hill, where you meet tonight - well, let it be what it can be and let it engage such loyalty as it deserves to engage. As for me, I buried my heart in the Moench Building forty years ago. After the war, I went back to Weber and for a few years taught writing and literature. I did not know how to write, and I had not read much literature, so what could I do but teach both? Those were the quietest and most deceptive years of my life, for the calm peace of the late forties was phony. I didn't know it then, but peace is always phony. It is war that cancels thought, creates clarity, establishes firm minds, and defines morality. In war, life saws through to the bone. Peace is always messy, uncertain, ambiguous, a muddle. In peace, life saws, but it is like sawing through jello. Yet - when I went back after the war to teach, it was good, but it was not the same. The deception of peace was good to have. Carl White was there, teaching theater with Thatcher Allred and John Kelly. Helen Mally, now with a Ph.D. from Stanford, was teaching English. For the first time in my life, I had a car, a wife, and, in due course, a baby girl. I was writing stories about the war and publishing them, and doing the book pages for the Salt Lake Tribune for the free books - and walking the same paths I had walked six years before as a freshman, smelly and wide-eyed and straight from the onion fields and the manurey stables of Plain City. But, Weber was not quite the same as it had been. I had changed, too. Weber became ambitious, and I did not. When Weber was not escaping from the clutches of the governor, who wanted to give it back to the Church where it had come from, it was buying up land on the bench of southeast Ogden and making the moves that would destroy it in a few years by turning it into just another large, sprawling four-year vocational college/university, producing workers to fill the slots of a technological world gone mad with hubris, efficiency, and money hunger. Down on Jefferson the faculty faced the twin horrors of American higher education: the placing of faculty into professional ranks (instructor, assistant professor, etc.), and the appointing and advancing of faculty through the ranks by virtue of their advanced degrees and publications. Helen Mally married John Kelly, and the two of them went into the exploding community college system of California. Carl White left and, after a few years of being on the move, also found a position in a community college around Sacramento. And I, slipping the grungy entanglements of the Ph.D. octopus for the last time, following the yak and the musk ox and the dog sleds to a college in Minnesota that had not yet fallen into the heresy that teachers need to know something - anything will do - precise, special, narrow, and exhaustive. At this college I taught happily ever after. But that little school of 1941 to 1943 - it was our Harvard College and Yale, and it gave us something Harvard and Yale could never have given us - passing grades. And it gave me a taste for what has been written in books and a sense of a small talent, and a feeling that with luck I could make something useful of my life. Weber gave all that to all of us. We are a class as few classes are classes. We are dyed purple and white. Forty years later - good Lord! it just came to me - I am writing this on my sixtieth birthday. Who knows what colors we now show to the world? Our work colors us, our families, our different friends, the other landscapes whose hues we assume, the alien air we breathe or chew, dealing with people who think Weber is pronounced "Webber." All the distorting and reconstruing forces of our divergent forty years apart - they color us. Color us what you will. We are not as we were. We are crooked and halting and squinting, and if someone doesn't do something about it in a hurry, we are elderly. We are a lot of things, many colors, possibly disordered, but we do not forget that from 1941 to 1943 we were royal purple and, if not pure, at least innocently, white. And like Rosebud to Citizen Kane, purple "O I'll be true to thee, O purple and white, and i will stand by thee in any fight, for truth and right will always be close by thee, O flag" 112 and white is likely to be the last image we retain as we slowly, smokelessly bum away. Like Claude Courval, who could not locate Ogden on a map, in that portable shower in that muddy turnip patch in Holland, don't you sometimes break out at the oddest times into "O, I'll be true to thee, O Purple and White,/ And I will stand by thee in any fight,/ For truth and right will always be/ Close by thee, O flag"? I do. Lots of times I hum it as I am walking my dog through the lilacs in the arboretum here at Carleton College. The people I live and work among, the students I talk with each day, would howl with derision if they heard me making this tape. Well, they have their life, I have mine, we have ours. I intend to have mine for as long as I live. We were lucky to be young and at college together, during a time when our personal lives could be seen as a natural extension of our nation's life. Was that natural extension a lie? I don't think so. It was innocent. But what a terrible life it would be if we did not have innocence to remember. We are a select company to have had our innocence together. In a sense, we lost our innocence together, too, on April 8th. You cannot know how much I wish I could be with you tonight; but as I said, I squandered my wealth in my youth. At my college, we are nearing the end of the term, the lawn needs raking, and my son is flunking social studies because the teacher is a scumbag mutant nerd. My students want their essays back, graded "A" but with severe critical comments, and the pre-meds all want conferences to assure me that they are studying for the simple love of learning. So, I will stop unless you would like me to sing "Danny Boy." Okay, goodbye, then, and thanks for the memories. They have had a lot to do with whatever I have done since. I owe you a lot of thanks. We all owe each other a lot of thanks. We are a class, and the date of creation is April 8, 1943. Class of 1945 Reunion Althea Andelin Roberts he music that was just played is "Sentimental Journey," and I am sure that the sentimental journey is where we have been tonight, because as we talked to each other, we remembered the things that happened to us when we were here. So before we can really start a sentimental journey, we have to remember certain things. We must remember the sounds: Lockers slamming in the Central Building hall Balls whacked against the squash court walls Splashing water during intramurals in the pool Swish of tennis balls on courts Van Nance playing his rendition of Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Ritual Fire Dance" Chatter in the CI In the lounge groups discussing school activities "Dreams" played on the nickelodeon J. Clair playing "Purple and White" on the organ "String of Pearls," "In The Mood," "Opus No. 1" floating over the ballroom Laughter at those three idiots mopping the stage in the assembly Thatcher's articulate voice. And then we must remember the smells: Formaldehyde floating through the Moench The lunch line 11:00 a.m. outside the cafeteria Bonfire behind the Institute where we held hands The swimming pool And, the gym, the gym, the gym. And then we must remember the sights: Dr. Dixon's radiant smile The Christmas tree in the Gym lobby That extended hand greeting to honor the sophomores (Intricate finger movements extending across the body as originated by Pat Jurgens) The red leather chair in the lounge Lemon pie and carrot pudding, yummy topping Freezing Navy Cadets sprawled by the steps of the Moench The orange air of autumn in Cold Water Canyon Blue cobalt and green olivine in rocks and minerals Snow and hoarfrost hanging on trees making isles from Dr. Dixon's home toward the Institute Us, behind a thousand poinsettias, singing "A Child Is Born." 113