Thoughts on Our 50th Reunion
Received from Jim Sentman for 1972 Class Notes:
Our reunion days, June 9 – 12th, were filled with so many brief moments of shared discovery and rediscovery that I want to write them down before I forget them. Our paths crossed again on a weekend of poignant, funny, and even random events that I treasure. Was the best one talking to Dr. Gordon Collins at our Coccia House pizza party? Or perhaps the many of us moved by the bag piper at the Memorial Service? Maybe a random statement over a breakfast? Finding a lost twin in Luce Lounge among the snacks & the drinks & the fellowship?
Sunday morning the congregation at Westminster House had invited all alumni to attend a special worship service at 10 a.m., but by 11:45, I returned to a deserted Luce Hall, to discover I was surely the last man standing in celebration of our 50th reunion. At Westminster, alumni were invited to speak about our spiritual journey in connection with Wooster, and four of us spoke. I want to share with you what I expressed.
I defined the Holy Spirit as that divine spark within each of us humans that creates potential connections between us. I testified that I experienced that spark as a boy of 17, who came to Wooster for an education, but discovered a life changing culture among the students and professors I met. More importantly that spark was very much alive during Alumni Weekend when, over and over again, a decades old experience was relived among you my classmates and me. Old friendships, long dormant, came alive again. New ones formed. I know Wooster is indeed a real community of caring and supporting people. Apparently, that did not end on graduation day.
As if in affirmation of all I’d said, it turns out during the worship service a stranger I was sitting with at Westminster House turned out to be Professor Vivian Holliday of the Classics Department, who had taught me Mythology in 1971. I began to weep when I rediscovered her and was able to thank her for all she gave to me decades past.
I hope that any of you whom I spoke to during our reunion knows exactly what I mean by a brief connecting moment we had that weekend. I would love to share them all here in this message. But, instead, I hope that each of you will get to your laptop and send in some special memories either of this June 2022 at Wooster or perhaps from our shared days long ago.
Jim Sentman
Posted in on June 30, 2022.
