Rice Centennial

 

Rice celebrated its Centennial in Houston October 10 – 17, marking 100 years since the first class matriculated. Steve and I were there from Wednesday through Sunday, attending events from dawn to midnight, listening to visionary speakers, viewing new campus art works, and catching up with classmates and friends. With Elizabeth Lodal, Carolyn Cohan, Alyce Boster, Patti Everett and others from my class of ’66 we celebrated 50 years of friendship. Patti and her husband Richard invited all of us, plus Carol Starr, Dave Boster and others from the class of ’67 to her penthouse for drinks on Saturday. In the 60s, Rice classes had no more than 300 students with a 4:1 male to female ratio. For the class of 2017 Rice expects 15,000 applications for a class of 900, which will have gender equality. We marveled at all the new buildings and what a great place Rice has become. Here is a link to the pictures I took.

Rice is an important part of our family heritage.  Though my brother Joel ’58 was in Austria,  we enjoyed visiting with son David ’95, cousins Jay ’68 and Roger ’71 Collins, and brother-in-law Joe Simmons ’66. Joe’s wife Karen is Steve’s sister and an honorary Owl. Steve was an Alumni Governor 1993-97; Jay is now on the Board. Jay and Maxann hosted a home-cooked dinner on Saturday night for the senior Owls in our family, while David partied on the quadrangle with his Rice friends.

In 1962, my first year at Rice and Steve’s second, history was on parade. During Freshman Week in September, we heard John F. Kennedy give his “Going to the Moon” speech at Rice Stadium. A month later Rice celebrated its Semi-centennial by inviting visionary speakers such as Margaret Mead, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and Arnold Toynbee to address students, faculty and visitors and to participate in an academic procession.  Just a week later, the Cuban Missile Crisis made us face a grim reality. Would the world survive? Somehow, we did.

For its Centennial, Rice pulled out all the stops. Besides an even grander academic procession and five visionary speakers including Chief Justice John Roberts (a classmate of Rice President David Leebron at Columbia Law School), there were parties, new art installations, a spectacular 20-minute sound/light show, a performance of a commissioned symphony by William Balcom, a football game that Rice won, and much more. Here is a 100-second video that summarizes the celebration of 100 years.