving out of the frat house. You couldn't actually quit. Others there mentioned that they quit as well, mainly because of the discrimination clauses in the organizations. I remember people having trouble with that at my school, Allegheny, but we did not have houses. Everyone lived together in only dorms with no segregation in that sense.
Friday morning we met in Hunter for a panel on Civil Rights, Then and Now. The discussion was lead by three former '66 students. One was a lesbian. Her memory of college and her sexual orientation was that the dorm counselors cautioned to "beware of lesbianism because it is evil"
Another presenter was a lone Asian student who was the daughter of American Japanese who also had a college education in the US, very unusual at that time. She felt like you do the first day of school when you looked around the room and everyone was a stranger. but she felt like this most of the time. She felt ignored.
The last speaker talked about his civil rights advocacy, his exchange student experience at Howard University which program he helped facilitate. He is now a criminal attorney which he feels fits with his former activism.
David asked about Native Americans but that was not even an awareness at the time. I asked the lesbian woman if she was married, thinking I would like to meet her. Instead she asked if I was married which I later interpreted as her telling me this was something politically incorrect to ask, as you do not normally just ask a woman if she is married.
This was a busy day. After the morning discussion we went to a lovely lunch in Reid where the President (who was accompanied by her female partner), gave a very nice speech and opened it up to questions. Mine was the only question: "what was the average debt that a graduate carried after graduation and how many got jobs"? She said it was about $20,000 compared to two state universities with over $25,000 in average debt. The school's tuition and fees is now over $40,000 per year (not including room and board). One of my continuing frustrations with this world is our college education system which is inaccessible to most because of these high fees. Parents must buy equivalent to a Mercedes Benz each year.
After graduation on Sunday, we spoke with a couple who had a graduate daughter. I asked about how they financed her education. They said their income did not allow them to qualify for most assistance or scholarships. They mortgaged their house twice and she went back to work. They spent over $120,000 for her degree.
As a professional, we as parents did not qualify for government assistance for our kids, we were in too high an income bracket. However, the stage in life for parents of college age kids is one where they are also trying to save for their own retirement as well as care for aging parents. At least this was our case. Fortunately our kids had scholarships and some savings from the Alaska permanent fund. However, we could not afford graduate school - Aaron was a USC Keck School of Medicine and Andy in Chicago getting a Masters in Nursing. Aaron now, having accumulated interest, has a debt of $400,000. Andy has over $150,000 and plans for further study as a Nurse Practitioner. If we helped pay for their loans, we would not feel secure in our retirement.
Our book discussion group
After lunch I attended an interesting discussion about what books we are reading and recommend. I recommended Barbara Kingsolver Prodigal Summer and told about Peter Galbraith's book. I am interested in recommendations such as Tara Road by Maeve Binchey, It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, and Being Mortal by Atel Guande. Other books recommended are Hans Heinsheimer Menagerie in f#, Enders Game, The Giver by Lois Lower, Butterfly Summer, Vicar of Baghdad, Cutting for Stone, Angle of Repose, Farly Mowat Never Cry Wolf, My Family and Other Animals, Behind the Beautiful Forever, Paper Love, Neither Wolf nor God, and Days of Rage by Brian Burroughs about the 60's and 70's. I eliminated more esoteric tomes. Afterwards some of us browsed the campus book store where I found some very nice children's books for Aurora.The evening dinner was held in a tent outside Baker. We sat with a couple who work at Stanford. They were in the book discussion group. Some ladies at the table said they were going to the play so David, who was involved in the Harper Joy Theater in his college years, got tickets. We saw Seagull by Chekov. The student actors were excellent. It was a very minimalist production, but suitable. I was impressed with the young man who played the famous novelist, Trigorin.
Saturday morning I had time for myself to write this blog while David went to the TKE house, and the memorial service before our picnic lunch.
We didn't get to the fried chicken and baked beans and potato salad picnic until after noon. We got to sit with Dave and Linda and the woman moderating the afternoon discussion about the survey. It was noted that even though there were no Viet Nam deaths, several class members who died had been to Viet Nam and were never the same, perhaps affected by agent orange, or PTSD. One man said he applyed for C. O. And the draft board granted it to him even though he didn't even use religion as a reason. but every draft board was different he thought. It was notable that 82% went on to get graduate degrees. Several had students who went to Whitman and one has a daughter who is a faculty member now. No one stood out as being "famous" per se. Most have become more liberal as they have aged. It was noted that "conservative" and "liberal" have also changed. I wanted to tell the story about a boy who asked his Grandfather how he was able to live back in those days without a cell phone, internet, email, and all the technology he uses today. Grandpa replied, "yes, it was a struggle. That's why we old folks had to invent all that."
Steve Lane, Louise Wilkinson, David and I went for a walk in Pioneer park. They have a little zoo with tropical birds, a nice playground, and bandstand/cupola. It was a nice afternoon in the park. As we drove back to the hotel, we went through downtown and I wanted to stop into some of the cute stores but David was tired. He said his visit to the TKE house was interesting. The house looked nice on the outside, but it hadn't changed on the inside. "It looked like a slum" were his words. He said when he was there they had a house mother who made them clean up a bit and tried to keep them in line.
The dinner Saturday night was held at the Foundry Winery. Dave Miller bought a bottle of the 2012 Meritage which was excellent. After a delicious dinner they honored the person who had attended 9 out of the 10 reunions and invited us to the 55th, 60th, etc. David seemed to really enjoy the weekend so maybe we will attend after all.
They invited us to talk about our most memorable, poignant moments. Here are a few I noted. One man came early Freshman year and walked down the street with another early student. They were accosted by a tumbleweed and both said "What have we gotten into!" A woman asked how many had had "practice marriages" and said she did. Another said in retrospect their class was on an important cusp of change. A man described the difficulties of sliding tires down the flagpole as a fraternity prank. Then others described pranks such as putting VW bugs sideways in between two buildings, and throwing a rival fraternity's silverware into the pond and then making a poem with clues that described where they could find them. Another group of friends had never experienced -20 degree weather and discovered what water and cold air could do. They found a squirt bottle and covered the dorm counselor's car windows in ice. Then they decided more water might be better and started to pour buckets of water over the whole car. The counselor came out and saw his encased car and the pranksters. The culprets commiserated with him as he immediately blamed "those Phi Delt pledges".
The football team was very bad. At a particular game Whitties were down 57 to 0 at the half. The coach told them, "Just go out there and have fun". Their minus score that half was only 10 more points. In the girl's dorm they would cover soap with clear nailpolish and put saran wrap over the toilet, under the seat and remembered midnight serenades. One woman fell over a cliff and had to be rescued causing several girls losing minutes because of coming in after curfew.
A woman described how she loved to play ukulele today because they sang the oldies of the 60's. She asked us all to sing "This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land. Some of us felt awkward, but the room resounded with the song and everyone remembered the words.
David spoke about how he was oblivious of all they had mentioned!
A woman asked if everyone remembered where they were on Nov. 22, 1963 when Kennedy was shot. All the women in her dorm sat in the lounge the rest of the day glued to the TV broadcasts. Others were walking to class.
Sunday we went to Starbucks downtown and then David changed to a graduation gown in Baker where all the Class of '66 gathered. I figured out that the 50th reunion was the only one at this time and was why we got such special treatment. At 11:00 the band started to play and the processional began. The Class of "66, followed the 130th graduating class with their banner. The audience clapped for the '66 class as they marched by.
We had VIP seating and Whitman water bottles under our seat as gifts. The President
opened with introductions and remarks. She said she hoped the students would embrace empathy and that they would reject cynicism. The two student speakers' address humourously compared the class to butterflies and were now about to emerge from their chrysalis. The main speaker was a female newly appointed Washington Supreme Court Justice who is also a member of the LGBT community. She received an Honorary Doctorate degree after her speech. She asked "What is life summoning you to do today"?
David, Louise and Steve in their graduation gowns. Steve has his honorary doctorate hood on from Whitman
A light lunch was served in Baker after the class changed back into their regular clothes. We got to say our goodbyes to friends of old and new.
Dave and Linda Miller
Steve Lane and Louise Wilkinson
Steve Bauck
Gretchen Abbott from Alaska
A boy playing ball in the park near the school
4 year classroom using puzzles
This building is the example of how crazy architecture is. the bottom floors are govt offices. The top floors, all decorated differently and in various states of repair are privately owned with no coop rules.
A gallery of a young modern Cuban artist. He works in colored clay like you played with as a child. His tiles are actually this clay pressed in various patterns and designs inside an empty CD case.
This is an art piece carved from a large piece of styrofoam
