In a sense, the Class of '49 was the last to be shaped by World War II both in size and makeup. The classes of '50, '51, and '52 were already part of a new Harvard generation.

War Holdovers

Though the war was over by the time most students ever set foot in Cambridge, its effects echoed throughout the campus in many ways.

Unlike the Harvard students of the isolationist 1930s, the Class of '49 involved itself in politics on a world scale. Throughout the late 40s multiple liberal political groups appeared on campus.

Students organized rallies to "Save the Marshall Plan" and they held and participated in debates to bash the anti-Communist Barnes Bill that was introduced in the Massachusetts legislature during 1948.

President Truman's Universal Military Training plan caused much controversy on campus with heated arguments coming from both sides, and rallies at Sanders Theatre.

Over 1,000 students gathered at Memorial Hall in April 1948 to rally against the escalating Cold War.

In an attempt to educate Harvard students the American Veterans Committee held programs on politics and how to work within the political system.

Undergraduates also supported student movements overseas and collected money and food to be sent to China, India and Greece.

In general, alumni remember that this flourish of political activity, which tended towards the liberal, was new and exciting for them, though it soon died out as memories of the war started to fade.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Whatever they did, in the words of one alum, was with a sense of "earnestness."

Recovering from a big war meant that everyone was " a little more serious and little more concerned" than the younger classes at Harvard.

Their intensity made them a studious group of men so dedicated to their academics that they advertised in The Crimson for their lost class notes.

Class members say they don't remember much of a "party atmosphere" on campus, and administrators worried that veterans were not having enough fun.

Not only were many students veterans of the battlefields, some were already married with families. There were so many "family men" in the Class of '49 that Harvard had to lease the Hotel Brunswick in Boston for them to live in, in addition to temporary housing established on campus.

The lingering insecurity of a world so recently torn by war also contributed to the "earnestness" of the late 1940s.