Prestidigitators, monkeys, and music leavened three days of revel and mingling as 300 members of the class of 1933, marking their 25th reunion, returned to Cambridge with their families to compare graying heads and growing off-spring.
Despite climatic misadventures, reunion activities rolled with the promised well-oiled efficiency, the Reunion Committees headed by Russell Robb substituting and adlibbing when water interfered.
Sports Program
The young people's sports program went off approximately as scheduled although tennis enthusiasts and divot diggers were able to play only irregularly. Grounds were wet on Tuesday, but the two soft-ball games gutted Soldiers Field although contestants, observers, and umpires were unable to agree on the winning teams.
Sore muscles were the main result of the morning's masculine melee, but in the afternoon Susan Wilson, an 18-year old Freshman from New Hampshire University, offered a sneaky fastball for three innings baffling a mixed nine which featured six comely outfielders.
Advised to bring bathing suits, some 200 of the younger set tried out the Blockhouse pool on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and watched a diving exhibition by assistant coach Bernie Kelly.
A barrage of buffets and catered meals came at the traditional three times per diem in Lowell, the Union, the Block-house, Mem Hall, the Harvard Club, and the Hotel Somerset with the diet ranging from Dublin stew to roast beef. The food never ran out although at times fraudulent reunions and uninvited guests almost outnumbered the genuine articles. Led by hopeful Olympic oarsmen, a horde of disguised undergraduates lunched Tuesday on seafood Newburgh at Lowell.
Dances, yesterday's symposium, and special entertainments rounded out the non-stop program. Sporadically entertained by the Glee Club and the Band, the 1800 also were serenaded by assorted other musicians including a troop of Scotch bagpipers, an accordion player and an organ grinder with an aging monkey. Bobby, the monk, who winters in the Square, drew plaudits and coin as he entwined his tail around bare ankles.
Last night's informal dance at the Somerset finished the terpsichorean activities of the week which featured a Hop Concert at the Blockhouse on Tuesday evening. There Galli-Galli, an imported Egyptian, entertained with feats of magic and sleight-of-hand.
Dance Routines
Deutsch jigs, gavottes and polkas were interspersed with impromptu soft-shoe routines by extroverted dancers. "Well er I mean, it sure was different," sighed Elizabeth Wood, a striking coed from Kansas U.
Ernest S. Young, co-chairman of the reception committee, was pleased with relative smoothness of the three days of varied events, and participants unanimously agreed.
An onlooking Harvard undergraduate, soured by a winter of Radcliffe Jolly-ups, could only remark, "I've never seen so many people at Harvard having a good time." Today the windup, the last round, until ten or 15 or 20 years on.
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