Its members often call the Class of 1949 the "transition class." The first class to enter Harvard after the end of World War II, the Class still spent their college years in its shadow.

They came in three installments, in the summer and fall of 1945 and the spring of 1946, to a campus that still lodged Navy officers in Eliot House. And they left as the Class of '52 filled the Yard with first-years too young to remember the rise of Hitler clearly.

Harvard changed drastically in those four years, and the Class of '49 was right in the middle.

After spending months and even years fighting overseas, the returning veterans were older than typical college students and not looking for the same type of experience. The '49ers were, overall, an exceptionally studious group of young men determined to improve the post-war world and their prospects in it.

Men and Boys

Unlike the classes before it, most of the Class of '49 entered Harvard after the war in the Pacific drew to a close in August 1945.

Because the class came to Cambridge after the war ended, it was comprised of both high school graduates too young to have been drafted, and veterans beginning college after their military service.

"I think the most unusual feature of our Class, was really a split group in age," says Thomas Read '49. "I was 16 and around the same age as half the group-the other half were vets coming back from the war."

Memories of a class divided are what stand out in the minds of many younger '49ers today. Going to school with older and worldlier men, they say, made their experience at Harvard unique.

Besides the age differences among the students, there was an unprecedented amount of economic and social diversity in the class.

In the post-war years, the GI bill enabled thousands of veterans to attend Harvard, students who might not have been able to enroll in the country's oldest and most exclusive University before the war.

"The GI Bill changed the demographics," says William J. Richard Jr.'49, Harvard's First Class Marshal. "It became more inclusive, it became a national college."

Yet, as the class entered its last year at Harvard, the effects of the GI Bill became less noticeable. Whereas the years before had seen unprecedented peaks in enrollment, 1948 and 1949 saw major drops.

According to the first Crimson issue of the 1948 fall semester, which ran with the headline "College Sees First Enrollment Drop Since War," 200 fewer men enrolled than the previous semester.

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.