Halfway through the brunch, the group looks up to see the beaming face of its most recognizable resident. Franklin was elected first class marshal of this year’s graduating class, after a Harvard career spent accumulating a laundry list of extracurricular pursuits. Franklin, a gregarious and engaging social studies and African and African-American studies joint concentrator, breaks into a wide smile. Before long, he’s cracking jokes and regaling his entrymates with long-forgotten anecdotes and fondly-remembered antics.
“Caleb would have this yell, Steeeraus A!” Sprague says, laughing at the memory. “You could literally hear it across the Yard. I think the freshman class all knew about Straus A.”
Franklin offers his own assessment of his freshman neighbors. “We’re a bunch of crazy party animals,” he says happily. “I think there are people in our group who drink very heavily.”
Always the center of activity in Straus A, Franklin quickly slips into his old routine. Before long he’s raised a glass of champagne, leading a toast.
“To the good times we had in Straus A,” he says. “Ultimately I hope as we graduate, we keep in touch with each other in our lives, and we all say together, Steeeraus!”
Zachary D. Raynor ’05, a pre-med economics concentrator in Leverett House, smiles and downs his glass. Raynor has turned his own dramatic tendencies into some success. The Callbacks crooner made it to the second round of auditions for “American Idol” and appeared on MTV’s “Say What? Karaoke.” At Harvard he competes for varsity track and stays involved in the campus black community.
After graduation, three Straus residents will be reunited for a different sort of freshman experience. Sprague, Daniel J. Irom ’05, and R. Christian Wyatt ’05 all start work this summer at the Blackstone Group, the investment firm in New York.
“It will definitely be like living in Straus A again: Hanging out, sitting at our computers together, pretending to do work,” Sprague laughs.
As the brunch comes to a close, farewells are offered and numbers swapped. There are still papers to be written, exams to study for. The dreariness of reading period looms on the horizon, and then, the great unknown. Many of the seniors share a final backwards glance at the long tables and ancient portraits that decorated their past: the first anxious days of Freshman Week, dinners with roommates and dorm-mates, last-minute cramming sessions, and Sunday morning gossiping. Some linger, but most don’t. Trays are bussed, handshakes and hugs exchanged. The Class of 2005 streams out the oak doors of Memorial Hall into the noontime sunlight, ready for the challenge ahead.
—Staff writer Michael M. Grynbaum can be reached at grynbaum@fas.harvard.