The NPHS Reunion Interview: Beverly Gaston Kochard, Class of 1969

Beverly in the office at Allentown College in 1975
where she worked as the first director of the school's college union.

Describe your career.

My undergraduate college years were spent at Moravian College, which was absolutely the right choice for me.  While I’d been involved in out-of-class activities at NPHS, I took it to a whole new level in college and loved every minute.  Somewhere along the way, it dawned on me that I could make this a career.  And that’s basically what I did.  

With the ink still drying on my BA in English, I was hired by Allentown College (now DeSales University) as the first director of their college union.  I served in that capacity for seven years and completed graduate work at Lehigh University, after which I moved on to a sequence of administrative positions elsewhere.   The last 22 years of my 39-year career in higher education were spent as Vice President for Student Affairs at Moravian, and I retired as VP Emerita in 2012.   It was truly an exhilarating ride. 

Where do you live now?  Where have you lived since graduating?

For years, my mother told people that I “went to Pennsylvania to go to college and never came home.”  That’s not really true, and yet maybe it is in that I fell in love with the culture of eastern Pennsylvania and all it has to offer.  My husband, Dale, and I met when we were seniors at Lehigh and Moravian, respectively.  We married in 1974 and have lived in Pennsylvania our entire married life.  Sharing a passion for history, heritage, and antiques, we bought a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in Upper Macungie (near Allentown) in 1990 and have been restoring it ever since.  I doubt we’ll ever be done.

What was your sense of community in your class/in the school at NPHS?

Our class, like most classes, was comprised of groups, but I seem to remember them as being somewhat amorphous in nature, with people moving in and out in accordance with changing interests, activities, goals, and priorities.   As young people do, we passed judgment too quickly at times and missed the chance to develop relationships with others who had so much to offer…and so much to teach us along the way.

Hopefully, we’ve all grown more appreciative of the differences that once separated us.  I’d like to think that, as we approach our 50^th well aware that some classmates are no longer with us, we now see ourselves as one group…one very special club comprised of those who went on a journey together and came out on the other side.

What experiences in high school, positive or negative, helped to shape you as a person?

It was more the composite picture that shaped me as a person…the sum of experiences that I had at NPHS.  Looking back, those years strike me as a time of collecting developmental puzzle pieces that ultimately fell into place over the years. 

Do you have any regrets about your experiences in your high school years?

I think perhaps I stayed too much within my comfort zone… really didn’t take advantage of a time that’s so full of opportunities for personal discovery and growth.

Now, 50 years later, has your perspective on your high school years changed at all?  If so, how?

I’m not sure my perspective has changed, but the specifics have certainly faded.  It’s hard to call it all back into focus 50 years later.

What is your fondest memory of your years at NPHS?

For me, it’s a collective remembrance of the relationships and of the particular people who were such an important part of my life at that time.  I had a lot of friends but probably spent the most time with Christina Soler, with whom I still maintain contact, and Tracy Sylvester, who passed away in 1998.

What was the craziest or stupidest thing you did in high school?

Now, see…this is where it’s helpful to have diminished recall – or selective recall! – in terms of 50-year-old memories.  Let’s just say that I definitely ate way too many onion rings at Opdyke’s on Rt. 22.

What was your proudest accomplishment in high school?

It was being honored by the American Association of University Women and presented with a scholarship during the awards ceremony at the end of our senior year.  I remember filing into the gym and catching a glimpse of my parents off to the side.  That told me something was up, but I had no idea what until my name was called.

Who was your favorite teacher?

Miss O’Brien and Mr. McKenna top the list.   Marie O’Brien’s English classes convinced me that effective writing skills provide a strong foundation for just about any career path, including the one that I ultimately traveled in higher education.  And Dick McKenna’s biology classes ignited a personal interest in genetics that morphed into an all-too-time-consuming pastime of researching my ancestry.

What was your worst class?

That’s an easy one:  chemistry.  I struggled with it in high school and again in college.  PE probably comes in at second place.   In high school, it seemed like I was not good at anything vaguely athletic, which is why I tended to cringe in gym class when Nancy Schuman would yell “Ladybugs!  Hustle your bustles!”  But then Jane Fonda came along, and I learned about exercise one can do in the basement.  Years later, totally hooked on aerobics and Pilates, I find myself thinking how amazed Nancy Schuman would be at this transformation.

What is your most powerful or haunting memory during your years at NPHS?

I recall the moment we learned of JFK’s assassination, of course, and the sadness when a classmate’s brother lost his life in Vietnam, but for me the most haunting memory is probably Bob Gardner’s death in a car accident during our senior year.  We thought we were immortal.  That was a tragic wake-up call for us all.

How did growing up as a child of the 60’s – and all the social baggage and impact that it may have entailed – impact you at the time and in your young adult years?

In retrospect, I was somewhat embarrassingly oblivious to what was going on in the world in terms of social change, political upheaval, and civil rights until I got to college.  Then the blinders came off.  It was impossible to be on a college campus in the early 70s and not sense the societal seismic shift going on all around us. 

My most vivid memories have to do with the Vietnam war.  One is of huddling with classmates in the college union lounge with eyes glued to the TV as numbers were drawn in the draft lottery to see who would and who would not be called to serve; I can still feel the anguish so palpable in that room.  A second is of struggling to decide whether to abandon my spring semester classes and go on strike with many of my classmates out of principle or continue to go to the classes for which my parents had paid a sizable sum.  And a third is of agonizing over the state of our society when Kent State happened. 

During the 1970s, University of Colorado professor Morris Massey produced an insightful video called “What You Are Is Where You Were When.”  The premise, in part anyway, is that members of a generation are shaped by particular defining moments in history that occurred during their growing-up years… most notably during their teenage years.

Just as our parents were majorly impacted by World War II, we bear the imprint of all that occurred during the late 6os and early 70s.  I think growing up when we did pushed us to be more questioning and contemplative.  It challenged us to be more self-aware.  And, hopefully, it made us more compassionate. 

Beverly Gaston Kochard in 2018 at Kiawah Island, SC.