Festivities

When the biggest Class Day ever reaches the parading stage early this afternoon, the unchallenged top spot for colorful customary will go to the Twentieth Reunion contingent of 1928.

Some 180 Class members have arranged to wear full fireman's regalia, with a ten-piece fireman's band and an old-style fireman's hand pump in the vanguard of the procession.

After 24 hours of preliminary festivities at Poland Spring, Maine, the band of 180, together with their families, plans to entrain for Boston this morning--completely attired for the afternoon's celebration climax. From debarkation at North Station the group will march through Hub traffic to the Charles River Basin where "water taxis" are scheduled to pick up the crowd for a ride to the Newell Boat House in time for luncheon at Dillon Field House. Then follows the featured parade to the baseball diamond for the Yale game.

Here the six younger classes involved in the day's revelry will be converging and will vie for liveliness of garb. Tradition calls for something with dash and curiosity, often a costume idea for a specific class repeated over the years. though equally often varied as the fancy of the prime movers of each group shifts.

This year the Class of 1928 decided on the fireman scheme--the first time it has been used--through a simple process of elimination. "First someone suggested Russians, Cossacks I suppose he meant," Victor O. Jones '28 remarked Sunday night, "but we rejected that because of the present situation. Another thought was pirates. Firemen won probably for the nice color and the coolness."

On an earlier occasion, Jones recalled, masquerading Class members marched as the Seven Dwarfs with the aid of a young lady 'mascot" as Snow White. The great advantage of this, he explained, came with the masks worn by the dwarfs, which "allowed us to get drunk without our wives being able to tell it."

By the time a Class has held its 25th get-together, according to Peter E. Pratt '40, director of the Alumni Records Office, the frivolity of costumes has usually worn off and the custom has been abandoned.

The Class of 1888, the oldest unit which will celebrate as a group, holds its sixtieth reunion tomorrow. At a dinner in his Concord home Charles Francis Adams '88 will entertain his mates.

Highlighting the Class of 1898 events, which started yesterday and are not due to end until tomorrow, is a dinner this evening at the Harvard Club of Boston. The Forty-Fifth Reunion class of 1903 opens its program today with bowling on the green, golf, and backgammon at the Country Club in Brookline, and a dinner at 7 o'clock; the Fortieth Reunion Class started off last night with festivities at the Hatherly Country Club in Scituate and will wind up its preceedings at an Algonquin Club dinner tonight.

Magnolia's Oceanside Hotel will be the scene of activity of the "35th" which will reach Cambridge in time for a women's lunch at the Boat Club before the Commencement exercises.

Of the younger classes, '42 promises to steal the show at the parade with its green cardboard top hat and green necktie combination. Carrying balloons and lollypops, the squad, whose hats will have red bands, expects to wear white and khaki short pants. Yesterday's opener of the Sixth Reunion was spent at the Essex County Club in Manchester, with sports in the afternoon and dinner at 7 o'clock. Class members will attend Memorial Church at 11 o'clock today and a buffet luncheon including wives has been slated for 1 o'clock.

Yesterday was the big day for '33: an all-day outing at the Western Golf Club and the Class Dinner at the Continental. Today a luncheon in Adams House will precede the parade. The dress will include white trousers in striking uniformity; beyond this the secrecy which is traditionally practiced before the parade to lend suspense shrouds details.

The Tenth Reunion's literal clambaking at the Wentworth in Portsmouth yesterday preceded today's luncheon in the Kirkland House Quadrangle.