Class Note 1995
New Year’s Eve, 20 years ago…I was on campus, back early for rehearsals for a show and celebrating with fellow Glee Clubbers at somebody’s apartment. The ball dropped and 1995 flashed everywhere and we just looked at each other and said, “It’s here!” Our year had arrived, the year that had been on our acceptance letters to Dartmouth and attached to our names ever since, now shared with the world and signaling the beginning of the end of our college years. There were cheers, there were goosebumps and then Hootie and the Blowfish took the stage on Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve and Darius Rucker was wearing a Dartmouth sweatshirt. Magic!
What’s your Dartmouth magic? Here are a few memories shared by ’95s via our Facebook page.
Itir (Sayin) Clarke: “Glee Club backrubs, biking across the bridge to the breakfast place on the other side of the river, getting my physics book wet while ‘studying’ on the docks at the river, doing a handstand on the moving Glee Club bus.”
Charlotte Flower Streidel: “Taking my daily study-nap-tea time in Sanborn, my first bouncy-bounce on Green Key weekend, teaching ’shmen how to ski at the Skiway, my Saturday morning radio show.”
Hareesh Khurana: “Embers of the bonfire at 6 a.m., late afternoons in the cemetery, afternoon pong on the back porch, spontaneous trips to wild places with friends that ended up being brothers from other mothers.”
Alexandra Lesk Blomerus: “Tea in Sanborn and filling the blackboards in Dartmouth Hall at night with hundreds of Greek words until they were memorized. Walks around Occom Pond in duck boots, midwinter, to go tobogganing on the golf course. Craig Sakowitz’s basement apartment lit with crazing lights. Oh, oh, singing Dartmouth songs in front of Dartmouth Hall and hearing the echoes across the campus.”
Jennifer (Sopko) Hee: “Practically living in the Hop (Chamber Singers, Dodecs, ushering). Walking across the Green at 4 a.m. to pick up a paper at Kiewit that I spent the whole night writing, hopped up on Mountain Dew.”
Kristen Foord: “The crazy blur of running around (and touching) the bonfire my freshman year, Tubestock and late nights with good friends in the Rip-Wood-Smith lounge.”
Marie Weisse Berg: “The peace at the lab where I worked, even when dyeing my hands yellow with acid there; late nights in front of my tiny Mac Classic screen writing papers which I still think about (though they were probably fairly mediocre!); watching bad TV on the Delta Gamma couch with some of the most wonderful women I have ever met; watching the sunrise with my now husband on the roof of his house.”
Jason Duty: “Sitting on the river at 9 on a Saturday morning. The water is flat as glass. It is fall and the leaves are changing. The mountains and the sky perfectly reflecting in the water. We all feel bad disturbing the beautiful sight before us, but we know that neither the 26-mile row nor our coach in the boat next to us will wait for us to daydream. As we row up the river toward Lyme, the only sounds we hear are the buzz of the coaches’ launch, the oars moving in and out of the water and the occasional command from the coxswain. It is a moment in time that I will never forget.”
Her spell on us remains in so many ways. When the ball drops on 2015, think about your classmates and start making plans for our 20th reunion June 19-21. Keep your news coming (and your memories too!).
—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu
