In the Lagunita dining hall 55 years ago, Ralph Duniway was in charge of a crew of students who served food, filled drinks, and cleared and cleaned dishes. Because of his supervisory role, he admits, “I wasn’t everybody’s favorite guy,” but it hasn’t kept him from staying in touch with his fellow “hashers” ever since. In June, just as they do every year, Duniway, ’46, MS/MBA ’49, and a couple of dozen Lagunita hashers will reunite to share old stories and invent new ones.
For the past 25 years, Sabra Driscoll, ’47, along with her husband, John, ’48 (they met as hashers), have hosted these annual get-togethers in the backyard of their Palo Alto home. People come from all over— “Connecticut, Iowa, coast-to-coast”—says Sabra, the group’s unofficial historian.
The tradition began soon after World War II when friends from the Lagunita group held informal summer outings on the beach near Half Moon Bay. As the participants aged and their children grew up, the beach lost its appeal, but by then the event had codified into an annual affair.
The durability of the relationships may seem extraordinary, but Duniway says it is a natural outgrowth of the tight bonds—including a few romances—the hashers developed while working together at Stanford. “That affiliation was stronger than our housing affiliation or our academic affiliation,” he says. “That’s the group we identified with the most.”
