The First HBS Class Notes
The first class notes about HBS alumni were run in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin. But when the first issue of the Bulletin of the Harvard Business School Alumni Association — to give its full title — appeared in January 1925, fifteen years after the first class graduated in 1910, it included a page of staff-written "Personal Items" about alumni, reporting job changes, addresses, and marriages. The first item — "M.B.A. '14—Hugh D. Hite is manager of the Chicago office of Priester, Quail & Cundy, Inc., investment bankers, 29 South La Salle St. He is living at 720 Hinman Ave., Evanston." — is exactly the sort of dry recital of facts that we try to avoid in today's notes. The first class-notes photo, in the August 1926 issue, enlivened the notes in a staid way. It shows a get-together in Chicago of classmates from the Class of 1914 at a meeting of the Associated Harvard Clubs. Mr. Hite, the subject of the first class note, is third from the left. The same issue has lively photos of an impromptu baseball game during an HBS Alumni Association outing in Swampscott, Massachusetts.
Already in the second Bulletin issue, a complaint familiar to current class secretaries began the notes: "Alumni have not cooperated recently in sending in items about themselves; only by the help of graduates can the number of these items be increased." The plaint bore fruit: the fifth issue had seven pages of "Personal Items," and that fact was advertised on the front cover!
From one page in 1925 and one photo in 1926 to today's 450-500 pages and 450-500 photos every issue: Mighty oaks from little acorns grow! For a history of HBS's class notes tracing that growth, see the article written in 1999 for the 75th anniversary issue of the Bulletin at http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/bulletin/1999/december/notes.html.
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Seems a long long time ago!