Alumni College Association

I have received a letter from Jay D. Runkle '13 who attended the first Alumni College in 1964. Jay, having retired from the department store business, came to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with his wife, and both wanted to do something worth while in retirment. He and his wife came from Michigan where a number of cities had active "town hall meetings." While Jay was working in New York City some years before, he frequently attended the famous Town Hall Meetings of the Air. After arriving in Fort Lauderdale, he writes:

"Our thoughts naturally turned to the Town Hall Programs we had known and enjoyed. We found that the name Town Hall was being used here by a woman who gave a series of book reviews, so we could not use that name. We decided on the name The Fort Lauderdale Forum, and we incorporated under that name; however, the Town Hall techniques were applied."

Jay provided me with a copy of the 1966 brochure of the Fort Lauderdale Forum which includes talks by General John B. Medaris, U.S.A. Retired, on "The Problems of the Space Age and Its Challenge to Education"; by Dr. Edward R. Annis, past President of the American Medical Association, on "America's Place in World-Wide Medical Advances"; and by Dr. Arthur Visser, Freedom's Foundation Award Winner, on "What Is America," among others. The program of lectures seems to me to be a wond erful contribution to the life of the mind, and I must report that Jay and his wife beat Alumni College to the punch by starting their series in Fort Lauderdale in 1963, the year before the Alumni College began.