Dear Kent ’67 Classmates,
Many of us have not remained in touch in the years and decades since we lived and learned together. That’s to be expected. After all, our intrepid class traveled to the Hill and Valley campuses from 27 states and territories and seven other countries. And we have scattered just as far and wide since, each of us finding our own ventures and adventures and likely pursuing them with the same intensity we needed at Kent.
Even so, there is little chance we have forgotten those years in the Housatonic Valley and atop Skiff Mountain, or the friendships that sustained us then. The awkward, transformative period from adolescence to early adulthood is so fundamental to personal development that it’s impossible to leave that stage of life completely behind, however hard we may try. Some of our experiences at Kent surely did provide cause for subsequent inattention; but those do not fully explain the reality. We simply moved on to new challenges after the ’67 Prize Day and haven’t thought much about the group of Sixth Formers present that day, much less considered the value for each of us that our class holds now.
Where else in our current lives can we find so many interesting people who are chronological peers, coursing through life on the same timeline? These are the same people who once knew things about us that we wished they didn’t know and who may have understood us better than we understood ourselves. At the end, we were all more than ready to depart that tightly knit and knotted community, but the many benefits we gained at Kent School are difficult to deny.
Our emergence as self-determining individuals happened at Kent, where we depended on and learned from one another and were guided, coached and goaded into responsibility and achievement. We were members of a community seeded with remarkable talent and exceptional diversity in academics, scholarship, visual, musical and theatrical arts, athletics, religious belief, geographic origin, native language, cultural tradition and financial means. To this day, Kent School remains culturally enriching, academically strong and competitive. All members of the community contribute to the whole, and everyone, youth and adult - whatever the role, is assessed on actions and performance, just as we were.
We were encouraged to value learning: not just do the work. The academic excellence at Kent - the demands and quality of instruction, wide range of courses, and commitment of faculty - was evidenced by our own performance and achievement. Twenty percent of our 150 members continued to an Ivy League university, 8 classmates (Eight!) matriculated at Stanford, another 12 at U.N.C. - Chapel Hill. The list also included: Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, MIT, RISD, Rutgers, Sarah Lawrence, Smith, Vanderbilt, Vassar, Wellesley and Williams. Two of our UK exchange students progressed to Cambridge and Oxford. We were a smart, hard-working and determined bunch before we arrived at Kent.
Too often, school life was too serious, too competitive - except when it wasn’t: in the laboratory, club sports, friends’ rooms, fishing, on horseback, hiking Algo and Skiff mountains, and on the bus and in the bushes and other seams in the supervision. How lucky are we to have discovered a few of our own gifts and strengths, as well as limitations, in such a charged and challenging environment among some lovely and accomplished people! Maybe now as aging humans we can better appreciate the lessons for mind, body and soul delivered at Kent, as well as the character and rhythms of the intellectual and spiritual community that resides there. Where we are welcome to return. Our years at Kent coincided with a period of tremendous change at the School. As Second Formers at age thirteen, the first 32 members of our class arrived on the bluff overlooking the Housatonic in September 1962. This group was one of the last Second Forms. 1962 also was the freshman year of the School’s first and only non-cleric headmaster, the father of one of us, who provided leadership for almost 20 years. More importantly, the 1962-63 academic year was the first for a Girls School Sixth Form, the year young women graduated from Kent School for the first time.
Other than the School’s origin in 1906, no development of greater consequence than the founding of the Girls School has occurred in Kent’s eventful history. The graduation of girls had far reaching significance in June 1963, but the School’s actions to empower young women in the same manner as young men resound even more crucially today, as clearly as the carillon bells resound above St Joseph’s Chapel.
The balance of our Class of 1967, some 120 young men and women, arrived in the Valley and on Skiff Mountain in September 1963. There were no weekend passes or afternoons in town, academics were rigorous, competition was rife and downtime was long. Family visits and hours off-campus were few. The women of our class truly were the intrepid ones. Our ’67 women completed the process of defining a new school, strengthening traditions that have lasted for generations and building a vibrant female community grounded in mutual support. That unique community must continue to be celebrated, its legacy and importance to the values of Kent School permanently ensured.
There was scant evidence of a similar ethic on the Valley campus in 1963 where Sixth Formers reigned with authority and special privileges not always earned by their responsibility for managing the daily schedule and Jobs Program. Significant disparity in physical development and maturity magnified the advantage of older students. New students were made to feel vulnerable at the long refectory tables in the Dining Hall where boys sat on benches in order of class rank. Callous indifference and hazing were not uncommon. What distinguished our Kent Class of 1967 from those that preceded us was the desire and intent of our male and female members to spend as much time together as possible. Despite proven advantages for women of learning in an environment unburdened by male presence, many of us quickly had our fill of sequestered, single-sex existence. And many on both campuses seized early opportunities to spend time with the other half of our class. In our final year, both senior councils successfully lobbied for additional social events between campuses. In the intervening years, we got to know one another at every turn.
We understood that our bifurcated class was most at ease when unified, and that the respite we gained from time together renewed and helped us to be more positive and productive. The women of our class had a profoundly normalizing influence on their male counterparts, and it is no co-incidence that the ‘67 men buried the destructive 'rabble culture’ of the male-only domain driven by excess testosterone, frustration and competition. We extended respect to all. The correction may have commenced, but our united class accelerated and finalized a fundamental change in the quality of life on the Valley campus.
For the most part, we actually liked and enjoyed one another. We reshaped the social culture on both campuses by revealing the compelling merits of class unification. How great is that for an assembled collection of youth whose diversity and range of talents first defined it! Well, apparently not great enough since there are some of us who still have negative associations with Kent or carry hurt and resentment not just about the School. How could any of us who endured the Kent School crucible at that point in time not manage to annoy, disappoint, anger or offend someone? Few of us can claim we did not.
Most of us choose to hold onto the positives from our years at Kent. There are many, and we – the people of our class – may be the most important. We should get together again! We still have much to learn from one another, from the more complete version of each of us - who we are and have been since sharing our lives some time ago. Dates in June are pre-arranged: June 9-11, 2017. Hope you can make it!
That’s an All Call !! Activate old alliances, fire up former networks and contact your friends. More of us are going back to Kent than ever before. Far more than ‘thanks and amends’ will abound, and absences will diminish the meaning and fun of this multi-day special gathering.
Proud to be your classmate,
Vic E.