From May 10th to 12th, Choate hosted hundreds of alumni for the School’s annual Reunion Weekend, a time for Choate graduates to reconnect with their old classmates and celebrate their never-ending Choate spirit. This year, alumni from classes celebrating their 5th, 15th, and 25th reunion had special events; however, alumni from other years are always welcomed to join the event.
Following grandparents day on Friday, alumni began arriving on campus. Some early arrivals joined the grandparents in visiting the different classes, activities, and sports on Friday. To officially start the weekend on Friday evening, alums gathered in the Hill House Dining Hall for the first time for the annual Friday dinner. The weekend was packed with fun activities ranging from a morning fun run with Ms. Fran O’Donoghue to the annual alumni vs. Boys Varsity Lacrosse game.
On the clear spring day, families, alums, and students came out to the great lawn and enjoyed numerous activities together. Tigo Ponce De Leon ’22, whose mother is a Choate alumna class of 1992 said, “It was amazing to see how great of a community Choate has. Since my mom is a Choate alumni, it seems to me that relationships that people create at Choate is unbreakable.” After flying from Seattle to Wallingford, Tigo’s mother and grandfather enjoyed all the activities while meeting with their friends. Aside from the countless activities, alumni were free to hang out and socialize in the Hospitality Lounge inside the alumni tent. St. John Hall, Kohler Environmental Center, and Gold Key tours were also accessible to alums wishing to learn more about the campus in 2019.
Every year, Choate organizes leadership receptions, afternoon programs, and panels. Abdi Nazemian, an author from the class of 1994, who writes novels for young adults and produces movies, joined this year’s Reunion weekend. Most recently, Nazemian was a producer for a well-known film that came out this past summer: Call Me by Your Name.. Nazemian held a panel discussion on the industry with Amy Mascunana ’04, a teacher in the New York system who teaches a lot of Nazemian books. This year, Choate was also really honored to have Stacey Plaskett ’84, a member of the United States House of Representatives (State-R/D), Rebecca Jones ‘04, Assistant Attorney General in Arizona and Mr. Jonas Akins, a former Naval Intelligence officer and a faculty member at Choate. They were featured on the panel entitled “Public Service: Our Shared Legacy.”. In another session, Lani Uyeno ’19 shared her research a concussion panel with Josephine Pucci ’09, medical student at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and Tim Fleizer ’94, Executive Director of the Concussion Research Foundation in Canada. Fleizer said, “I think that concussion is a very prominent topic in the news these days especially in light of CTE (brain injury) research.” Lani did her SRP project at the Holland Bloorview Rehabilitation concussion center and has been researching there for the past two summers.
The Alumni Relations Office has always been responsible for planning every Reunion Weekend to match the desires of the visiting classes. Organizing Alumni Weekend is never a small deal for the department; they have to put in hours upon hours of work to pull off the event.
When talking about the planning of Alumni Weekend, Director of Alumni Relations Ms. Monica St. James, Rosemary Hall ‘69 said, “Every single department in the campus has an important role in making this weekend possible.” Every year, the department does an amazing job of putting various panels together on relevant and important topics of the visiting classes. Ms. St. James, who oversaw much of the planning for the weekend, continued, “Every year, there will be something different in Reunion Week. For example, the panels are different each year because it depends on the different alumni that are coming back each year.” One big change from last year is that the Friday dinner and the evening celebration took place at the Hill House dining hall instead of the Alumni tent. “We are very grateful to the students for swapping locations with us. The alumni were definitely excited about spending time in the Hill House dining hall.” Ms. Monica St. James joked.
The goal of the Reunion week is to reconnect alumni with the school, to keep that community together and allow people to connect back with each other in person. “It is also a very good opportunity for the school to bring money in and put the funding to other things because we charge alumni money to come back for the activities that we host. So I do think that it is a source of finance to the school,” said Maxwell Gingher ’19, a senior who spoke on the “Student Life” panel, where the students shared their favorite classes and activities. On Saturday morning Mr. Velez, a current third form dean, the incoming Dean of Students, and also a class of 2000 Choate Alumnus sat on a panel and met with the class of 1984 to discuss student life at Choate in 2019. It certainly made for a busy weekend for Mr. Velez being both a faculty member and an alumnus of the School. “I try to balance as much time as I can between catching up with my former classmates, while at the same time, carving out moments to reconnect with former students who I interact with over the past 15 years as a faculty member,” he said. Mr. Velez added,“Alumni weekend is one of the most important events that take place from a programming aspect at Choate throughout the year.” He believes that it is a good reminder to current students that there are so many generations of previous Choate students that paved the path for them in a positive way.
