When you chart the time spent over the course of your life with different individuals (parents, siblings, family, work colleagues, etc), you get a stark reminder that the percentage of time that represents your adolescents is incredibly small in comparison to the impact of those years. As we welcomed 150 Proctor Alumni back home for Alumni Reunion 2024, we were reminded why it is so important to reconnect with those who shaped our lives as teenagers.
Everyone comes back to Alumni Reunion for a different reason: to hang out with friends, to show our own children the place we spent our high school years, to gather together to remember classmates who have passed, or simply to rock out to Nick’s Other Band in the Wise Center, but what unites everyone’s experience is a commitment to nurturing the relationships with others who have shaped our lives.
We are all busy, all going a million different directions with competing priorities: our own families, our jobs, community responsibilities, expenses. Valid excuses for why we can’t attend events like Alumni Reunion abound, but each June we encourage ourselves and our alumni to prioritize the relationships with those we love. When we commit to spending time with our Proctor Family, our roots are strengthened and we leave energized despite the lack of sleep over the weekend.
Listening to the stories shared by the Class of 1974 celebrating their 50th Reunion, we heard about a different era in Proctor’s history - an era where our school was undergoing a transformation from a traditional all-boys boarding school to an alternative, funky, co-educational school that valued experiential learning and operated on an informal first name basis. The group of 1974 alumni who returned, some for the first time in fifty years, were blown away by how Proctor has evolved, and yet, saw that its core remained rooted in relationship.
Seeing multiple generations of alumni interact with each other and with all those faculty and staff (current and former) present is a testament to the relationships that keep Proctor rooted in who it is and who it seeks to become. Our Class of 2019 cohort (the largest to ever return for a reunion with 34 members present!) saw first hand the emotions surface for their Class of 1974 colleagues as they said ‘thank you’ to their former teachers, coaches, and dorm parents, like Chris and Kit Norris and Tim Norris fifty years after they last saw them. Neither words nor images do these moments justice. But we notice. We notice both the impact we have as educators and the transformation of students that this school so uniquely empowers.
While connection was at the core of the weekend, the planning and activities offered by our Alumni and Development Team were impressive. From hikes in the woodlands to campus tours, to art and blacksmithing classes, to hanging out at Elbow Pond, to sampling wine and spirits made by Proctor Alumni, to Java Hut, and inducting new members into the Athletic Hall of Fame, we left Sunday morning exhausted, and yet oddly rejuvenated from the weekend.
We recognize each of our alums and employees gave up something to attend reunion - children's sports games, family down time, barbecues, and so much more - but feeding our roots requires intentionality. As we nurture the relationships closest to us, we create a safety net that will sustain us when life gets tough. Too often we gather with those we love at weddings and funerals. That's not enough. Thank you to each of our alumni for showing us what it means to prioritize friends and family in your life. We miss you already.
Check out more photos from Reunion 2024 on Flickr!
- Alumni
- Community and Relationships