Class reunions

Class of 1949 Pass in Review, 50th Reunion (photo courtesy of Leon Rue)

It is important to note the difference between Homecoming and a Class Reunion. Homecoming is what occurs on Hargrave's campus (and the golf course) each year, and it is for any and all alums. Your Class Reunion is just for the members of your class, and it can occur solely on campus, or both on and off campus (If you want to do more than simply meet on campus, then the "more" has to occur off-campus—usually in Danville).

Hargrave doesn't do much to put together Homecoming, and they do even less to insure a successful class reunion. I'm not complaining about Homecoming, just that it certainly isn't a gala event set up to really make someone want to come. I also don't have suggestions to make it better.

With regard to Homecoming, the best things Hargrave did in recent years were to eliminate the Saturday night thing at the country club, and replace it with the cocktail party at a hotel. Attendance had become abysmal at the country club because few people wanted to (1) put on a coat & tie; (2) pay for an overpriced, lousy meal; and (3) be trapped in a room listening to speeches. The cocktail party has much better attendance, and is a much better venue for the guys to meet and chat. We owe a great deal to Clay, as he was the one who eliminated the country club thing, and replaced it with the cocktail party.

As for whether or not a Class Reunion is successful, that's not up to Hargrave; it's strictly up to the Reunion Chairperson, and how much work he/she/they put into it. Hargrave likes to present the job as "easy". All they want you to do is have your signature go out on cards reminding your classmates that this is their reunion year.

Hargrave will give you mailing labels and even pay the postage. However, look at the dismal results that have produced over the years. How many times have you looked at the post-Homecoming issue of the Guidon, and seen pictures of a reunion class with only two
guys, or three guys, or less than ten guys. That ought to let you know how successful a class reunion will be when you use the "not-a-lot-of-legwork", "just mail out a card" Hargrave method.

In the first 39 years after I was graduated from Hargrave, my class had only one successful reunion, and it was semi-successful at that. The only reason we had a "fair" turnout is because one of my classmates sent out a "the class of 1963 challenges the class of 1964 to a baseball game" announcement. Still, we had to "borrow" from other classes to make up the two-team roster. Other than that, we had only used the "post card" plan, and I think the best turnout
under that strategy was maybe eight guys.

For our 40th Reunion, some of us finally got off our asses. Two other classmates and I formed a three-man Reunion Committee... and we worked our asses off. First, we used our 1963 Cadence to put together a real list of our class. Hargrave's list was missing some guys, and had the names of others who were never members of our class. Hargrave didn't have addresses for a lot of our classmates, and had "no longer good" ones for others. Second, we used lots of different (time consuming) ways to put together the most accurate address list we could... and discovered some dead bodies along the way. Third, we had numerous mailings to classmates: First to find out how much interest there was in doing something; second to find out what that something was—party, dinner, dance, panty raid on Chatham Hall, etc. Then we put together the meeting spaces and other stuff necessary to do what they guys wanted to do.

We kept mailing flyer to create a "buzz". We ended up with about 40-50 guys attending... not bad for people who, in some cases, hadn't been back in 40 years. And we had a blast.

So yes, you can be a "do-almost-nothing" Class Reunion chairperson, as Hargrave suggests, but you'll probably get "almost nothing" results. Or you can commit to doing it right—which means lots of work, but is the only chance you'll have of a truly successful class reunion.

One other secret I'll pass on. This may surprise you, but not every alum of Hargrave loved the place! I stressed from the beginning that Reunion was about classmates getting together to "catch up". That Homecoming was about seeing the school and getting hit up for donations. That if you didn't want to go to Chatham, you didn't have to; you could stay in Danville and party hardy. A lot of my classmates came to the Reunion because I had explained it that way.

One really needs 18-24 months to plan a reunion, because of the time involved in putting together an accurate mailing list, and making reservations for meeting rooms, etc. It is 10 months until Homecoming 2007, so you'd better start now if you're planning a 2007
reunion. We began 8 months before Homecoming; we could have accomplished a helluva lot more if we'd had 12 months.

One last thing: There are some in my class who presume I'll put myself through this again for our 45th or 50th Reunion. They would be the ones who are still drunk from our 40th!

Marc Axel
marc.axel@verizon.net
Class of '63