Class News

Tony Lavely ’64 retraces history of 1964 Class Secretaries

April 14, 2022

While I’ve been in the Class Secretary position for almost 20 years, I don’t really know when the position was first defined as “Secretary.” It does make sense to me (as I’m sure it does to other Class Secretaries) since the main responsibility is writing about our classmates. In fact, most of the writing is originated by classmates, so the Secretary becomes the conduit. The Class Megaphone, so to speak.

With our 60th Class Reunion approaching in two years, I wanted to retrace the history of 1964 Class Secretaries. It was easy to remember David Sherman, our first Class Secretary, because his name is preserved in our 1964 Class Book.

Other Secretaries have been memorialized in the Class Books created for our major reunions, like the 25th and the 50th.

And of course I knew Terry Holcombe as the Secretary with whom I served as Corresponding Secretary, before Terry handed off the Class Secretary job to me in 2009. Other than those guys, I needed help from Ellen Cole, our editor at Yale Alumni Magazine, to remember the full list of Class Secretaries in the correct sequence:

Term	Class Secretary	Corresponding Secretary	Webmaster
1964–1969	David Sherman	-	-
1969–1974	Joe Lieberman	Chris Getman	-
1974–1979	Ward Cates	-	-
1979–1984	Jon McBride	-	-
1984–1989	Len Baker	-	-
1989–1994	George Humphrey	-	-
1994–1999	Denny Lynch	-	-
1999–2004	Tony Lee	-	Sam Francis
2004–2009	Terry Holcombe	Tony Lavely	Sam Francis
2009–2014	Tony Lavely	-	Sam Francis
2014–2019	Tony Lavely	-	Sam Francis
2019–2024	Tony Lavely	-	Sam Francis

We especially remember three of our Class Secretaries who have departed: Ward Cates, George Humphrey, and Denny Lynch.

The scope of Class Secretary changed as the Internet became part of our lives. In 1989 the World Wide Web was created. No longer were classmates limited to scribbling updates on 3x5 cards and mailing them in with Class Dues. And the column was no longer limited to bimonthly issues of Yale Alumni Magazine with a word-count limit. With that sea change in communications, our Class had the good fortune to have Sam Francis in our ranks. Sam was learning code before most of us knew it was more than a secret language used in espionage. In 1999, ten years after the birth of the Web, Sam was tapped by Class Secretary Tony Lee to be our first Class Webmaster. Sam then built our first Class website, giving us the ability to create, expand, and propagate content far beyond the pages of YAM six times a year. We still post a short column in YAM, but most classmate activities are posted in real time on the website. The website has also given us the ability to share multimedia content — photos, audio, video, and books published by classmates — on its pages. Our In Memoriam pages remember every departed classmate, and these pages will inevitably expand in the years ahead. In March 2022 we deeded all of our website content, current and future, to Sterling Memorial Library, where it will be part of Yale’s digital archives in perpetuity.

None of this record of the Yale Class of 1964 would mean much if classmates didn’t continue to be active and engaged in issues of the day and share those experiences with us. As the Hamilton lyrics ask: “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?”