Bellbottoms, rock ’n’ roll and Watergate — get to know the UF class of 1973, 50 years after graduation.

The University of Florida was a Stairway to Heaven in the early ’70s when this year’s Grand Guard inductees attended UF, steps to something bigger in their lives. Historians call the decade a “pivot of change” and turbulence. Women’s equality and gay rights and the silent majority. The Vietnam War and the Cold War. The Munich Olympics. The oil crisis. Moon landings and Skylab. Microwave ovens, environmentalism, the sexual revolution. The end of the Beatles and Richard Nixon.

Gators enrolled on campus at the time were witnesses to it all. Here are a handful of their memories, along with photos from this year’s Grand Guard reunion that took place in November.

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“Somebody mentioned football games, and men wearing coats and ties and women wearing dresses. Don’t forget, we were also wearing stockings and high heels and trudging to those games in 90-degree heat. We sat in the stadium with all the bleachers that ripped up your stockings.”
— Adrienne Garcia (MED ’70, EDS ’71, EDD ’78)

“Coming from a small town, the atmosphere here was tough. I got my degree in chemical engineering, and in all my classes except one, I was the only Black person. Having the Black Student Union here, that fellowship, really helped my journey. After I graduated, it took me a while to become a real diehard Gator because of some of my experiences. But I thought about it one day, and I said, ‘You know what? It was a real blessing to come here and go through all the changes and get the education I received.’”
— Brownell Barnard (BS ’73)

“Another great Florida legend was Robert Cade. Everyone knows him as the inventor of Gatorade, but he was also a pretty good violin and viola player. I was playing string bass in the Symphony Orchestra and in the row in front of me was Dr. Cade. During intermission he had a vat of early Gatorade there for the orchestra to make sure we were ready for the second hour. I remember him saying, ‘I work in a wee-wee lab.’”
— Rob Hyatt (BA ’73, MED ’82, EDS ’89)

“Back in 1971, Don Middlebrooks ran for student body president. Of course, he’s gone on to bigger and better things. But I had a friend who decided to run against Middlebrooks, and he thought it would be interesting to have a female vice president, so he asked me to be his running mate. We didn’t realize until there was a headline in the Gainesville Sun that I was the first woman to run for an office higher than secretary or treasurer. We didn’t win, but the next year a woman did win.”
— Ruth Whitman Gordon (BA ’72)

“I was managing editor of the Florida Alligator, and I was on staff when we printed the abortion referral information. Our era was a big time for women. When I was getting ready to come to Florida in the fall of ’69, I came to campus with my Villager skirts and loafers, and the dress code turned out to be cutoff shorts and halter tops. We came a long way. There were a lot of firsts for women.”
— Marianne Messina Hoffman (BS ’73)

“How many of you remember those folks that used to gather at the corner of University Avenue and 13th Street all dressed up in orange and chanting: the Hare Krishnas? I found out yesterday they still do that.”
— Jim Downing (BS ’73, MA ’75)

Check out more photos from this year’s Grand Guard reunion below.