“It’s the first event of the weekend that gets people together, and that’s what it’s all about, making contacts with those you knew and didn’t know,” Chris Winner ’79 said at this year’s bash, where the software development vice president from Castaic, Calif., clustered with classmates to begin 25th-year reunion festivities. Sidekick Edward Traub ’79, a marketing executive from Potomac, Md., unabashedly confessed to filling his plate three or four times with mounds of steamed clams, steamed shrimp, fresh corn on the cob and other delights.

True, people come to see their friends, admitted Keith Martin, director of dining services. “But the food is the icing on the cake.”

And what an icing. About 425 alums each year run through 3,500 littleneck clams alone. And let’s not forget the broiled portobello mushrooms and peppers with cherry tomato relish and those hunky desserts.

Executive Chef Jack O’Donnell is the guy behind the recipes, which include what Martin calls “a crab bisque to die for. It’s crab and heavy cream. How can it get much better?”

“Yes, it is full-bodied,” said O’Donnell. Like all the soups served on campus the bisque is made from scratch. But it’s only prepared for the Clambake.

Due to rainy weather the event was held this year in the dining hall, which didn’t have the usual ambiance of tent-side dining on Morgan Field. But to Kevin Hess ’69, the setting was no impediment.

“The event is wonderful for its informality—good food and drink and no expectation beyond having a good time. It works, even inside the dining hall,” Hess, a Cumberland County Court of Common Pleas judge, said as he made the rounds at his 35th-year reunion.

Cindy Murphy ’76, also of Carlisle, has been a perennial attendee since the late 1980s. Murphy, exhibits manager for the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, said, “Of all the alumni events we always make sure we go to the Clambake. When it’s outside it’s a really relaxing evening. I liked it when they used to have a jazz band. People would stay and socialize and listen to music.”

While Murphy goes for the chance to see friends of her era this one time each year, her husband, Dave Zug, a psychologist at the Dauphin County Prison, goes for the food—in particular the steamed clams and charcoaled beef flank steak au jus—and the open bar, she said. Daughter Gretchen, 5, also looks forward to the event. “She especially loves the music; she’s dancing all night long.”

If you ask William Boucher ’79’s opinion, though, the clams are not the icing on his cake.

“They are wee clams,” the CPA from Browns-ville, Pa., pointed out. “So it’s not about the Clambake. You could serve hotdogs. It’s really about the people not the food.”