This web site is for the Class of 1971 of Williams College. Its purpose is to bring forward memories from our collective past, add to our common experience with new information (photos, videos, essays, tributes, comments, music, art…), allow exchange between classmates, and to encourage participation – in person at reunion events, or in any other way. While the site builds toward our upcoming 50th Reunion in June 2021, it is intended to serve in the long term as a virtual gathering place for our class.

It is hard to imagine this web site, or indeed the reunion it invokes, without the 50th Reunion Program Staff:  Mark Robertson ’02 Director; Chris Robare, Associate Director; and Darlene Alderman, 50th Reunion Program Assistant.  (Early 2019 has seen Chris transition to retirement, and Kate Hyde ’96 newly appointed.) Similarly valuable has been Katherine Myers ’85,  Development Communications Manager, who with videographer Keith Forman has helped us create a new level of video content for the site.  The entire staff of the College Archives has been helpful in locating photos and other resources; we are particularly indebted to Katie Nash, Laura Zepka, and Sylvia Kennick-Brown.  Mike Reopell, AIS Director, deserves special thanks for both his technical contributions and his patience with our requests large and small.

More particularly, the College’s 50th Reunion Office made this 1971 web site possible by contracting with web designer/developer Berkshire Direct to support the prodigious efforts of Ray Kimball ’70 to create a prototype for the Class of 1970.  Ray, in turn, generously allowed us to clone many functions of the ’70 site, and provided both inspiration and advice.  The Classes of 1968 and 1969 have been similarly helpful, regarding both web sites and Class Books. Berkshire Direct, in the person of Luke Schulze, has worked with us to create and maintain this 1971 site; it might never have been launched without Ray and Luke. 

The contributions of Williams Faculty members continued even all these years after our graduation, and can been seen directly on the web site.  Look for videos featuring John Hyde, Phil Smith, Nancy McIntire, and Renzie (“I never met a camera I didn’t like.”) Lamb.

But from there, many volunteer classmates have stepped up to do most of the work to bring this web site to life – starting on the Home page with Sue Denburg Brown’s iconic ’71 purple cow.  John Ackroff, who has taken on the mantle of Class CTO, is generally responsible for what works well on the site; the hours he has spent have been beyond calculation, even while he has continued his longstanding commitment as our Class Agent, and his good humor has been unfailing.  Also giving valuable help on the “back end” or technology side of the site have been Don Harrington, Valle Schloesser,  and Jim Tam.  No less valuable, though perhaps more visible, have been editors including Peter Clarke (essays and In Memoriam), Bob Eyre (Faculty Tributes), Russ Pulliam (67-71 Timeline), Paul Lieberman (Coeducation), Bill Sweney (GUL vinyl conversion to the site).   Perhaps most amusing is the notion of John Chambers as 1971 “webmaster.”  Schoolmaster, yes, but where the web site is concerned he served mostly as recruiter of talent (see above) and content (see the site). We hope to welcome and thank still more volunteers and contributors as the site grows, and then as we try to capture a sample of the content in a print version, the Class Book.

These team members are, of course, just a small part of the prodigious batch of volunteer Class leaders, and others noted elsewhere on this web site, who make ’71 in particular and Williams alumni in general so unique in their dedication to the College, to classmates, and to ongoing generations of students.