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The City of Frederick was different in the late 1950s when Suzanne Webster Hoyle was a student at Hood College.

There were no bustling restaurants downtown and no residential developments on Opossumtown Pike. Fort Detrick was on the outskirts of town, U.S. Route 15 was a quiet country road, and Frederick was anything but a growing and diverse community.

"Everything west of Route 15 and north of 7th Street was farmland," said, Hoyle who graduated from Hood College in 1959.

"Frederick was a very German Dutch kind of town," she said.

College life for Hood girls was also different, remembers Hoyle, who will turn 72 in July.

Girls raced horses from the college stables. They went to dances with men from Fort Detrick and swooned after midshipmen from the Naval Academy in Annapolis. The more daring took trips to Thurmont, where they could buy cocktails without getting in trouble.

"You couldn't buy mixed drinks downtown, only beer," said Hoyle, who now lives in Spokane, Wash.

Hoyle was one of 496 Hood alumnae who returned to the downtown Frederick college for its 2009 reunion last weekend. It was designed for Hood alumnae who graduated from the college in five-year increments, starting with the class of 1929. Alumnae came to the reunion from states such as Maine, Connecticut, Washington and Delaware. For them, the event was an opportunity to catch up with old friends and reminisce about their youth.

For many, it brought up memories from a different time — in the 1950s, the Hood campus was still closed to men and Hood girls could get in trouble if they went downtown wearing slacks or shorts.

"You had to wear a skirt," Hoyle said. "You had to be ladylike."

Unlike students today, most girls who attended Hood in the late 1950s did not work while in school, Hoyle said. Hood was still a college for the elite and most students came from upper-class families, she said.

"Most of these girls didn't have to work," she said. "They were having tea parties and cotillions."

Hoyle was an exception. Born and raised in Frederick, she received the new merit-based state senatorial scholarship, which was created to expand the opportunities for middle-class students in Maryland. The scholarship paid for Hoyle's tuition, room and board and was the main reason why Hoyle's parents could send her there to study, Hoyle said.

"They could have taken a loan from the bank, I guess. But college loans were really not that common," said Hoyle, who left Hood with a bachelor's degree in music.

Tarun Johns, who was also in Hoyle's class, said in the late 1950s, girls at Hood followed a different set of rules. They were back at their dorms by 11 p.m., took classes on Saturdays, and had to go to chapel three days a week.

If girls were in trouble, they would receive a note from the dean, handwritten in purple ink.

"If you opened your mail and you saw purple, you knew you were in trouble," Johns said with a smile.

Fifty years later, Johns marveled at the changes at Hood College and in the City of Frederick.

"Frederick has blossomed," said Johns, who came from Maine to attend the reunion.

Over the years, Hood College has also changed, expanding its campus and opening its dorms to male students. But the academic traditions and the close-knit Hood community have remained the same, alumnae said.

Daphne Gabb, a 1984 graduate, came to Hood from Indiana. She knew about the college from her mother — a 1956 Hood College graduate.

Gabb said she was looking for a small school, and Hood seemed to be the perfect fit. Gabb now lives in Walkersville and says Hood helped her create lifelong friendships. She also credits the college for shaping her and her classmates into active citizens, who are not afraid to get involved, volunteer or speak up in the community.

"It just has helped us be a more vocal group of people," she said.

E-mail Margarita Raycheva at mraycheva@gazette.net.