Reunion 2017 Recap

2017 Williams College Alumni Reunion

Reunion 2017 brought a record number of alumni, family and friends back to campus. With over 1936 alumni, 547 kids, and 3100 total people descending on the Purple Valley, the college hosted quite the celEPHbration. The campus was peppered with 10 tents, 49 tangerine-shirted Reunion Rangers, 850 purple, yellow and cow print balloons, and 2800 bagged lunches in purple reusable totes. The sun shone brightly all weekend long, a rarity for a Williams Reunion, with a record breaking 34% of the Ephs in classes in the 2s and 7s returning to campus.

View, download and share Reunion 2017 photos.

Watch alumni presentations from the Reunion 2017 seminars.

Review the weekend line-up in the full Reunion 2017 program.

The following awards and announcements were presented at the 195th annual meeting of The Society of Alumni on Saturday, June 10, 2017:

Oldest alumni in attendance were Wayne Wilkins and Frank Bush from the class of 1941.  This year, Thurston Holt ’42 and John Gibson ’42 celebrated their 75th reunion from the Class of 1942!

Major Awards

Robert Bahr ’67 received the Rogerson Cup, the college’s highest award for alumni service. Martin Samuels ’67 won the Kellogg Award for lifetime career achievement. The Thurston Bowl, for exceptional service as class secretary, was presented to Heidi Sandreuter ’92, and the Copeland Award, for effectively representing Williams to prospective students, went to Carl Davis ’62 . The Joseph’s Coat, in recognition of a highly esteemed member of a post-50th Reunion class, went to Dick Flood ’57.

The Ephraim Williams Medal—awarded to a non-Williams graduate who has demonstrated exceptional service and loyalty—commemorates the most important non-alumnus in the college’s history. Rick Spalding, Chaplain of the College, was the 14th person to ever receive this honor in the college’s history.

New Members of the Executive Committee of the Society of Alumni

Charles F. Sanders ’78, White Plains, NY; Stewart J. Menking ’79, Stamford, CT; Kathanne W. Fowler ’80, West Hartford, CT; Teresa A. Rodriguez ’95, Jamaica Plain, MA; Leigh Winter Martin ’99, Los Altos, CA; Vladimir Lubomirov Andonov ’05, Sunnyvale, CA; and Tracy J. Heilman ’88 and Sumant Bhat ’03 both ex officio as Alumni Fund Co-Chairs.

Class Attendance Awards

The Reunion Trophy, awarded to the class with the highest percentage of registered and present classmates, went to the Class of 1967 with 51.2% in attendance. The Reunion Bowl, for the class with the greatest number of members registered and present, went to the Class of 2012, with 258 members attending.

Philanthropy

The Class of 1967’s 50th Reunion gift came to $12.75M, of which $4.78M was raised to support its two class gift purposes – “The Class of 1967 Memorial Scholarship” and the “Class of 1967 Faculty Recruitment Fund” – and $1.17M was raised in Alumni Fund gifts and pledges. Roughly 85% of the class made a gift that counted toward the overall total.

The Class of 1992’s 25th Reunion gift reached $5.4M with 65.8% of the class participating in this effort. Within this, $1.7M was raised to support the class gift purpose, tutorials at Williams, with an additional $2.35M raised in Alumni Fund gifts and pledges. The class won two Alumni Fund trophies – the Webster Atwell ’21 Trophy for the class raising the largest Alumni Fund gift and the John P. English ’32 Trophy for the largest increase in dollars over the prior year.