Celebrating the Class of 1967 and the Forever Club

Last week, members of the NC State University graduating class of 1967 joined the Alumni Association’s Forever Club, a community of alumni who graduated from NC State 50 years ago and earlier. Special Collections joined the celebration for a third year in a row, bringing a show and tell of items from the archives that reflected their time as students at NC State.

The class of 1967 would have taken classes in the newly constructed Harrelson Hall, spent time in the Erdahl-Cloyd Student Union (currently housing the Atrium and West Wing of D. H. Hill Jr. Library), witnessed the Pullen Hall fire of 1965, welcomed growing numbers of female students living in the first female dorm on campus in Watauga Hall, celebrated the first football game in the new Carter-Finley Stadium, honored legendary basketball coach Everett Case and welcomed new coach Norman Sloan, and much more.

Alumni gathered at the Park Alumni Center to kick off their reunion weekend, and spent time exploring Agromeck yearbooks, issues of the 1964-1965 Technician from their freshman year, admissions booklets for prospective students noting the price of tuition in 1964 ($162.50 per semester for in-state students), athletics programs, brochures and calendars of events in the student union, photographs, computer punch cards from the first Computing Center on campus, and more.

Alumni shared some of their memories of the events reflected in the materials on display, and several sat down to record these stories in Wolf Tales recordings that will add more nuance to the record of this period on campus. One alumnus described watching the news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and being sent home early for Thanksgiving that year. Another alumnus spoke about the excitement and challenges of using a large, shared computer in the Computing Center to complete his course work as an Electrical Engineering student.

As part of our work to document and share the history of NC State, especially from the student perspective, we look forward to collecting stories and bringing materials from the archives into the hands of alumni and other members of the NC State community. You can explore more university history through our Rare and Unique Digital Collections site, where you can also access thousands of images, video, audio recordings, and textual materials documenting NC State history and other topics.  If you’d like to learn more about these resources or have any other questions, as always, please feel free to contact us!