Our harlequin sports coats are still spread out on the guest room bed, waiting to be packed. My husband and I planned to be at Princeton this weekend, celebrating our 40th. It’s the kind of myth that’s easily discarded yet desperately needed in our divided culture. Princeton’s rituals enact the conviction that the Princeton of today descends from the Princeton of yesterday, that the many eras belong to one another, and that, whatever their differences and flaws, they are all beloved and good. Whatever their disagreements or differences, in their orange and black they are all one tribe, from the good old boys’ network to the meritocratic strivers, the rowdy drinkers to the quiet nerds. The presence of the old reflects belief in the young. The P-rade is a powerful ritual because it represents continuity amid change. “As they turned the corner onto Prospect Street," wrote Siddons, “the crowd rose spontaneously to its feet, sun hats off, and all along the street they rose till the entire street was lined with standing people as the Old Guard went marching by." Reflecting on her essay, Marilyn Marks, editor of the alumni magazine, wrote in 2016, “After 15 P-rades, the Old Guard still makes me cry."īut without the rest of the P-rade, the Old Guard would just be a bunch of aged men. The sight of the Old Guard inevitably moves the crowd. At my early reunions, classes from at least as long ago as 1909 were represented. “We saw 1865 march," read a sign I saw at one reunion. But the real attraction is the embodied history.
High school marching bands provide music, live tigers have been known to show up, and some classes feature vintage cars.
Retired psychiatrist Joe Schein ’37, typically walks, leaning on the engraved cane honouring the oldest returning alum. Many of the Old Guard ride in golf carts. Beginning with the ‘Old Guard’ who’ve passed their 65th reunions and ending with the new graduating class, classes line up along the route, joining the line as their immediate predecessor passes. The ritual climax of reunions is the P-rade, held on Saturday afternoon. He’d been conditioned by decades of reunions. Perhaps even more absurdly, it didn’t look absurd." One of my classmates, who wore his reunion jacket to travel, reports that his husband didn’t even notice the oddity. The novelist Anne Rivers Siddons, who attended her husband’s 25th reunion in 1973, described the atmosphere they create as “absurdly like Disney World, moved lock, stock and barrel into the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The crazy clothes identify classmates and give the campus a festive air. Ours is a harlequin print with diamonds in orange, black, white and grey. For the 25th, each class chooses a distinctive sports coat to be worn at all future reunions. For the 10th, there was a kind of Flintstones theme, with a shirt of triangular orange stones outlined in black, accompanied by Butt Fur brand fleece shorts with tiger stripes. For my fifth reunion, we wore a pith helmet and a shirt printed with palm trees and tigers. Every class has its own, which changes every five years until the 25th reunion.
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