See You In September

Isn't it curious how undergraduates look younger and younger every September?

After I had worked as a staff member at the University of Chicago for awhile, I mentioned this one September afternoon to a few of the faculty members with whom I was having lunch in the lounge at the Quadrangle Club. Their ages ranged from the mid-30s to the mid-50s. My remark made them all laugh!

Each year, the college generation remains the same age, but we move a notch farther away in time. In 1977, when I made the above observation, alumni I met from the Classes of 1939 or 1949 were old-timers. Now my class, the Class of 1976, has joined the old-timers!

But I remember my teachers and my classmates as if it were yesterday. We were working hard on our MBA's. I was in my mid-30s. We were the GSB Class of 1976.

And I was in the Class of 1963 when I graduated from Northwestern. Both Chicago and Northwestern have beautiful campuses. I miss seeing them everyday. I miss seeing my teachers and my classmates and the staff members I knew at both schools. But I still see their faces and remember their personalities, their smiles, their frowns, their laughter, their brilliance.

The same is true for my high school and grammar school teachers and classmates. I remember you.

In June, I attended the 50th Reunion of my eighth grade class at St. Leonard's in Berwyn, Illinois. There were 39 kids in our class. Today, 35 are still alive. Of those, 24 attended our 50th Reunion. We even saw our seventh and eighth grade nuns!

What a great time! What a wonderful feeling to see everyone after so many years! I hadn't seen some classmates since our graduation on June 10, 1954. I hadn't seen the rest since high school!

Old friendships, young love.

We all looked the same age. As I talked with each one, I saw a friend from childhood. My perception blended into my memory of them, as images of people sometimes do on the current CBS-TV series, Cold Case, starring Kathryn Morris.

I look forward to my alumni magazines and visiting the Northwestern and University of Chicago web sites. A few of the faculty I knew are still at both places. I am always saddened when I read that one of them has passed away.

It seems like yesterday....

Only yesterday.