| Dan Lassiter
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Like the faithful heeding a call to prayer, they come strolling from all corners as the brassy sounds of the ’50s surf-rock hit Tequila floats on the unseasonably warm Midwestern autumn air.
Those making their way across Beloit’s campus may remember frenzied dashes across these same paths some 10, 25, or even 50 years ago, as they tried to make it to class on time. Kitchen staff from Commons bop to the music as they set up grills for a picnic lunch in front of Pearsons, while alumni gather on the leafy lawn in front of the Logan Museum of Anthropology under placards identifying their class years.
This is not a gathering of a religious sort, but rather, an assembly filled with a different kind of devotion—love for one’s alma mater, tempered with a desire to see how gracefully (or not) one’s classmates have aged over the years.
More than 450 people have converged on campus at the end of September for Homecoming/Reunion Weekend 2008.
| Trevor Johnson |
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| Anne Wood Wandler’83 gets an early start on Homecoming by running in the inaugural Bill Behling Memorial Fun Run/Walk. |
Among them are about 75 members of the class of ’83 and friends, including class agent Anne Wood Wandler. Fresh from running in the inaugural Bill Behling Memorial Fun Run/Walk, Wandler pauses in front of the Alumni House with classmate Jane Hart Oyler to have her picture taken as a turtle. The two stand behind a board painted with the College’s unofficial mascot with spaces cut out for giggling alumni to place their faces as photographers snap away.
"Holy Toledo!" Wandler exclaims, as she catches a glimpse of the long line of alumni snaking from the Logan to Eaton Chapel. She is running slightly behind schedule, but as one observer points out, Beloit wouldn’t be Beloit if everything always started on time.
Growing up in Milwaukee, Wandler always thought she’d stay in her hometown and attend the state university there.
"A typical city kid, I thought I’d go to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee," she says. Her father, who had attended Earlham College, had other ideas. "He just knew that I’d be bored at a university. He must have known I’d do better with something different," she says.
Beloit was a good fit in that it was close to Milwaukee, but far enough away—not to mention different enough—that it felt like another world.
The College’s close-knit community had its advantages and detractions.
"It was good and bad, like a small town," she says. "You know everybody, and everybody knows you."
Though as a child she didn’t have any idea she’d attend Beloit College, Wandler made one decision about her post-high-school education at a young age.
"I always wanted to major in anthropology. I knew that when I was 10," she says. She didn’t wind up in an anthropological field, but instead has worked for the last 18 years in quality assurance for GE Healthcare, in Waukesha, Wis.
A believer in liberal arts education, she has heard the song-and-dance from others who say it’s not practical, or it doesn’t pay the bills. "People at work who have other backgrounds and are more specialized have a harder time, I think," she recalls, shaking her head. "One of the benefits of a liberal arts education is you know a lot about a lot of stuff. We’re not overly specialized."
Catching up with her class under the ’83 placard in the alumni procession, Wandler exchanges hugs with several people before catching sight of her former swim coach, Bob Nicholls, near the steps of Eaton Chapel.
"The ageless coach!" she laughs, gathering other former swimmers for a photo with Nicholls, who coached college swim teams from 1952 to 1995.
"He's a legend," she says. "Typical of many of the faculty, he remembered us after all these years."
As Wandler makes her way to her seat inside the chapel, someone calls out,
"We can’t get started without Anne!"
| Dan Lassiter |
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| Wandler (left) and Jane Hart Oyler’83 stand with their classmates at the alumni assembly in Eaton Chapel. About 75 members of the class of ‘83 and their guests attended Homecoming/Reunion. |
Noticing members of the class of ’58 in their newly awarded golden hoods, Wandler says to a friend, "That’ll be us in 25 years."
In his address to the alumni group, interim College President Dick Niemiec’65 reminds the crowd that he, too, is a Beloit alumnus, and that life post-college can have unexpected twists and turns.
"Forty-odd years ago, I never thought I’d be standing up here, under any circumstances," he says to the alumni assembly.
Grouped by class years, alumni applaud many times over the course of the assembly, as fund-raising accomplishments are announced, several choruses of I Want to Go Back to Old Beloit are sung, and six alumni—including Wandler’s classmate and Beloit College trustee Tom O’Neill—plus one of her favorite professors, J. Edson Way’68, receive Distinguished Service Citations.
"He taught the first anthropology class that I took," Wandler says of Way.
"I loved his class. He was funny, and he was a great teacher."
While tailgating later in the day, Wandler runs into John Hailer, another graduate from ’83, who, like O’Neill, is now a Beloit College trustee.
"That’s kind of cool," Wandler says, proud of the fact that three classmates have become College trustees 25 years down the road. One of the most interesting things about coming back to reunions, she notes, is seeing how classmates have built successful lives for themselves.
"I look at people, and I think about what they were like as students. Then you realize that some of these people had real leadership potential," she says.
Seeing how everyone turned out is, of course, one of the best parts of going to reunions. ("They still look the same, with wrinkles," says Oyler.) It’s right up there with reminiscing. Of which there was plenty.
Over lunch, under a tent pitched in front of Pearsons, Wandler, Oyler, and Ginna
Newman Yocum’83 recall Wandler and Yocum’s unlikely forays into the world of competitive college swimming at Beloit.
"I was in gymnastics in high school, and Beloit didn’t have a gymnastics team, but I was so used to being in sports," Yocum remembers. Nicholls, the long-time swimming coach, asked Yocum to get in the pool and do a lap. "So I did, and he had his head down, and he was scratching his chin, and finally he said, 'I think we can work with it.'"
| Dan Lassiter |
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| From left: Longtime swim coach Bob Nicholls, David Kruse’83, Karla Parsons-Hubbard’83, Melita Schaechter-Tunnicliff’83, and Wandler catch up with each other outside of Eaton Chapel. |
Watching swim meets as a time-keeper during her first year, Wandler noticed that points were given for the first 12 finishers, but some races, like the butterfly, had five or fewer contenders. Having always liked swimming but with no concept of how to swim the butterfly stroke, Wandler decided that she would go out for the team her sophomore year.
"I thought, well, all I have to do is finish the race," she says. "So I got this idea in my head that I was going to swim on the swim team, and I didn’t even know how to do a stroke."
She checked books out of the library and taught herself to swim the stroke over the summer. Then she went out for the swim team her sophomore year, and swam for three years. "Now, where else can you basically just walk off the street and join a college sports team?" asks Wandler. "There were a few of us like that."
This is just one of the selling points Wandler offers when she talks about Beloit College, to this day. "That’s what I tell people: Here’s another advantage, you can do stuff like that. Here and where else?"
As a Gold Key member in college, Wandler gave tours of the campus and called prospective students. Now, she comes back to speak to students at Beloit’s career fairs.
Wandler is always scouting for Beloit, whether she’s running a triathlon or singing with a choral group or volunteering to help paint public schools in Milwaukee or visiting zoos—a passion about which she plans to write a book. When she thinks a niece or nephew or a neighbor or co-worker’s son or daughter would be a great fit for the College, she tells them so and says, "We need to go on a field trip."
For Beloit to be a good fit for a student, and vice versa, Wandler thinks students need to be involved, have varied interests, and a strong sense of self. Beloiters, she says, "are not afraid to stand out."
After Saturday’s lunch, Wandler, Oyler, Yocum, and Yocum’s husband, Sam, decide to walk to Strong Stadium for tailgating and the Homecoming football game. As they cut across campus, they appreciate the physical changes that have occurred over the years, while noting that a lot has stayed the same.
| Dan Lassiter |
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| Wandler, Oyler, Sam Yocum, and Ginna Newman Yocum’83 head to Strong Stadium for tailgating and football. |
"It was always beautiful, and it still is," Oyler says of Beloit.
"It’s fun for my husband to see the campus," Yocum says.
"The campus is really beautiful—and a lot bigger than I’d expected it to be," Sam comments.
"And a lot like New England," adds Yocum, who lives in New York.
"Well, it was founded by Yale-ies," Wandler points out. Looking across campus, she notices a few changes.
"The sign is different, the Poetry Garden is new since we were here … and just because of the way the world has changed, there’s much more security. The most unusual thing is the new science building."
The day before, a ribbon-cutting ceremony had been held at the newly constructed Center for the Sciences.
Elaine Soeurt Hunt’83 talked about how much she liked Beloit’s newest building at her class dinner on Saturday night. "I love that they’re doing green construction," she said.
"I’d like to be a student again"” Yocum says. "It would be great." The rest of the group concurs that they also would like to go back in time and re-live their college experience but only, of course, if they could do it knowing what they know now.
As they stand on the corner of College and Chapin streets, a member of the class of ’48 strikes up a conversation.
"Is this the President’s House?" he asks. Assured that it is, he grins as he tells them about an old Beloit College tradition of whitewashing a line down the middle of Chapin Street, all the way from Strong Stadium to the President’s House.
"Of course, we were 18-year-olds, coming from Illinois, where we couldn’t drink, to Wisconsin, where we could. And," he says—eyes twinkling—before heading down the sidewalk toward the football game, "beer was provided with the whitewash."
Before she leaves Beloit for the weekend, Wandler wants to do one last thing: walk downtown to visit the bookstore. She likes to make a point of shopping there every time she comes back, and she has a soft spot for books written by fellow alumni.
Walking down Bushnell Street, Wandler pauses to take a picture of the Godfrey Anthropology Building.
Continuing on her way, she comments about improvements in Beloit’s downtown area. "It’s so much nicer than it used to be," she says. "They had stores downtown when I was here, but the riverfront area really wasn’t safe for women to walk alone. People, I think, are surprised by all the changes downtown."
Heading to the back of the bookstore, Wandler makes a beeline for the anthropology shelf when she sees the textbook section.
"When I come back, I always love seeing what books they’re using," she says. "I look at them and go 'oh my gosh, it’s really expensive.'"
"This would be a class that I would take, if I were here now," she says, picking up a text for a forensic anthropology course. "I loved physical anthropology."
"Look at that!" she exclaims, pointing. "It’s a hundred-dollar book. I used to spend $100 on my books for a semester, total."
Looking back over the weekend, Wandler reflects that she had a wonderful time.
"I’d been looking forward to it for so long, and I had so much fun," she says. Catching up with old friends played a big part in the weekend, but so did meeting new people. Over the last 25 years, Wandler says she has become friends with Beloiters she didn’t even know when she was a student.
But Wandler and her classmates agree that the experience of revisiting Beloit is more than meeting new people and seeing the rush of familiar faces. Returning to the place itself feels like coming home.
Oyler was struck by that realization when she drove in from Tomah, Wis., to attend the reunion.
"As I was ready to get off the interstate, I saw the exit for Beloit College, and I got tears in my eyes," she says.
That’s the way it goes when you come back, says Wandler. "Every time I drive back into town, it’s like home"
Lynn Vollbrecht’06 majored in sociology and is a writer and photographer for the Stateline News, a community newspaper in Beloit. Living in the city of her alma mater makes much of her life feel like a permanent college reunion.
