REMEMBERING the MIDWESTERN COLLEGE EXPERIMENT

Sixty years is a long time to stay silent about something that shaped all of us so deeply. Most of us look back, never expecting the memories to rise again with such clarity, and never expecting to feel anything as strong after so much time had passed.

And yet here we stand.

We were just kids when we arrived in Iowa – though none of us would have admitted it. Our first winter was cold enough to make our bones ache, cold enough to make us question every choice that brought us there. And yet, somehow, that cold held us together. It forced us inward, toward each other, toward ourselves, toward something we didn’t yet understand.

We came from different worlds, carrying different wounds, different hopes, different ways of surviving. Some of us walked in with confidence. Some walked in with fear. Some walked in feeling nothing at all. And some – the ones we still think about – didn’t stay long enough to see what they could have become.

But for those who remained, something happened that none of us could name at the time. We changed – not suddenly, not dramatically, but quietly, like snow piling up outside the dorm rooms. Until that one morning when we began to realize that the whole world looked different.

We did not talk about it then. We were too busy trying to keep up, trying to belong, trying to understand who we were becoming. But now, with sixty years behind us, the truth feels clearer and somehow more tender.

We all were given a chance – not just to learn, but to grow into ourselves. To understand that all of life’s possibilities can be imagined. And to uncover the strengths that made us experience the pulse of the  world we would soon occupy.

And the most surprising part is this:

These moments did not really show up until now. Not until the noise of life quieted. Not until the years gave us enough distance to understand what those days really meant.

Those of us who remain can feel it now – not as nostalgia, but as deep appreciation. It is gratitude showing us how time, place, and circumstance shaped us when we were too young to absorb what was really happening.

We did not expect this reflection to return after sixty years – but it has. And it brought with it warmth we did not know. Iowa held within it the reminder that all of us mattered. That the Midwestern experiment mattered. That we mattered to each other, and to the lives we went on to build.

And the real gift is not looking back at the memories themselves, but the feelings that rise with them. A feeling that says quietly and unmistakenly: Sixty years ago, we were changed and yes, we are still here.