Fall 2026

Ken Weaver, 13 Coachman Drive, Egg Harbor Township, NJ 08234

kenweaver78@gmail.com 610-308-0398

Kudos to our Class President Paul Smith for organizing a great 2026 Reunion, the 65th anniversary of our graduation!

Attending were Doug Braendel, Roy Cravzow (and fiancée Wanda), Jim and Evie Geigerich, Mikell Groover, Toby James, Joe and Robbie Napravnik, Toms Royal, Harvey Skolnick, Ken Smith, Paul Smith, Ed Watters, Ken and Jessica Weaver, and Tom Whitten.

Thursday evening was the Brown & White Dinner, up at the Mountaintop where we had our 50th Reunion dinner. They gave me an Alumni Award, presumably for being Class Correspondent for three years, after Bob Paternoster did it for 62 years! Friday was very hot. We had lunch at the STEPS tent and then hiked up (whew!) to the remodeled Clayton University Center and saw the plaque crediting our Class Gift for contributing to that effort. Several of us then went down to Packard Lab to hear a fascinating panel discussion on how Lehigh is “Helping Make a Better AI Future”. Then dinner in the STEPS tent for the All-Classes Reunion Fest. Saturday was breakfast at the Comfort Suites (Class HQ), and then we heard President Joe Heible ’82 deliver the “State of the University”. He is quite impressive and so is the state of Lehigh!

After lunch, we lined up in great weather for the Parade of Classes, maintaining our tradition of being the only class that can carry our flag upside down! When the parade ended, it was announced that we had won the Samuel T. Harleman 1901 Award for having the highest percentage of registered alumni for classes out more than 50 years!

The University says we have 446 contactable alumni from 1961. This seems suspect, given our ages and the fact that they only conferred 495 bachelor’s degrees that June. So, if you are no longer alive, please contact the University immediately and help update their records!

After the parade, Paul chaired a ’61 Symposium which described our legacy, i.e., all the contributions the Class of 1961 has made from endowed professorships, the Ethics Endowment now providing for the Hagerman Lectures, the 611 Merit Endowment wit our 50-year adopted Class of 2011, the Tresolini Lectures, return of the Kingston Trio and many more.

Saturday evening, we gathered for our “Cheers to the Years” dinner with the classes of ’56, ’66, and ’71. It was at Lamberton Hall, where we had all our meals as first semester freshmen in 1957. Our Dinner Speaker was Terry Hart, Lehigh Professor & former NASA astronaut. Each class had a representative talk about their Lehigh experience. I gave a talk about our years on campus including: being sent home for two weeks after only six weeks on campus because of Asian Flu; building and defending our 61-foot bonfire; having an all-freshman first semester GPA of 1.857 (the all-University GPA was just 2.008, which the B&W noted was the highest Fall Semester average in three years), presenting the Kingston Trio, the “picnic” at Flickinger’s, breaking out of the traditional insurance program to invest our Class Gift in a mutual fund, and finally having 495 graduates in June of 1961, 70% of the 709 freshmen who started with us in 1957.