Welcome

 to the Class of 1974 50th Reunion Website

Beloiter Days: Homecoming & Reunion Weekend is set for September 13-15, 2024. Registration will open in July.

Our 50th Reunion website is a great way to reconnect and rediscover what the Class of 1974 has been doing since the last time we were together. You can share news, photos, and ideas for our reunion here.

It all begins with your Profile.

Getting Started: Create your Profile and login password. To start, click Classmates Profiles. Find your name on the list and click on it. Follow the Profile Wizard prompts. Upload photos and/or videos. Write captions or comments. Share info about yourself over the past 50 years!

Need help using this website? Click First Time Visitors on the menu at the left of the page for instructions and problem solving. You can always come back later to expand or edit your Profile. 

*This site works best through Chrome or Firefox. If you are having issues with Safari, the site should work if you check to allow cookies in your settings. 

-  Go to Missing Classmates to see a list of classmates who have not yet joined the 50th Reunion website.  If you are in contact with anyone on the list, let them know about our site and encourage them to join.

-  Check out “Where Are They Now?” or “Where We Live” on the right side of this page to see where classmates reside.

Your contributions will make this site much more interesting, and we want to hear from you! 

Beloit Class of 1974 Newsletter
April   2024

50th Reunion Rescheduled to September 13-15
It's no April Fools' prank. The 2024 Beloit College reunion—our 50-year reunion—has been rescheduled. The new dates are September 13-15, six weeks earlier than originally planned. Dan Schooff, Beloit’s VP of Advancement & Facilities, admitted “this is awkward. It was a big blunder. We apologize and are correcting that now. We are particularly apologetic to those who may have already made reservations.”

The new date will be on the weekend of a Saturday-evening football game between Knox College and the Bucs. There is no home football game scheduled for the originally-planned date. The College has been publicizing the erroneous schedule since December of 2022, so the announcement of the new date caught most alums by surprise. It’s a situation 50 years in the making—but we’re Beloiters; we can handle this!

Come Early for Extra Events
The Reunion Planning Committee has been hard at work coming up with special events for our 50th Reunion. In addition to the usual attend-a-class sessions, campus tours (Science Center, Powerhouse, Logan Museum, etc.), banquets, talks about the College and its future plans, C-Haus visits, and football, we are planning for more opportunities to get together with classmates and visit regional attractions. We are hoping that many of you will choose to arrive early so you can join in the fun, as some of the events below will be offered on Thursday, September 12.

• Trip to Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s estate and school near Spring Green, Wisconsin, about 2 hours’ drive from campus.

• Trip to Baraboo and Circus World, off-season home of the Ringling Brothers’ Circus; about 90 minutes from campus.

• Trip to Old World Wisconsin near Eagle, about an hour from campus. Old World Wisconsin has moved buildings from ethnic farm villages around the state, re-creating the villages and working the land in the old-fashioned way—with horses.

• Trip to Madison, where you can wander State Street, the UW campus, the Capitol, and more.

• Trip to Historic Auto Attractions, a museum/collection of historic cars, movie memorabilia, and more. It’s located in Roscoe, Illinois, about 15 minutes from campus.

• Trip to Angelic Organics, the farm run by John Peterson’72, one of the oldest Community Supported Agriculture farms in the country. Many of us visited “the farm” during our tenure at Beloit.

• Tour of downtown Beloit.

• Folk dancing––Does anyone have a playlist from our era?

• Nature walks led by Sally Frelick O’Byrne’74.

• Kayak the Rock River! The College Boathouse will be open!

• Special reunions for groups that participated in foreign seminar groups.
   

If you have additional ideas, or want to sign up for any of these options, please let us know! Send an email to pencemr@alumni.​beloit.edu, or post something on the Beloit Class of 1974 Facebook page. We’ll be sure you are kept up to date as we get our plans together and firm up the dates and times for these events.

We also have a Class of '74 Reunion Website that lets you set up or update a profile to let classmates know about what you’ve been doing. You can check other profiles, leave messages, and post photos to the site.

New Fund Option for Class Gift
The 50-year reunion is a great time to support our Alma Mater. Beloit is counting on us to help the College with donations to their key funds, which are important to bringing new students—and new corporate donors—to the school. (Corporations want to know how many alumni donate before they will write checks to support College programs!)

All donations made to Beloit College between July 1, 2023 and December 31, 2024 are considered part of the Class Gift from the Class of 1974. Two funds—one main College fund, plus one new fund put together by the Class of ‘74—are used to receive donations for our Class Gift.

The Beloit College Annual Fund is currently one of the College's highest fund-raising priorities. 100% of the Annual Fund goes toward financial aid and is awarded to students in their financial aid packages, decreasing their net tuition paid. Financial Aid packages are most impactful in our students' decisions to attend Beloit and help shape their Beloit experience, their college education, and their success as a future Beloiter.

The Marca Bristo Disability Fund is a new fund to honor a classmate. Marca lived with a mobility impairment that she experienced as a result of a diving accident shortly after we graduated. But that did not keep Marca down. She became a leading national advocate for people with disabilities. She founded Access Living in Chicago, one of the first organizations in the independent living movement. As they said in an article noting her death, “Marca served as the Chair for the National Council on Independent Living for many years after co-founding the organization in 1982. President Clinton appointed her as chair of the National Council on Disability from 1994-2002; she was the first person with a disability in the role. As the vice president of North America for Rehabilitation International, she participated in the negotiation for the United Nations’ Convention (UN) on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which the UN adopted in 2006. She was given the Distinguished Service Award of the President of the United States in 1992; the Henry B. Betts Laureate, considered the Nobel Prize in the disability field in 1993; and the 1993 United Way of Chicago Executive of the Year Award.” Learn more about Marca, click here.

To honor our classmate, we have founded the Marca Bristo Disability Fund. With the input of disabled Beloit alums, a group of disabled current Beloit students, former work colleagues of Marca, and her family, it was decided that money raised by the fund would go to provide disability training to Beloit staff and faculty.

To contribute to either the Annual Fund or the Marca Bristo Disability Fund, please click here.

Reunion Hotels
There’s a long list of hotels in and around Beloit that have worked with the College for Reunion stays. You can find a complete list by clicking here. Scroll down to find the “Local Hotels” link. Call the hotels directly to make a reservation. Some hotels may give you a discount if you tell them that you are attending the Beloit Reunion.

The Ironworks Hotel and Hotel Goodwin are closest to campus, just down the hill on the way to downtown Beloit. At last report, those hotels are full for Saturday night, but have rooms available for Wednesday through Friday nights.

At last report, the Fairfield Inn did have rooms available for the entire Wednesday-through-Saturday-night period. The Fairfield is on Milwaukee Road near the Interstate, a little over three miles from campus.

Registration for Reunion
You can make reservations for hotels right now to reserve your room for the reunion. But the College won’t be opening their registration for the official campus events until July. Be patient; the College will be happy to accommodate all of our classmates at the reunion. But you’ll need to wait until July to let the College know you are coming.