In 1967 we wrote letters . . . 

Phone calls were expensive and inconvenient.  For many of us, the daily habit of writing to family and friends and trekking to the campus post office was an important part of student life.  An empty mailbox could dampen our spirits, but letters or a care package would brighten the entire day.  As we wrote those letters, little did we realize that we were writing not just our own memoirs, but collectively the history of an exciting and turbulent era.

The Whitman Letter Project gathered letters from Whitman alumni in the classes of 1969 to 1973, written by or to them during their college years, and from excerpts of those letters created a script which was presented on stage at the April 2012 reunion.  Reading our young voices were current Whitman drama students who volunteered for the project.  

We're grateful for the generosity of those who dug up and contributed letters, for the assistance of Polly Schmitz '83 and Nancy Mitchell in the Office of Alumni Relations, and for the enthusiasm, time, and talents of our seven student readers.  We hope the performance of the Letter Project will inspire others to rediscover and share their old letters, so they may add to the history of student life at Whitman College.

Jack Rasmussen '71, writing home in the fall of his freshman year at Whitman.

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night" stayed these Whitties from the swift completion of their daily trips to the mailbox.