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The following story is included in PAW’s 2010 Reunions Guide, available on campus May 27.

As an early riser and avid runner, Catherine Patrick Sullivan ’85 noticed that quite a few alumni found time for a Saturday morning run at Reunions. So when her class began looking for a project that it could launch at its 25th reunion, Sullivan suggested bringing those individual joggers together in a community event: the new 5-kilometer Princeton University Reunions Run, or PURR, at the West Windsor fields.

Designed to be a recreational event, the Reunions run begins Saturday morning, May 29, at 8:30 a.m. and follows the same course that Princeton’s cross country teams use to train and compete. “It’s a chance to catch up with people and do something that you feel good about,” said Maria Carreras Kourepenos ’85, Sullivan’s co-chairwoman.

Interested runners can register online at www.purr85.org.

The following class-by-class plans for this year’s major reunions were compiled by Madeleine Bruml ’11 for PAW’s 2010 Reunions Guide. Photos by T. Kevin Birch.

Class of 1945

Friday’s class dinner will take place at the Present Day Club, preceded by the class photo at 5:45 p.m. Entertainment after dinner will feature classmate Rocky King, the Nassoons, and a slide show of old reunion photos. Saturday’s activities include lunch in the tent and the P-rade for classmates and families. Dinner in the tent will be preceded and followed by the piano playing of Bob Egan, featuring songs of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. Sunday brunch will be in the Forbes dining room.

Class of 1950

The Class of 1950 is celebrating its 60th, beginning with a Thursday-night dinner at Frist Campus Center, featuring the Patty Cronheim Ensemble. On Friday, a lunch at Prospect House will honor Professor David Billington ’50’s 50 years of service at the University. The Royal Palm Steel Band will play at dinner. Before Saturday’s P-rade, class members and guests will meet for lunch at Rockefeller College with music by the Ancient Order of Hibernians Pipe Band. Saturday-night dinner features the Bobby Mansure Ensemble, followed by the University Orchestra concert and the annual fireworks display.

Class of 1955

The 55th reunion begins Thursday with a tour of the Trenton and Princeton battlefields, led by emeritus professor James McPherson. That evening, Princeton Project 55, founded by members of the Class of 1955, will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a gala at the Westin Princeton at Forrestal Village, featuring keynote speaker Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, N.J. At headquarters, Jerry Rife and his Dixieland band will perform. Friday starts with a panel discussion on “The Tectonic and Cyclonic Economic Events Since the 50th Reunion.” Later, there is a reception at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, followed by dinner at headquarters and a performance by the class’s own Stan Rubin and his all-star jazz band. The Saturday reception will be held in the Lewis Science Library, with Peter Lewis ’55 serving as the class’s guide.

President Barack Obama meets with Solicitor General Elena Kagan in the Oval Office last month. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama nominated U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan ’81 for a seat on the Supreme Court May 10. Kagan, a New York native and history major at Princeton, clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall and was the first woman to be dean of Harvard Law School before she joined the Obama administration last year. If confirmed, Kagan will join Samuel Alito ’72 and Sonia Sotomayor ’76 on the high court. Princeton has produced 11 Supreme Court justices, but three alumni have never served on the court at the same time. Three alumni — Smith Thompson 1788, Peter V. Daniel 1805, and James Moore Wayne 1808 — briefly served together on the court in 1842.

Kagan appeared in PAW’s alumni spotlight in 2003, after she was named dean of Harvard Law, and was profiled in a 2007 PAW feature story. But her first appearance in the magazine came as an undergraduate (below), when she was named the Sachs scholar in January 1981.

With Reunions 2010 just four weeks away, we present below an archival gem: footage of Reunions in 1927 and 1928, courtesy of the University Archives and the Princeton Campus Life YouTube channel. The original 16-millimeter version was filmed by George Linkletter, Class of 1902.

The 1927 celebration was Linkletter’s 25th reunion, and according to PAW, 143 of the 1902’s 274 graduates attended, including one who traveled from his home in Egypt. About 3,000 alumni marched in the P-rade, then known as the Commencement Parade.

(Photo from PAW, July 14, 1927)

With a 98-0 vote, the U.S. Senate confirmed Denny Chin ’75 as a justice on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit April 22. [New York Times]

Oregon State basketball coach Craig Robinson ’83, the brother of Michelle Obama ’85, discussed his new book, A Game of Character, with Stephen Colbert. [Colbert Report]

Jennifer Weiner ’91 is touring with fellow authors Amy Tan, Dave Barry, Mitch Albom, and others in a series of charity concerts by the Rock Bottom Remainders. [Wall Street Journal]

Former Princeton soccer coach Bob Bradley ’80 will be back on campus May 17-23 to coach the U.S. men’s national team as it trains for the 2010 World Cup. The practices, to be held at Roberts Stadium, will not be open to the public. [ESPN]

When Alycia Zimmerman ’04’s third-grade class at P.S. 33, Chelsea Prep, in New York City began researching Princeton for a school project, she saw that her students had quite an appetite for all things orange and black, from videos and photos to facts and figures about the University. For their final presentation, titled “Princeton’s Secrets Revealed,” each student provided answers to one “mystery” that they encountered. (For example, “How do 70 miles of bookshelves fit in Firestone Library?”).

Zimmerman, in her fourth year as a New York City Teaching Fellow, said that her class is “pretty extraordinary,” and it showed in their presentation at Chelsea Prep’s College Fair in March. A field trip to Princeton, she thought, would be a great way to cap the project. Funding through her school was not available, so she tried using the Web site DonorsChoose.org to raise about $400 for group-rate train tickets on New Jersey Transit.

For a few weeks, the project drew no interest. But when Zimmerman explained the trip in a message to an alumni listserv in early April, the response was immediate. She posted her note (“Send 3rd Graders to Princeton Please”) on a Tuesday night, and when she woke up Wednesday morning, the entire project had been funded by alumni donors.

By Katherine Federici Greenwood

In February and March, three alumni playwrights — Lia Romeo ’03, Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins ’06, and Najla Said ’96 — premiered new works that touched on subjects ranging from love to minstrel performers and personal identity. Below are snapshots of the plays and their creators.

Lia Romeo ’03’s latest play, “Green Whales,” premiered in March at the Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City, Mo. She has called it a “romantic comedy about pedophilia and alcoholism and death” in which she explores the idea that “whatever issues each of us has, there’s someone out there who will still want to love us … but … this love will not necessarily be enough to redeem us.” Romeo, who earned an MFA in playwriting from Rutgers University, was the playwright-in-residence at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey for the 2008-09 season. She’s currently working on her first novel, titled Dating the Devil.

Green Whales: In the opening scene of the play, two sisters, Karen and Joanna, are returning from their mother’s funeral. A love story centers on Karen, a brilliant but dateless 38-year-old philosophy professor who suffers from Turner syndrome — a genetic disorder that makes her look like a teenager. Her wacky alcoholic sister, Joanna, comes up with a plan to find Karen’s “perfect” match — a man with pedophiliac tendencies — while navigating her own tenuous relationship.

A New York Times profile of billionaire financier Carl Icahn ’57 asks “Does Icahn still make them tremble?” [New York Times]

Reviewer Douglas Brinkley calls David Remnick ’81’s new biography, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, a “flawlessly written” exploration of the president. [Los Angeles Times]

Sophie LaMontagne ’00, co-owner of the popular D.C. bakery Georgetown Cupcake, will soon co-star in a TLC reality show, Cupcake Sisters. [Politico]

This photograph of Lima at night is one of eight images in a solo exhibition of Carlos Jiménez Cahua ’08’s latest work on exhibit in the James S. Hall ’34 Memorial Gallery at Butler College through April 9.

In this series of photographs, titled Ciudad de los Reyes, Jiménez Cahua explores Peruvians’ relationship to their landscape. The people of Lima “don’t sculpt the land,” he wrote in a statement on his Web site. “The earth remains visible if not nearly unaltered despite their development. … The people of Lima quite literally merely scratch the surface — their relationship to the ground is not one of dominance, but of acquiescence.”

A native of Peru, Jiménez Cahua had his first solo exhibit in New York last summer at Anastasia Photo gallery space. It featured images of towns springing up in and around Lima’s desert landscape.

Alumni Day honorees Gen. David Petraeus *85 *87, Connor Diemand-Yauman ’10, and former Rep. James Leach ’64 posed for this photo at Jadwin Gym after Diemand-Yauman, the Pyne Honor Prize winner, joked with the general about his push-up prowess. “We actually ended up doing only one,” Diemand-Yauman said in an e-mail to PAW. “We didn’t want to push the congressman.” Petraeus is well known for his stamina, and Leach is no stranger to fitness: He was a standout 147-pound wrestler as an undergraduate.

(Photo by Sameer Khan/Courtesy of the Princeton Alumni Association)

By Katy Pinke ’10

Professor David P. Billington ’50, who recently took emeritus status after 50 years of teaching civil and environmental engineering at Princeton, gave a Feb. 20 Alumni Day talk that explored “engineering in politics and history, and engineering as art.”

Billington’s lecture centered on a discussion of structures. “The study of structural engineering is different — but parallel to — the study of architecture,” he explained. As is the case with architecture, “history, politics, and art become integral lenses through which we must look at engineering.”

Billington’s personal views reinforce this interdisciplinary approach. “I see structures as art forms,” he explained, “[and] in the beginning of my career, there was no particular literature for this kind of idea. The teaching of a new idea requires new scholarship, much of which was created at Princeton.” Billington has authored several books using this aesthetically and socially driven approach to structures.

Big day for ’64

On Alumni Day Feb. 20, former Rep. James Leach ’64 received the Woodrow Wilson Award, the highest honor conferred on Princeton undergraduate alumni. But Leach wasn’t the only ’64 honoree: James Madison Medalist Gen. David Petraeus *85 *87 noted that he is an honorary member of the class. He was inducted at Reunions last May, the morning before he delivered the Baccalaureate address for the Class of 2009. Petraeus even brought his orange-and-black plaid ’64 blazer back to campus — though he confessed he had not yet found an occasion to wear it.

Heard on campus

(Photo by Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications)

“The truth is that the surge of ideas was even more important than the surge of forces, though clearly, the increase in forces enabled us to implement the new ideas.”

— Gen. David Petraeus *85 *87, commander of U.S. Central Command, explaining the importance of “big ideas” in the success of the 2007 U.S. troop surge in Iraq.

(Photo by Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications)

“If 400,000 American soldiers sacrificed their lives to defeat fascism, if tens of thousands gave their lives to hold communists at bay, and if we fought a Civil War to preserve the union, isn’t it a citizen’s obligation to apply perspective to incendiary remarks that once summoned citizens to war? … Asserting that someone who prefers another approach or is a member of a different political party is an advocate of an -ism of hate that encompasses Gulags and concentration camps is out of bounds.”

— James Leach ’64, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, on hyperbolic political rhetoric that includes labeling opponents “fascist” or “communist” and raising the threat of secession.