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The 1970 Princeton Theological Seminary commencement looked for the most part like previous graduations.
The ceremony got underway with Bach’s Prelude in B Minor. Faculty and graduates processed into the Princeton University Chapel, and the president of the Board of Trustees gave the invocation.
But there was one small break with tradition.
Several graduates went without robes and instead sported black ribbons on their arms. It was a show of opposition to the Vietnam War, which that year alone claimed the lives of over 6,000 U.S. service members and thousands more Vietnamese troops and civilians.
“There was an awareness of how senseless the war was,” says Jim McCormack, one of the 1970 graduates who engaged in the silent demonstration. “We were killing innocent Vietnamese people, and American soldiers were dying. I was very disturbed by it all.”
McCormack and some of his classmates chose to donate money they would have spent on robe rentals to the Seminary in hopes that the modest sum could be used for student aid.
They never dreamed they were laying the seeds for a fund that would help generations of aspiring clergy and theologians attend Princeton Seminary.
The Class of 1970 Scholarship Endowment Fund has grown over the years to provide financial assistance to approximately 60 seminarians. McCormack says that’s a testament to both the Seminary’s wise stewardship of the original donation, and the generosity of alums.
“Only a handful of people actually responded by not wearing robes,” says McCormack, who is retired after nearly four decades as a pastor in Pennsylvania. “But over the years people have been very generous in supporting the fund. They probably didn’t think about it in terms of opposing the war, but in terms of supporting students.”
Graduates from 1970 remember a divided campus, where draft cards were publicly burned by some students but proudly displayed by others.
“I had great dissonance about that war,” says graduate Stan Wood. “I had friends who were dying in Vietnam, and I had friends who were conscientious objectors.”
For commencement, Wood wore a special pulpit robe that his family had purchased as a graduation gift. But he has long supported the scholarship fund, in part because of the assistance he received himself as a seminarian.
“I give cheerfully in gratitude to God for what I received when I went through Princeton,” says Wood, a consultant, coach, and adjunct professor who leads Sower’s Field, a mission of the Presbyterian Church (USA). “Somebody had thoughtfully provided scholarship money that allowed me to finish Seminary without a huge debt.”
Those who have benefited from the Class of 1970 fund include many successful graduates: senior pastors from congregations around the country as well as university professors and other scholars. One recipient went on to become a mental health counselor specializing in treating addiction.
“Every year I would get a letter from a student giving thanks for the money provided by this fund,” McCormack says. “And that is very humbling and gratifying.”
McCormack says he feels proud of both the fund and of his public antiwar stance at commencement, though he recalls that his parents felt embarrassed when he appeared without a robe.
Another alumnus who did not wear a robe, Brewster (Budge) Gere, who went on to senior pastor roles in Ann Arbor and other locations, also remembers some of the reaction.
“My loving, supportive, proper mother, upon hearing of my decision and the reasoning behind it, said, “Well, dear, I do hope you will wear a subdued tie,’” Gere wrote in an email. “I can report to this day that I was an obedient son — at least in that situation.”
