Dear Norse Classmates of 1971,
Greetings from the mountains of So. CA! It's Conn McKercher (the artist formerly known as Gary). Yes, I recently nudged right to my middle name as preferred non-formal address. Call me Gary and you are dead-naming me!
I am newly-anointed as one of three Class Agents. Each of us will be writing consecutively over a year's time with campus news, random personal musings, plus trivia questions from the past.
But first some timely facts:
Sometime before Labor Day of this year, after a 51-year absence, I will succumb to the pull of the Oneota Valley, campus, lefse(?) and reside again in Decorah. Post-graduation after short and lengthy periods of time in England, MN, CA, KY, NE, and WI, I settled in Mason City, IA near where I was farm-raised. I don't know if your time before college was similar, but after four successive Dorian Fests as a flatlander high school student, I was hooked on the limestone bluffs of the Oneota Valley. And somehow, perhaps subliminally, I sensed a permanent return one day. There are several '71ers in Decorah, as you may know. However, if many more of us septuagenarians move to town, will there be enough beds at Aase Haugen home to welcome us eventually?
At my new residence, which I will rent from the Rosholt brothers (all LC grads), I found, on overnight visits, yearbooks reaching back to the early 50s. Leafing through several, I wonder how many of us are aware how little campus had been erected before our arrival autumn of 1967. Pre-1961, the south side of campus was all there was. Just Main, Brandt, Olson, Koren, Loyalty Hall, and Larsen. After Preus Gymnasium burned, nothing remained of north campus or the valley floor until 1961 when Valders and the Union were erected. Would campus have been as attractive to us in the late 50s or early 60s? I wonder. The splendid valley vista had always been a draw for me. It was at least a 50% factor of my decision to attend the college.
How about you? I encourage you to share some college memories which I, and perhaps other agents, will attempt to include in a "Reader's Digest" format in forthcoming letters. I have to admit, the pictorial collage at the end of the reunion dinner last October was what got me weepy. Were we ever so young, active, and hopeful?
My present hope is to see many of you at our 55th.
Conn McKercher
330 E. State Street
Mason City IA 50401-3482
641-530-0127
wld10or1@gmail.com
