Hundreds of alumni descended on the campus this weekend to connect with old friends and reminisce about their time at Duke. The Chronicle spoke with several alumni—some who were students as far back as 1953—to ask about their most memorable moments in college and how the University has changed since they were last here.
“I got a degree and a wife out of it.”
—Carr McClain, Trinity ’88
“When my father lived in Epworth, the squirrels would come in through the windows and steal his socks.”
“[1968] was a real activist year, and it was the year that Martin Luther King got killed, and there was a big vigil on the quadrangle.”
—Tom Harris, Trinity ’68, Law ’71
“We decided on a prank that would be non-destructive and ultimate. So what we did is we turned the [Crowell] clock tower… into a Mickey Mouse clock.”
—John Tyson, School of Engineering ’81
“I called on [former football head coach] Wallace Wade… and he presented to me a trophy to auction. [It] was auctioned off by Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and raised $10,000 for children’s cancer research.”
—Alan Talpalar, Trinity ’83
“I used to sit outside around the corner of the [Duke] Chapel with friends talking about existentialism and philosophy and the meaning of life… The seeds of what I have done in the past 40 years were planted here.”
—Stephen Conover, Trinity ’73
“I lived right here in House C [on West Campus]… and when we moved to East campus, I was highly upset.”
—Reid Lewis, Trinity ’84
“We had a curfew at 9:30 every night.”
—Bernice Larson, Woman’s College ’53
“One of the biggest values of Duke is the building of everlasting relationships.”
—Eskinder Zewdu, Pratt ’11
“One of the most important things to do here at Duke is to form relationships with faculty members.”
—Gabriella Fitzgerald, Trinity ’93
“East Campus is much more developed and the Nasher museum is amazing.... When I was in school, we just had the Loop.”
—Walter Pye, Trinity ’88
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