THE MAGAZINE OF REGIS COLLEGE Fall 2012
i
my iPad
New iPads for everyone! A giant digital leap is revolutionizing how we learn.
Special edition Roll of Honor 2011–2012
“
The way I see it now is that the iPad is groundbreaking in the classroom for those who take advantage of it.” [pg 23]
Miriam Finn Sherman ’98 Chief Development Officer miriam.sherman@regiscollege.edu
Regis College
Rachel Morton Editor | rachel@rachelmorton.com
Chair
Board of Trustees 2012
Donna M. Norris, MD
Lilly Pereira Designer | www.lillypereira.com
Members
Heather Ciras Writer | heather.ciras@regiscollege.edu
Carole Fiorine Barrett ’63, JD
Ruth Sanderson Kingsbury ’57
Ernest Bartell, CSC, PhD (Emeritus)
Peter Langenus, JD
Marian Batho ’70, CSJ
Judith Murphy Lauch ’68
Regis Today is published twice a year. © 2012, Regis College, Weston, Massachusetts. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in Regis Today are those of the authors and not necessarily of Regis College.
Beverly W. Boorstein, JD
Christina Kennedy McCann ’60
Rosemary Brennan, CSJ
Kathleen McCluskey ’71, CSJ, PhD
Kathleen Dawley Smokowski ’79
Teresa M. McGonagle ’81
Maureen Doherty ’68, CSJ
Peter Minihane, CPA
Please send address changes to:
Mary Anne Doyle ’67, CSJ, PhD
Glenn Morris
Clyde H. Evans, PhD
Kathleen O’Hare ’69
Rev. Msgr. Paul V. Garrity, VF
Mary T. Roche ’78, CPA
Antoinette M. Hays, PhD, RN
Joan C. Shea
Leila A. Hogan ’61, CSJ
Jane Cronin Tedder ’66, EdD
Karen Hokanson, SND
Donato J. Tramuto
Ellen C. Kearns ’67, JD
Richard W. Young, PhD (Emeritus)
Office of Institutional Advancement and Alumni Relations Regis College 235 Wellesley Street Weston, MA 02493-1571 781-768-7220 www.regiscollege.edu
regıs g inside
On the cover iPads were given to to all full-time students and faculty. Photograph by Kathleen Dooher.
Features
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photo: Kathleen Dooher
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Her Dream For Liberia Her African home has been torn by war, yet Cecelia “Buff” Harmon-Rogers ’85 has new hope for its future.
Finding Herself A famous photograph stirs memories for Mary Crane Fahey ’64.
Thinking Forward A new strategic plans envisions a larger and more global Regis in the near future.
Move-In Day 24 Regis puts its best foot forward to welcome new families.
Departments
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Dear Neighbor Though some Catholic leaders have questioned the Sisters Religious, we salute them and strive to follow their example.
Tower Views A devastating loss of two students in motor vehicle accidents shakes campus community.
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Taking Action A Regis doctoral candidate invents MyPapp, a computer app to educate women about the Pap Test.
Questions & Answers Historian Raffaele Florio talks about history—the world’s and his own.
Roll of Honor 27 Thanks to those who gave.
A lumni Together 48 Gatherings and events bring alumni together.
Notes 50 Class News of the classes. & Minds 72 AHearts daughter salutes a life well lived.
dear
neighbor
2 REGIS TODAY
Last spring, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in Rome questioned the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) for some of its work with a social justice lobby, Network. At the same time, although unrelated, the CDF also questioned Sister Margaret Farley, RSM, a Yale ethicist, for her book Just Love, saying that her academic inquiry did not convey Catholic teaching. Across the Atlantic, people felt, at the very least, that the timing of the CDF was off or that it lacked communication sensitivity in a Church wounded by the clerical sexual abuse crisis. Catholics of all stripes around the United States affirmed the value and importance of religious sisters in our religious history, talking with love and affection about the work they have done in this country teaching, healing, and helping countless human beings. Both Catholic and secular media picked up the story. To his credit, while many bishops were silent, our own Archbishop, Cardinal Seán O’Malley, OFM, Cap., lamented the perception that the Church does not welcome women. “It’s a great concern,” he said to a Boston Globe reporter. “The last thing the church needs is more controversies. As we try to evangelize people, we are trying to get them to focus on the centrality of Christ and trying to promote family life and service to the poor, and I see these things as great distractions sometimes.” This summer, Sister Simone Campbell and other Sisters from Network launched “Nuns on the Bus,” a lobbying campaign that traveled from the Midwest to Washington, DC, visiting soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and congressional offices to point out the social service work of Catholic sisters and protest the House Republican budget. On September 5, Sister Simone made a well-received presentation at the Democratic National Convention in which she affirmed Catholic social teachings the bishops also affirm. I thought of the Dominican sisters who taught me in my childhood and the Sisters of Saint Joseph I have known in over 27 years of service at Regis College. I also thought of the Sister of Notre Dame who serves on our Board, and of Sister Clare Dawson, C.P., whom our students have known in her mission in Villa El Salvador, Peru, through seven years of community service trips. Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Sister Mary Owens, IBVM, who operates the pioneer and premier orphanage in Nyumbani, Kenya, where a number of our students and faculty visited in May as part of the Christian Immersion experience sponsored by our friend, Kathryn Erat. Politics aside, the Sisters we know are highly educated and accomplished women who, with faith, hope, and charity, address the realities of families needing food, children and elders who have been socially abandoned, immigrants caught by human trafficking, the poor trying to make ends meet, and generations of students struggling to get an education, accepting all, as the CSJs put it, as “dear neighbors,” without distinction. This work, too, is what American religious freedom is about and holds a worthy place among the aims of Catholic liberal education. I am proud to be one of the Sisters’ heirs in the great transition from religious orders to lay leadership in American Catholic colleges and universities. Here at Regis, we all salute you, Sisters. You are the salt of the earth and we strive to follow in your footsteps. Antoinette M. Hays, PhD, RN PRESIDENT
Dressing for Meaning Early this fall, the Carney Gallery exhibited two artists who reinterpreted familiar objects in a new way: Virginia Fitzgerald and David Lang. Fitzgerald, who in 2006 began The Dress Project, has created well over 400 dresses in wildly divergent media. Many of the dress sculptures have deep meaning for her and others. “In Memory Of,” on exhibit at Carney [right] contains dog tags and photographs of soldiers killed in Iraq. Another, “Dear Jeff,” [bottom right] was commissioned by a man whose wife was killed in the Twin Towers during 9/11. Others are more whimsical. Fitzgerald has recently been making little origami dresses on which she writes fortunes, like “May this dress bring you peace,” and she places them in random public spots. “The dress is my soapbox,” said Fitzgerald. “I hope to add a little joy, happiness, lightness into our life.”
“Eat Your Vegetables,” went in the crock pot for dinner.
photo: XXXX
“Wedding Dress,” the first official dress of The Dress Project, was made on Wells Beach, Maine.
Inset: The bottom of the dress is a tangle of wires adorned with mini dog tags onto which are attached photos of dead soldiers.
“Dear Jeff,” is made partly of notes written by a woman killed in the Twin Towers on 9/11.
New and Noted David Gilmore was named Associate Dean of Undergraduate Affairs. He was Chair and Assistant Professor, Medical Imaging, and Program Director, Nuclear Medicine Technology. Gilmore was recently named outstanding educator in nuclear medicine technology at the Annual Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM) Conference.
REGIS TODAY
photos: Eric Goldscheider
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Kenya Connection This fall, Regis welcomed special guest Sister Mary Owens, IBVM, a psychologist and the director of the pioneer orphanage for children with HIV in Nyumbani, Kenya. It is the largest such facility in Kenya and offers unparalleled medical, educational, and social benefits to the more than 100 children who live there. A Regis group had visited Nyumbani in the spring as part of an academic seminar with a focus on health. They were led by Professor Nancy Bittner, Associate Professor Lauress Wilkins, and former lecturer Lorna Rinear. Father Angelo D’Agostino, SJ, founded the orphanage 20 years ago Sister Mary Owens in the village of Nyumbani and, despite many obstacles, he succeeded in developing a thriving home for children and in keeping the village and its network of families intact. At the time of the founding, the village had lost many adults due to AIDS, leaving only elders and children. As Sister Mary Owens put it in an anniversary newsletter, “through Father D’Agostino’s faith in God’s guidance, courage in the face of misunderstanding, and perseverance despite betrayal, his vision for Nyumbani has been realized beyond what even he envisaged at the foundation.”
Peter Langenus has been appointed to the Regis College Board of Trustees. A practicing lawyer at Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP in New York, Langenus is married to Eileen McCormick Langenus ’78. Mary-Anne Vetterling has been named Teacher of the Year: College/University Level by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP). Peter and Carolyn Lynch, philanthropists and founders of the Lynch Foundation, spoke at Commencement 2012. The Foundation supports education, historic preservation, healthcare and medical research, and religious and educational efforts of the Roman Catholic Church. Le Sette Wright was named the new Coordinator of Multicultural and Community Engagement Initiative and Protestant Chaplain. She has worked as an associate director for violence prevention programs, director of youth ministries, and as chaplain. Amy Scott has been appointed Director of The Regis College Children’s Center and The Academy of Regis College. Scott has 10 years of experience as a director of children’s centers in Pasco, Wash., and in Holden, Mass. Susan Clancy Kennedy ’81 is the new Director of Internships and Career Placement. Kennedy has more than 20 years of experience in recruiting, hiring, and managing entry-level professionals.
PRAYERS & CONDOLENCES and lacrosse co-captain Michael Kaplan ’13 from Braintree. Peter Leighton ’15 of Wilmington was seriously injured in the motorcycle crash but is recovering, and we will soon welcome him back to campus. The College has experienced a great outpouring of faculty and staff concern. Our students’ outreach to each other, both undergraduate and graduate, united them in community participation at memorials on campus and wakes and funerals in greater Boston and in the embrace of
Darner’s and Michael’s families. On October 2 we postponed the celebration of Founders’ Day and the Cap and Gown Investiture of our senior class, which mark the heritage and values of the Sisters of St. Joseph. In reality, however, our grieving campus has been living those values of inclusiveness and excellence with gentleness that come from a profound encounter with the love of neighbor and what it reveals about our humanity and the love of God. May Michael and Darner rest in peace.
Darner Alteon
5 Michael Kaplan
“Watershed Moment” for Haiti Project Twelve Haitian nursing professors have returned to Haiti after spending six weeks at Regis taking master-level courses and shadowing nurses at local Boston hospitals as part of the Regis College Haiti Project. After two years, the project is still going strong; and with a grant from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, its future is assured. A collaboration among the Regis College School of Nursing, Science and Health Professions, Haiti’s Ministry of Health, and the University of Haiti, this innovative program’s goal is to educate nursing leaders in Haiti, who will go on to continue to teach the next generation of Haitian nurses. “It has been a personal honor to work with such an incredible group of global nursing leaders, and I am incredibly pleased that— thanks to a generous $462,800 grant from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund—we will have the opportunity to continue this partnership for years to come,” said Sheila Davis, Director of Global Nursing for PIH.
“ Take a leap! Be open to leaving your comfort zone to seek growth opportunities to become all you can be.” From the Commencement remarks of Amy Lind Corbett ’70, Federal Aviation Administration.
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During the week of September 20–27, the Regis College community suffered two devastating losses and undertook a remarkable journey of grief and love. A car accident on the evening of Thursday, September 20, took the life of Darner Alteon ’14, a well-known and well-respected junior and track runner, on his way home to Milton after attending a poetry reading on campus. A week later, a Thursday afternoon motorcycle crash on nearby Chestnut Street killed much-loved biology major
An App for the Pap Women’s Health Goes High-Tech by rachel morton
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For 23 years, Stacy Christensen has heard just about every misconception in the book about Pap Tests. Does cervical cancer run in the family? Many women think it does, but it does not. Does a Pap screen for STDs? No, it only screens for one STD—HPV (Human Papillomavirus). Women contract that virus through unprotected sex, and 99 percent of all cervical cancer is caused by HPV. Will a Pap screen for cancer of the ovaries or the uterus? No, it only screens for cancer of the cervix. A nurse practitioner in Connecticut, Christensen has done “probably thousands” of Paps. She is also in a tenure-track teaching position at Central Connecticut State University, and she has a family— a husband and two boys, 15 and 18. So her plate is full, but she has made it even fuller. For the past two years, Christensen has been commuting to Regis to attend the DNP (Doctor of Nursing Practice) program. For her Capstone Project this year, she decided to address those common Pap Test misconceptions by creating an informative tool to help women understand the Pap and their gynecological health. Her teaching vehicle is not a book or an article, an infomercial or a website. It’s a mobile app. Called “MyPapp,” it helps educate women about the Pap Test and teaches them about female anatomy. It is an easy to use, interactive application that is free and can be used in the privacy of one’s own home. Christensen is by no means a computer expert, so creating an application was a difficult hurdle to surmount. But a nursing informatics class spurred her interest in the project—health informatics is all about technology and health, two fields that
are rapidly intertwining as the health profession attempts to improve patient outcomes through the use of technology. To build a computer application, most people hire programming professionals and pay many thousands of dollars to turn their ideas into applications. Christensen didn’t have those kinds of resources, so she sought help from a professor at Trinity College, Dr. Ralph Morelli, who had experience with a program called App Inventor. He helped her work her way through programming a computer application. “I never thought I could do it,” Christensen admits. “But I did it with a free program and I did it myself.” She also created the app in Spanish because in her culture class she learned that Hispanic women have a much higher chance of dying of cervical cancer. The result received immediate attention. Christensen was invited to present MyPapp at an App Inventor Summit at MIT this summer. “I’m not a computer geek so I was living proof that someone like myself could use this programing platform.” She coauthored a paper with Dr. Morelli that was accepted for publication in CIN: The Journal of Computers, Informatics, and Nursing. Christensen recently presented MyPapp in a poster presentation at the national DNP conference in St. Louis. And MyPapp was recognized among the “100 Best of 2012 Nurse Practitioner Round-Up” by the Online Nurse Practitioner Programs website. People involved with health education understand that this kind of private, personal access to sensitive health information could be of great benefit to women. For where do women learn about their bodies, about what happens in a gynecologist’s office? Some women
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photo: Kathleen Dooher
“ MyPapp helps educate women about the Pap Test and teaches them about the female anatomy.”
might have attended health classes when they were girls, but most depend upon the information they get at a doctor’s office. And the atmosphere could not be less conducive to learning there—especially for a young woman going in for the first time. “You go in for your first exam,” Christensen says. “You are sitting on crinkly paper and you are a basket case.” She explains that patients retain probably 10 to 15 percent of what they hear in a doctor visit. So even if the Pap is explained, the chances that a woman remembers and takes that information away with her is remote. Plus many women are reluctant to ask
questions regarding the gynecological exam because of embarrassment. So there’s a lot to learn, and to un-learn, and Christensen has got that covered with her friendly, interactive MyPapp application, which can be downloaded for free onto a smartphone or other electronic device via the Android program. (It is currently not yet available for download on Apple products.) The informal feedback has been very positive so far. “One woman said she learned things she’d never dared ask her provider because she was so embarrassed by what she didn’t know,” says Christensen, who thinks women like the privacy and ease of use. “It’s not your Angry Birds or fancy apps like that,” she laughs, “but it is very interactive. You tap on the ovary and it says, ‘This is the ovary—it releases eggs.’ ” Christensen’s Capstone Project represented a great blend of nursing knowledge and technology expertise—the kind of interdisciplinary effort that is becoming increasingly important in the health field. “This Capstone has been a phenomenal experience,” says Christensen. “It exceeded all my expectations.”
answers
questions &
Historian Makes It Personal Raffaele Florio builds foundations under “Castles in the Sky”
REGIS TODAY
When did you decide to become a teacher?
I grew up on Federal Hill in Providence which (although it’s pretty trendy now) 40 years ago was what I guess you’d call a very ethnic neighborhood. I was always that kid that actually wanted to hear the older generation tell their stories about their experiences in diverse regions of southern Italy. This was a tremendous cultural experience for me that certainly had an impact on my own sense of identity. By the time I was in high school it became pretty clear that the study of history would become my path. I was an active member of the local historical society before I could even drive. I was fascinated with things like landscape as a form of memory and began to really see the importance of historic preservation. But at the same time I always knew that it was the stories that gave life to these things. Objects do tell stories and as long as there were people willing to add to the narrative which might help uncover those stories, I was willing to listen.
Italy opened my eyes to a whole new way of viewing history. It also caused me to hate just about every history course I took after that point. Though I completed my degree a few years later, the following September, rather than going back to Providence College, I started working in construction doing mostly carpentry work and painting. With construction paying the majority of the bills, I tried my hand at several things—teaching middle school social studies for a few years, designing educational technology for a software developer, taking on historic preservation jobs, starting an interior design business which focused on historic reproduction, teaching in a tech school, and eventually teaching in college (at Salve Regina University and Community College of Rhode Island). It stopped there. I knew I had found it. And other than a minor setback—a year of treatment and recovery for cancer in 2005—I made it work. Why is Regis a good fit for you?
Was there a moment when history became personal?
I think the experience that changed my life forever was my summer in Italy. I fell in love with the history, but more with the heritage. You just can’t escape it there. Everyone and everything has a story to tell. I found that those old timers in Providence who told stories of the old country weren’t “Italian”—they were Neopolitan, Sicilian, Calabresi, etc. Even the language we spoke in the neighborhood—which I always believed to be Italian until I travelled through Italy trying to use it!—barely resembled Italy’s national language. It was a linguistic hybrid of southern dialects—which my later studies revealed to be hybrids of the dialects that preceded them—and broken English. I was a hybrid. We were a hybrid. Yet we all had this odd notion of collective identity, even if it was in many ways invented and in a sense connected back to what is essentially an imagined geography.
I was asked this question when I first arrived here and jokingly I responded that the two faculty members who interviewed me, Sister Betty Cawley and Ernie Collamati, “had me at hello!” I dropped everything for Regis. It was one of those indescribable moments when you sort of just know. I guess I should apologize up front for my romantic view of life, but I saw this opportunity at Regis metaphorically as someone handing me a blank canvas and a set of brushes directing me to create what I had always envisioned, or to paraphrase Thoreau, to build foundations under the castles I had built in the sky. I remember Russ Pottle, the dean who hired me, said in my last interview: “Now you need to understand, this isn’t your garden-variety faculty position.” And all I could think was: “SOLD!”
photo: Kathleen Dooher
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What got you interested in studying history?
“Objects do tell stories, and as long as there were people willing to add to the narratives, I was
willing to listen.�
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answers
questions &
Can you describe your approach to history?
REGIS TODAY
If you could live in another culture and another time, what would that be and why?
Okay, this is totally a selfish reason. I’d love to go back to the Cilento Coast of Italy in the ninth century. I’m dying to know if my theories about the religious culture of that place and time are even close to what was really there. Who knows? I could be way off base! One caveat—once I have my answer, I’d want to come back! If you were analyzing your own personal history, what threads would you identify and study?
Oh my goodness! God bless the person who would have the ill fate of analyzing my personal history! It’s just so, I don’t know, circuitous I guess you might say. I’m a strange mix of curious—adventurous even, academic, yet totally blue collar, both intellectual (even contemplative at times) and downright silly. I am not sure I know what I want to be when I grow up! My circle of friends contains the most ridiculous cast of characters—of course I use that term in an endearing way. I think I’d confuse the daylights out of anyone analyzing my history.
What is your current research project?
Years ago, I started working on a project in an amazingly picturesque fishing village, Castellabate, in southwest Italy. I was there researching the Castle of the Abbot, a typical Norman-era fortified settlement built in the early 12th century by a Benedictine Abbot who served as the ecclesiastical baron there. The region was essentially untouched by American scholars and I was there to tell the story of power relations between the Normans, their Benedictine administrators, local merchants, and the town’s inhabitants. I found everything I needed to tell this story but it was in every way your standard “garden variety” historical narrative.
photo: Kathleen Dooher
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In the first couple of years my program’s motto was: “Regis College is changing history!” And it really was. My approach to history is based on a hybrid model that borrows heavily from the field of anthropology, but really stretches across the traditional liberal arts disciplines. My own graduate education was an interdisciplinary one and my most influential professors and mentors were very progressive; their courses were based largely in post-modern theoretical models, and this approach becomes very visible in the work I do. I try to engage the historical narrative holistically. I see the written record as one form of historical artifact and believe that it is essential to put that record in conversation with other historical artifacts —things like material culture (art, architecture, landscape, textiles, archaeological artifacts, etc.); alternative forms of written culture (literature and poetry); and cultural artifacts, essentially cultural memory (folklore, oral tradition, and personal narratives, prayers, rituals, etc.). This approach brings the study outside of the archives and requires fieldwork, ethnography, and oral history in addition to a different kind of interpretation—a more open-ended, holistic one.
“ This approach brings the study outside of the archives and requires
fieldwork, ethnography, and oral history.”
When you are not involved in history (teaching, researching, etc.) what do you like to do?
I can say that family is the most important thing in my life. I am fortunate that my wife and 10-year old son share many of the same interests—and my one-and-a-half year old daughter is too young to argue about it! They entertain my tendency to drag them around to various museums and heritage sites. When it comes to eating dinner, I’d like to think they get their reward for putting up with me. I love to cook and will actually spend hours food shopping. I pride myself on putting on the table (again, what I’d like to believe is) a gourmet dinner every night (unless of course if I’m teaching a night course— then it’s take-out!). Besides that I really love the outdoors. I enjoy the landscape and find something to do in just about every season—whether it’s fishing, hunting, mushrooming, or something more mundane like riding my Harley through country roads, or even just chasing my beagles through the woods! But I’d argue that even these things connect back somehow to my heritage. These are things that I’ve inherited. One of my favorite, in fact, is wine making. I am happy to know that I am carrying on something that would have otherwise been lost in my generation.
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After speaking with some of the elderly fishermen who, from nearby benches, gazed out at the boats pulling in the day’s catch, I stumbled into the historical conundrum that forever changed me as a scholar. These men told me tales of mermaids, shipwrecks, and a courageous mariner who was cast into the sea only to be saved by the town’s patroness, Saint Mary of the Sea. One guy, who voluntarily disclosed himself as illiterate, essentially recited, in the Cilentan dialect (which is an amazing sociolinguistic study in itself), book five of Homer’s Odyssey. I spent the next year studying the earliest Greek settlements on that particular coast and traced some of the cults and rituals associated with that area through the Roman period and into the early Medieval. The written record essentially begins with the Benedictine arrival, and as one might guess the material record confirms major changes in terms of veneration at that point. I guess the rest is history—for me anyway. I began employing the methods I had learned from anthropology and using some of the models employed by the early ethnohistorians who were working with the Native American populations in the southwestern United States. Over the years I’ve adopted, perhaps adapted would be a better term, these strategies hoping to fill in the very obvious gaps in written history and attempting to circumvent some of the particularly lopsided aspects of the formal narrative. It fit. It worked. It became the model I use with my students today at Regis. A few years ago Castellabate was named as one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites, and almost immediately following a very influential movie, Benvento al Sud (Welcome to the South), was filmed there. What resulted is a researcher’s dream; although, it might also be seen as a native villager’s nightmare. The landscape, at pace with the new
economy, is changing drastically. The marina is full of foreign yachts while small fishing vessels, once a source of self-sufficiency, have disappeared. The language has changed. Sustainability in both cultural terms and economic terms is challenged. Even the public historians there have begun marketing their books on “local history” to the tourists. The poetry, the music, and the festivals all tell a rather lamenting tale. What was gained? And at what price? The project does more than provide context for our students. It provides tools that can be adapted to life in New England and beyond that. Last year we found similar conditions right here in Gloucester. Our students responded to the call for help. They collected the oral histories and recorded the narratives describing the plight of New England fishermen and the impact of tourism on the landscape. This history was then converted into a musical by Professor Wendy Lement and her theatre students here at Regis and it was a huge success.
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Hope has been reborn in the aftermath of civil war, anarchy, and a brutal regime
Her dream for Liberia By Patricia Murray DiBona ’84
illustration by OLAF HAJEK
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Her family was part of Liberia’s Americo-Liberian group who descended from freed slaves.
C
ecelia Harmon-Rogers ’85 sat alone in the dark on a cold street bench, numb inside and sad to her core. It was November 1985, and the new college graduate and aspiring banking/finance professional had just finished a routine work day in downtown Boston while at that very moment, in a cruel twist of fate, her father was being buried thousands of miles away in Monrovia, Liberia. Over the next two decades, Liberia would continue to be a source of unimaginable heartache for Harmon-Rogers. The West African country, created with promise by freed American slaves and characterized by lush tropical rainforests and a colorful indigenous culture, would be nearly destroyed by two horrific civil wars and rampant government corruption. Fourteen years of strife would leave Liberia’s economy in ruins, healthcare and education at a standstill, the capital city without water or electricity, and 250,000 people dead. But the women of Liberia never gave up hope during those tumultuous years. Under the leadership of Liberia’s first female president, Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, elected in 2005, Liberian women fought peacefully for their beloved homeland. They are credited with Liberia’s fragile rebirth and tenuous stability. Harmon-Rogers is one of these women. Her journey began quietly enough, in typical teenage fashion. “Buff,” as Harmon-Rogers is known to family and friends, was living in Liberia and deciding on a college. Her police director father, a Michigan State University alumnus, wanted something small and safe for the third of his eight children. “My aunt graduated from Regis in the 1950s and the wife of Liberia’s former secretary of state was a graduate,” said HarmonRogers about the Liberia-Regis connection. Two cousins, Sharon Cooper and Lafayetta Harmon, graduated from Regis as well. (Lafayetta is deceased and Sharon is currently the UNHCR special representative to Ghana.) “I wasn’t thrilled about the all-girl thing,” she laughed. “But I had never ventured outside of Africa and was ready for an adventure. I was excited to go to America, a place I had heard about my entire life. We grew up reading about the U.S. and watching American TV shows. I visited Regis in March and still remember my tour guide vividly and how beautiful the campus was. I was so excited when I received my acceptance letter.”
Thanksgiving and Christmas. During the summer months, Harmon-Rogers scrambled to find a place to live, writing letters to extended family members in New York and Virginia in search of a place to stay. “This was very unsettling. I couldn’t wait to get back to Regis where life was stable,” she said. She flourished there, majoring in economics and establishing close friendships with classmates and faculty. Sister Zita Fleming, then dean of students, provided much-needed guidance. “She made my experience bearable and became a motherpresence to me,” Harmon-Rogers said. Sister Zita remembers a young woman, “full of light and love and fun.” Classmate Keegan was struck by Harmon-Rogers’ inquisitive and pensive nature and Harpley Brukilacchio recalls a chance meeting freshman year that developed into a lifelong kinship. “Harpley/Harmon: We shared a mailbox,” she said. Ever self-reliant, Harmon-Rogers secured a part-time job as a bookkeeper with a Boston real estate firm and learned to navigate the MBTA with ease. Sometimes exploration was necessary. “There weren’t any Weston hairdressers who could cut black hair so I had to find one,” she said of her trips to an ethnic hair salon in Copley Square. On other occasions, she served as the unofficial tour guide for her American and Puerto Rican friends. “There I was the foreigner and the Boston expert,” she chuckled. Graduation was bittersweet. HarmonRogers reunited briefly with her visiting mother and then moved on to the next phase of her life in the States. She accepted a permanent job with the real estate company and moved into a sixbedroom house in Newton with Harpley Brukilacchio and several Regis classmates. And then the news arrived that Harmon-Rogers’ father, Edwin, had died. “My mother told me not to come home for the funeral. It was unsafe to travel in Liberia after another attempted military coup. I hadn’t seen my father in four years and now he was gone,” she said. HarmonRogers detected loneliness in her mother’s voice when they spoke by phone every Sunday. She quit her job and booked her airline ticket.
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Harmon-Rogers’ family was part of Liberia’s Americo-Liberian group, an estimated 5 percent of the population who descended from freed slaves. Her ancestors trace back to a plantation in Delaware and Gibson Island and South Baltimore in Maryland. In 1819, the United States Congress appropriated $100,000 for the establishment of Liberia by the American Colonization Society, led by prominent Americans such as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and President James Monroe for whom the capital city is named. The first group of settlers arrived in 1820 and in 1847 founded the Republic of Liberia, establishing a government modeled on that of the United States, one that advocated freedom and equality. Liberia continued to modernize throughout the 20th century with American assistance and displayed high rates of economic growth throughout the 1950s, thanks to foreign investment. Actively involved in international affairs, Liberia was a founding member of the United Nations and a vocal critic of South African apartheid. The political and economic climate in Liberia remained relatively calm throughout Harmon-Rogers’ youth. She recalls a middle-class upbringing filled with laughter and delicious African cuisine courtesy of her mother, Sylvia, a professional chef. Later, as Harmon-Rogers settled into college life in tranquil Weston, Mass., turmoil began brewing in Liberia. In a military coup, Samuel Doe of the Krahn tribal group overthrew the Americo-Liberian leadership in 1980, murdering President William Tolbert and executing his cabinet. Far from the upheaval of her homeland, Harmon-Rogers felt the personal pressure of familial expectation. “My parents made a major financial sacrifice so that I could study abroad and I didn’t want to let them down,” she said. “The last words my father said to me in person were: ‘We are depending on you.’ ” This sentiment resonated with Harmon-Rogers and gave her strength during the four years she lived apart from her family. “Holidays were hard,” she admitted, recalling classmates such as Mary Crimmins Adgate ’84, Linda Moroni ’83, Sarah Harpley Brukilacchio ’85, and Peggy Keegan ’84 who opened their homes on
As she settled into college life in tranquil Weston, Mass., turmoil began brewing in Liberia.
16
Rebels had hand grenades strapped across their chests, waving machetes in the air, high on drugs, and dressed crazily in women’s dresses and army boots.
REGIS TODAY
Rebels dragged thousands of people into the street. Along the road, people lay dead and dying.
Though waves of discontent echoed throughout Liberia in the late ’80s, Harmon-Rogers was happy there and acclimated quickly. She got a job with Citibank in customer service and was promoted to the treasury department. She married William Rogers. But life was about to change forever. Rebels from the National Patriotic Front of Liberia led by Charles Taylor launched an insurrection against Doe’s government in 1989, leading to the first Liberian civil war. The economy came to a grinding halt, Citibank closed down, and the capital city of Monrovia, where she and her family lived, fell under siege. “Overnight our community became a war zone,” she said. “Armed rebels pulled us from our homes by force. They were fully armed—hand grenades strapped across their chests, waving machetes in the air, high on drugs, and dressed crazily in women’s dresses and army boots. They dragged thousands of people into the street, people from different neighborhoods and tribal groups, and forced us to walk miles in a single line. Along the road, people lay dead and dying, bodies bloated and unrecognizable. But we couldn’t react, couldn’t grieve, or the rebels would kill us. They didn’t want witnesses. I kept my expression passive as I memorized the faces of the dead so I could tell their families.” Harmon-Rogers trudged along with her mother and husband, their only solace that the two youngest Harmons were not with them. “I sent them out of the country before the invasion,” Harmon-Rogers explained. “I’d heard that rebels were
abducting and raping young girls and my sister was a teenager. My brother was 6' 4" and often mistaken for an American. He would be killed on sight.” As the ragtag army led the terrorized Liberian families, one of the rebels took a closer look at William and pulled him out of line to be shot. “He accused my husband of being from a particular tribe, said his features resembled that group. Another rebel pointed out scars on William’s ankle, insisting they marked him as a government soldier,” she recalled. “He’s no solider,” she told them with a laugh. “Just a clumsy soccer player who was kicked in the ankles.” Seven times she boldly intervened, Bible in hand, and with humor convinced them otherwise. Harmon-Rogers and her family, along with 30 other people, were sequestered in a 10-by-15 foot office at the overtaken University of Liberia’s Fendel Campus. They remained there for four months with no electricity or running water. Day and night they heard piercing screams and constant gunfire. There was no privacy and rebel interrogations were frequent. “We pooled our money and gave it to my mother. She scrounged for food and tried her best to make our one meal appetizing. But there was never enough,” said Harmon-Rogers, who was pregnant with twins. “I had no medical care and terrible morning sickness,” she said. Harmon-Rogers’ one possession, her Bible, became the kidnapped groups’ lifeline. Using her trademark sense of humor and enthusiasm, Harmon-Rogers taught an informal Bible studies class. “I became the encourager. People depended on me to keep them going,” she said. “Knowing that I was needed lifted a weight off my shoulders. I had a job to do.” Charles Taylor’s rebels soon split into opposing factions and in-fighting broke out. The Economic Community of West African States, led by Nigeria, intervened. They organized a military peacekeeping force and released the campus captives. Harmon-Rogers and her family returned to their desolate Monrovia neighborhood and found their home empty. “There was nothing left. The rebels had stripped it bare. They’d taken everything: our cars, furniture, clothes,” she said, noting with
a group of 3,000 Christian and Muslim Liberian women who staged nonviolent protests. Documented in the film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, these ordinary women, dressed in white to symbolize peace, became an unshakeable political force and spurred the democratic election of the first female president in Africa, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Harmon-Rogers attributes her country’s resurgence to the peaceful negotiations of Harvard-trained economist Sirleaf. “After accumulating three billion dollars in debt, Liberia is now a credit-worthy, debt-free nation,” said Harmon-Rogers. “Development and reconstruction is happening. Liberians who were forced to leave are returning, reconnecting with their communities and bringing back the professional training they’ve received in other countries. The infrastructure of roads, electricity, hospitals, and schools are being rebuilt. Progress is slow and sometimes frustrating, but it is steady.” From her Maryland home, HarmonRogers reflected on her war-torn years in Liberia. Now a senior pastor with Harvest Ministries International, Harmon-Rogers is philosophical and grateful, and said her first-hand experience with civil war changed her life. “Tension always existed between indigenous tribal groups and settlers like me, but war brought us together. In that tiny university office, we suffered as one, we became allies.” She is confident that Liberia is, as she writes, “on the verge of redefining herself as a nation of people emerging from a critical historical correction that should realign her destiny in a very positive way.” President Sirleaf echoed this belief in her commencement address at Harvard University’s 2011 graduation: “Today, we are proud that young Liberian children are back in school, preparing themselves to play a productive part in the new Liberian society. Our seven-year-olds do not hear guns and do not have to run. They can smile again,” she said. “We can thus say with confidence that we have moved our war-torn nation from turmoil to peace, from disaster to development, from dismay to hope.”
Harmon-Rogers attributes her country’s resurgence to the peaceful negotiations of its president ellen johnson Sirleaf, whom she’s known all her life.
17 Fall 12
surprise that her wedding dress remained, hanging alone in a closet. With no functioning medical facilities and a blossoming pregnancy, HarmonRogers knew she must leave the country. Her aunt struck a deal. “She gave a group of soldiers her house in return for transportation to a port where we boarded a ship to Ghana,” said HarmonRogers. When they got to Ghana, the twins, Leopold and Maggie, were born and the Rogers family eked out a meager existence with financial support from family living abroad. But they always wanted to return home. So when word reached the Rogers’ that Monrovian banks had reopened, they returned to Liberia. It was a brief landing. Every time a new chaos erupted, they went back to their rented house in Ghana. “After our third child, Edwina, was born we realized we couldn’t continue this upand-down life, as much as we loved our country,” she said. The family moved to the Ivory Coast after another eruption and then immigrated to the United States in 2000 where many Harmon siblings lived. William began working at the Ryder Transportation System as a diesel truck technician, Harmon-Rogers at the University of Maryland and later at the Liberian Embassy in Washington, D.C. She is still there today, serving as the finance and administrative officer and overseeing human resources. Responsible for issuing visas and renewing passports, she is a staunch advocate for Liberia and is filled with hope for the country’s future and her place in it, due in large part to the 2011 re-election of Sirleaf, who also happens to be her godmother. Under Charles Taylor’s dictatorship, Liberia had gained a reputation as a corrupt country where brutality and anarchy reigned. He stepped down as president in 2003 and in a landmark ruling in 2012, an international tribunal found Taylor guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war. He was sentenced to 50 years in jail. Taylor’s fall from power was hastened by intense pressure from the international community as well as the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace movement,
By Rachel Morton
Alumnae featured in famous photograph
18
Finding Herself
REGIS TODAY
W
hile at the dentist’s office several years ago, Mary Crane Fahey ’64 was absently thumbing through a magazine when she came upon an image that made
her do a double take. The photograph by Garry Winogrand was entitled World’s Fair,
New York 1964, and it showed six young women sitting on a bench, waiting for a bus. What drew her eye was a dress. “It was blue with a Kelly green stripe down the center. She recognized that dress—“I wore that dress to death.” She also recognized the handbag—her first Etienne Aigner bag. “Oh my God, that’s me!” she thought. “That’s us!” Seated on the bench with Fahey was her Regis roommate Barbara Bye, and their classmates Louise Brennan, Karen Johnson, Audrey Dalton, and Fredda Callaghan. It was 1964, and they had just graduated from Regis and were on a whirlwind one-day trip to New York City to see the World’s Fair. “We were all exhausted,” she remembers. “It was a full day, coming from Boston to New York, doing the Fair, and going all the way back. On the bus ride home, we all conked out.”
Fahey tore the photo from the magazine, tucked it away, and eventually lost track of it. A few years later, while visiting her daughter and son-in-law, who is a photographer, she was reading an issue of Aperture—a photography magazine—when she saw the photograph again. This time Fahey did some research and called the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, where Winogrand’s work is represented. She told them who she was. “I am not a nut,” she recalls telling the curator of the gallery, “but that photograph is of me and my Regis College classmates.”
Winogrand is widely regarded as one of the premiere “street photographers” of his time. He liked to shoot in cities, in crowds, snapping moments in time. And he liked shooting women. “I am subjective in what I photograph,” Winogrand said in a 1982 WNYC series called Creativity hosted by Bill Moyers. “Women interest me. How they look, how they move, their energy.” Many of his photographs of women were gathered in a book called Women are Beautiful—a book Fahey hopes to add to her collection one day, since this photo is among them.
Photo: Copyright The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
19 FALL 12
Unlike many photographers of today, he never asked for his subjects’ permission, and probably most of them—like Fahey—had no idea they were even being photographed. So that should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t. Last year, Fahey was reading The Boston Globe and there it was, World’s Fair, New York 1964, illustrating a photography exhibit opening at the Museum of Fine Arts. This was obviously a message from the universe for Fahey to get to the MFA and see the photograph in person. This time,
Fahey asked to meet in person with the curator, Karen Haas. “You have to know that this is a very, very famous picture,” Haas told Fahey. “It has hung all over the world.” The curator suggested that Fahey gather as many of her old classmates as she could for a photograph at the MFA exhibit. Only two of her friends— Barbara Bye Murdock and Karen Johnson Celi—were able to make the trip to Boston (Freda Callaghan Megan is deceased). The three women posed in front of the famous photograph, and The Boston Globe ran the
photograph with a little story on June 19, 2011, entitled “Fair Reunion.” So what does it feel like to be the subject of a famous photograph? “It’s fun and so amazing to know that we six Regis girls have ‘traveled’ all around the world!” says Fahey. Though he died in 1984 at the age of 56, Winogrand’s works are still widely exhibited, and his photographs are the subject of art scholarship.
Nearly 50 years after she and her Regis classmates went to the World’s Fair, Mary Crane Fahey ’64 saw herself in the very famous photograph, World’s Fair, New York City 1964 by Garry Winogrand.
From left: Unidentified man, Louise Brennan Murray, Mary Crane Fahey, Karen Johnson Celi, Barbara Bye Murdock, Audrey Dalton Gorman, Fredda Callaghan Megan, unidentified man.
20
A New Day
REGIS TODAY
dawns for Regis
By Rachel Morton
21
photo: Kathleen Dooher
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Thinking forward. A look at Regis College’s strategic plan.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Thinking forward >>>>
he past quarter century has been a tough time for many small liberal arts colleges. Many of those who have not adapted have been forced to close their doors. Others are surviving, barely—a shadow of their former selves.
22 REGIS TODAY
Though Regis went through its own difficult years, the college is now thriving and ambitiously moving forward with a new strategic plan that presents a clear vision for the future. “There has been a culture shift in the way Regis is doing business,” says President Toni Hays. “We are in a strategic planning mindset versus a surviving mindset. We look for opportunities. We are thinking forward.” President Hays presented her vision recently in a five-year plan that would build on the core identity and mission of Regis, while initiating some exciting new areas that position the college well in a changing world. “Who is Regis? What is Regis?” asks President Hays. “It’s the sum of its people and their experiences.” It is facilities and curriculum, athletics and outreach, and charisma. “It is what makes up Regis as an entity and an experience.” She articulates three main goals that intersect and overlap and all work together to define and build Regis’s character. Those goals can simply be described as enlarging and strengthening our community, cultivating and building on our mission, and creating a strong fiscal underpinning for both. Regis already has a vibrant and diverse community of students and faculty. President Hays wants that community to grow and she sees new opportunities to expand Regis’ works and horizons with partnerships—
in education, nonprofit, and business sectors—and in the local communities and abroad. These partnerships will increase internship, service, and mentorship opportunities for students. Because students are increasingly drawn to interdisciplinary programs, and this blending of disciplines is becoming more relevant in the job market, President Hays’ plan calls for the creation of new interdisciplinary graduate programs. She also envisions new, incisive strategies in Catholic and interfaith studies to help ease interfaith conflict here and abroad and a new Institute for Global Connections. These initiatives will expand the expression of the character and community of Regis. This fall, President Hays has also begun the massive technological upgrade that will make the whole campus a classroom without walls by distributing iPads to all faculty and students and upgrading the Wi-Fi by 500 percent.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > Grow graduate enrollment by
12% annually
Establish an Institute for Global Connectedness Develop the East Campus Create new interdisciplinary programs
Grow total endowment to
$17 million
Grow undergraduate enrollment to
950 by 2014
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >
“ I don’t think our alumni are as afraid of change as they are of not changing.
Her plans for upgrading the facility itself are also ambitious, including developing the East Campus and modernizing existing buildings. Maintaining a beautiful, modern campus will help attract new students. But to attract those students, Regis needs to tell its story, and for that a strong communications component is part of the president’s vision for the next five years. “We need to get our light out from under the bushel basket,” she says. “The world needs to know about this wonderful institution.” President Hays’ enthusiasm for Regis and for its future is evident. “I can see clearly how this all fits,” she exclaims, pointing
to those three goals—community, character, and financial support. “Developing these centers and programs, creating the international footprint, building relationships, becoming a sophisticated technological institution—it’s all part of our character, part of our community, and will ultimately bolster financial engagement. “I don’t think our alumni are as afraid of change as they are of not changing. There is enthusiasm and excitement as they see Regis thriving,” she says. “The vision is that Regis will become a signature institution in New England and beyond.”
23
At the start of the fall semester, Regis College, in one
giant digital leap, purchased 1,250 iPads and distributed them to all full-time students and faculty. The half-amillion-dollar investment will increase collaboration
among students and faculty and turn classrooms into
FALL 12
photos: Kathleen Dooher
”
iPads for All!
dexterous labs of learning. Needless to say, recipients of the iPads were enthusiastic.
“The way I see it now is that the iPad is groundbreaking in the classroom for those who take advantage of it,” says Jonathan Chen, a Resident Assistant. He cites
its convenience for note-taking, organizing material, and as a small repository for everything necessary for class. “The convenience is just priceless.” But it goes way beyond mere convenience. More than a dozen faculty have been working with iPads to incorporate digital pedagogy into their curriculum design. The iPads handed out this fall came with apps tailored to the Regis learning community to make them useful in course work, interactive class discussions, and in-class research. “It’s not only about the tools, it’s about the pedagogical innovation,” says President Hays. She says that “Interactive and participatory teaching and learning are part of the new digital world, and Regis is positioned to become a leader in this arena.” Andrea Humphrey, a professor of English at Regis, plans to use the iPads to conduct instant surveys of her
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> class with a group polling app called eClicker. They’ll also use the Keynote app to produce multimedia presentaGrow total voluntary support to
$5 million annually by 2014
100% of students will engage in experiential learning by 2013
tions on the material they’re learning, Humphrey says. Even more apparent is its usefulness in the health fields, where nearly all aspects of a patient’s history and treatment are part of a digital record. “Higher education is catching up to the interactivity of healthcare and business in our digital age,” says Dean Penelope Glynn of the School of Nursing, Science and Health Professions.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
24 REGIS TODAY
move-in day
By Andrew Clark
Every time a car put on its blinker, poised to enter campus from
Wellesley Street, the group of maroon- and gold-clad students erupted into cheers, waving pom-poms in the air. Did the high spirits and rah-rah atmosphere signal a Homecoming game? No, but Sunday, September 2, was a homecoming of sorts—it was move-in day for 200 incoming freshmen about to make a new home at Regis College. the parking lot towards her new dormitory. Landis, who grew up in Natick, plans to major in nursing. Diante Hopkins was also excited to move into his new digs, eager to start the next chapter of his life. The Milton High School graduate says he was drawn to Regis because of its location and financial aid. His plan is to immerse himself in business classes. One day he hopes to open his own clothing store. For some families, move-in day was not a simple trip down I-95. Some had day-long journeys to make. Even though it was 10 a.m., it had already been a long day for the Stimas. They had driven up from Edison, N.J.— nearly 250 miles away. As Amanda Stima stood in line to register, her aunt and grandmother waited anxiously for instructions about what to do next. “It was actually a very smooth process for us to get here,” said Dana Stima, Amanda’s aunt. “And the set-up has been great, where they have all of these people running around to help you move in.” Shawn Edie, Regis director of housing, says that a well-organized
and upbeat move-in day is important for both students and families. Regis did its best to give the campus a festive atmosphere— a DJ manned a table, blasting out throbbing tunes, and a refreshment table was set up for weary movers. For parents and students, the atmosphere at move-in day made quite the impression. “I really like the way things are looking here,” said Federico Sanchez of East Boston as he walked toward registration. Sanchez plans to study a combination of sports management and psychology. For him, the diversity of the Regis campus was a crucial draw. And though moving out of the city was a taxing process, it is all going to be worth it in Sanchez’s eyes. “Before moving out, you have to go through everything and figure out what you need and what you’re missing. But I’m really excited to move in and get started.”
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The morning began with families lining up at Angela Hall, mountains of clothing and furniture in tow. Students and their families lugged suitcases and backpacks, cartons and trunks, as well as basketballs and assorted sporting equipment, some flat screen televisions, and of course the occasional teddy bear. Bill Fontes, a father from South Hadley, Mass., surveyed the twodays’ worth of packing wedged into his van, musing on the unpacking yet to come. “At least I have a 13-year-old who can do a lot of the carrying,” he observed wryly. Don Raucher of Florence, Mass., helped his daughter Taylor move her belongings, including quantities of snacks. “My wife seems to think that they don’t sell snack foods here, so she really stocked up,” Raucher joked. “We have a lot of Goldfish to unpack.” While parents were understandably sad to say goodbye to their children, many of their children were eager for that first taste of independence. “I really can’t wait to get in there and get started,” exclaimed Molly Landis as she walked through
25
mınds hearts &
Funeral Reflection for Our Mother BY Judith King Weber ’61
72 REGIS TODAY
“I if I had
Our mother, Lillian Marie Snell King ’34, was a remarkable and accomplished woman by any standard. Mom’s lifespan of 100 years and 52 days is, in and of itself, remarkable. During Mom’s century the world literally transformed itself. Mom was born two months before the Titanic sank on April 12, 1912. She died in the month Apple Computer rolled out the iPad 3. In between, she experienced the Great Depression, two world wars and several armed conflicts. She saw women gain the right to vote, the Civil Rights movement, the Atomic Age commence, and man walk on the moon. She saw telephones go from operator-dependent crank boxes to the wireless cell phones attached to the ears of almost everyone. She saw transportation by horsedrawn wagon and foot, to motor vehicle travel for almost all. She saw the computer development that has transformed communications. Mom was never just a passive observer: she actively embraced the entire world that surrounded her with fascinated curiousity and enthusiasm. She was vitally interested in it all. She made it her business to learn have had a happy life, continuously, virtually to do it all over again, to the end. She was a teacher by profession and it was her core .” belief that educationwas a lifetime process, and that it was both your duty and responsibility to yourself and to your fellow travelers on this earth to be aware and keep abreast of the world around you. Her faith was the alpha and omega of her existence. Until her final breath her faith was
I would do it exactly the same way
unwavering. Mom’s faith was a silent and deeply personal faith. She did not wear it on her sleeve. She was never “preachy” nor was she sanctimonious or maudlin about her faith. She had scant patience for those who were. Rather, she lived it every day, teaching by example. For many, many years, she kept a small wooden cross on her night table. In the past months, the cross migrated to her hands. She was holding it when she died. She is holding it now. It was not that her faith was unchallenged. She lost her mother at age 5 to tuberculosis, and her father died months before her wedding, at age 25, having struggled with Multiple Sclerosis for 14 years. She lost our dad at age 56, a loss she never quite got over. Ultimately, she came to terms with her losses. She knew how to make lemonade out of lemons better than anyone I ever knew. Family meant the world to Mom. She had a thirst for the tight bonds of a real nuclear family. Perhaps that is why she was drawn like a moth to the flame to the rollicking, frolicking, 10-sibling Irish immigrant family of my dad. It was so different from the solid and supportive, but serious adults-only home of her childhood. Her marriage filled in a space in her life. She adored my dad and they shared a fine and happy marriage. Lillian remained until the end, “Leo’s girl.” In the past few years, Mom was well aware that the sand in her life’s hourglass was rapidly dwindling. She accepted this fact with grace and dignity. She reminisced about her past, sharing a myriad of memories. It was one of her last, best, and most valued gifts to us. It seems fitting and appropriate to close this reflection with Mom’s own words spoken to me not so long ago: “I have lived a very long life. I have had a happy life. I went to all the places I wanted to go. I did all the things I wanted to do. If I had it to do all over again, I would do it exactly the same way. I am not afraid to die. I am ready to go.” Folks, life does not get better than that!
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Regis Today,
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e v JLo s* i g e R Save the Date
Regis College All-Alumni Reunion Saturday evening, May 18, 2013 Take a trip back in time and show your Regis spirit with a retro-themed event featuring music, dress, décor, and nostalgia from the 1950s and 1960s. This event is for EVERYONE! Celebrate a great time in Regis’s history, no matter what era you’re from! Invitation to come. * In case you’re too young to remember, this is the Regis twist on the “I Love Lucy” title screen