Author: classnotes

I received a couple of responses to my request for news.

Bob Wylie kindly wrote in with this update: “I was a World War II veteran at Wesleyan but doubt that there are any left. After Wesleyan, I entered the corporate world and eventually became a vice president of marketing at Celanese and Hoescht. My wife Karen and I and our four children lived in Greenwich for 50 years, but we recently moved to Meadow Ridge, a senior living facility in Redding, Connecticut. Over time I attended the Advanced Management Program at Harvard, and as my interest has been in history, I obtained two master’s degrees at the New School and Western Connecticut State University. I ran for political office and was soundly defeated, but I successfully managed a number of successful candidates. I am 97, have given up driving, but not Scotch.”

Dick Steuart sent a note too. He said that he couldn’t recall which class he would have been in officially—1949 or 1950—but he attended Wesleyan for one year. He had some association with one of the fraternities, but not as an official member. He also competed on the swim team. Upon leaving Wesleyan, he joined the army and entered West Point, graduating in 1950 and, soon afterward, was in the Korean War. “During 27 years in the army, I served in numerous countries throughout the world, but still have fond memories of Wesleyan. One of my Wesleyan classmates was Chuck D. Stone. With regards, Dick Steuart.”

It would have been one of my 100th birthday wishes to gather with my friends.

Each of us six—Bill Cunningham ’47, Peter Hemmenway ’48, Frank Bowles ’44, Phil Dundas ’48, Tex Reynolds ’48, and I—would come together at Sal’s to play a round of liar’s dice and quaff a cheap beer. We were all teachers from 1947 through 1986, and we had seen great changes over those years. Each had taught secondary, three had gone on to college teaching, and we agreed that time back then had been given to subject matter that required thinking for oneself, not as you were told to think. We urged students to study facts, not opinions. We hoped that they would learn that in a world so little understood there should be room for two to be mistaken. Two on the same side or on opposing sides? Two people? Two causes? Two subject matters? Two truths? Party over, we broke up still clinging to our belief that subject matter is better for fact rather than opinion, which can lead to preaching morals or ethics, or racial outrage or sexual anguish. Some subject matter is better suited to the classrooms of religion or medicine, or even the home, we argued among ourselves. We lamented the passing of the time when students accepted that they had not lived long enough to know who was or was not qualified to teach what, nor should free speech be free only when it says what you want to hear. We had worried, too, about the current stage of political correctness. Why multiple valedictorians? Why euphemisms for words denoting sex or gender, or race? Have we become so fearful of being accused of being prejudiced that we make verbal pablum of robust words; and that is simply obsequious censorship. We last remnants of the class of 1945 urge the inclusion of factual history as subject matter, for we hear echoes of the suppressions of our past. Remember the fraternity landmarks? We 45ers remember what we fought for. Censorship was not among our ideals. Nor are foul discourse, rampage, or gun madness.

Slán go fóill.