The Madwomen of 1960 Gather on Zoom

by Holly Worthen '60 and Mary Kay Vaughan '60 on behalf of the Class

In the Spring of 2020, when the Pandemic turned the world upside down, Laurel canceled its upcoming in-person Alumnae Weekend and organized a virtual gathering for each reunion class. On May 16, 2020, the Class of 1960 met virtually to celebrate its 60th Reunion. The desire to continue the conversation led to five more Zoom gatherings over the summer before the class landed on a regular biweekly schedule, a commitment it has kept since that fall. Over the course of the last 22 months, the classmates have explored the young girls they were and more importantly, the wise women they have become—all through the lens of a shared girlhood and a connection, rediscovered after decades, that thanks to intentional cultivation and care has bloomed into a deep and remarkable bond. We asked them to share their story.

Laurel’s Class of 1960 is part of the last generation born during World War II. After the war, peace was good to our families. We were from middle- and upper-class white Protestant families, destined for college and raising a family. Among us were two Catholics and one Jew: that was the extent of our diversity. We learned Latin, French, music, US and European history, English literature, drama, and art. We played tennis and field hockey, wearing bloomers. We learned very little science. We were not expected to go to law, business or medical school. We were well prepared for Cold War America and the 1950s—for us, a Eurocentric, white, suburban and gender limited world.

However, we graduated into the 1960s: a different war and the protests against it; the civil rights movement along with assassinations and burning cities; the Beatles, the women’s movement and birth control.

A couple of Fridays ago one of us said, “The sixties were absolutely exhilarating, an opportunity to break boundaries and blinders, to try to put into practice ideals of peace, justice and equality we learned at Laurel.” Then another classmate said, “The sixties were scary. They were as scary as today.”

Being on the cusp of major change is not easy.

Who we are

Sixty-one of us graduated in June 1960. Fourteen sadly have since died and 13 have not responded to emails or letters the last two years. Of the remaining 34, about 17 show up regularly every-other Friday afternoon, thanks to the Laurel Zoom account, with a steady core group of 12 to 14 attending. Our conversations move quickly and last one hour. Some of us miss out because we live in distant time zones, but everyone can read the emails that go back and forth between Zooms. Only five have asked to be taken off the email list. Remarkably, given that we range politically from Trump supporters to moderate Republicans to centrist Democrats to socialists, we stuck together through the 2020 election and January 6. One of us pointed out how these challenges have drawn us together: “Those of us who have joined our Zoom discussions appreciate the knowledge and better understanding we have gotten from people who view things differently.” We are writing this while the Glasgow Summit on climate change is taking place; commenting on how little progress was made, one of us said, “We are getting so sinful, I don’t know how long God will let it go on.”

How we started

Our first Class of ’60 virtual gathering, organized in May 2020 by the Alumnae Office, was crowded with overlapping greetings. We decided to meet again, write our stories down and share them. Phase I would cover the years from graduation through the end of the Vietnam War; Phase II was from 1975 to 9/11; Phase III brought us up to the present. Nothing was off-limits.

One of us wrote, “I believe that during this past year and a half I have spent more time trying to put my true thoughts and feelings into words than ever before and have shared those thoughts more accurately with each of you than I have ever done before with any other one person.” We discussed things we would never have shared as girls or even young women. As one of us noted, we were not a close class back then.

There must be something about being nearly 80 that loosens the tongue. If some of us have stayed away from these Zooms out of fear that they would be competitive, the opposite is the case. Everything is seen in deep perspective: deaths, divorces, mental illness, problems with children—and the happy stuff, too. Topics for writing spun out of our conversations: what the government owes us, the ongoing COVID pandemic, dementia, what creates a sense of place, our work lives, our ten-year plans (that means being 90!), religion, what is a good death, how we each became aware of racism, and varieties of creativity. Sometimes one of us presents a work of art or an important object. Zoom makes this possible. Not everyone writes, but we now have an archive of hundreds of pages.

Despite its limitations, our Laurel preparation evidently had its strengths: we may have been naïve, eager, idealistic, recklessly open hearted, but we were somehow confident enough to dive into the waves of social and cultural change and keep swimming.

One thing you can say about our lives is that they took a crooked path. Looking back, one of us said, “We were a transitional generation of women.” Most of us have balanced family life with work, paid or volunteer. Those who pursued professions usually entered fields historically penetrated by American women such as education, nursing, social work, and the arts, but often pushed the limits that existed at the time. Some braved entry into the fiercely male private business sector and confronted discrimination as did those in the more “female” professions. In 1960, the women’s movement hadn’t reached girls like us. One of us who became a nurse had to quit work when her pregnant tummy made it so she couldn’t button her uniform. That became a metaphor for the way our lives as young women pushed up against barriers we hadn’t seen coming. We hit these barriers and fought them, so that the next wave of young women could really knock them down.

Beloved teachers

Two teachers especially have come up in our conversations. One was Janet Moore, who taught art on the third floor in the studio with white walls and steep skylights. Maybe one reason so many— eight or nine of us—found work in the arts was because in her studio, we actually made things—built them out of clay or paper, string or wood. Her exams were a set-up for joyful efforts. She said that an exam should be your opportunity to do your best, so she put Edith Piaf on the record player and served strawberries and whipped cream while we painted enormous still lifes.

The other was our classmate Cathleen McCollom’s mother, Miriam, who taught dance and directed the Senior play. Presciently, she chose Jean Giraudoux’s La Folle de Chaillot (The Madwoman of Chaillot), about a trio of nutty French old lady aristocrats who, with the help of some riff-raff led by a Ragpicker, defeat an attempt by some millionaires to drill for oil near the Eiffel Tower and destroy Paris. From this play we adopted the name for our Zooms: Madwomen. The classmate who played “La Folle” is one of our steady participants.

Being 79 or 80

As “elderly ladies,” as one of us insists on putting it, we face a set of body-related challenges, that are not the sex, drugs, pregnancy type of our early days, but things that involve x-rays, walkers and eyedrops. When one of us says she runs three miles a day, no one doubts her, but no one attempts to compete with her either. We’ve got one classmate who can stand on her head, another who can perform a yoga move called “The Swan,” one who goes ballroom dancing and one who can sail a fishing boat. Several of us are still working or volunteering. It’s pretty impressive.

But we share an awareness of what is coming, for the planet in general and for ourselves. One of us has a mother who is 103. Another has a partner, a man who was the love of her life, who is slowly descending into Alzheimer’s. She told us how she invited some of his old friends over for dinner, suddenly found herself looking at him through their eyes, and got a reality check about how far down the road he had gone. We listen but then we all talk about it together.

The answers to the question, “How are you doing?” can range from travel plans to surgeries. We don’t pretend.

There is a sense in the group that our gathering will go on indefinitely. So far, we haven’t skipped a one, not even on Christmas Eve, when many of us who said they couldn’t make it turned up anyway. Intimacy, at our age, turns out to be pretty simple: One of us said, “Everyone has a need to belong, to be appreciated, to feel happy, and to laugh. I always feel better after our Zooms than I did before.” There is a lot of talk about the disintegration of community in our society. We created a community out of a long-ago shared experience. It is an exciting one.

Laurel's Class of 1960