Reflections of the 60th Reunion of the Harvard Krokodiloes

Before the Great Spectacle of the March 2006 60th Krok Reunion, what actually spun things into motion was the arrival in the mail to each of us of an old 33 &1/3 vinyl, created and launched by Jeff Korn ’86 with mirror image Krokodiloes at the center of these Disc Invitations!! I suspect no one has thrown theirs away, including mine which featured Scotch & Soda & The Kingston Trio…

This inspired 4 day Reunion grew out of the 50th glory days Reunion when David Orenstein ’96 was GM, and who first seeded the idea of creating a Board for the undergrad Kroks. Misty-eyed from the fabulous 50th, the Board of about a half dozen local guys was born to try to help in any way they could the undergrad Kroks enter into this new millennium with Jeff Korn ’86 as its first president. We met at a round table in the old Upstairs at the Pudding in its home in the Hasty Pudding Club at 12 Holyoke. Since then, the Board has evolved to have world-wide monthly teleconferencing meetings, with Eliah Seton’04 president for ten years, and Larry Wasserman ’97 equally brilliantly at the helm now in his second year. (In the background working furiously all this time has been Steve Dostart ’86 always keeping us one step ahead in the financials….and now devoting himself equally to archiving Krok history.)

But the Opening Note of the 60th Reunion sounded Thursday night at a Welcome Event when Fred Heller ’54 generously hosted a warm and crowded party at 2 Garden, honoring Friends and Honorary Kroks who traveled from all over, from as far as Australia, Japan and Europe, including Prince Alexander and Princess Gabriella Sayn-Wittgenstein (along with Louis, Alexandra and Stefano of course) who have hosted the Kroks on Tour in Sayn, Germany for 30 years now. The evenings peak moments were Eliah Seton’s ’04 Welcoming Address and Mdm Taeko Matsuda’s ‘acceptance speech’ (with Lina in tow indeed) bringing her sometimes saucy wit and good cheer!!!

On Friday night our beloved Reverend and Honorary Krok Peter Gomes HDiv’68 opened the packed Sanders theater with a lyrical and loquacious love letter to the Kroks filled with his unique mix of wit, warmth and charm, in that unforgettable, instantly recognizable booming, loving baritone voice of the Oxford don he wasn’t!

Quickly thereafter, however, the Kroks of ’06 ignited the concert with their sweet sounds and solos of several vintage undergrads like Rex Baker ’06, Clayton Thomas ’06, and Myles Fisher ’06, along with several younger new Kroks including Frank DeSimone ’09 getting ‘no kick form champagne,’ Matt Christian ’09 who reduced all of us to tears with Mama, and Jon Weigel’s ’09 leap to the stage after hurdling down the corner posts of the Sanders pews (a feat promptly thereafter Banned Forever in Sanders !!)

After having rehearsed all day Friday (and some for days and weeks before,) groups of alums roughly by decades prepared their own mini-concerts trying hard to regain their undergrad voices to try to match the Kroks of ’06 with a sound and fury that brought smiles and cheer to all in attendance. All groups were awesome, but perhaps the prize went to those fabulous mid-80s guys including Steve Dostart, Jeff Korn, Peter Miller ’86, Paul Sagawa ’85, TH Culhane ’85 and others, singing especially the many songs arranged by Peter Mansfield ’76 whose songbook greatly amplified and enhanced the beloved repertoire previously anchored in the Jeff Gutcheon classics. There was no shortage of passion, competition, harmony, and hilarity in this second half of the program!

The evening actually grew to its climax, however, at the over-the-top Afterparty Gala in Annenberg complete with a flowing chocolate fountain, (even while some Kroks were unable to leave the Sanders stage and kept performing the beloved songs of their undergrad days!) This exhilarating and celebratory performance evening, and in fact the entire 60th Reunion, it must be heralded, was primarily the offspring of just two guys, namely Greg Lau ’99 and Tony Salewski ’97 who ended up working way too hard without enough help to make it all happen from the sublime, as noted above, to the ridiculous, including managing the sale of Krok fleece jackets and other memorabilia (to their ultimate lament!) To these to guys all of us remain forever indebted…

It was hard to believe that there could possibly another third night of celebration and revelry, but Saturday night took us back to the old grandeur of the Harvard Club Great Room (and the lovely ghosts of the 50th) where we were especially honored to have alive and present three of our four original founders, Frank Cabot ’49, David Binger ’49 and Arthur Nichols ’48. Frank, the esteemed horticulturalist who has long generously supported the Kroks, spoke in his old-world way of his knowledge of Kroks and Krok history, while David roused the crowd with his sharp and at times bawdy wit and shared his table not only with other Kroks of his era, but also with a couple of Whiff friends of the same vintage as guests. This evening honored individual Kroks from 1946 through 2006, followed by groups of Krok alums rising up spontaneously and sequentially bursting into songs and sentiment of their eras until the very wee small hours….

On Sunday, what was left of those able to attend were riveted and pulverized at the Memorial Service back in Sanders by the memories of those who have left us, all expressed through the words and tears of those who loved them. Frank Cabot presided in his humble, gracious way, steering our emotions, memory by memory until those of us left dissolved in so much gratitude, connection and deep happiness to be a part of such a strong brotherhood of men over time who sing together in joy and bonhomie.

Nunc est Cantandum.
Lynn Weigel ’70

60th Anniversary Concert – The Harvard Crimson