Commencement 2004

Class of 1954 shares memories

Jo Knoop (left), Bertie Buffett-Bialek and Sue Parshall were freshman roommates.

photo by Mary Hanlon

“At my undergraduate commencement it was 94 degrees. We were sitting in our sundresses fanning ourselves. We were almost dying from the heat.”
Evelyn Richard

“One of the reasons I came to this affair is that I didn’t attend my own commencement exercise. Why didn’t I? I had to get out to Colorado to see my girlfriend. But I got permission from the dean to leave early.”
Eugene King

“We were here during the McCarthy era. It was an uneasy time. We knew that in some classes there were people from the FBI and that some students were ratting out others for the things they said. If a student said ‘I was reading Karl Marx, and I agree with him,’ the professor would say, ‘For heaven’s sake don’t say you read that here!’”
Pat Endress

“I remember swimming in the Dolphin Show at Patten Gymnasium. One year we wore pink elephant heads and the next year they turned down the lights in the pool and dressed us in strings of light so we glowed as we swam.”
Lois Shuster

“I remember there was a housing shortage. We were freshman roommates at Sargent Hall and that was a big deal because it was the first time females lived on the north quad.”
Jo Knoop (pictured)

— Stephen Anzaldi