This page was created by Carrie Pirmann. The last update was by Aung Pyae Phyo.
How the Weekends Started
The Burma-Bucknell Weekends started from her and Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Rickard’s suggestion: Bucknellians could invite Burmese students from colleges nearby and diplomats from the Burmese embassy for a Weekend at Bucknell to celebrate the annual scholarship and get to know one another. Following this suggestion, Forrest D. Brown, the General Secretary of the Christian Association at the time, organized a Weekend with talks, a trip to nearby farms, and a dinner party held at the Lewisburg Inn. The Judson scholarship was also formally established at the dinner party that Saturday, with a budget of $500 annually.
Records also show that a film of the Burmese New Year celebrations were shown during the Weekend.
Students were found and contacted with the help of Helen Hunt, the Burmese Embassy, the Department of State, and the Baptist Foreign Mission Board. From their efforts, sixteen Burmese students arrived to take part in the first Burma-Bucknell Weekend, many of them acquainted with Helen Hunt through Judson College.
According to letters from attendees, the first Weekend was very much a success. The following celebration was planned for the fall semester of 1949. Helen Hunt was able to attend that celebration and in the following years kept in touch with Forrest Brown, relaying information about the students who were beneficiaries of the Judson Scholarship. The Weekends gained momentum, each one being more successful than the year before and receiving more visitors each time.
In subsequent years, faculty from the University of Rangoon and other institutions of higher education in Burma came to the Burma-Bucknell Weekends. Next came the representatives of the Voice of America’s Burma Desk in 1952, and in the following year, representatives from the U.N. Delegation and the Burmese Embassy started attending the Weekends.
What started as a small get-together quickly became an international affair.
