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 Dynastic gathering. On June 5 Katherine Evans '97 became the seventh of seven Evans children to graduate from Harvard College. They gathered--less Robert III '82--at Winthrop House to cheer the wonder of it. From the left they are: Janet '83, Karen '81, Katherine '97, Thomas '85, Midori '88, and Laura '91. They are the children of Robert Evans Jr., professor of economics at Brandeis, and the late Lois Herr Evans '54, M.Ed. '55. All grew up in Acton, Massachusetts, and graduated from Acton Boxborough High School. Mather House alumnae Karen and Janet married fellow Matherites William Rose '81 and Michael Vhay '83, respectively.Photograph by Jim Harrison |
Each year twenty-fifth reunioners and their families, after dinner at the Gordon Track and Field Center and other venues on the Monday of Commencement week, board yellow school buses, the kind with the red stop signs that pop out from the sides. This year the celebrants filled 30 buses, which proceeded, all in a line, down Memorial Drive and across the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge to Symphony Hall for a special concert by the Boston Pops. Traffic everywhere along the route stopped to let the majestic train of yellow school buses pass, shepherded as it was by nine troopers on motorcycles and one cruiser, in an operation involving the Boston, state, and Harvard police. What could be a more deeply satisfying manifestation of Harvard privilege than to look so silly but be treated with such respect?
The concert was nice, of course. Actor Nick Wyman '72--now playing Thenardier, the Master of the House, in the tenth-anniversary Broadway production of Les Misérables--narrated Peter and the Wolf and all sang Harvard and Radcliffe songs. And then the yellow buses took them home.
No one would suggest that the reunion went downhill after the buses. People schmoozed or had heart-to-hearts, ate, danced, drank temperately, and attended symposiums, including one on journalism in which panelist Andrew Heyward '72, president of CBS News, told classmates that the remote control has had more influence on network news than any other technological advance. "The remote control forces you into a storytelling mode where you won't risk boring anyone for even a second, or you lose them perhaps forever," said Heyward. "Imagine doing your jobs under those conditions."
Jeremy Knowles, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, reminded classmates of a time when they had serious worries. He read a 1968 Crimson report: "Dean Glimp said that the coat-and-tie rule for all meals would be replaced by a 'well-defined expectation.' When asked what this meant, he said that his expectation was 'a coat and tie, or equivalent dress, for meals when ladies are apt to be present.'" "This conjured for me," said Knowles, "a wonderful picture. There are all you male undergraduates, worrying in front of your wardrobes before every meal: Are ladies going to be apt to be present?"