So You Think You Know Vandy 1969-1973?

Welcome to your Vanderbilt Class of '73 Reunion blog!

This is your place to get "in the mood" to come back for our 35th Reunion October 24-25 as the VU Centennial Class returns to campus once more.

You can get ready for Reunion by coming here to interact with your Vandy classmates and think back on the days we were all together on West End here in Nashville.

There are almost 40 blog postings already on this site (which started up back in February). Hopefully they'll help you remember those special times in the late 1960s and early '70s.

And we plan a new posting here at least once a day, everyday, from now all the way to Reunion weekend itself. So come back often.

But whether this is your first visit or you've already been here several times, how about a chance to win some prizes from the Vanderbilt Reunion Office? (and when's the last time you got anything free from the University?) :)

All you have to do is be one of the first three class members to correctly answer the Vandy trivia questions below. Please submit your answers by hitting the comments link at the end of this post (and leave us some contact information like your name and e-mail address, so we can get back in touch if you are a winner).

Here's the quiz (It's an open book test but Honor Code still applies) :)

1.What Vanderbilt assistant football coach has gone on to coach and win in the Super Bowl?

A. Bobby Proctor
B. Alexander Heard
C. Watson Brown
D. Bill Parcells


2. The first co-ed dorm at Vanderbilt was?

A. Stapleton Hall
B. Landon House
C. McGill Hall
D. Oxford House

3. If you had long hair you could not eat at what area restaurant?

A. Loveless
B. Rotier's
C. Tex Ritter's
D. Pancake Pantry


4. Which of the following rock groups were the featured performers at Homecoming our freshman year?

A. The Grateful Dead
B. Sha-Na-Na
C. The Association
D. Bread

I believe many of you have seen most, if not all, of these questions before. In fact, we asked them 20 years ago when we were preparing for our 15th Reunion in 1988.

We sent out a special Blue Book mailing with the questions. The answers were contained in a special HUSTLER we sent out later.

So rummage through your memories and maybe your attic to find the correct answers. Then submit them below and you could be a winner!

Then remember to come back here often as we all get ready for Reunion '08!

Study Up On Those Yearbooks...You Don't Want to Miss This.....

Very soon (Monday, September 15) all members of the Class of 1973 will be receiving a special blast fax e-mail from the Alumni Office about our upcoming Reunion (October 24-25).

Of course, the e-mail will once again encourage you to sign up to come back to campus for our special weekend. By the way, we are ahead of some previous classes (i.e.,the Class of 1972), in our projected attendance.

58 classmates and their guests have already registered to attend the Friday night party with another 74 folks saying they plan to come but haven't registered yet. We hope to have at least 200 classmates and guests total, so there's still plenty of time and space if you want to "come on down" (check out the Class of '73 Reunion web site for the full list of those who have registered or say they plan to attend).

The coming blast fax will also give you an opportunity (believe it or not) to win some free prizes from Vanderbilt. All you have to do is be among the first three folks to come here to our Class Blog Site on September 15 and provide the correct answers to a Class of1973 Vanderbilt trivia contest.

The questions are really not that hard. In fact, we asked several of them 20 years ago to promote our 15th Reunion. That's when we sent out a special Blue Book exam with the questions, and later provided the answers in our own Reunion HUSTLER (with apologizes even today to Neil Skene, the real editor of the HUSTLER our senior year). :)

Now through the wonders of the Internet, we can do this quiz on line here at the blog site and provide some great prizes to those who get the answers right (at least the first three folks who do).

So study up on those COMMODORE annuals and try and find that 15th Reunion Blue Book exam or the Reunion HUSTLER we sent you back in 1988 (I know, yeah, right. I do still have my copies, but then I am wierd like that).

So see you back here Monday as we pick up the pace on this blog. We want to get everyone in the mood and excited about our Reunion, which is just a little over 6 weeks away.

We will begin at least daily postings here, including more photos, stories, memories, TV news stories and TV ads, all from that special period we spent together at Vanderbilt from 1969 to 1973.

So bookmark this site or set up an alert from here to your computer to let you know everytime we have something new posted. For those of you coming to the site for the first time, welcome and please feel free to review all the previous posts (over 30 of them) that date back to when this blog first began back in late February.

And to everybody who comes here, please let me know what you think about what you read and see and hear on this site. Also tell me what memories you have or stories or pictures you'd like to share...all by clicking on the comments link at the bottom of each blog posting.

If you do have photos, I would happy to get them from you and post them on the blog for everyone to enjoy. The easiest way to do that is to scan them and e-mail them to me (pat.nolan@dvl.com). Or we can work out a way to have them mailed to me (or locally in Nashville I can pick them up). I promise to return any photos after they are scanned so we can place them on the site.

Thanks!

But We Had Fun Anyway....

We've talked several times on this blog about the fact that the Class of 1973 did not get to enjoy its own Student Center. In fact, the Sarratt Center opened in the fall of 1973 just a few months after we graduated (May 25)and left campus.

We also didn't get to enjoy some of the other more modern and luxurious campus facilities of today, such as the Student Rec Center or The Commons on the Peabody Campus (now called the south campus, by the way), where all the freshmen students live.

But as you can see from the photos above, we always managed to find a way to amuse ourselves!

When the construction of the Sarratt Center closed off our major on-campus green space for recreation on Alumni Lawn, we used the fence itself to have some fun as these coeds outside their dorm (is that Tolman or Cole?) demonstrate.

I hope nobody pulled a muscle doing this for the photo. :)

From the other picture above you can see we also had a banner/ fence painting contest to perhaps allow some kind of creative outlet for our inability to use Alumni Lawn, as well as the frustration of having to walk all the way around the fence instead of cutting across the Lawn to get to class more quickly.

For obvious reasons, some of the more "creative" signs or slogans we used in those days about the situation we were enduring (i.e., "Pluck the Pence", etc.) are not included, living on only in our memories. So please feel free to share your thoughts and memories below.

Another Word From Our Former Sponsors

As we continue to look back on our years at Vanderbilt, sometimes the change from those days to now can be quite striking.

And some of that change began while we were still on campus....

The commercial below was something you saw everday on TV back in the late 1960s and the very early 1970s. But cigarette ads were banned from the airways while we were in school at Vanderbilt.

In April,1970 Congress passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act which banned both TV and radio ads for cigarettes as of January 2, 1971.

It is interesting how so many of the cigarette ad concepts from those days ("The Marlboro Man", "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should", "Outstanding, and they are mild") continue to live in our pop culture even today.

But this ad for the "extra long" Benson & Hedges cigarettes (with its catchy jingle) was already on its way to being a thing of the past when it aired on the Evening News on July 21, 1969....




Once again, we thank the Vanderbilt New Archives for making these TV ads and news clips available. By the way, if you are wondering, the last national TV ad for a cigarette was for the Virginia Slims brand. It aired at 11:59 PM on January 1, 1970 during a network break for THE TONIGHT SHOW on NBC.

It Was Quite A Year

As the University settles into another academic year, it's quite interesting to take a look back at our freshman year at Vanderbilt in the fall of 1969.

While lots of things have clearly changed in 35 years. For example, check out tuition. Or check out the new Commons where all the freshman now live on the old Peabody campus and compare the living quarters there to what we had in Kissam and Branscomb.

Nevertheless, looking back through the headlines of THE HUSTLER, you can see a lot of things occurred our first year that began traditions that still endure today:

September 12, 1969: Quadrangles over overflow with 1,195 freshman

We were the largest freshman class to ever come to Vanderbilt up until that time. To say the least, the University wasn't fully prepared, with some of us sleeping four people to a lounge. And those areas really weren't designed for anybody to sleep there!

September 12, 1969: Women Get Permission To Live Off Campus

Now this didn't apply to freshmen but it sure was something a number of the coeds of the Class of 1973 eventually took advantage
of for living arrangements. And to think, just a few years before, VU coeds were not allowed to wear shorts or pants on campus.

September 16, 1969: Freshman Say Parietals Now!

A lot of us were outraged to learn when we got to campus that opposite-sex dorm room visitation was set to begin in all campus dorms, except for freshmen. We raised hell, and demanded equal treatment.

October 17, 1969: Frosh Parietals To Begin For Spring Semester

We win! Parietals is a right every freshman class has enjoyed ever since we came to campus and demanded it 35 years ago. That is, except for Stapleton Hall, which voted not to implement parietals, earning the ever-lasting nickname, at least for our class, of "Sterile Stapleton."

November 4, 1969: Committee Begins Research, Planning for Co-ed Dorm

Another campus housing innovation which began back in our day. Landon House was the first co-ed dorm on campus, but soon others, like Carmichael Towers, would follow in the next few years. But across Tennessee not everyone liked co-ed dorms. In fact, by our senior year, in the winter and spring of 1973, the State General Assembly considered a bill to ban co-ed dorms, and finally passed it in 1974. Fortunately, Governor Winfield Dunn vetoed the measure and it stuck.

December 16, 1969: Manager Refuses Service: Youth Picket Pancake Pantry

It's always been a great place to eat in nearby Hillsboro Village (with pancakes to die for). But in the fall of our freshmen year, those with long hair were not welcome. That has fortunately long since changed,and the long line you see outside the Pantry today is not a protest, it's just all the folks waiting to get inside to eat!

April 3, 1970: Second Semester Rush Instituted

Another change that began when we came to campus. It was met with cries that it would kill the Greek system. But the University felt it best to give freshman a chance to settle in on campus for a semester before holding rush and that's the way it still is today.

April 21, 1970: Pre-Christmas Exams for 1970-71, PE Out

Remember how you'd forget everything you knew over Christmas break, then have to come back to school in January for final exams? And remember how PE was a required course for all freshmen? Well, that changed after our freshmen year and it probably helped everyone's GPA, if not our waistlines. Why didn't we try to end 8:00 AM classes too?

All in all it was quite a freshman year, especially when you add in the Vietnam Student Moratoriums (October & November 15, 1969); Chicago 7 Attorney William Kunstler speaking at the IMPACT symposium in February (and angering Governor Buford Ellington); the very first Earth Day activities in April, 1970; the Cambodian Invasion/Kent State protests in early May that led the faculty to vote to close Peabody College.

So what are your memories of our freshman year? Please leave your thoughts below.

It's More Than Just The News...

The Vanderbilt TV News Archives is a wonderful resource.

Not only has it captured for research and history, all the significant news events of the past 40 years (as covered by the major TV networks), it also has a great collection of TV commercials mixed in with the broadcasts.

The Archives weren't designed to do that, but nevertheless you can literally track the changes in our culture and in our marketing by looking at these ads.

Here's the first installment of what will be several collections of TV ads we will feature here between now and Reunion weekend.




You will notice several interesting things about the ads, which were broadcast on September 21, 1970. Unlike today's evening newscasts which are filled with spots for prescription drugs, all of these are selling consumer products (deodorant, laundry detergent, flour and cake frosting) and notice the emergence of black actresses in a couple of the spots, something just beginning to happen in the late 1960s and early '70s. Also I am not sure the first ad (Secret) would be as well received by women today as it might have been when this spot was created.

Our class is part of the TV generation, born and raised glued to the tube. What do you remember about watching TV while you were at Vanderbilt? Too busy studying or hanging out? Did you even have a TV set in your room and if you did, what did you watch? Did you have any favorite shows? Your comments, as always, are welcome below.

39 Years Later

Can it really be almost four decades ago?

This August marks the 39th anniversary of Woodstock, the rock concert held in upstate New York which came to symbolize, in many people's minds, the generation that came of age in the'60s.

39 years: that's how old comedian Jack Benny said he was every year when he celebrated his birthday. Ever thought you read Jack Benny and Woodstock in nearly the same sentence? But, if you think about it, unless you are our age, you may not really remember either one anymore.

Woodstock was held just a few weeks before the Vanderbilt Class of 1973 arrived on campus. Did any of us attend Woodstock that summer on the way to Nashville? What are your memories whether you attended or not? Please leave your thoughts below.

And in the meantime, thanks to the wonders of YouTube, enjoy these flashbacks to Woodstock:


Grace Slick & The Jefferson Airplane: White Rabbit (recorded live at Woodstock)



Crosby Stills & Nash: Sweet Judy Blue Eyes (recorded live at Woodstock)


And finally, especially for the Vandy Class of '73:

Jerry Garcia & The Grateful Dead: Lovelight (recorded live at Woodstock)

The mainstream media in the Summer of 1969 had a lot of difficulty both covering the Woodstock story (the rain, the mud, the crowds, the traffic) as well as coming to grips with what it meant.

Here's how CBS News reporter John Laurence talked about it (in a coat and tie in his New York studios) on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite on August 18, 1969. Notice in particular, he never uses the word Woodstock.







If you'd like to know even more about Woodstock, check out this website:

http://www.woodstock69.com

Peace