The Harvard College Class of 1955 has collected narratives from over 50% of its members as they reflect on the past five years.
My own follows.
MHH'S
HOME PAGE
Warfare
Johnny Got His Gun
Déjà Vu
Nam-Iraq
Curriculum Vitae
55th Reunion Narrative
My New Hip
This is the home stretch and so far so good. A consistent weight
of 180 remains 30 lbs. over that of undergraduate days. Blood pressure, cholesterol
and triglycerides are in a happy normal range thanks to good primary medical
care and appropriate pharmaceuticals. I do the Nautilus circuit regularly and
spin twice weekly, averaging a pulse ca. 80% of maximum cardiac rate for forty-five
minutes. On the other hand I've discontinued annual summer treks up and down
Mount Washington. My thirty-third and last extension school course at the college
was in the spring of 2007, "Japanese Art from 1615 to the Present."
BUT I still read and write - a good bit yet to do.
I'm impressed by how elastic and retentive young minds are. I brought my twin
grandsons to the Netherlands to attend school and they were soon chattering
away in Dutch while I was struggling with the basics.
In a few months at least one of the three medical advances that I had hoped
to witness may come to fruition. Eyes are not transplanted, glioblastoma multiforme
is not cured, BUT meaningful health-care reform may finally become a reality
in our land - not universal medical care, but closer to it.
The similarities between our current involvement in Central Asia and the international
armed conflict in Vietnam of the sixties and seventies are depressingly troubling
and familiar. In preparing for a presentation to charter school students about
the latter I reviewed hundreds of the 35 mm slides I'd taken in NAM, Japan and
Okinawa forty years ago. I should probably get over it and trash these pictures,
BUT I can't. Instead I refurbished my 35 mm slide projector. Photographs that
I take are still with the Nikon FTN film camera purchased at the PX in 1969.
Of course my children and grandchildren all swear by their own digital devices.
I remain attached to a few other items of long ago, not antediluvian and not
collectibles. I couldn't bring myself to recycle two IBM Selectric typewriters
that I thought a grandchild might one day like. And sure enough the eldest grandson
thought it cool to receive one!
Each month I try to further downsize, simplify and reduce the number of items
that have accumulated over these many years. It's a Sisyphean task, but given
enough time I do believe it can be done.
Life is so precious. One of the more sobering of my activities as your class
Webmaster is chronicling those of us who have moved along. Three hundred twenty
I count. Memento Mori.