The Spirit of ’66 — since ’76

Fifty years ago this summer, while most of the United States was focused on the Bicentennial, an almost unnoticeable handoff from one Lawrentian class secretary to another was hardly any cause for fireworks. That summer, Ralph Harder ’66 handed the reins of the 1966 class notes column to Doug Hirsh ’66, who later submitted his first entry for the Fall 1976 issue.

A full half-century later, Hirsh is still the name at the top of the column, as he becomes the first 50-year class correspondent in the history of The Lawrentian, which began naming and crediting secretaries in 1962.

“I remember submitting class notes on yellow legal pad paper,” says Hirsh, who has seen technology shape the way class notes have been submitted, from paper to fax machines to the advent of the internet. Email, he figured, would break down the barriers for the more reticent members of the class to share their news.

“I thought, Oh, baby, now it’s really going to roll in, Hirsh recalled. “And then the same thing: Nothing.”

The art of class correspondence is predicated on coaxing news from classmates, and Hirsh’s way of proactively collecting updates has proven to be a consistently winning formula.

“I think in all this time, I’ve missed three columns,” he said, “and one of them, I know I mailed.”

The understated Hirsh has chronicled the Class of ’66 from their days as young men establishing careers and families to today, when many of his classmates have retired and fill their updates with news of their grandchildren. The entire arc of that maturation has passed through his pen — not that they seem much different to Hirsh.

“No, I’ve never really given it a thought,” he said. “They’re still the same guys I went to school with and had in class.”