To celebrate their 50th reunion, the class chose to create opportunity
The Class of 1973 will soon have a distinction: the first graduating class to celebrate an endowed Wake Forest Scholarship awarded in its name.
To the leaders of the effort, the fact is curious and surprising. And sort of beside the point. Making an impact is far more important than making history.
“As a member of the class, it will be a real joy going forward to be able to welcome our scholarship recipients throughout the years into the Wake Forest family,” said Costi Kutteh (’73), one of the co-chairs of the committee behind the effort along with his wife, Teresa Kutteh (’73), and Marc (’73, P ’00) and Patricia (’73, P ’00) Meachum. “Teresa and I have learned that one of the joys of lifetime giving is that you sometimes get to see the results of your bounty. You get the joy of a card or a letter or having a piece of chicken with the person you have helped.”
As the Class of 1973’s 50th anniversary celebration weekend began to take shape, Costi Kutteh began thinking about legacy. He asked Wake Forest administrators how his class could join what he presumed was a long line of predecessors and successors in creating an endowed scholarship fund specifically named in honor of the cohort.
He didn’t know his concept lacked precedent. The longtime mayor of Statesville, North Carolina knows how to inspire people around a common goal.
The more he and others bandied the idea around, the more they thought about two different forms of history: their own Wake Forest experience and similar opportunities they could create for others.
The Class of 1973 attended Wake Forest in a remarkable era. The Vietnam War produced protests at home and ultimately wound down weeks after the class graduated.
Closer to home, the University celebrated its first Black Homecoming Queen, Beth Norbrey Hopkins (’73), honored as a winner of the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2023.
Marlou Cooper (’73) became the first woman elected president of Student Government. Maya Angelou visited campus for the first time, initiating a relationship with Wake Forest that would make her a faculty member and a legendary presence from 1980 until her death in 2015.
The first coed dorm on campus opened. The University began to grow its graduate programs, the first step in its advancement toward classification as a research institution and status as a national university. The football team shocked the ACC by winning the conference title in 1970.
But through change, core characteristics remained. As they still do, students knew faculty and faculty knew their students. Patricia Meachum still remembers the thrill of learning she would be taking Romantic Poets with Dr. Ed Wilson (’43), who was still teaching English while serving as Wake Forest’s first provost, or chief academics officer.
“Wake Forest was a special place and still is,” Marc Meachum said. “As a student in the early 1970s, the experience of campus life was just remarkable. The book learning was fine, but the experience of life and the opportunity to know and enjoy people told me this was a small community of really good people.”
The class went into the world at large and made a difference as leaders in education, faith communities, business, medicine, law, government, the military and dozens of other areas. Roughly one of every six earned a second Wake Forest degree. Almost one of every five felt the joy of watching one or more children graduate from Mother, So Dear. One of every 12 married a fellow member of the Class of 1973.
“Wake Forest is a unique experience that every young person should have the opportunity to experience,” Marc Meachum said. “It’s not like any big schools. It’s a family and you’re always part of that family.”
For its next act, the group is working to ensure others can benefit. During Homecoming week, the fund surpassed the $100,000 mark in receipts. Crossing that threshold means the Class of 1973 50th Reunion Scholarship is elibible to be awarded in the Fall 2024 semester.
Organizers consider that a milestone but not an end point, and they intend to keep on going.
“We are at the age, as a 50th reunion class, where we’ve had successes and failures and joys and sorrows in our lives and have thought about what our legacy might be,” Costi Kutteh said. “I just know there are a lot of classmates who, in large part because of their time at Wake Forest, have been propelled into successful careers.
“Now that this is real and not just some pipe dream, I think people could be encouraged – in a nice way – to contribute.”
And there is something else they’ve considered. They have created a template for other classes – particularly those that graduated after 1973 – to emulate.
Which might be a story for another day and another year.