Returning to campus this week for Reunion Weekend, Jerry Alpern will celebrate the 60th anniversary of his Class of 1949 graduation -- and seven decades of ILR School memories.

Events during Alpern's teens led him to a lifetime of involvement with a school that didn't yet exist. His father, critically injured in a car accident, was in a Boston hospital. Alpern's mother was at his side there during a long recovery. Jerry, at home, started to flounder academically at Stuyvesant High School in New York.

His brother, Daniel Alpern, a student in Cornell's College of Engineering, told his mother, "Send him up here. We'll watch him."

Jerry enrolled at the Cascadilla School, a private school in Ithaca. There, he jokes, "I was valedictorian, voted most likely to succeed and most likely to fail." He was the only person to graduate in January 1945 from Cascadilla.

By year's end, Daniel was in the U.S. Navy in Korea, and ILR had opened its doors.

In January 1946, Daniel wrote the fledgling school's admissions director to inquire about transferring to ILR when he resumed his education at Cornell. Four weeks later, Daniel drowned. ILR, Jerry said, "helped me get through that grieving period. They were so supportive."

Alpern went on to graduate from ILR, marry his college sweetheart, Enid Marjorie Levine, HumEc '47, and earn a Cornell MBA before going into business with his father. A resident of Englewood, N.J., Alpern continues to work as a business and financial consultant.

"I always felt I had a debt to the school and felt I should be active," said Alpern, who has served in numerous ILR School and Cornell volunteer leadership positions over the years.

In recognition of Alpern's dedication to ILR, the school established the Jerome Alpern Award in 1997, given annually to a professional who provides service and support to ILR and whose career achievements are outside industrial and labor relations. In 2001, the university also honored Alpern with the Frank H.T. Rhodes Exemplary Alumni Service Award.

In Daniel's memory, Alpern's parents established ILR's first scholarship in 1946. In 1947, they established the Daniel Alpern Prize, awarded annually to two seniors. More than 500 students have benefitted from the scholarship and prize.

Mary Catt is a staff writer for the ILR School.