The Winding Road: Class of 1974 Newsletter

January 2024

Welcome to the Fourth Issue of Our Class of ’74 Reunion Newsletter!

Here we are at the start of another new year – time to gather our energy and get ready to jump into new plans, projects, and pursuits. In this issue of the newsletter, you’ll find articles reflecting a variety of our classmates’ diverse interests – from the curating of an invaluable collection of photographs documenting the Black student experience at Carleton to a look at women’s sports during the Title IX era, and a thoughtful look back at many of the concerts we enjoyed (or not) during our years on campus.  You can also enjoy an interview with Ted and Jean Reynolds Dunham and delve into the wealth of great life stories that are being added to the Reunion Bio Book.  We hope these offerings will bring back good memories from our Carleton days and spark your own interest in catching up with classmates in person to learn more about what they’ve been doing over the years since leaving Carleton.  As you build your calendar for the year ahead, don’t forget to hold June 13-16 for our 50th Reunion in Northfield.  We look forward to seeing you there.  Until then, Happy New Year!

 Reunion Outreach Committee:  Kristine Larson Brown, Chris Helm, Mary Sanders Jones

Navigating the Road to Reunion

Reunion Event Details:

When: June 13-16, 2024
Where: Carleton College Campus in Northfield, Minnesota
Accommodations: Class of ’74 Participants will be housed in Watson Hall (with elevators!)
Cost to Attend: 50th Reunion alumni (and their spouses/partners) pay a fee of only $50 per adult for the full weekend (including all meals, events, and housing).
How to Register: Registration will open on the Class of ’74 website in March 2024
Tell Your Classmates You’re Coming!

The 50th Reunion Program Committee wants to hear from you! More importantly, we want our classmates to hear from each other. We have a number of activities planned for the reunion weekend, with two of these focused on sharing: a group poetry reading and a chance to exchange stories from our lives.

Dear classmates,

With six months still remaining before our reunion, we are speeding along toward our ambitious Class of ’74 gift goals. At our 50th, we have set our sights on establishing a $1 million Class of 1974 Endowed Scholarship and raising $1 million in cash commitments for Student Health and Counseling, with the help of generous matching funds.

As we’ve mentioned in prior communications, 60 of our classmates have passed away since we graduated in 1974, and we are making plans to honor and remember them in several ways. There will be a memorial service during the reunion weekend as well as a special section in our Reunion Bio Book. We are also developing a “Farewells” album on the “Carleton Memories” Flickr site available on our reunion website. Unfortunately, we still don’t have any information, photos, or personal comments for 23 of these deceased classmates.  You can see the list of their names here.  Please check out the list and send your remembrances, information, or photos to our committee at 50threunion@carleton.edu or enter a comment on the Carleton Class of ’74 Farewells page. We will take it from there to ensure their memories are honored.

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Documenting Black Student Life at Carleton
by George Clabon, Herb Crawford and Cornell Hills

At the start of the 1970 school year, when racial integration was becoming in vogue on the campuses of many of the nation’s top colleges, Carleton, too, experimented with a variation of this social exercise. In the words of Bardwell Smith, Dean of the College (1967-1972): “…we are not integrating Carleton… We are trying to be part of the process in this country which is forming a new culture. We’re not really sure what we’re doing and we can’t guarantee the results, but we are very excited [by] the possibilities in our midst.”

In the fall of 1971, Erich Brooks, ’75, arrived on Carleton’s campus from Cleveland, Ohio along with 50 or so other African American incoming freshmen from across the country. With camera in hand, Erich, a Studio Art Major, began almost immediately recording Black student life at Carleton. He carried on this photographic tradition far beyond his four years at Carleton. He continued to document with his camera Black student as well as Black alumni involvement at Carleton long after the ’70s.

Women’s Sports at Carleton, Part 2: The Era of Title IX
by Kristine Larson Brown

[This is the second in a three-part series. You can read the first installment in the October Newsletter.]

Title IX became law in 1972, making sexual discrimination and harassment illegal in all programs which received Federal Funds. While its application was much broader than athletics, the law immediately applied to women’s athletics where women had largely been sidelined in deference to men. Until women were given an opportunity to compete in intercollegiate athletics, they basically didn’t have opportunities to participate in anything beyond recreational sports. Elle Hansen and Pat Lamb actively encouraged Carleton women to participate in activities. In most cases, the women themselves organized and participated in sports.

It would be impossible for me to investigate all the changes that came to Carleton in the wake of Title IX, so I decided to research swimming because it is one of the only sports where women and men share a season, a facility, and a coach at Carleton. Archivist David Bliss at Carleton became interested in this story and helped me research the evolution of swimming at Carleton. Leon Lunder and Andy Clark generously contributed their recollections.

Music on Campus
by Peter Hirtle

The announcement last August of the passing of David LaFlamme got me thinking about our freshman year.  No, LaFlamme was not a forgotten member of our class.  He was instead the co-founder of It’s a Beautiful Day, whose concert in the New Men’s Gym in March was one of the musical landmarks of what would be four musically-rich years.  I was a fan of the group, but mostly what I remember about the performance was the large crowd of people in the space at the start.  The subsequent review in the ‘tonian suggested the whole experience was pretty awful.  Two years later, when interviewed by the paper about his new role as co-chairman of the Carleton Co-Op, Jeff Slocum, with what the paper described as “a wisdom betraying his years,” promised to never bring the group back for another concert.   I guess it is fortunate that my memory is fading and that the in memoriam reminder of the group only got me thinking about the other musical events of our time on campus.

A Dive into the Archives
by Dick Marchessault and Peter Hirtle

A few weeks ago, you should have received a special 12-page edition of the ‘tonian in the mail–a “lookback” issue that contains articles spanning the four years that we were on campus from September, 1970, to June, 1974. A small team of members of the reunion committee scoured every issue of the newspaper published during those years and sought to select articles that reflected the social and political issues on campus as well as articles that captured the highlights of the athletic, music, and theater departments.

Since there is no way to include every meaningful article in a 12-page printed format, our hope is that you will see the special “lookback” issue as an invitation for you to dig into the digital archives and explore the topics and people that interest you. Every page of every issue of the ‘tonian has been digitized and saved in PDF format so it is very easy to view or print the articles that you target in your research.