Life began to return to normal by the fall of 1946. Discharged soldiers swelled registration almost to the unusually high levels of the spring 1946 term and student life resurged as extracurricular activities emerged from dormancy.
Harvard lost to Yale in the first post-war football game, but as the Harvard Album (as the yearbook was then called) notes, "the more or less alcoholic nature of the festivities washed away some of the bitterness."
June 1947 brought a Class Day and Commencement that were practically indistinguishable from pre-war ceremonies.
The War's presence was still strong, however, because less than half of the 769 seniors who received diplomas in 1947 had entered as members of that class.
The three-term wartime schedule meant that some class of 1947 men had been receiving diplomas as early as 1945 while others were still second-term first-years.
In a fitting closure for a class whose lives were, in O'Donnell's words, "ordered by the war," Secretary of State George C. Marshall gave the now-famous 1947 Commencement address in which he first described what became known as the Marshall Plan.
Still, most students say they did not then appreciate the significance of his words.
"We were so impressed that the secretary of state had come to talk to us, but we were just too excited to understand the importance of his words," says Dana F. Bresnahan '47.
The Marshall Plan--which proposed heavy U.S. involvement in Europe's reconstruction--was particularly fitting for a class that had spent two years at war and two at peace.
Yet the same turmoil that made the class of 1947's experiences so rich and diverse also made it difficult for its members to know each other.
It has taken 50 years of reunions to truly bring this class together, and alumni stress how much closer they have become since their college years.
The standard joke about Harvard's class of 1947 goes something like this: At your 25th reunion you think you know your classmates, and at the 50th you'd swear they were all your roommates.