This past Saturday, we held two alumni events on campus, which made for a fun day.

The day started off with a panel discussion, led by Director of College Counseling Tim Cheney and featuring nine young alumni. Collectively, they represented eight different colleges and universities: Yale, Wesleyan, Northeastern, Smith, Connecticut College, Hobart William Smith, Davidson and Boston College.

As students in either their first or second years at college, the alumni came back to speak with our current juniors and seniors about their experiences, particularly with college selection process. The group— Henry Lombino, Brendan Hellweg, Cameron Hill, Elyssa Katz, Brittany Collins, Hannah King, Loren Po, Marie Innarelli, Jenna Phelan—spoke for almost two hours on a variety of college-related topics.

The panel told their audience of more than 30 students and 10 faculty to trust the college counselors, adding that they know what they are talking about. Among the other interesting points the panel made:

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This was a nice little event at Boston’s Liberty Hotel on October 6. Originally the jail house for Boston, it was converted into a hotel with three bars/lounges in 2007. They tried to keep the jail house feeling with bars on the windows and much of the original floorplan. A very cool setting, which several alumni commented on.

We had access to the outdoor patio and the weather was nice enough that most people (there were almost 60 registered) opted to be outside. The alumni ranged from the majority in the 2000s to Peter Holleran, who was representing the Class of 1959.

The event began with an intro to 175th Anniversary events. Then representatives from EverTrue gave a talk about the app and circulated to answer questions. All the participants received a 175th pint glass.

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My wife Karin and I travelled down to Mystic, CT for the annual Fall Wildcat North dinner. Cocktail hour was nice as people circulated and I was able to meet just about everyone. (There were a total of 27 people present.) The dinner was at the Harbour House Restaurant at the Inn at Mystic. There was a big wedding party going on in the next room and there was no way to completely shut off the room. As a result, there was a good bit of noise, making conversations tough.

I talked about the 175th, Reunion, the galas and the new Bulletin (they loved the piece on Sarah as well as the “lost Williston” article, saying “it wasn’t lost when we were there so that just means we are getting old!”). The evening was a lot of fun. We all loved playing the “who was still teaching at Williston from our era when you were a student?” game. We talked a lot about Red Culver (my math teacher), Couchie, Rick Francis, David Stevens (my 10th Grade English teach), Steve Seybolt (their classmate and my 12th Grade English teacher), and Carpie

Charlie and Joanne Pinnell Jr. ’59 flew in from Seattle. Charlie is in law, while Joanne worked with street kids and teenage pregnancies. Gene Pfeifer ’58, who was there, is also in law, as the partner in the fifth largest law firm in the world. He is originally from Springfield, MA and was going up to visit his sister, so I invited him to come over to Williston for a tour. He said he has walked around informally about five years ago and was impressed how much nicer the campus was from when they were students. Gene has a daughter who lives in Utah so he goes out there from November to January and does a ton of skiing. He says, “I’m a New Englander by birth but I only ski Western snow.” Gene played ice hockey here and we talked about playing on the pond.

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