My Williams College 50th Reunion: Grace and Gratitude

Thompson Memorial Chapel, an interfaith sanctuary at Williams College, was completed in 1904 in memory of Frederick Ferris Thompson (1836-1899), who, at the time of his death, had been the most generous benefactor in the College's history, according to the College. At the news of his passing, the school suspended all classes and events for the day, and the community gathered in a chapel to pay tribute to Thompson, who had attended Williams.

During the Civil War, Thompson organized and drilled members of the U.S. Colored Troops. He hoped that the soldiers would be allowed to fight for the Union, reported The New York Times (April 11, 1899). Thompson, a prominent banker and railroad president, co-founded the First National Bank, which survives today as Citibank.

The church's tower is a reproduction of the tower of St. Cuthbert's Church, in Wells, Somerset, England, which I had ample time to study while waiting for treacly traffic to move on Friday evenings at a roundabout on my way from Bristol home to Cornwall years ago.

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I traveled from one mountain range to another this month, from the sculpture-like granite boulders of the Serra da Estrela in central Portugal to the dense woods of the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. The distance spanned nearly all of my septuagenarian life, and the occasion was my 50th Class Reunion at Williams College, officially chartered in 1793.

Grace and gratitude was the traditional travel toast of two of my colleagues: spitfire Deborah Heineman, a glue among alumni and my first-year roommate, and the deceased Paula Moore Tabor, a star whose light still shines in the eyes of students and graduates.

In the four days of deep conversation, good food and light banter, grace and gratitude ripped away any artifice and revealed our hearts. It was a true celebration of life among a group practiced in the ritual of funerals.

Nearly 200, most of whom were 1976 graduates, registered for the reunion out of a class of about 500, with 101 remembered in memoriam.

In the autumn of 1972, our class began our studies in a period of institutional transformation at the liberal arts school. It was the second which enrolled women as four-year matriculated students. Also, the previous class had broken historic ground for enrolling the largest cluster of black students, 44. In the past, African American students had studied at black colleges. Our class took on the mantle of agitating for more black students and professors, and for more diversity, which the College seems to have achieved and is the richer for it.

We were pioneers then, becoming almost mythical now. My presence as a black woman shocked some of the alumni of earlier classes, whose eyes opened wide as they introduced themselves to me. They realized that my very existence had been a revolutionary act, and they thanked me.

At the Ephraim Williams Legacy Society breakfast in The Williams Inn, the voices of the Reunion Ephlats, an a cappella group, serenaded the alumni of several classes with a college song and Watching the River Run, by Loggins and Messina, from the vinyl album Full Sail (1973). The latter was once played by students on their stereos in their dormitory rooms, acoustic guitar wafting into the halls and buoyed by the humming of those who passed by. I had the album and could lay down the needle on the groove of this track, I played it so repetitively.

The joy and wistfulness of Portuguese saudade suffused my core. I cried quietly.

“Saudade is the memory of enjoying past times that never come back; the penalty of not enjoying them in the present, and the desire and hope of returning to the former state of happiness in the future,” according to Saudade Portuguesa (1914).

The incomparable musical genre of fado of Coimbra is closely linked to the University of Coimbra, officially chartered in 1290 and one of the world's oldest universities. Often, it tells of the saudade on leaving the university.

The strong voices of the Reunion Ephlats carried me back, forwards and to the present, settled peacefully.

Watching the River Run

If you've been thinking you're all that you've got

Then don't feel alone anymore

When we're together, then you've got a lot

Cause I am the river and you are the shore

And it goes on and on, oh, watching the river run

Further and further from things that we've done

Leaving them one by one

And we have just begun watching the river run

Listening and learning and yearning

To run, river, run

Winding and swirling and dancing along

We pass by the old willow tree

Where lovers caress as we sing of our song

Rejoicing together when we greet the sea

And it goes on and on, watching the river run

Further and further from things that we've done

Leaving them one by one

And we have just begun watching the river run

Listening and learning and yearning

Run, river, run

And it goes on and on, watching the river run

Further and further from things that we've done

Leaving them one by one

And we have just begun watching the river run

Listening and yearning and yearning

Run, river, run

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The Mondego River below my home in Oliveira do Hospital Municipality, Portugal (Photo by Cynthia Adina Kirkwood)

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