TCU's 450-year-old alumni class
The class of 1959, who received misprinted diplomas with the year 1559, return for reunion, Commencement ceremony 50 years later
by Jessie Milligan
Graduates of the class of 1959 received misprinted diplomas that read: "….on this third day of June A.D. 1559."
If you believe the diploma, they graduated from TCU 450 years ago at the dawn of the Elizabethan era.
You wouldn’t have guessed it when 68 alumni and their spouses gathered for reunion ceremonies on Friday.
“To everybody in the class of 1559, you look great,” TCU Chancellor Victor Boschini Jr. told the 50-year-reunion group gathered for a lunch at the Dee J. Kelly Alumni and Visitors Center.
He was referring to a misprint that happened on some of the diplomas handed to the 1959 graduating class. Those diplomas read: “….on this third day of June A.D. 1559.”
Oops.
Make that 1959 for the class that danced to the Ink Spots and Les Brown’s Band of Renown, the class that saw Marilyn Bunny “World Champion Yo-Yoist” perform tricks on the hot toy of that decade, the yo-yo.
It was nothing like the Elizabethan age, graduates said.
Most of them who received the misprinted diplomas – and not all diplomas had the wrong year– are still laughing.
Paul Youngdale ’59 hung his 1559 diploma signed by TCU President M.E. Sadler on his office wall when he was a young lawyer in Austin.
“I didn’t realize TCU was that old,” a client told him. “That makes TCU older than the Sorbonne, doesn’t it?” (Not quite. That university in Paris started in the medieval 13th century.)
Joanne Lott found a frame with a double opening and put in both of her husband Jorge Lott’s diplomas, including the one with the correct date that TCU later mailed to graduates as a replacement.
Not everyone displayed their diploma with the misprint.
“I taught art at Trinity Valley School,” said Marihelen Miller Hickey’59 who saved hers but only framed the real one that followed in the mail. “I am pretty sure the kids would have thought that 1559 was the right year.”
Liz Creson Sisco ’59 of Rochester, Minn., loved her misprinted diploma.
“I thought it was cool. My father was terribly upset. He was on the phone calling the administrator’s office. He thought it meant I hadn’t really graduated.”
Three alumni from the Class of 1959 brought their 1559 diplomas to the reunion.
Jan Sherley Miller of Anna, north of McKinney, Texas, had hers.
"I thought it was hysterical,” she said.
Her aunt Lorraine Sherley '23 taught English at TCU for years.
“She loved the Elizabethan era. She lived in it,” said Miller, who, it should be noted, did not go to school at TCU during the reign of Elizabeth I, but far later, in the post-war years, with the great class of 1959.
Recent fund raising by the class has been highly successful, with a 50 percent rate of participation, Chancellor Boschini said.
Whether you think of them as the Class of 1959 or the Class of 1559, the group of alums was able to present the university with a check for $6.5 million at the reunion lunch Friday.
