DePauw 1961 - 1965
Visit the DePauw University Archives & Special Collections pages to explore yearbooks, newspaper articles, and more from your time at DePauw.
Join us for an extraordinary celebration to reconnect with our beautiful campus, reminisce with old friends, make new ones, and celebrate DePauw University.
The Class of 1965 is invited to save the date for Alumni Reunion Weekend 2025, scheduled for June 5-8, 2025, to celebrate your 60th reunion. More details will be available in the coming months on this class page and on the Alumni Reunion Weekend main page!
Start your journey back to campus early by checking out our Virtual Campus Tour!
Check out the latest DePauw News and Stories, Class Commencement Program and listen to Class Commencement Audio!
Esteemed Fellow ’65 Classmates,
It approaches…oh, yes, it does…our 60th reunion at our beloved alma mater. Your dedicated reunion committee, signed below, has been laying some groundwork, with the invaluable help of Zaida Benassi at the Alum Office, for our getting together to celebrate this monumental milestone. We hope to engage with current students, to become acquainted with new construction on campus, and to become reacquainted with our favorite memory filled spots. We hope, as well, to facilitate engagement on topics of interest to us octogenarians.
Our plan, thus far, is to gather in the fall of 2025. You are all most welcome to attend Alum Weekend, June 5-8, 2025, but, for our class reunion, we choose to reunite when the campus is less crowded and when students are there. We think best will be to arrive on a Tuesday and depart on Friday. You might be asking what the date of this auspicious gathering might be…we don’t yet know. With the University’s help, we’ll find a week, between mid-September and mid-October, 2025, when our being on campus would be most compatible with DePauw’s schedule. We hope to have more information in early 2025. Please know that, whatever our chosen week, there will be a block of rooms reserved at the Inn for our class. We will also have information on surrounding accommodations.
Need we tell you how much your presence for our 60th would be appreciated? What makes our reunions successful, what brings delight to all participants, is the camaraderie of folks we met just as we were embarking on our futures, knowing we were well prepared by our university to succeed.
With hopes of raising a goblet with you in ’25,
Bruce Bondurant, Mercedes Condy, Rick Ferrell, Valerie Watson Hamilton,
Vin Hoey, Sarah Roberts Houghland, Tom Porter
The Classes of 1965 and 1966 returned to DePauw September 8-11, 2022, to celebrate their 55th reunion. Thank you to those who returned, those who volunteered their time, and those who contributed to the class gift.
Thursday, September 8, 2022 |
---|
4:00 - 5:00 p.m. |
6:00 p.m. |
Friday, September 9, 2022 |
8:00 - 9:30 a.m. |
10:20 - 11:20 a.m. |
12:15 - 1:30 p.m. |
1:30 - 2:45 p.m. |
3:00 - 4:00 p.m. |
5:00 - 7:00 p.m. |
8:30 p.m. |
Saturday, September 10, 2022 |
8:30 - 9:30 p.m. |
10:00 - 11:30 a.m. (choose one) or Richard E. Peeler Art Center Tour |
11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. |
1:30 - 2:30 p.m. |
Free Time |
6:00 p.m. |
February 2022
Dear Classmates of the Great DePauw Class of 1965,
Happy New Year. The question is “Could this be the year we mark our 55th Reunion, celebrating our 58 years since we walked across Bowman Gym on that rainy June Day?” I know you may think we’re trying to produce a sequel to the movie Ground Hog Day; that this feels like déjà vu all over again, or, to throw in another metaphor, that we are going to line up to kick off our fall reunion on September 8 and Lucy is going to pull the ball off the tee and we will run headlong into another mutation of Covid-19 called Spheroid 20. Alas, all that has been the nightmare dreamt by your woebegone Reunion Committee.
But we are resolute, we have new dates from the DePauw University, September 8 – 11; we have a brilliant plan and program very similar to the ones we attempted to execute twice before. And, with growing confidence, we invite you to a wingding September-fest in Greencastle complete with students, faculty, nice weather, and the camaraderie of old friends.
This is what you need to know now.
Call the Inn at DePauw at 765-658-1000 to make your reservations for the September 8-11 weekend.
You will be getting updates and more detailed plans as we move toward the summer. Please bookmark this page for more details.
Registration for the campus events will open shortly after the Fourth of July.
An updated list and the new total are found below for the Class of 1965 Scholarship. Needless to say, we are still accepting gifts and will continue to do so until the last classmate falls, and even then our children and grandchildren could toss a few shillings toward this eternally wonderful scholarship.
We hope the year has started well for you. Warmest regards,
Mercedes Condy, Bronson Davis, Rick Ferrell, Val Watson Hamilton, Sarah Roberts Houghland, and Tom Porter
Total (as of September 2022) $124,556
Class of 1965 Donor Name List
Names listed only once but multiple gifts may have been given
Jane Eklund Anderson Betsy Buell Barrow |
Ralph Jones Wendy DeWitt Taylor Susan Scully Walsmith |
The Class of 1965 continued to celebrate with the ongoing enthusiasm and drive of their reunion committee. In continuing the tradition - San Marco Island, Chicago, Santa Fe - plans were developed to meet once again in Washington, D.C., with an invitation to regional DePauw alumni beyond the class of 1965 as well. With the steering committee in place, planning quickly took off for the class.
The 2018 event took place Thursday, October 25 through Sunday, October 28, 2018 with the class staying at the Kimpton Donovan in downtown Washington, D.C., providing an opportunity for short walks and travel to various local must-sees.
The class had the opportunity to explore historical sites all over the area, including the Supreme Court, Capitol Building, Portrait Gallery, Newseum, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. A detailed outline of the itinerary from the weekend in D.C. can be found below.
The Class of ’65-- after celebrating a grand 50th Reunion-- continues to celebrate. Your reunion committee came together in Empire, Michigan last October and decided we couldn’t let the camaraderie and fun die. After generating some ideas, we proposed them to you in a letter, and then discussed them at a breakfast gathering of classmates on San Marco Island, Florida in January. A group of us had decided to attend DePauw’s annual January gathering of trustees, Alumni Board members and interested friends. The University provided both a splendid day of programs and the venue for the breakfast. From that discussion, we formulated some of the plans for Chicago-- our first official post-reunion event.
The distinguished Class of 1965 assembled in bucolic Greencastle on June 3-7, 2015, to commemorate the 50 years that have passed since our graduation. It was an occasion to renew friendships, to reflect on paths taken and not taken, and to celebrate alma mater and all she has meant to us.
Our class has gathered every five years since we walked out of Bowman Gym on that fateful, rainy day in 1965. This, our 10th gathering, was for four days to fully celebrate DePauw, and to have DePauw celebrate us.
If you are interested in getting involved with class reunion planning, please contact the Development and Alumni Engagement team by emailing us at alumnioffice@depauw.edu, and we will connect you to the appropriate team member.
Please explore the photo gallery link below and reflections from this (and other reunions).
This has been a fun journey...and the journey continues. We're glad you are with us every step of the way.
It’s difficult to say what sparked my interest in cemeteries in these later years. It wasn’t some kind of death wish, but as I have traveled I have made an effort to visit a cemetery if there is someone of historical note buried there. So this fascination could be related to my studying history at DePauw or the closeness I feel to my grandparents when I visit them in the Danville, Kentucky cemetery where they occupy a choice corner overlooking the Danville High School athletic fields. It also could be related to the soft, spring evenings I spent in Greencastle’s Hanna Street Cemetery as an undergraduate.
As a survivor of a student overseas trip sponsored by DePauw in 1964, I was intrigued to be involved in another such trip in 2014, spanning a generational abyss of 50 years. In the summer of 1964 a flock of 26 fortunate students departed on “Wandering with Winsey,” a “Grand Tour” of Europe escorted by the Art Department Chair.
One of the knocks on DePauw in the sixties was that it was a white bread school with all of us coming from similar ethnic and racial backgrounds. That always seemed a superficial view. Diversity comes in a variety of forms. My experience was that I met any number of people who may have shared my skin color, but who came from quite different backgrounds. My encounters with them formed a valuable part of my education. The best example of this was James Ince.
Felmus Chapman was the cook at the Phi Psi house. She was an African-American woman. I worked in the Phi Psi kitchen for 4 years. One either served and cleared the tables or washed things. When I was on pots and pans (washing them, that is), an additional part of that job was peeling potatoes (check that spelling, Dan Quayle).
As we gathered for our 50th reunion in 2015, we took a moment to fill in the blanks from our time after graduation.
Visit the DePauw University Archives & Special Collections pages to explore yearbooks, newspaper articles, and more from your time at DePauw.