Hollins University Alumnae Magazine, Summer 2020 Issue

SUMMER 2020

UNPRECEDENTED:

Shared stories

from a spring in quarantine

14 23

72

24

26

Hollins Hollins Magazine Vol. 71, No. 1 July - September 2020 GUEST EDITOR Jean Holzinger M.A.L.S. ’11 EDITOR Billy Faires, executive director of marketing and communications

Content s 2

The Sound of a Hopeful Community

By President Mary Dana Hinton

14

“It Feels Like There’s No Closure” Shared stories from a spring in quarantine

By Beth JoJack ’98

23

At the Center of Experience and Education

ADVISORY BOARD Interim President Nancy Oliver Gray, Vice President for External Relations Suzy Mink ’74, Director of Alumnae Relations Lauren Sells Walker ’04, Director of Public Relations Jeff Hodges M.A.L.S. ’11

24

Hollins and the 19th Amendment

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Ann Atkins Hackworth ’82, M.A.L.S. ’95; Mary Ann Harvey Johnson ’67, M.A. ’71; Lucy Lee M.A.L.S. ’85, C.A.S. ’03; Linda Martin; Brenda McDaniel HON ’12; Sharon Meador; Kathy Rucker; Karizona “Rory” Sanson ’19

26

CLASS LETTERS EDITORS Olivia Body ’08, Leah Abraham

72

DESIGNERS Sarah Sprigings, David Hodge Anstey Hodge Advertising Group, Roanoke, VA PRINTER Progress Printing, Lynchburg, VA Hollins (USPS 247/440) is published quarterly by Hollins University, Roanoke, VA 24020. Entered as Periodicals Postage Paid at Roanoke, VA. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Hollins, Hollins University, Box 9688, Roanoke, VA 24020 or call (800) TINKER1.

University archives contain clues to what students were thinking about women’s rights, including the right to vote, in the decades preceding the passage of the 19th amendment.

By Jean Holzinger M.A.L.S. ’11

How One Librarian Tried to Squash Goodnight Moon There’s a reason this classic is missing from the New York Public Library’s list of the 10 most-checked-out books of all time. By Dan Kois

Robert Sulkin: Photographs 1973—2019

D E P A R T M E N T S 3

In the Loop

12

Focus on Philanthropy

30

Class Letters

The articles and class letters in Hollins do not necessarily represent the official policies of Hollins University, nor are they always the opinions of the editor. Hollins University does not discriminate in admission because of sexual orientation, race, color, national or ethnic origin, disability, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, age, political beliefs, religion, and/or pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, and maintains a nondiscriminatory policy throughout its operation. For more information, contact Melissa Hine, assistant dean of students for education/Title IX coordinator, (540) 362-6069 or hinemd@hollins.edu. Questions, comments, corrections, or story ideas may be sent to: Magazine Editor Hollins University Box 9657 Roanoke, VA 24020 magazine@hollins.edu

WWW

Visit the online version of Hollins magazine at hollins.edu/magazine.

Cover photo: Kayla Deur McKinney ’16, senior admission counselor.

Photo by Karizona “Rory” Sanson ’19, multimedia specialist.

FROM THE

President

The Sound of a Hopeful Community

T

BY PRESIDENT MARY DANA HINTON

“Will the story that moves us forward be one of courage?”

2 Hollins

he beauty of Hollins beckons to me as I walk across campus on a July afternoon.

I remain awed by the landscape, in part because of its unrelenting beauty and in part because it remains a new experience for my senses. I have not been able to spend much time on campus, and the newness of the sights and smells, the lovely surroundings, still call to me.

The beauty of the scene is matched only by the depth of the silence. This, too, is new for me. On my first official visit to Hollins in February, the campus was filled with the voices, laughter, questions, shrieks, and joyful tears of the students we are privileged to serve.

When I think of Hollins, that’s the sound that comes to my mind: the sound of a hopeful community. Today, the silence is unnerving. It is as if the beautiful campus mourns the absence of the beating hearts of our students.

As I walk past Front Quad, I am reminded that as a steward of the campus, my job is both to highlight the beauty and to find and illuminate the many stories that dwell within the silence. While our students are not physically present, they, like our over 14,000 alumnae/i, are out in the world sharing the lessons and values learned at Hollins as they lead in this challenging moment.

In the silence, I think through the many stories our students bring with them to campus and how those stories make Hollins new each day and each year. Whether a student is a fifthgeneration legacy or the first in their family to go to college, Hollins students

bring with them stories they entrust to us and, in turn, Hollins has the meaningful opportunity to gently nurture, illuminate, and inform those stories as we live into our mission.

Hollins is a living epic poem. It is a space where stories are created, shared, and held dear. Hollins is a place where voices that have long been silent feel empowered to tell stories that need or deserve to be heard. At the heart of every Hollins story is the power of connection—to others, and to this place.

The silence reminds me that the need for connection to and between our students, faculty, staff, and alumnae/i, and the power of their stories, especially when we are apart, is undeniable.

Hollins has persevered through many difficult moments, and written many stories, in its history. We must address those stories, both those that bring us glory and those that bring us pain. We must learn from our collective story even as we are writing a new one. The question before us today, the question this edition of the magazine will explore, is: what story will we tell as we emerge from this moment?

Will the story that moves us forward be one of courage? One of inclusion?

One of the freedom brought forth through the liberal arts? One of hope?

In the years to come, I look forward to sharing my story with you, and to collaborating with you as we write the chapters of these coming years and weave them into this centuries-old tale.

Until then, know that I will be listening to and for your story in the beauty and in the silence of our beloved Hollins.

Mary Dana Hinton became Hollins’ 13th president on August 1, 2020.

IN THE

Loop Training young artists of the future Raymond Rodriguez M.F.A. ’18 named director of Joffrey Academy of Dance Cheryl Mann

E

arly last October, Raymond Rodriguez received good news: He was named director of the Joffrey Academy of Dance in Chicago. In this new role, he explained, “I work as a thought leader and direct strategic planning for the academy, which is the official school of the Joffrey Ballet. I represent the academy internally and externally in areas of dance training, program partnerships, philanthropic outreach, and arts advocacy.”

That’s a long list—but one for which Rodriguez has been training most of his life. A dancer since the age of six, starting in his native New York City, he attended the High School of the Performing Arts in Manhattan and trained at the American Ballet Theatre School on a full scholarship. In 1981, he joined the Cleveland Ballet as a principal dancer, and proceeded to work his way through several roles—as a dancer and then administrator—including those of associate artistic director and managing director.

In 2016, he joined the Joffrey Ballet as the head of the studio company and trainee program.

As a principal dancer, Rodriguez had roles that included Albrecht in Giselle; Romeo in Romeo and Juliet; the Peruvian in Léonide Massine’s Gâité Parisienne; the Profiteer in Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table; Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake; principal roles in George Balanchine’s Who Cares?, Tarantella, Serenade, Agon, The Four Temperaments, Rubies, and Theme and Variations; the Champion Roper in Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo; Don Jose in Roland Petit’s Carmen; and many other roles created for him. He shared the stage on international tours with such legends as Rudolf Nureyev and Cynthia Gregory.

Rodriguez was drawn to Hollins’ program in dance, he said, “through a desire to continue my education. Hollins opened my eyes to the limitless possibilities that are in front of me, giving me the tools to communicate the knowledge I possess to the young artists of tomorrow.”

Growing into a leadership role Kayla Surles ’22 sets the pace for HU basketball

S

ome game-changers can affect more than the outcome on a scoreboard.

Some can change the trajectory of a season or even a program. That person for Hollins? Kayla Surles ’22.

A dedicated student in only her second year at Hollins, Surles served as the point guard for a basketball team that came within a few buckets of tying a Hollins record for team victories. The team settled for a secondbest-ever 11 wins. In the last two years of ODAC competition play, Surles has led Hollins basketball in wins against multiple top-five teams, including the number-one team in the league each year.

Not only did Surles lead her team in both points per game (16.6) and assists (4.4), but she ranked second in the ODAC in points and first in assists.

For her efforts this past season, she was selected as Second Team AllODAC—the only sophomore selected on first or second team.

“Having the league’s best point guard walking onto the court for us every game gave us so much confidence this year,” said Emilee Dunton, Hollins’ head coach. “We knew she would and could put this team on her back as a great floor general.”

Surles and her sister Keenan (who is two minutes younger, Kayla would like you to know) are part of a trifecta of small college athlete triplets. The third, Emma, plays volleyball for Meredith College in Raleigh, which is where the family calls home.

“Being away from home was a real challenge, especially that first year, because I’m really a homebody at heart,” Surles said. “But getting to see my family at the games last year and this year has been great and helped a lot.”

The team has already begun its strength and conditioning program to prepare for next season, during

which Surles expects them to make a run for—and break—that 12-win record.

Dunton isn’t quite sure what the team will look like in the winter of 2021 but is optimistic; they lose only one senior from this year’s roster and return their starting five.

“Kayla has brought renown to our campus. She is a high-character student-athlete who represents Hollins with class on and off the court,” Dunton said.

When asked what her personal goals are for the second half of her college career, Surles didn’t mention awards or personal honors. “I just want to continue to be a good leader on and off the floor. I’m young, and being a leader hasn’t always come easy to me, because maybe I’m not as assertive as I could or should be.

But some of the courses I’ve taken here at Hollins have been helpful for me in that way and are helping me feel more confident in speaking up and taking on that leadership role.

I’m growing into it.”

Summer 2020 3

IN THE

Loop “I want all girls to play chess” Tien Nguyen ’22 is an ambassador for gender parity in the game she loves.

F

Tien Nguyen ’22 and Chanmolis Mout ’23 with the trophies they earned at the 2019-20 Virginia Scholastic and College Chess Championships.

4 Hollins

or the second year in a row, Tien Nguyen ’22 was ranked as the top female chess player in the commonwealth at the 2019-20 Virginia Scholastic and College Chess Championships, held March 6 and 7 in Alexandria. She and Chanmolis Mout ’23 combined to win second place in the College Section’s Blitz team competition, while Nguyen took third in the Blitz individual category. Nguyen also tied for third place in the tournament’s Standard competition.

“Tien is very smart and talented, and she deserves all of this,” said Mout. “This was my first tournament, and she supported me throughout the event. She is a really good coach.”

As a five-year-old growing up in Vietnam, Nguyen received a present from her father that would not only have a profound impact on their relationship, but also spark a passion that would take her throughout the world and foster a dedication to inspire other women and girls.

That gift was a chessboard, and the initial benefit was giving Nguyen quality time with her dad.

“He coached me to become a chess player and I was very happy because I could play chess with him,” she recalled.

Nguyen quickly developed into an exceptional player, and in the ensuing years, her talent took her to competitions in Vietnam and beyond. To date,

she has played in 10 countries, including India, Indonesia, Korea, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, Russia, Thailand (three times), Turkey, and the United States.

In this country, the United States Chess Federation (USCF) ranks Nguyen 67th out of 10,389 female chess players, or in the 99th percentile. Among players of all ages and genders, the USCF places her in the 98th percentile. The organization has awarded Nguyen the title of Candidate Master (given to players who achieve five performance-based “norms” in competition) for life, and has named her a U.S. Chess Expert, recognizing that she is among the top five percent of all USCF tournament chess players.

“I really want all girls to play chess,” Nguyen said, “to learn about it and enjoy it.” Competing in the Virginia Scholastic and College Chess Championships, she was struck by the fact that “I was the only girl—they all looked at me like I was a museum exhibit! Some of the male players were upset when they lost a game against me. I got used to it.” Nguyen said one of her proudest moments in serving as a role model for girls and women in the game occurred this year when the 2019 National Chess Congress Standings for her U.S. Chess Expert section were released, and she learned she was cochampion with three male players.

The work of two U.S. poets laureate, Joy Harjo and Natasha Trethewey M.A. ’91, was celebrated on campus last spring. Harjo, a poet, musician, and playwright, has written many works, including a memoir, Crazy Brave, which was the common reading for last fall’s incoming class. She is the first Native American poet laureate in the history of the position. In March, Trethewey came to Hollins for a theatrical reading of Native Guard, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2007. Trethewey served as the 19th poet laureate from 2012 to 2014.

Karen Kuehn

Jon Rou

Hollins Welcomes Fulbright Scholar-inResidence for 2021-22

A

public health expert from Kenya with particular expertise in parasitic diseases will be spending a full academic year at Hollins as a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence (S-I-R).

Isabell Kingori, who teaches in the School of Public Health at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, is coming to Hollins for the 2021-22 academic session to further infuse a global perspective into Kingori the university’s public health curriculum.

In January, the Fulbright S-I-R program, which supports international academic exchange between the United States and more than 160 countries around the world, approved a joint proposal by Hollins and Virginia Tech to bring an S-I-R to their respective campuses, with the individual spending 80 percent of their time at Hollins. The S-I-R will provide an international point of view to the undergraduate public health programs launched at both universities during the 2019-20 academic year.

Elizabeth Gleim ’06, an assistant professor of biology and environmental studies at Hollins, co-authored the proposal with Gillian Eastwood, an assistant professor of entomology at Virginia Tech.

“The Fulbright program requires applicants to select two specific countries from a particular continent from which to draw potential candidates for the Scholar position,” Gleim explained. “Gillian and I narrowed our choices to Kenya and South Africa. Africa has so many fascinating disease systems, and in those two countries, scientists are conducting some very interesting research. Because diseases don’t recognize borders or boundaries, it’s important that our public health students have an understanding of these different health care settings around the globe.”

Gleim noted that the existence of an endowed fund created specifically to bring international faculty members to campus was instrumental in gaining approval from the Fulbright program.

“Hollins’ financial support of the S-I-R via the Jack and Tifi W. Bierley International Professorship significantly enhanced our proposal.”

Established in 1946, the Fulbright Program is funded by an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State. Its goal is to increase mutual understanding and support between the people of the United States and other countries while transforming lives, bridging geographic and cultural boundaries, and promoting a more peaceful and prosperous world.

Ayers

Call

Oechslin

Wagner

Faculty, Staff Members Earn Distinguished Service Awards Four Hollins employees have each been recognized with the Distinguished Service Award, honoring “meritorious or superior contributions” to the university.

E

lectrician Lee Ayers, former University Chaplain Jenny Call, Manager of Instructional Technology Brad Oechslin, and Assistant Professor of Education Teri Wagner were cited by Interim President Nancy Oliver Gray for having “gone above and beyond to continue supporting their coworkers and our students.”

Faculty and staff were invited to nominate colleagues for their efforts on behalf of the campus community throughout the 2019-20 academic year and particularly this spring during Hollins’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Distinguished Service Award Committee then forwarded their recommendations to Gray.

“The committee had an especially challenging job this year, given so many strong nominations,” Gray said.

A university employee for more than 20 years, Ayers was called “one of Hollins’ hardest-working and most dedicated and reliable employees. He loves his job and the people here. When Lee drives through the front gate in the morning, his mind is on doing the best job he can, or who he can help that day. If someone needs him, it doesn’t matter if it’s five minutes before he punches in in the morning or halfway through his lunch break—Lee will be there.”

Call was described as bringing “light and love to our campus for a long time. She is always offering kindness, compassion, and understanding. She is truly selfless. Her wisdom and peace flow so effortlessly

to those around her. She intentionally walks alongside all of our students and provides religious and spiritual spaces for them. She works so hard to make Hollins home to so many, and has helped our community get through difficult times. She is a blessing to everyone.”

Oechslin and Wagner were both acknowledged for their work on behalf of the faculty during the university’s shift to remote instruction beginning in March. “He is a remarkable member of the Hollins community, providing technological support for teaching with lightning speed and good humor,” Oechslin’s nomination stated. “But with the pandemic, Brad has been a superhero to every member of our faculty. The faculty’s transition to Zoom and other online learning tools could not have gone forward without him.”

Wagner “volunteered her time and energy to develop a series of training sessions and tools. She generously shared of her time and knowledge of technologies and strategies. Teri’s blend of enthusiasm, warmth, and patience was found to be an incredible asset. She has been essential in training faculty on the ins and outs of remote teaching.

Her work to prepare our faculty for teaching online and on incredibly short notice has been impressive.”

Now in its 26th year, the Distinguished Service Award is an endowed award made possible by a generous gift from an anonymous donor.

Summer 2020 5

IN THE

Loop Answering the Call During the Pandemic Hollins Employees Responded Rapidly and Effectively to Support the Campus Community.

As fears over the spread of COVID-19 were beginning to grip the country in early March of this year, Hollins University Interim President Nancy Oliver Gray sought to reassure students, faculty, and staff.

“We can take great comfort in knowing that the Hollins community is strong. We support one another,” she stated in a campus-wide email. “I have no doubt that the strength of our community will sustain us in the days ahead.”

That unwavering belief manifested itself in the coming weeks and months as, time and again, the university came together to assist students as the pandemic unfolded.

“An incredible group effort to get it right.”

A

mong the measures Hollins took at the outset to protect the campus and reduce the risk of contagion was to begin Spring Recess early on March 13 and continue the break through March 29, followed by two weeks of online classes.

Initially, it was hoped that students could return to campus in mid-April.

But, as the pandemic’s threat persisted, the university announced it would close residence halls for the remainder of Spring Term and classes would be conducted remotely through a combination of Zoom, a video conferencing platform, and Moodle, the university’s course management system.

“Learning how to teach remotely so quickly was a challenge for the faculty, and what I saw was an incredible group effort to get it right,” said Elizabeth Poliner, associate professor of English and director of the Jackson Center

6 Hollins

for Creative Writing. “The amount of coordination on a very short timeline to prepare the faculty, who came to this moment with such a range of experience—and, frankly, inexperience— with technology, was inspiring.”

Dean of Academic Success Michael Gettings added, “I saw so many people step up to help, support one another, and genuinely express the spirit I have seen over my two decades on campus. This was true of students, staff, and faculty.”

Both Gettings and Poliner acknowledged that outcomes varied across classes, teachers, and subjects.

They also noted that few would claim the remote classrooms matched in-person learning in terms of overall quality.

That, however, did not dull their admiration for the collective effort to do the best possible job under restricted circumstances.

“It warmed our hearts to see the outpouring of love and concern.”

A

s students departed for Spring Recess, Hollins transported 12 international students to Dulles International Airport to fly home. Unfortunately, these students were forced to return to Hollins when their flights were canceled. Out of an abundance of caution, the Virginia Department of Health requested that the students selfisolate for two weeks. Housing and Residence Life (HRL) staff led efforts to quickly prepare accommodations at the university-owned Williamson Road Apartments, located across the street from the main campus.

To ensure these students were cared for and supported, Dan Derringer, interim vice president for academic affairs; Alison Ridley, interim vice president for academic programs; and Jeri Suarez, associate dean of cultural and community engagement, invited Hollins employees to get involved.

Volunteers were needed to prepare meals for the students in self-isolation and provide activities to keep them engaged. Help was also requested to put together care packages for the 16 students still residing on the main part of campus.

According to Ridley, 37 faculty, staff, and administrators participated in the effort. “The meals were incredible, ranging from homemade soups to complete Indian feasts. Faculty members prepared a virtual workout competition for the students to keep them moving, and others gave coloring books, puzzles, and games to ward off boredom and loneliness. Many also wrote notes to the students. Employees stopped by the administration building every day with treats for the care packages. We were able to prepare two care packages for each student during Spring Recess.”

Ridley applauded Meriwether Godsey (MG), Hollins’ food service provider, for “dropping everything to help. As soon as we found out about the students returning from Dulles, MG gathered everything they could and packaged items into separate containers for the six apartments we needed

IN THE

Loop to use. Even though MG was not supposed to be serving meals during Spring Recess, they made two hot lunches for the students in the apartments during the week.”

Hollins’ facilities staff, she noted, “were equally wonderful, working long hours to get the apartments ready and equipping them with essentials.” Once the students moved into the apartments, Cultural and Community Engagement stayed connected by holding activities via Zoom.

“It warmed our hearts to see the outpouring of love and concern,” Ridley said.

In mid-May, Suarez coordinated a meal plan for 28 domestic and international students who, because of extenuating circumstances, were unable to go home for the summer and would be residing in the Williamson Road Apartments for 12 weeks. The cancellation of summer camps and the transition of summer graduate programs to remote instruction meant dining services would not be available.

The Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges gave each student a supermarket gift card to cover the cost of breakfasts and lunches. But 12 weeks of dinners still had to be provided.

“We reached out to see if faculty, staff, and alumnae would be willing to ‘adopt’ an apartment for a week of dinners during the summer,” Suarez said.

Seventy-six community members, a third of whom gave assistance over multiple weeks, met students’ needs in a number of ways. “They could prepare hot meals each day of the week they selected. Or they could precook the meals, freeze them, and drop them off at the beginning of the week,” Suarez explained. “They could also give supermarket or restaurant gift cards, or do a combination of all of these options.”

Suarez arranged for food donations through Feeding America Southwest Virginia and Keystone Community Center, while the university’s community garden offered fresh produce on a weekly basis.

“I was buoyed by the strength and resilience of our student body.”

W

hile faculty sought to maximize the effectiveness of their virtual classrooms, others worked throughout the rest of Spring Term to minimize the impact of separation.

The Hollins Activity Board organized game nights, movie nights, and even online scavenger hunts. Student leaders worked behind the scenes to boost their own spirits, and those of their classmates, and many student organizations continued to meet virtually. University Chaplain Jenny Call offered online “Sanctuary Today” moments for those wishing to join in meditation, and her messages regularly received hundreds of Facebook views.

“I was buoyed many times by the strength and resilience of our student body,” said Gettings.

Many students who departed campus for Spring Recess in March expected to return the following month. As a result, a number of them left behind possessions.

With guidance provided by the Virginia Governor’s office, HRL offered students four options from late May through mid-June to gather their belongings: return

to campus themselves during specific appointment times while using face coverings and observing proper physical distancing protocols; designate a friend or family member who would follow the same guidelines; have a university-selected moving company and/or Hollins employees store their possessions; or have the items shipped to them.

Suarez stressed that the success of all these initiatives was due to the compassion of Hollins employees. “We could not have provided the care for our students, to the level that we did, without the collective efforts of many individuals and departments.

Our students were overwhelmed by the community’s generosity. It made me incredibly proud.”

Hollins’ 178th Commencement Exercises in May were initially rescheduled for September and then moved to Memorial Day weekend of 2021. Impressively, Gray recorded over 200 personalized video messages for graduating seniors and group messages for those earning their graduate degrees. Alumnae/i gathered online to toast the class of 2020 virtually via Zoom.

“Carefully Onward.”

I

n June, Hollins announced initial plans to resume in-person instruction and residence hall living in the fall under the theme “Carefully Onward.”

The plans include beginning fall term two days early, removing Fall Break, and closing the campus entirely the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

The university will shift to remote learning for the final week of the term and for fall term examinations.

Gray praised a campus community that would “continue to work diligently to address additional details and complexities” during the summer and prepare for what promises to be an unpredictable fall.

“The last few months have been an exceptionally challenging time as the pandemic changed our world in unimaginable ways,” she said. “I have been especially grateful for your resilience, flexibility, and partnership.

It has been an honor to lead and serve alongside you.”

Updated information about Hollins’ reopening plans can be found at hollins.edu/onward.

Summer 2020 7

IN THE

Loop

8 Hollins

“With a deep sense of honor for the Hollins mission and community…”

A

s spring moved into summer and communities throughout the U.S. wrestled with the challenges of minimizing the damaging consequences of COVID-19, a series of tragic deaths in the Black community sent the country into a season of protest and public unrest unlike anything seen since the Civil Rights Era. National surveys estimate between 15 and 26 million Americans actively participated in protests in June 2020, often risking their health to do so.

On May 30, the Hollins cabinet and other key administrators issued a statement noting that the school’s mission “reminds us that our calling is to nurture civility, integrity, and concern for others, and to encourage and value diversity and social justice… For this reason, it is imperative that we lift up our voices in solidarity to say ‘Enough!’”

“…We must be accountable for equity.”

O

n June 19, then-President-elect Mary Dana Hinton shared a message with the extended Hollins community noting that the moment demanded a time of mission-based soul-searching within the institution, and vowing to lead the school down the difficult road of learning and then, of taking necessary action toward building “a shared, aspirational, and inclusive future.”

As individuals and collectively, she noted, an institution of learning had an obligation to grapple with these difficult and uncomfortable issues.

“As school leaders in this moment, we are called to respond to systemic racism and injustice in our world and, most importantly, on our campuses,” Hinton noted.

“Making the choice not to respond would still be a response in its own right, an intentional and damaging response of silence to expressed feelings of anger, frustration, and pain.”

By the time she officially took office on August 1, Hinton had met remotely and heard from a dozen different individuals and groups within the campus, and she vowed to create “a public timeline and accountability structure,” with updates coming in the fall around direction and action steps.

IN THE

Loop La vie est belle Edwina “Ed” Spodark, professor of French, retired at the end of the academic year.

B Y N A N C Y H E A LY, P R O F E S S O R E M E R I TA OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

E

ffective teaching is really helping students learn. Since 1982, Edwina “Ed” Spodark has been doing just that.

Her former colleague, Professor Emerita of French Jean Fallon, recalled her first meeting with Ed when the department was interviewing candidates for a position at Hollins: Dreading the anxiety that interviews produce, I was prepared for a stressful encounter. To my surprise and relief, I was struck by how down-to-earth, funny, and personable she was. Through the years, I witnessed Ed’s ability to teach her students in the same happy manner. Ed took genuine pleasure in teaching, particularly the introductory courses, and her students responded happily and enthusiastically to her calm and cheerful demeanor.

Professor of French Annette Sampon-Nicolas added:

Spodark

Ed and I have had 35 years of daily morning chats, as we were always the first ones in Turner and had offices across from each other.

The only time we did not was when she was on sabbatical, and then third-floor Turner was unbelievably empty. Every morning, when we did not have students, we covered almost every subject imaginable and exchanged many pedagogical ideas. For 35 years I practiced shooting baskets into her wastepaper basket across the room. I shall miss her as a colleague and friend and wish her the happiest of retirements.

Always looking for new and effective ways to teach, Ed was an early fan of teaching with technology.

She mastered computer skills with ease and shared her knowledge with students and faculty at Hollins and throughout the country. She developed

several online offerings at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Together, we made many presentations demonstrating teaching with technology. She was a diligent (and delightful) presenter, always promoting Hollins in the process.

Our running joke was that we played the “Rainbow Room.”

Ed taught more than 30 courses at Hollins. She has published over 40 articles, made over 65 conference and panel presentations, received numerous grants, and been selected for and elected to many prestigious professional organizations. Her resume is long and impressive. In fact, when you are looking at a journal in the Wyndham Robertson Library, the height of the windows is just about the length of her printed resume.

Ed has served on more than her share of Hollins committees. She has also served as acting dean of graduate studies and international programs and as department chair numerous times. Her service has extended to the community, too. She volunteers as a poll official during elections and served for many years as an officer of elections in Botetourt County.

Ed is also a generous colleague.

After a bad fall when I broke my shoulder and foot, I wasn’t able to teach my spring semester class. Since Ed and I had taught it together in the past, I asked her if she might add this class to her regular teaching load. Without hesitation, she said yes.

Another way to measure effectiveness is how long the learning continues after the classroom experience is over. Several years after graduating from Hollins, a student called Ed and asked for confirmation on the spelling she was using for her tattoo. Ed chuckled and told her she was correct. The quote the student used? “La vie est belle.”

Thanks, Ed, for sharing your life with us. We wish you a continuation of “life is beautiful.”

Summer 2020 9

IN THE

Loop My Dear Hollins Community,

FROM THE

Board Chair

10 Hollins

I send you a warm Hollins greeting and hope that this letter finds you and your loved ones healthy and safe.

Throughout the spring and early summer, Interim President Nancy Oliver Gray, working in close partnership with then-President-elect Mary Dana Hinton and the exceptional Hollins cabinet, worked tirelessly on plans for reopening the campus for fall term. With the full support of the board, this work has been guided by one principle—ensuring the health and safety of our students, faculty, and staff.

As of this writing, we have planned various forms of instruction which will include in person, online, and a hybrid of both. However, like every other institution, we are subject to change due to so many uncertainties brought on by the trajectory of the coronavirus.

The board would like to express its deep gratitude to Nancy, Mary, the cabinet, faculty, and staff of Hollins for carrying the university through what will long be viewed as one of the biggest challenges in our history. Under normal circumstances, the group keeps things running seamlessly every day, but their ability to pivot so quickly—and to reimagine how to move forward in a new online environment— deserves to be honored. We also salute our students, who showed the best of Hollins through their remarkable resilience, grit, and flexibility.

Every member of the Hollins family, past and present, owes a huge debt to Nancy Gray (and her husband David Maxson) for so graciously stepping into the role of interim president last summer.

Nancy brought an immediate sense of calm and confidence to the entire campus. She led us deftly through a presidential transition and steered us expertly through the enormous challenges brought on by a worldwide pandemic and its many collateral consequences. Of Nancy’s many gifts to Hollins, this was perhaps her greatest.

At the same time, it is our great good fortune to welcome Mary Dana Hinton as the 13th president of Hollins. Mary officially began her tenure as our president this summer but worked closely with Nancy throughout the spring to ensure a smooth transition.

Mary is deeply thoughtful, mission-minded, empathetic, and carries incredible quiet confidence.

She is a seasoned leader who understands and values the power and potential of women’s colleges and the complexities of running a small but multifaceted private university. We are fortunate to have her at the helm as she leads Hollins through a time of difficult, thorough, and necessary introspection, and as we continue the work to be a place that best champions every member of our community. The board is confident that as more of you get to know Mary and see the extraordinary

breadth of strengths and assets she brings to this campus, her legion of admirers will only grow.

Two critically important areas of institutional health are: 1) ensuring we generate enough financial support to cover a significant portion of our annual costs, and 2) making certain we continue to attract and retain high-talent students who will most benefit from what Hollins can offer.

Given the nationwide economic disruptions caused by COVID-19, we were braced for significant consequences to our fundraising efforts.

Thanks to Vice President for External Relations Suzy Mink and her outstanding team, and thanks most especially to you, our dedicated Hollins community, we have weathered the first stage of a storm that can be expected to impact most educational institutions in the years ahead. At the end of our fiscal year, the Hollins Fund significantly exceeded its goal and raised over $3.7 million. These funds became even more crucial as our room and board revenue was impacted significantly in the spring.

We hope we can rely on your continued support.

We likewise questioned what the pandemic might do for our admission prospects. Those concerns were put to rest thanks to the high-touch and personalized work of Ashley Browning, vice president for enrollment management, and her phenomenal team. As I write this, we are on pace to start the 2020-21 school year with the largest incoming class since the fall of 2016. These are highly promising students whom we welcome with great excitement. This lays the strong groundwork and momentum for even better enrollment years to come.

Finally, as you will read in this magazine, the story of Hollins in this pandemic is one of a community and the power it can summon: the stories of faculty and staff learning and adapting to the challenges of teaching online, of students showing real resilience in far-from-ideal circumstances, and of seniors providing inspirational leadership even as the traditions they expected to celebrate together this spring were postponed or canceled.

This fall, whatever environment and challenges the school may face and overcome, Hollins will continue to lead with courage, intelligence and optimism. The Board of Trustees and I hope you, as our loyal Hollins community, will work together to ensure that we can look back on this era as a time when the connections, the intimacy, and the agility of our beloved university shone brightest.

With tremendous gratitude to you, Alexandra C. Trower ’86 Chair, Hollins University’s Board of Trustees

IN THE

Loop Board of Trustees Welcomes Four New Members Patricia Thrower Barmeyer ’68, Paul Hollingsworth, John Poulton, and Anne Lindblad Quanbeck ’79 have been elected to the Hollins University Board of Trustees.

A

history major at Hollins, Patricia Thrower Barmeyer ’68 graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School.

After clerking for a federal district court judge, she began practice with the State of Georgia Attorney General’s office, where she litigated landmark environmental issues.

In 1990 she joined the firm of King & Spalding, where she has focused on the environmental permitting of controversial projects and the litigation that is often part of the process of bringing these projects to completion. She has been ranked

by Chambers USA Leading Lawyers for Business as the top environmental lawyer in Georgia since 2006.

Barmeyer is currently active with the Trust for Public Land. She has also been involved with legal services organizations, including the Georgia Legal Services Foundation and the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation. She is a recipient of the Hollins Distinguished Alumnae Award.

P

aul Hollingsworth has been an intelligence advisor for the international energy company BP since 2014. He previously served for 27 years in the CIA, including eight years on three overseas tours, a rotational assignment at the FBI, and two years as a special assistant for national security affairs on the NCS staff under President Barack Obama.

A 1977 graduate of Georgetown University with a B.A. in Catholic theology, Hollingsworth also holds a Ph.D. in Byzantine and Medieval Slavic Studies from the University of California— Berkeley. Married with three children, his daughter, Anna, is a member of Hollins’ class of 2022.

Barmeyer and Quanbeck began three-year terms on the board on July 1, while Hollingsworth and Poulton are filling two-year and one-year unexpired terms, respectively.

J

ohn Poulton serves as senior scientist at NVIDIA Corporation, where he has continued the work he began more than 30 years ago of producing chip-to-chip communications circuits for high-performance computers.

As a research professor in the University of North Carolina— Chapel Hill’s computer science department in the 1980s, he and his team developed techniques for computer graphics systems and image rendering that became industry standards.

He has published over 40 papers, co-authored a textbook, is an inventor on some 70 patents, and is an Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Fellow.

Poulton holds a B.S. from Virginia Tech, an M.S. from SUNY Stony Brook, and a Ph.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill, all in physics. He cotaught the first course in computer programming at Hollins as an assistant professor of physics from 1968-1970. His daughter, Sarah, is a member of Hollins’ class of 2006, and his grandmother, Elizabeth Macatee Poulton, was Hollins’ director of student housing from 1929 to 1951.

A

nne Lindblad Quanbeck ’79, a biostatistician with more than 38 years of experience serving both industry and government clients, is the president and CEO of Emmes, a global contract research organization. She has supported clinical research throughout her career, serving as principal investigator of projects spanning diverse disease areas, including oncology, dialysis, transplantation, ophthalmology, speech and hearing, dentistry, and neurology. She has contributed to the literature in such fields as patient-reported outcome development, central statistical monitoring as part of a riskbased monitoring plan, disease classification systems, and barriers to recruiting for clinical trials.

After completing her B.S. in statistics at Hollins, Quanbeck went on to earn an M.S. in biostatistics from the Medical College of Virginia/ Virginia Commonwealth University, and a Ph.D. in statistics from George Washington University.

Summer 2020 11

FOCUS ON

Philanthropy Volunteers and Challenges Spur a Strong Year for Fundraising

D

espite, or perhaps due to, a volatile economic crisis brought on by the pandemic, donations for the year pushed the Hollins Fund for 2019-20 over its $3.55 million goal, almost $400,000 more than the university raised the previous year. Overall philanthropic gifts for the year totaled more than $11.7 million, again up a substantial amount compared to the previous year.

Clark Hooper Baruch ’68, who chairs the development committee, credited the commitment of volunteers for much of the success. “The volunteers were pivotal in generating and building the kind of momentum needed for this level of effort.

They made a real difference, and it wasn’t just the impressive overall number of volunteers, but also the breadth of experiences and classes represented in that group that helps us engage with people beyond those who are already in the donor pool.”

She especially emphasized the promising growth in younger alumnae/i volunteering.

STUDENT VILLAGE PROGRESS

12 Hollins

“They’re the key to securing a healthy future for Hollins the farther we travel into this century.”

What is also clear in the rearview: Hollins alumnae/i and friends are generous in good times and bad, and they love a good challenge.

Last December, an anonymous donor offered to match every gift made in the month up to $100,000, and the challenge was met barely halfway into the month. The effort so impressed the donor that she promised to match any additional gift, up to $5,000, for the remainder of the calendar year.

Then, in June, another anonymous donor offered up $100,000 if Hollins could generate 500 donors in the month. The donor reiterated her conviction that Hollins is in a very strong place, but that “now is the time for anyone who cares about Hollins to give something, no matter what the size. There is no better time than now to show your support of Hollins.”

Once again, the challenge was not only

May 12, 2020

met, but swiftly, as the goal was met on June 21. Yet another donor offered an extra $25,000 if Hollins could generate another 100 gifts in the final nine days of the fiscal year… and our donors responded with more than 350 additional gifts!

“This spring and summer have been such a roller coaster of emotions for us,” said Suzy Mink, vice president for external relations. “We have all been heartsick for the way the pandemic disrupted the campus experience for our students, faculty, and staff, and especially our graduating seniors. Further, we knew Hollins would face some unexpected financial strain from having to close the campus, and our office felt a tremendous responsibility to do what we could to minimize that strain.

“We were already impressed in the spring with how many of our alumnae/i reached out to us, or responded to our calls, with such incredible generosity, but then June kicked all of that to another level.”

May 26, 2020

FOCUS ON

Philanthropy Student Village Update

The Costly Road to Reopening

W

I

hen this issue went to press, the first three houses of Phase II of the Student Apartment Village were on course to be open and available for students by the start of fall term. The three new homes add 14 rooms and a total of 28 beds to the housing capacity. An additional three houses are planned— funding is still being secured—which will bring the entire capacity for the area to as many as 98 beds.

One key factor in the effort was the securing of a $400,000 challenge from the Cabell Foundation in May 2019. Thanks to donors helping Hollins raise $1.2 million over a single year in support of the project, the grant was provided in June.

“It’s been so great to be able to gather and welcome people, whether it’s in our kitchen, or in the common space, or on our front porch in a rocking chair. Whether it’s studying or hanging out, it’s been a great place to just be together,” said Monica Osborne ’20 as she reflected on being one of the village’s inaugural residents.

The Student Village could be especially valuable in the fall, as their outdoor gathering areas work well for socially distanced gatherings, and their kitchen and living room areas will allow for several students to gather while maintaining the minimum distance expectations and wearing face masks.

n the world of “yes and” news, yes, the successes of the FY20 fundraising efforts are cause for great celebration, and the added financial challenges of responsibly operating a complex small university during an ongoing pandemic are expected to continue piling up in the summer and fall months.

As of early July, the projected additional costs for unexpected operational needs around reopening the campus were at $600,000 and expected to increase as the term progresses. The added costs run from the expensive and complicated— additional lab or photography equipment to minimize the need for sharing of items, for example—to the simple… yet still expensive. An example of the latter is the projected costs for all the disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizing gels needed to meet the needs of keeping classrooms, common spaces, and equipment and appliances clean before and

after use: $30,000. “That amount does not include all of the cleaning and disinfecting supplies that the facilities staff would be using daily,” said Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Kerry Edmonds, who said adding in those costs would more than triple the amount.

Edmonds said the ultimate challenge has been and remains preparing fiscally for the unknown.

“Hollins is in a more secure position, financially and otherwise, than most small private colleges, but we can be almost certain this fall will come with added costs, and potential revenue losses, that we can’t reasonably project with the shifting landscape of this pandemic.

Nevertheless, we are committed to doing what we can to make the fall term a positive and rewarding one for our students, while respecting the public health guidelines and health concerns for our entire community.”

June 22, 2020

July 15, 2020

Summer 2020 13

“It Feels

Like There’s

NO

BY BETH JOJACK ’98

As this magazine issue goes to press, more than 440,000 people globally have died from COVID-19.

Much of the world shut down in March to slow the spread of the coronavirus — and that was true for Hollins, too. On March 20, Interim President Nancy Oliver Gray announced classes would be held online for the remainder of the semester. In a heartbreaking blow for Hollins seniors, commencement had to be postponed.

Just as the pandemic has affected people all over the globe, members of the Hollins community have seen their day-to-day existence altered by the virus. Here, we’ve gathered stories from students, alumnae, and faculty on how COVID-19 impacted their lives.

CL SURE

”

Courtney Legum-Wenk ’03 is an OB-GYN at Virginia Women’s Center in Richmond. She’s preparing herself for the second wave of COVID-19 that she believes is likely to hit the state in the fall.

S

o my practice is obstetrics and gynecology, and we cover four hospitals in the Richmond community. Very early in the crisis, we decided that as a practice, we would take half of our doctors and throw them into the hospital to only do hospital medicine. And then the other half would be just in the office. I was one of the ones who went into the hospital.

I specifically go to Henrico Doctors’ Hospital Forest Campus, and I was there doing shift work for about seven-and-ahalf weeks.

It was definitely hard at the beginning because each hospital was trying to do their very best with whatever protocol they decided on, but those protocols would often change daily. My fellow call partners and myself decided very early we would wear the N95 masks for all deliveries. My hospital didn’t start endorsing this policy until just three weeks ago.

We have had several positives [positive tests for COVID-19] not just at my practice, but in labor and delivery at the hospital. What’s been hard from the women’s health perspective is there’s so much that is unknown. At first they were like, “Oh, there’s no transmission to the baby,” but then a case study from China suggests it’s a possibility—which is very scary. We have been lucky; at my hospital there have been no deaths from a women’s health perspective.

However, my emergency room friend declared 10 people dead in one shift. This is local. It isn’t New York. It’s not Seattle.

This is Henrico County.

The first couple of weeks were personally very hard. My husband is a pediatric ICU nurse at VCU, and I was pretty worried about him because he’s also a volunteer paramedic, and rides with one of the local rescue squads.

So he is a health care worker in one of the largest teaching hospitals, as well as being out in the community on the ambulance. We’ve developed an entire system for when we enter the house

that involves immediately going to the basement, removing all clothing, showering and then putting our clothes, which potentially could carry the coronavirus, in the washer. I have designated shoes, pens, highlighters, and my hospital badge, which now stays in the car unless being used, and I Clorox wipe my car every morning on my way to work.

In March, my husband and I pulled out our wills, our power of attorney documents, and our medical advance directives. We reviewed our wishes and told our beneficiaries where in the house they could find the originals and copies, just in case. We even wrote down who gets Wink, our beloved bulldog, if tragedy hits. We have had very serious discussions between ourselves and with our friends who are also in health care regarding whether or not we want to be on a ventilator if we contracted COVID. Most of us have said out loud, “No!” I’ve had the personal protective equipment needed because some of it I obtained on my own; I have had friends who have given us masks and gloves, and my practice was very proactive at the beginning. PPE wasn’t lacking at the hospital, but there were strict rules to access it. I have banked several N95 masks and face shields at home that I haven’t used because I’m purposely waiting, just in case there’s an emergency.

Now things are opening up. I’m back in the office for certain days and we’re slowly transitioning to a more normal schedule. I haven’t had a direct exposure to a patient with COVID-19 that I know of, but I’ve had exposure to other physicians who’ve had exposures.

I have a young patient who lost her partner to COVID-19 and another patient with COVID-19, who is younger than me, without any health issues, who had to be admitted to the ICU. None of my colleagues have tested positive yet.

We’re still wearing masks all the time.

It’s the new normal, even just in basic clinical practice in the office. Basically,

Legum-Wenk

Summer 2020 15

I take it off only to drink water, eat, and go to the bathroom. We’re not seeing the same capacity of patients as before, so we don’t have as many people in the waiting room area. Patients can’t bring visitors to their appointments, which has really impacted the pregnant patients who want their partners with them.

Tons of people have reached out, especially the local Hollins girls I’m friends with. People have made me masks and sent gifts. I have probably written more handwritten thank-you cards this year than I’ve written since my wedding.

I’m grateful for our scenario that we haven’t had a catastrophic event, and that both myself and my husband have stayed healthy. But there has been a certain level of guilt because I haven’t had it as bad as other doctors. I question whether I’m deserving of these gifts and the recognition. You hear these other stories that are just so much worse.

All I want to do is hug these doctors and nurses who have seen all of this tragedy firsthand. Consequently, treating the long-term mental health of our health care workers after this pandemic is going to be really important. There’s going to be some serious PTSD. We need to learn now how to address it before it becomes its own pandemic.

— As told to Beth JoJack ’98, who lives and writes in Roanoke.

Lytle

Maureen Lytle ’20 of Fairfield, Pennsylvania, heard about the coronavirus not long after returning to Hollins from New York City, where she completed a J-Term internship at the nonprofit America Needs You, which assists low-income, first-generation college students.

I

t was right after my internship that we heard about what was happening, and we didn’t really know whether it would affect us at all or how serious it was going to get. From the news we heard, we knew it originated in China, and we didn’t know how it was going to spread. Once we knew that there were U.S. cases, we were paying close attention to the news from surrounding schools to see what they were doing to address the situation. On March 13, the administrators said we were going to go into spring break a week early.

Ernie Zulia, associate professor and chair of the Hollins theatre department, was midway through rehearsals for Hollins’ spring production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time when the lights went out on campus.

C

urious Incident is a show full of wonder and heart, and the entire cast had been basking in the deep satisfaction of a rich and exciting rehearsal process before this work we love was called to a halt. What to do?

Continuing rehearsals in Zoomland was not practical. So out came the calendars and timelines, and come September, we are planning to pick up where we left off to open the show on October 22. So with determination, passion, and some good ole theatrical grit, we are embracing the old adage that the show must go on!

WWW Read longer versions of these stories at www.hollins.edu/magazine 16 Hollins

I got approval to stay on campus longer because I wanted to continue working at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, where I was an assistant, as long as possible.

I didn’t know if I was going to have a job when (or if) we returned.

I found out we were transitioning to virtual learning on March 21. Since I read the announcement the day before I left Hollins to return home, I was able to pack up most of my belongings.

I was quite upset when I found out we were going to have class online for the rest of the semester. I cried a lot and thought, “Okay, it’s actually over.”

I slowly processed all the things that weren’t going to happen, like things I wanted to do in Roanoke one last time.

Things like going to the top of Mill Mountain at night again with my friends, or going to Benny’s for a late-night slice. I was thinking, “Should I have done all these things sooner?” But I still had classwork to do, so I figured I should focus on my studies first.

For my major in gender and women’s studies, we had an oral presentation where we present our final capstone projects. Since our class was really small, only three students in all, we got to work together closely and curated our projects together. I was really looking forward to going through that process with them and our advisor. My paper is

an autoethnography titled, “The Influence of Whiteness on My Familial Relationships Through Ownership, Capitalism, and Disconnection.” Doing a project that revolves around your family while being surrounded by those family members is a unique challenge, and one I was not anticipating.

My girlfriend, who was one of my roommates at Hollins, lives in Manassas, Virginia, which is about two hours away from where I live. I went to her house for a couple of days in May and then we drove down in her van on the first day we were allowed to pack up our belongings at Hollins. We packed up our apartment and then we went to Bobby’s Hot and Cheesy for pizza and Blue Cow for ice cream. Then we went back to Hollins and finished up.

It was sad to leave Hollins, but I knew I’d be back eventually.

It feels like there’s no closure. As a senior, at Hollins especially, we have so many traditions to participate in at the end of the year. We have senior week, which is a weeklong celebration the week before graduation, where we can spend time with friends and say all our final goodbyes. I’ll probably never get to say goodbye to so many of the people who made my Hollins experience memorable.

My parents had a hotel booked for graduation, which they canceled once we heard the news. My parents, sister, and grandmother were going to attend.

I’m not sure if I’ll be at the graduation

in September* yet depending on where I’m living and my financial situation.

Graduation is a momentous occasion, especially for first-generation college students. It is a moment of triumph and celebration where you can show your family all you’ve accomplished. I don’t think I’m going to have that moment in the same capacity.

Whenever I get upset about what happened, though, I remember, “Just think of the alternative.” We could have attended Hollins for the rest of the semester, but that wouldn’t have been safe. People’s health is at risk. I think we can be upset about what happened while understanding why it happened.

It can be both.

I’m planning on finding a job in New York City and moving there. I want to live in a big city when I’m young.

I wasn’t anticipating going to NYC at first. While living in the city during January for my internship, I thought it might be a little much to live there full time. But there are so many Hollins alums there who are willing to help and so many nonprofits (which is what I want to do). Now, that’s where I see myself going.

I’m applying to jobs every day and hoping I find the right opportunity.

I’m trying to stay motivated because it’s easy to think, “Oh, I’ll be fine. I just need to wait it out.” I want to really push hard now to make it happen.

— As told to Beth JoJack ’98

Maureen Lytle ’20, Mitch Mitchell ’20, and Kalyn Chapman ’20.

* Hollins’ 178th commencement exercises have since been rescheduled for Memorial Day Weekend of 2021.

Erin Slattery-Duda ’98 received an email from her daughter’s school on March 11, announcing students would transition to online learning the next day. The school was closing to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

T

he next afternoon, I took my daughter, Madeleine, to ride her scooter in the P.S. 187 schoolyard, a five-minute walk north from our apartment on the west side of Washington Heights in Manhattan. A dozen kids were there, zooming around on scooters, bikes, and roller skates, shouting in the late sunshine. My daughter raced off with glee with friends from our co-op apartment complex. I walked over to a

friend—the mother of twin girls, my daughter’s friends—sitting on the ground at the edge of the schoolyard. She looked anxious. We watched our girls circle the schoolyard in a blur of flying hair and chrome, and then she grimaced.

“Seven-year-olds just don’t get the idea of social distancing,” she said, getting up.

I didn’t blame her at all, but my heart sank as my friend caught up to her

girls and said a few words. The twins got off their scooters, looked up at their mom, and then followed her out of the schoolyard, glancing back at their friends. It felt like a punch in the gut.

My daughter watched the twins go, then came over and slumped against me, upset, letting her scooter fall on its side.

The afternoon was a glimpse of the disappointment and confusion (especially for kids) that would come

Summer 2020 17

LeeRay Costa, professor and director of the gender and women’s studies department and director of faculty development, went to her office on March 15 to gather her books, files, course materials, and supplies with the hope that this new arrangement of working from home and teaching remotely would be temporary.

A

s I’m writing this, seven weeks have now passed and we have begun our last week of spring classes. On the one hand, I am admittedly relieved that what sometimes feels like the terrible, horrible, awful, no-good spring semester is finally coming to an end. On the other hand, I deeply miss my Hollins students and colleagues. And while I have secretly come to loathe the #Zoomlife and its inability to capture the joyful energy of being physically together, I cherish every moment I get to see you and talk with you, even on a screen. Unlike most of our students, I have the freedom and ability to return to campus, but I have avoided doing so because I can’t bear the thought of being there without all of you. This separation weighs heavily upon my heart and there have been days during this quarantine when I have felt unmoored and lost. I imagine you may have felt that way, too.

WWW Read longer versions of these stories at www.hollins.edu/magazine

18 Hollins

Erin Slattery-Duda ’98 with daughter Madeleine.

next. Everything began to be canceled— school, a work dinner, work. Then the cancellations rolled into the weeks beyond, engulfing playdates, kids’ birthday parties and trips, as city hall urged residents to stay home. For our first-grader (as for so many other kids around New York City and around the world), it meant spending the last rainy weeks of March and early April cooped up with parents, mourning the temporary loss of friends in explosive ways that neither she nor we really understood.

We spent the first weeks of quarantine adjusting to all the sudden togetherness, feeling joyful one moment (having all three of us at home for dinner was an unexpected silver lining, even though the idea of a silver lining to a pandemic seemed wrong) and fearful, guilty, and frantic with worry the next. How would we quarantine one of us in our small apartment?

What would happen to our daughter if both of us got sick? Was what was happening in Elmhurst, Queens, about to happen elsewhere in the city? Did we have a will? In disbelief, I sent a text to my brother and sister-in-law, asking them to be Madeleine’s guardians.

We ordered plastic drop cloths to turn an eight-foot by four-foot space off our hallway that held bookshelves into a sick bay if we needed.

It was absurd. It felt inevitable that anyone left in the city would get it.

Our kid kicked off the first Monday of school online by showing up to breakfast in a narwhal costume. “Are we going to be okay?” she asked through a mouthful of granola. My husband, Jakub, and I looked at each other.

“I…hope so?” I said. By then, we’d stocked up on masks and weren’t making any trips out of our neighborhood.

But we soon began a kind of parallel living—during the day, cheerful and optimistic in front of our daughter; at night, watching news footage from China, Italy, and Queens, scared and drained.

A week later, in Bennett Park, outside our apartment complex, we noticed that the city had locked the playground gates. Signs told New Yorkers that the

playgrounds were closed until further notice. Everyone had deserted the park anyway, as the March rain began; only an occasional patrol car slowly went through the park with its lights on.

Although our neighborhood seemed empty, ambulances were everywhere.

You become used to the sound of sirens here, but suddenly it was nonstop.

The one daily moment when everyone seemed to let out the breath they’d been holding all day was at 7 p.m., when neighborhoods leaned out the window and began to bang pots and pans in a show of support for healthcare workers. Our daughter joyfully smashed a saucepan and lid together at our kitchen window while neighbors across the courtyard, at their windows, did the same. One night, we were in the park at 7 p.m., and the sound was like an orchestra when the musicians take a deep breath and play one note, all at the same time: whistling, shouting, clashing pots and pans, drums, and the sound of a shofar rose up from apartment buildings on all sides.

We tried to order groceries online, rather than going to the supermarket.

But the usual local delivery services, Peapod and FreshDirect, were swamped, and as soon as someone discovered a grocery delivery service with a few available delivery times, the city converged on it. Bent over my laptop in a makeshift office under our games shelf, trying not to bang my head on the shelf above me, I tried to figure out how to get groceries.

A couple of restaurant supply companies had pivoted to online retail; with another family in our apartment complex, we split an order that included 10 lbs. of chicken, eight lbs. of fruit, and 10 lbs. of carrots in a bright-orange bag the size of a toddler. The $10 we spent on a box of 200 small chocolate pieces, ostensibly for baking but great for stress-eating, remains the best purchase I made this spring.

Desperate to get out of the house, I started taking Madeleine to ride her scooter or bike in Bennett Park. By late April, other parents and kids began to come to the park, and we stood the requisite six feet apart, shivering, and

trying to make normal parents-in-thepark conversation. It emerged that one family in our apartment complex had had the virus in March, but continued to come to the park, initially without masks, so their daughter could ride her bike. I remembered being at the park with them, and remembered the dad coughing at length. I felt a mix of shock, anger, and suspicion. What did it mean for everyone else’s kids? We were all just coasting on the hope that children didn’t seem to be coming down with the virus nearly as fast or as often as adults and the elderly. But was it nuts to hold that hope?

I knew there was a stark difference between my family’s experience this spring and that of families living on the east side of Washington Heights (and, beyond that, in the Bronx, hit almost as badly as Queens by the coronavirus).

The coronavirus outbreak was so much more deeply felt a short walk away than in our neighborhood that the issues I dealt with—which grocery delivery service to use, whether to let my kid bike outside in the large, leafy park for an hour, how many Amazon deliveries was too many—were trivial. Being able to quarantine was a privilege. How you quarantined was a privilege. As April went into May, we looked for ways to support rent-cancellation drives, donate to a local food pantry, and contribute to a fundraiser for small-business owners in Upper Manhattan. None of it felt like enough, and none of it would be enough.

— Written by Erin Slattery-Duda ’98, a freelance writer and editor living in New York City.

When masks began selling out in Korea, Josalyn Knapic M.F.A. ’17 realized the world was about to change.

S

ongdo is a neighborhood in the city of Incheon built on manmade land.

Our neighborhood runs along the seaside, with downtown Incheon and Seoul to our east and the Yellow Sea and China directly to our west. Songdo’s aesthetic is the complete opposite of the rest of Korea. There is abundant and open space, at least four lanes for traffic, and clusters of apartment housing are surrounded by large artificial parks. Much of the land is still underdeveloped, as blocks of tall reeds grow next to new shiny buildings next to construction sites. Restaurants and shops are clustered here and spread out. Many residents rely on driving.

I came here for a job teaching at the first American university in Korea.

Upon moving to Songdo, I immediately missed Daejeon’s convoluted alleyways, its lively streets, the mom-and-pop stores on every corner, old brick houses scrunched up next to each other with their traditional ornate gates, decorated roof tiles, and kimchi pots. When I moved to a modern high-rise at the edge of Songdo, I felt I lost something special. But as the virus started to spread throughout Korea, I couldn’t help thinking that the large open roads and wetland that surrounded our area were something to be grateful for.

WWW Read longer versions of these stories at www.hollins.edu/magazine

Summer 2020 19

Sajila Kanwal ’22 travels from Gilgit, Pakistan, to Hollins, where she’s majoring in international studies and minoring in social justice. In early March, Kanwal panicked when she heard her fellow students buzzing about the possibility that the campus might close because of the coronavirus.

M

Kanwal

y mind was racing, and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go home to Pakistan because I was scared that I would get coronavirus while I was traveling, and I didn’t want to give this virus to my family. Because I live in northern Pakistan, I would have had to take a plane and a bus, and every city I traveled through, I would have gone under quarantine. I would have spent the entire summer break in quarantine.

I have a host family here. I see them as family. They told me to relax and stay in the U.S. here instead of going back home. So I decided to stay.

When Hollins announced classes would be online for the rest of the semester, all the international students were still on campus in their dorms.

Soon after, Hollins made arrangements for most of the international students to go home and even paid for their tickets. The university arranged transportation to take the international students to Washington, D.C., for their flight. Unfortunately, all of these students came back because they couldn’t go home, because the flights were canceled and the borders of their countries were closed because of the virus. The students

When Americans first began staying at home as much as possible to slow the spread of COVID-19, Darla Schumm, the John P. Wheeler Professor of Religion and chair of the faculty at Hollins, noticed her friends and family bemoaning the loss of “normal life.”

I

n these coronavirus-dazed days, I keep noticing people yearning for a return to “normal.” Social media accounts are flooded with memories of normal activities from past times. Political pundits prognosticate about when the economy will return to normal. As disability studies scholar Lennard Davis observes, we live in a culture propelled by the “hegemony of normalcy.”

As I faithfully practice social distancing while working from the couch, interacting only with two humans (my husband and son), one dog, and one parakeet, several questions float to the surface of my mind. What was this “normal” to which we so desperately long to return? For whom was the “normal” of even just a month ago so wonderful? Do we really want to go back to “normal?”

WWW Read longer versions of these stories at www.hollins.edu/magazine 20 Hollins

were quarantined at the old apartments across the street from the campus.

Since I had decided not to go home, I had stayed on campus, living in my dorm room in Tinker. After our friends came out of quarantine, all of the international students moved to the apartments. I’m very grateful to Hollins, the way they have responded to this pandemic; the way they treat the international students to make them feel safe. They’re providing us food.

They have provided free housing. Our professors and the staff members are checking on us.

My spring semester was going to be my best semester because all the classes I took in the spring were amazing.

I was taking a refugee resettlement class, a world religion and politics class, intro to international relations, and cultural geography. I’m a person who understands more when I am with people. When Hollins switched to online classes, I was just devastated. I was like, “This is not for me.” It was difficult for me to keep up, so I had been in contact with my professors. I’m like “I can’t do it. Help me.” I’m so happy that my professors helped me a lot in this and getting me back to the level that I’d been at before.

All the time, I am sad that I cannot see my friends. I cannot see my professors. I cannot go out. I cannot see my parents, and I cannot go back to Pakistan. That made me so depressed, because I thought, “At this point, people should be with their family.” I was really worried about my family back home and they were so worried about me. Since the number of coronavirus cases was so much higher in the United States, my mom would call me twice a day, asking, “How are you doing?”

I had a lot of plans for my spring semester and my summer in the United States, but everything was shot with this one virus hitting the world.

— As told to Beth JoJack ’98

The 1918 Spanish Flu

BY PETER COOGAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY

T

Image from the 1918 Hollins Spinster

Tori Carter ’21, a creative writing major from Halifax County, faced the coronavirus in Japan during her study abroad semester.

M

y dad was the last family member I saw face-to-face before entering security at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport. After landing at the Kansai International Airport, I used all the Japanese I knew talking to the customs agents. When I bought dinner, I struggled to read the kanji for the different foods. I was surprised to find only one hotel had a vacancy — and it was located 30 minutes away. I wasn’t comfortable with that, so I decided to stay overnight in the airport.

I’d studied Japanese for three years, and I’d eagerly awaited my trip to Japan. It wasn’t the first time I had been abroad; I went on the Jamaica Cultural Immersion Trip during Spring Break.

But this was the first time I had ever traveled alone, and I was a little scared.

That night, I kept occupied reading some of the English-language tourist magazines about things to do in Hirakata, where Kansai Gaidai University is based. At some point, as I sat in a near empty airport, it hit me: I was completely alone.

This feeling did not leave me for three weeks. Anxiety, sensory overload, wandering thoughts, and deep episodes of melancholy and depression were cont. on page 22

he disease struck suddenly. People with no symptoms one day became desperately ill within 24 hours and often died within a matter of days.

Hospitals were overwhelmed as wards filled with those fighting to live and nurses and doctors joined the sick and dying. Critical supplies disappeared as workers fell ill, production declined, and the transportation network broke down.

Unscrupulous vendors took advantage of desperate victims with snake oil remedies and inadequate protections. Scientists and physicians scrambled to find vaccines and treatments, often without adequate financial support or critical cooperation for systematic research. Schools closed, businesses failed, and government operations nearly shut down. Military bases and ships were hit especially hard, but government censorship vainly attempted to keep that information from the public.

The president, focused on foreign policy crises, abdicated leadership responsibilities and never expressed sympathy for the thousands of families who suffered losses.

Instead, political leaders at all levels of government appeared powerless to do anything but try to rename the disease to focus blame overseas.

At the same time, the country exploded in racial violence. Cities burned as African Americans demanded, and were repeatedly denied, the most fundamental of civil rights.

White supremacists struck back with lynching and the destruction of thriving minority economic centers. To many, the country seemed on the verge of disintegration, with the privileged fighting to maintain their prerogatives and the disadvantaged struggling to survive.

No, that is not a summary of this week’s CNN, The New York Times, or even the Huffington Post. The events described above all happened in America during 10 months in 1918. Over the next two years, an outbreak of a previously unknown strain of H1N1 influenza killed over 600,000 in the United States and over 50 million, and possibly as many as 100 million, worldwide. Despite frequent governmental references to the “Spanish influenza,” researchers today generally agree that the virus mutated somewhere in Kansas and spread primarily though military training

bases for the American Expeditionary Force, which after the country’s declaration of war against Germany in April 1917 was preparing for deployment to the Western Front in the First World War. The disease quickly wiped out whole bases and spread to surrounding communities, as medical professionals seemed helpless to treat it or prevent its spread. President Woodrow Wilson, consumed with winning the war and subsequently dictating the peace, provided neither financial support to the devastated American economy nor moral support to traumatized American communities.

In July 1919, the city of Chicago exploded in racial violence as African Americans sought to swim at the city’s segregated public beaches. Much of the South Side went up in flames and between 38 and 60 residents were murdered.

Two years later, the Black district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as the Black Wall Street, was burned to the ground by an armed white mob, with the result that the city’s Black residents were either killed and buried in mass graves or forced to leave town with nowhere to go. The violence affected cities across America from 1918 to 1921, with the added targets often including leftist labor unions, Jewish communities, and civic improvement groups not controlled by conservative white citizens. In Indiana, the Ku Klux Klan became one of the most powerful political forces in the state, touting “100% Americanism.”

Today, as in 1918, the nation was blindsided and crippled by a public health crisis. Those tensions exposed visceral cleavages within American society that quickly erupted in violence, demands for fundamental social change, and accusations of “un-American” behavior. When Americans looked to their leaders for help, they found nothing. As John Barry, the author of the bestselling The Great Influenza, wrote in 2004, “Those in authority must retain the public’s trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one.”

We could have learned much from 1918.

We chose not to, at a terrible, terrible price.

In the words of Sir Winston Churchill, “In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.”

Summer 2020 21

everyday issues. It eased a bit as I started classes and focused on my studies.

Still, it stayed at the back of my mind.

It was not long, luckily, until I made some friends. We went together on train rides, day trips on the weekends to Dōtonbori and Kyoto temples, and shared late-night drinks. My unit mates and I had parties where we would make takoyaki (octopus balls), okonomiyaki (a savory Japanese pancake), and celebrate Japanese holidays. I could even walk at 2 a.m. to the nearest convenience store to grab a late snack with my friends.

I was on top of the world.

The coronavirus had just started to dominate the news cycle in the United States, but in Japan, it hadn’t yet gotten much airtime. It wasn’t until the end of February, when the first cases in Tokyo started and the virus spread rapidly, that my friends and I started to wonder what would happen with our program.

My parents were more worried about me being exposed as I traveled back to the United States than about me staying put.

On my 21st birthday, March 10, administrators announced my program

would become fully online from that point forward. They suggested we return home. I was upset to hear my friends planned to leave. The COVID-19 pandemic had not been fully felt in Japan just yet, so it hurt to lose out on an experience I had spent my whole life working toward. It was still safe to travel throughout the prefectures and go out to eat, so I celebrated with one last sushi dinner with my friends.

Before, I had everything planned to leave Japan on May 31. After talking with my parents, we made a plan: I could stay a bit longer as long as I set up a backup plan to return home when it got to be too much. Over another two months in Japan, I took many more day trips to see the sakura trees bloom, went out to nightclubs, and studied at beautiful temples. Finally, I decided it was time. I had experienced all I could, and I missed being in the same time zone as my friends back home. I began my trip back to the United States on May 1.

Because the Kansai International Airport had canceled all flights leaving Japan through May 30, I had to go to

Narita Airport in Tokyo to fly out. The six-hour journey to Tokyo was quiet and lonely. On the Shinkansen (bullet train), there was almost no one close to me. Everyone wore their masks, washed their hands regularly, and avoided touching others. The plane rides were just as quiet. I took three connection flights: Tokyo to Seoul, Seoul to Atlanta, and Atlanta to Raleigh.

Each flight was near empty, with almost everyone having a row of seats to themselves. Through the whole journey, I wasn’t afraid that I would catch the virus. I had grown accustomed to Japan’s normalized use of masks even before the pandemic, so I trusted others to be safe and wear their masks like me.

When I got to Raleigh, my brother drove me back to Virginia. I would isolate at my mother’s apartment for two weeks before I could even hug my mother or talk to her face-to-face.

It was a struggle adjusting back to life stateside, especially in a pandemic.

Memories from my time abroad got me through it.

— Written by Tori Carter ’21

Bri Seoane ’01 took her kids out of school on March 5, a week before the official order came down for California schools to close.

I

work very closely with the children’s hospitals in the Bay Area; that’s part of my job at Ronald McDonald House Charities. We provide programming inside the hospitals, so infection control is something we’re really concerned about, because our mission is to offer safe housing and community support and access to health care for the sickest of the sick children, and most of them are immunosuppressed. Because of that, I probably have a little more access to information and understanding about epidemiology, and I could see the writing on the wall.

At that point, our organization had already made the decision to have all nonessential employees work from home. We wanted to get as few people on-site having contact with immunosuppressed kids as possible. But, that weekend, mandatory precautions were issued for hospitals to close down anything considered nonclinical, and that included our Ronald McDonald House and the programs that we were providing. They also would no longer let more than one caregiver into the hospital at a time, so there were all kinds of family members who needed to get home. It was sweeping and it was immediate. I got a phone call Sunday afternoon and it was like: It’s go time, we have to have all of this done by Monday at noon.

WWW Read longer versions of these stories at www.hollins.edu/magazine 22 Hollins

Seoane

At the

Center of Experience and Education

A

key strength of the Hollins educational experience is the carefully constructed bridge between the academic programs provided by professors on the campus and the dynamic, real-world experiences beyond the classroom provided by the Rutherfoord Center for Experiential Learning.

Made possible by the generosity of Jean Hall Rutherfoord ’74, and her husband, Thomas D. Rutherfoord Jr., the center encompasses study abroad at an array of destinations around the world; domestic and international internships and other career preparatory experiences; initiatives that promote innovation and engagement while connecting academic work with practical application; leadership practice; and undergraduate research projects conducted in close partnership with Hollins faculty.

Enveloping these various programs into the Rutherfoord Center “allows for greater collaboration and interaction while at the same time expanding opportunities for students,” noted thenInterim President Nancy Oliver Gray upon announcing the center’s launch.

“These programs all work best in coordination to ensure students acquire the experience necessary to thrive in both professional and educational settings after earning their undergraduate degrees.”

The center guarantees every student can pursue each of these programs throughout their four years at Hollins.

All the while, they gain mentorship and opportunities to expand their networks; receive expert help in identifying leadership, study abroad, research, and career options; and explore prospects for financial assistance.

“Tom and I are so excited to support the path of Hollins students through the array of real-world choices that the Rutherfoord Center will embrace,” Rutherfoord said. “Notably, Hollins’ strong history in study abroad and leadership programs, alumnae-sponsored internships, and research projects with faculty can be offered and centralized in a way to provide all Hollins students more comprehensive access.”

Like many modern university centers, the Rutherfoord Center is not a physical structure but a comprehensive program, so various aspects of the center’s work will continue to be housed in different locations throughout campus, and the opportunities for expansion and growth are bountiful. A director for the center is expected to be named in the coming year.

“Experiential learning transforms personal and social development,” Gray said. “It enhances resiliency, tenacity, curiosity, and self-reflection. It’s an immersive process by which students gain knowledge and skills by observing, inferring, and most of all, doing.”

You can find out more about the Rutherfoord Center for Experiential Learning at hollins.edu/rutherfoord.

Summer 2020 23

Hollins and the

19TH AMENDMENT

University archives contain clues to what students were thinking about women’s rights, including the right to vote, in the decades preceding the passage of the 19th amendment.

B Y J E A N H O L Z I N G E R M . A . L . S . ’ 11

L

ooking back on her days at Hollins, Eudora Ramsay Richardson, class of 1909, remarked that her alma mater was always ahead of its time, “if not with the radicals, at least in the vanguard of the conservatives.”

Richardson, who in 1936 wrote a book about women and public speaking (The Woman Speaker), and was active in women’s causes, had it about right in her assessment of her college and its students’ attitudes toward the 19th amendment. They were slow to embrace women’s suffrage, in part because Hollins discouraged any kind of political talk. The 1891-92 catalog, for example, includes this admonition: But a boarding school for girls, of all places, is the most inappropriate arena for the discussion of party politics and sectarian tenets and distinctions. We discourage all such discussions.

And in 1895, a student dismissed the cause in an editorial in the Semi Annual: Forgive us, gentle reader, if we evade a discussion of that intangible something, “The Woman Question.”

We fear that in the inevitable future woman’s suffrage will come, but at present the movement is in its infancy—and perhaps this accounts for the fact that our junior philosophers have found its childish prattle wholly illogical.

By 1912, the mood had shifted, as Beth Harris, university special collections librarian and archivist, observed. One student noted (“Politics Viewed from the Hollins Angle” by J. B., Nov. 1912, Hollins Magazine) that “we are as yet too conservative to adopt the ‘Votes for Women’ cry at Hollins, but amongst most of the girls the subject of politics is discussed with enthusiasm.”

For a library exhibition she put together several years ago about Hollins and the 19th amendment, Harris found a variety of clues to the thinking on

League before he goes off to war. By the time he returns, she has decided to quit the league, but he’s found someone else (more pliable?) to marry.

“We feel as though we had, to some degree, paved the way for our first real voting at some time in the near future.” campus: among them, a speech given at Hollins in 1878 by Dr. J. J. Moorman, a Salem physician, about the “horrors of Women’s Rights” (reported in Hollins Magazine); and a reading at the 1882 commencement by a student, M. Lou Palmer, which posed this provocative question: “Is It True that There Is a Growing Danger of Women Losing Caste in America?”

Minds began to open, gradually, in the early years of the new century.

For example, an editorial in a 1910 issue of Hollins Magazine asked, “Is the Hollins Girl of To-day Ignorant of Contemporary Events?” And, according to Harris, after several prominent members of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia visited campus in 1914, a student reported in Hollins Magazine that “not everyone at Hollins became a suffragist forthwith, but a surprising number of suffrage buttons were seen in the next day or two, and all who heard the able and earnest addresses realized that at least no woman of today has a right to be indifferent toward this much mooted question.”

Students began exploring the pros and cons of women’s rights, including suffrage, in their works of fiction, too. The 1911 May Day celebration, for example, included a performance of a student-written play called My Wife Is a Suffragette! “Margaret Decides” (Hollins Magazine, 1914, by Judith Riddick) is a story about a young woman who argues with her boyfriend about her membership in the Woman Suffrage

Of course in 1920, the 19th amendment became law. Hollins students who were 21 that November could vote in the official elections. For those too young to vote, students held a mock election, with elaborate preparations leading up to the ballot. Frances Warren, class of 1923, wrote in Hollins Magazine (Dec. 1920): Monday night the Republicans took the school entirely by surprise when they marched upon the campus in a torch light parade. … However, the Democrats were not to be outdone by their opponents, and so on Tuesday they came forth with an equally original and inspiring demonstration. … And now it is time for the most important action of the day—the casting of the votes. This was accomplished in a systematic way and a true political spirit, according to the rules and regulations of the polls.

The Democrat, James Cox, won the campus, if not the national, vote. All in all, wrote Warren, “We feel as though we had, to some degree, paved the way for our first real voting at some time in the near future.” In March 1921, Hollins Magazine reported that graduating seniors, “many of whom were able to vote the first time, were addressed at commencement as ‘fellow citizens’ on a subject in keeping with their new privilege and position.”

Summer 2020 25

How One

LIBRARIAN Tried to

SQUASH

Goodnight Moon 26 Hollins

There’s a reason this classic is missing from the New York Public Library’s list of the 10 most-checked-out books of all time.

O

BY DAN KOIS

n Monday, January 13, 2020, the New York Public Library, celebrating its 125th anniversary, released a list of the 10 most-checked-out books in the library’s history.

The list is headed by a children’s book—Ezra Jack Keats’ masterpiece The Snowy Day—and includes five other kids’ books. The list also includes a surprising addendum: One of the most beloved children’s books of all time didn’t make the list because for 25 years it was essentially banned from the New York Public Library. Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown, would have made the Top 10 list and might have topped it, the library notes, but for the fact that “influential New York Public library children’s librarian Anne Carroll Moore disliked the story so much when it was published in 1947 that the library didn’t carry it … until 1972.” Who was Anne Carroll Moore, and what was her problem with the great Goodnight Moon?

As it turns out, this footnote on the NYPL’s anniversary list hints at a rich, surprising story of power, taste, educational philosophy, and the crumbling of traditional gatekeepers.

Moore was appointed the NYPL’s first “superintendent of work with children” in 1906, at a time when the very idea of children even being allowed into libraries was brand-new. (Children who couldn’t read yet would gain nothing from a library, the theory went, and older children might be corrupted by all the trashy adult books.) Moore oversaw the beautiful Central Children’s Room in the library’s flagship building on Fifth Avenue. As Leonard S. Marcus writes in his biography of Margaret Wise Brown, Moore became perhaps the leading figure in

popular children’s books in the first half of the century, and many of her methods seem strikingly modern. She scheduled scores of story hours for children; she encouraged any children who could sign their names to check out a book; she trained librarians drawn from a diverse range of backgrounds and then sent them out into a city of immigrant children, preaching the gospel of reading.

She was also a tastemaker whose NYPL-branded lists of recommended children’s books could make or break a book’s Anne Carroll Moore was appointed the New fortunes. “Other libraries around York Public Library’s first “superintendent of the country looked to the NYPL, work with children” in 1906. and if she didn’t buy it, they didn’t buy it,” explains Betsy Bird, a children’s book blogger and longtime NYPL librarian who’s now at the Evanston Public Library in Illinois. “If Anne Carroll Moore didn’t like a book, she could effectively kill it.” Marcus writes that “editors, authors, and illustrators routinely stopped by to visit with Miss Moore and seek her counsel on their works in progress”; she supposedly had a custom-made rubber stamp reading “NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PURCHASE BY EXPERT,” and she was not afraid to use it.

But Miss Moore’s taste was particular.

She loved Beatrix Potter and The Velveteen Rabbit and was a steadfast believer in the role of magic and innocence in children’s storytelling.

This put her in opposition to a progressive wave then sweeping children’s literature, inspired by the early childhood research of the Cooperative

Summer 2020 27

28 Hollins

Brown

School for Student Teachers, located on Bank Street in Greenwich Village. The Bank Street School, as it became known, was also a preschool and the teacher training facility where Margaret Wise Brown enrolled in 1935.

This progressive wave was exemplified by the Here and Now Story Book, created by Bank Street’s leading light Lucy Sprague Mitchell in 1921. A collection of simple tales set in a city, focusing on skyscrapers and streetcars, it was a rebuttal to Moore’s “once upon a time” taste in children’s lit.

Anne Carroll Moore was not a fan of Margaret Wise Brown’s work. Brown, with her Bank Street training, was “looking at the mind of a child, operating at the level that a child understands,” says Bird. “She was trying to get down on their level, whereas Anne Carroll Moore placed herself above the children’s level, handing what she viewed as the best of the best down to them.”

By the time Brown’s most famous book was published in 1947, Moore had ostensibly retired, though—as Jill Lepore noted in the New Yorker in a story about Moore’s war with another children’s classic, Stuart Little—she still essentially ran the children’s section, leading department meetings even when her put-upon acolyte and successor, Frances Clarke Sayers, tried changing the meeting room at the last minute. Margaret Wise Brown wanted librarians to adopt Goodnight Moon; she even blurred out the udder of the cow who jumped over the moon to avoid offending those “Important Ladies.” But it certainly wasn’t enough for Moore, or Sayers, or the NYPL: Marcus notes that “in a harshly worded internal review, the library dismissed the book as an unbearably sentimental piece of work.” And so the book wasn’t purchased by the New York Public Library, and while children were encouraged to check out all kinds of books from the library’s extensive children’s department, Goodnight Moon was not one of them.

As Bird notes in a fascinating blog post, the legacy of Anne Carroll Moore is one that many children’s librarians struggle with. “She is the quintessential bun-in-the-hair shushing librarian,” says Bird. “She’s such an easy villain.”

Her discriminating book recommendations delivered from on high represent the exact opposite of the credo pledged by most children’s librarians today: that the library’s role is to provide the widest possible array of titles and allow children to find the books they love.

Yet Moore did more than anyone else in the first half of the 20th century to encourage children of all races and incomes to read. To adopt a 21stcentury rallying cry, Bird notes, Anne Carroll Moore “was all about diverse books waaaaaay before anyone else was.”

Perhaps in part because of Moore’s blacklisting, Goodnight Moon wasn’t an immediate commercial success; by 1951 sales had dropped low enough that the publisher was considering putting it out of print. So no one was pressuring the NYPL to stock the book, least of all Brown, who died in 1952. (Recovering from surgery for an ovarian cyst in a hospital in France, she playfully kicked her leg up, cancan-style, to show a nurse how well she was feeling; the action dislodged an embolism from a vein in her leg, which traveled to her brain, killing her nearly instantly.) The book regained popularity in the 1950s and 1960s as chains like Waldenbooks and B. Dalton grew; soon, libraries ceded their position as the primary buyers of children’s books to parents. By 1972, the book’s 25th anniversary, Goodnight Moon was nearing 100,000 copies sold a year. Perhaps it was that anniversary, speculated the NYPL’s Lynn Lobash, that spurred the library finally to stock the book.

Since 1972, Goodnight Moon has been checked out about 100,000 times from New York City libraries, placing it somewhat below the No. 10 book on the list, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

But, says the NYPL, it’s rising fast. No doubt at the library’s 150th anniversary, Goodnight Moon will have surpassed some of the more dated titles on the list, like How to Win Friends and Influence People. Sorry, Anne Carroll Moore.

Margaret Wise Brown won this round.

This article originally appeared in Slate magazine (Jan. 31, 2020) and is used with permission. ©2020 The Slate Group LLC.

Margaret Wise Brown Prize Celebrates Fifth Year

E

ach year, Hollins invites nominations for the prize from children’s book publishers from across the country and around the world. A three-judge panel consisting of established picture book authors reviews the nominations and chooses a winner.

Hollins established the Margaret Wise Brown Prize in Children’s Literature as a way to pay tribute to one of its best-known alumnae and one of America’s most beloved children’s authors. The cash prizes are made possible by an endowed fund created by James Rockefeller, Brown’s fiancé at the time of her death.

The engraved medal presented to the winners was conceived by award-winning sculptor and painter Betty Branch ’79, M.A.L.S. ’87.

Margaret Wise Brown graduated from Hollins in 1932 and went on to write Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny, and other children’s classics before she died in 1952.

2020

Wendy Meddour won for Lubna and Pebble, illustrated by Daniel Egnéus and published by Dial Books.

2019 2018 2017 2016

John Sullivan won for his debut children’s book, Kitten and the Night Watchman, illustrated by Taeeun Yoo and published by Simon & Schuster.

Elaine Magliaro won for her debut children’s book, Things to Do, illustrated by Catia Chen and published by Chronicle Books.

Adam Rex won for School’s First Day of School, illustrated by Christian Robinson and published by Roaring Brook Press.

Phil Bildner, the author of more than 20 children’s books, won for Marvelous Cornelius, illustrated by John Parra and published by Chronicle Books.

Summer 2020 29

30 Hollins

Class Letters header

Current Alumnae Association Board Members PRESIDENT

P R E SID EN T- E L E C T

Barbara “Duck” Duckworth ’72

Antoinette Hillian ’00 SECRETARY

Nancy Peterson Benninger ’02 DIRECTORS

Louisa Condon Barrett ’68

Diane M. Hall ’88

Kimberly Lamotta-Maye ’99

Blair Neill Celli ’03

Kristin Jeffries Henshaw ’94

Emily Morgan ’79

Anna Cork ’96

Linda Bertorelli Jennings ’85

Dee Mudzingwa ’07

Emily Daniels ’06

Christine Lefever Kmieczak ’92

Missy Lee Roberts ’85

Hannah Kiefer Earp ’10

Elysse Stolpe ’10

AND THANK YOU TO THE MEMBERS WHO JUST ENDED THEIR SERVICE

Punky Brick ’93

Elizabeth Joyce ’96

Trisha Rawls ’74

GeLynn Thompson ’05

The nominating committee of the Alumnae Association Board of Directors is responsible for selecting the slate of candidates. Criteria for selection include service to Hollins and/or to one’s community.

All Hollins undergraduate and graduate alumnae/i are members of the Alumnae Association and are invited to submit candidate names for future consideration to the committee through the alumnae relations office (alumnae@hollins.edu).

ROBERT SULKIN: Photograph s 1973—2019

T

he Eleanor D. Wilson Museum held a retrospective exhibition of Bob Sulkin’s works early in 2020,

a show that presented more than 100 works selected from over 40 years of photography. Sulkin retired from teaching at Hollins at the end of the 2018-19 academic year. His works span the history of photography technology in the 20th and 21st centuries, from glass lantern slides to Photoshop. To Sulkin, “My work deals

Construction with Flag. 2005 Archival print.

with the futility of the individual attempting to cope in a technology-driven world spinning out of control.

As such, it is a personal response to a world that controls me more and more even as I understand its workings less and less.” In her essay for the exhibition catalog, Assistant Professor of Art History Genevieve Hendricks writes, “A survey of his work gives a point of entry into a universe of cosmic junk, discarded souvenirs, and the fossilized remains of fantastic beasts. These form an extensive cabinet of curiosities, a world which can be visited in waking dreams, both created and discovered through the camera’s lens.”

72 Hollins

Ladder. 1982.

Main in

Reilly Swennes ’20 built a Minecraft version of Front Quad during the spring.

Below are some excerpts from her explanation for this passion project: What inspired me to build Hollins on Minecraft first came purely out of boredom, but as I continued to build, it had more to do with how dearly I missed the campus and everyone in it.

My goal then became sharing my progress with my friends over Facebook (alumnae/i, professors, current students, etc.) because I knew so many of us could not visit campus, and photos alone cannot capture it all.

I used floor plans, Google Maps, photos, and just the overall feel of a space to make this project come to life.

Main was the first structure I built and, considering I had not played on Minecraft since high school, it was more challenging than I had anticipated. First, I had to come up with a block palette and map out a general outline for where everything would

go. Then I spent a few hours a day over a couple of weeks placing each and every block by hand without any console commands. After getting the hang of things, I quickly finished portions of Front Quad, the covered walkway, and Bradley Hall.

I built the campus on a super flat world, because that way I would not have to contend with any pre-existing structures or biomes that might get in the way. The tradeoff for this was that I had to build every hill and plant every tree myself. One of the issues that I ran into during this process was realizing that super flat worlds are also super thin and leave virtually no room for basements, so I have to get creative and fudge the topography of the campus a bit. Still, I am pretty happy with how it turned out.

TINKER DAY IS COMING! Mark your calendar for the weekend of October 16-18 for our VIRTUAL Tinker Day celebrations.

Watch your email for dates and times.