Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly Spring 2017

Mount Holyoke sp r ing 2017

IN TH I S I SSU E LETTERS FROM THE PAST ALUMNAE CAREER PIVOTS INSIDE THE QUARTERLY OFFICE

Alumnae Quarterly

Helen Pitts Douglass The legacy of a civil rights pioneer

THE BUTTON FIELD

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President’s Pen a new way of students, parents, policymakers, and the wider public measuring higher education, it’s not a new idea. The value of the liberal arts—and the adventure of discovery that a Mount Holyoke education represents—have always been understood and promoted as an investment in the future, in a life of learning, and as preparation for professional success. What those professions and successes look like has changed many times over the course of Mount Holyoke’s history, especially in the twentieth century, which saw shifts in college career services Personal and career from vocational guidance to development job placement and from career planning and counseling to are core to the work of professional networking. These paradigm shifts reflect social college, and career change as much as they do the evolution of work and jobs. services have evolved Today this means that personal and career development to support that work are core to the work of college and that career services have and to create the evolved to support that work communities and and to create the communities and networks that position our networks that position students for success.

The Lynk, Mount Holyoke’s our students for success. signature approach to connecting curriculum to career, — S O N YA S T E P H E N S supports students’ personal and professional exploration and development and offers elevated career services. This integrated approach, aligning academic departments and centers with advising, demonstrates the extent to which the Career Development Center (CDC) is now a critical part of the College ecosystem. This change in structure and emphasis at the College speaks to the central precept of contemporary career services, which is about building community and making connections—on the campus, among our alumnae, and with employers. The CDC’s work brings into sharp focus the staff’s commitment to building relationships with students, faculty, alumnae, and

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employers and to creating the kinds of networks in which both traditional and more happenstance connections can be made. Career advisors in partnership with faculty, alumnae, and peers are facilitators, creating the climate in which students pursue their interests and curiosity, take risks and embrace uncertainty, and discover opportunities.

Through alumnae chats, site visits, MHConnect (internship opportunities for which Mount Holyoke students are given priority), and other internships and internship communities students have the opportunities to customize their experiences and develop individualized professional networks and communities.

What we know is that, in liberal learning as in career exploration, there are rarely straight lines to answers and that exploration and discovery build personal, intellectual, and professional capacities. The fuller integration of career services into a Mount Holyoke education is empowering our students, customizing their experiences, activating networks, and connecting us all in new ways and to new opportunities.

To learn more about Acting President Sonya Stephens and the work of the president’s office, visit mtholyoke.edu/president.

Meredith Heuer

I F T H E N O T I O N O F “return on investment” is

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Contents F E AT U R E S

D E PA R T M E N T S

16 A History through Letters

2 LYONS SHARE

As we continue to celebrate the centennial of the Alumnae Quarterly we look back at the letters section and share a selection of reader responses from the past century

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Kudos for a classmate, sundial secrets, enjoying the anniversary issue, achieving great heights

5 UNCOMMON GROUND

Alumnae connect through Facebook, welcoming new staff, remembering Curtis Smith and Paige Zeiler ’18, DES symposium, commencement speaker announced 10 The Female Gaze Alumnae write in Puget Sound; interior designer Janis Luedke ’76; authors Kathleen Wakefield ’76, Chandra Miller Manning ’93, and English professor Robert B. Shaw 12 Ten Minutes With Police sergeant Monique Washington ’91

Cover: Pierre Mornet; pivots illustration: Zara Picken; Washington: Kelsey Ingram; flu pills: Millie Rossman

36 On Display First issue of the Alumnae Quarterly

Four alumnae talk about the sometimes unexpected turns in their career paths

37 Then and Now Phones on campus

28 Right Is of No Sex.

38 A Place of Our Own Upper Lake bridge

Truth Is of No Color.

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34 MoHOME MEMORIES The Button Field; “Flue” pills from the past

22 Prepared to Pivot

The daughter of abolitionists and a leading suffragette, Helen Pitts, class of 1859, fought for civil rights long before her marriage to Frederick Douglass

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40 CLASS NOTES 80 MY VOICE

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Karen Calechman ’78 on “Becoming My Mother’s Daughter”

13 The Maven Janette Rosenbaum ’07 on rethinking your lawn 14 Insider’s View The Alumnae Quarterly office

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LETTERS

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EMAIL

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FAC E B O O K

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TWITTER

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I N S TAG R A M

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LINKEDIN

Lyons Share CLASSMATE KUDOS So wonderful to read about

FOREVER GRATEFUL I was pawing through mail the other

Zanethia Eubanks ’94 (“In the Service of Others,” fall 2016, p. 9), a fellow classmate whom I remember vividly, and work she has done since MHC. She is making a difference to society and with such passion and conviction. Lovely to know that a tea with Liz Topham Kennan ’60 was the spark!

—Gayatri Rangachari Shah ’94 via Association website

day and happily stumbled across not JUST the Alumnae Quarterly, but this absolute gem of an issue (100th anniversary issue, winter 2017). I have a one-year-old, so while we played on the floor I did my best to keep the magazine away from his wild and snotty fingers while I read some of the feature article.

Admittedly I haven’t had a chance to read the entire thing yet, but it was such a perfect reminder of why we chose Mount Holyoke. The rich history of the extraordinary campus itself, the esteemed faculty, and the outstanding women who have cycled through during so many historic periods in time, consistently doing amazing things both within the gates and outside. Mount Holyoke women have never failed to lead the way during critical moments in history, and even though my time on campus wasn’t marked by depression, war, or civil rights activism, I was a senior during 9/11, and I will be forever grateful that I was on campus and surrounded by my friends for that moment. There is great power in a few thousand intelligent and motivated women sharing the same 800-acre campus. Reading this issue was like peering through a yearbook and reconnecting with memories and old friends. It made me so proud to be an MHC alum.

So, thank you. I gave the magazine to my wife (who is also an alum) and may never see it again, but I will do my best to read the article in its entirety someday soon.

Thank you for all that you do to keep us connected with the college, each other, and the enviable legacy that is Mount Holyoke.

—Cheri Sobolik Fisher ’02 via email

LUCKY PENNIES People used to leave coins on the

sundial (“Counting the Bright Hours,” fall 2016, p. 35) for luck, especially during exam season. In the sixties this was a good source of cash for pecunious students who wanted to get a cup of coffee upstreet. No names!

—Lisa Lansing ’64 via Association website

Join the Conversation quarterly@mtholyoke.edu

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facebook.com/aamhc twitter.com/aamhc instagram.com/mhcalums alumn.ae/linkedin

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Yep. Powered by Mount Holyoke.

Never Fear Change. @R HAPPE R ACH E L HAPPE ’93

RT @A AM H C Add #MountHolyoke to your professional biography: ow.ly/T8rX3096dlj #PoweredByMountHolyoke

@mhcalums #MountHolyoke representing at the #WomensMarch #repost via @thefijiangurl

alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

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@mhcalums On campus? Join us tomorrow in celebration of the Alumnae Quarterly’s 100th birthday! Cake, button making, and more fun activities in the library atrium, 3-5 pm, Feb. 7. Thanks to @mhcarchives for putting together an exhibit and bringing their button-making machine! #MHCQuarterly100 #cake #birthday

MOST PO PU L AR POST

On Christmas Day, Catherine Gibson ’77 climbed Mt. Vinson, the highest peak in Antarctica (16,050 feet). This climb was inspired by her approaching 40th reunion, and she brought her MHC banner all the way to the top! #PoweredByMountHolyoke

Women’s March: Uzma Hussain ’14; Facebook: courtesy Catherine Gibson ’77

Button making by @ASCatMHC for Congratulations Catherine Gibson! Cheers to you from this MHC Class of ’87 alum. . . . So proud of you!

—Kelly Boldy Thomas ’87

the 100th anniversary of the Alumnae Quarterly in the library! #MHCQuarterly100

Taking Mountain Day to a new level!

—Laura Levy ’98 Finally, MHC acknowledged and commended my unique classmate!

—Stephanie Cimaglia Moder ’77 Inspiring as always, Cathy Gibson!

—Claire Yunker ’04 Yeah Cathy. You make all of us ’77ers proud!!!

—Liz Lewis Gershon ’77 Inspiring! #uncommonwomen —Alicia Mullen McNeill ’95

M O U NT H O LYO KE ALU M S @A AM H C

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly

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Lyons Share MOUN T H O LYO KE ALUM NA E QUA RT E R LY

@mtholyoke ’82 celebrates Mary Lyons’ birthday! @MHCNYC @aamhc

Spring 2017 Volume 101 Number 2

Taylor Scott Senior Director of Marketing & Communications Jennifer Grow ’94 Editor Millie Rossman Creative Director Anne Pinkerton Assistant Director of Digital Communications Jess Ayer Marketing & Communications Assistant CON T RIBUTORS

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Olivia Collins ’18 Alicia Doyon Bobbie Green ’19 Raisa Islam ’19 Shell Lin ’17 Maryellen Ryan Elizabeth Solet Amy Yoelin ’18

QUARTERLY COMMITTEE

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS

President Marcia Brumit Kropf ’67 Vice President Susan Brennan Grosel ’82 Treasurer and Chair, Finance Committee Tara Mia Paone ’81 Clerk Ashanta Evans Blackwell ’95 Alumnae Trustee Carrianna Field ’97 Young Alumnae Representative Elaine C. Cheung ’09 Chair, Nominating Committee Nancy J. Drake ’73 Chair, Classes and Reunion Committee Danielle M. Germain ’93 Chair, Communications Committee Shannon Dalton Giordano ’91 Chair, Volunteer Stewardship Committee Charlotte N. Church ’70

Beth Mulligan Dunn ’93, chair Carolyn E. Roesler ’86

Chair, Clubs Committee Elizabeth McInerny McHugh ’87

The Mount Holyoke Alumnae

Directors-at-Large Katherine S. Hunter ’75 Amanda S. Leinberger ’07 Alice C. Maroni ’75

Quarterly is published quarterly in the spring, summer, fall, and winter by the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Inc. Spring 2017, volume 101, number 2,

Executive Director Nancy Bellows Perez ’76 ex officio without vote

AB I GAI L WO LFF MAR IAN I ’82 @AB I GAI LWO LFF

Proud to be a #MoHo #UncommonWoman along with these #Sheros leading #SocialChange across our world!

was printed in the USA by Lane

K AVITA N . R AM DA S ’85 @KR AM DA S

Press, Burlington, VT. Periodicals postage paid at South Hadley, MA, and additional mailing offices.

Mount Holyoke College.

The Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Inc. 50 College St. South Hadley, MA 01075-1486 413-538-2300

The Alumnae Quarterly welcomes

alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

letters. Letters should run not more

quarterly@mtholyoke.edu

Ideas expressed in the Alumnae Quarterly do not necessarily reflect the views of Mount Holyoke College or the Alumnae Association of

than 200 words in length, refer to material published in the magazine, and

POSTMASTE R

include the writer’s full name. Letters

(ISSN 0027-2493;

may be edited for clarity and space.

USPS 365-280)

To update your information, contact

Please send form 3579 to

Alumnae Information Services at ais@mtholyoke.edu or 413-538-2303.

Alumnae Information Services Mount Holyoke Alumnae Association 50 College St. South Hadley, MA 01075-1486

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RT @A AM H C

See #MountHolyoke Medal of Honor winners from the past 100 years. ow.ly/Wnbl308jbxx #MHCQuarterly100

Courtsey Mount Holyoke Club of NYC

EDITORIAL AND DESIGN TEAM

alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

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N E WS

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THE FEMALE GAZE

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INSIDER’S VIEW

Uncommon Ground Alumnae Form a Community through Facebook “LET’S TALK GROCERY EXPENSES,” reads a post

to the Mohos with Kiddos Facebook group in February.

“What is your average monthly cost?”

With nearly 2,500 members—and growing—Mohos with Kiddos is a closed Facebook group for Mount Holyoke alums that was started in January 2016 by Laura Harris ’07, a mother of two at the time who in 2016 gave birth to her third child. She started the community, she says, as “a place for Moho mamas (and parents) to share their joys, questions, concerns, needed vent moments, and all other wonders of family life, from pregnancy and adoption to empty nesting, with their Moho family!”

On any given day, more than twenty posts are shared, and it’s not uncommon for each post to garner dozens, even hundreds, of comments.

Returning to the grocery bill question, responses and sub-conversations began popping up: “Family of 4, but youngest is only 6 weeks so still breastfed. But we spend close to $1000 a month on food. . . . We do live in a higher cost-of-living area and buy largely organic.”

Other recent questions: “Wise Mohos, how are you raising your sons and particularly your daughters to be confident?” and “Who felt dimmer after pregnancy and childbirth?”

Members share book recommendations for kids, tips on how to travel to Reunion and leave children at home for the first time, what to feed a fussy eater, advice on how to get a baby to sleep, and how to cope with an empty nest.

The group has become a trusted forum for alums, whose loyal support of each other is perhaps most effusive when a birth is reported. New baby announcements, many with photographs, collect hundreds of likes, loves, and messages of congratulations.

If you’re interested in joining, send a request through Facebook to Mohos with Kiddos. For quick approval by the administrators, Harris and (full disclosure) me, make sure Mount Holyoke is prominent on your Facebook profile!

—BY JENNIFER GROW ’94

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly

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Dolores Huerta, lifelong social justice organizer and activist, will deliver the commencement address at Mount Holyoke on Sunday, May 21. Huerta will also receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters at the ceremony.

With labor leader César Chavez, Huerta cofounded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962, the precursor to United Farm Workers (UFW). Her early accomplishments on behalf of farm laborers changed the face of labor relations in the United States for decades to come. She also was instrumental in the enactment of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 that allowed California farm workers the right to collectively organize and bargain for better wages and working conditions.

“Dolores Huerta embodies the sort of activist, organizer, and person that so many Mount Holyoke students aspire to be,” says Juliet Martone ’17, president of the senior class board. “Her work on behalf of the labor movement, the civil rights movement, and the LGBTQ movement is deeply resonant with our community. I think she will embolden us to continue fighting for equality and justice as we transition into the real world.”

As the UFW’s principal legislative activist Huerta became one of the organization’s most visible spokespersons. Now, at age eighty-six, Huerta continues her work in developing leaders and advocating for the working poor, women, and children. As president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, she continues to engage in the work of organizing communities to advocate for legislation aimed at equality and civil rights.

Huerta has received numerous awards for her work, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was given to her by President Barack Obama in 2012, and the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award.

In addition to Huerta, this year’s honorary degree recipients will be filmmaker Joan Biren ’66, whose work has brought unprecedented visibility to lesbian lives; and Kathryn Finney, technology entrepreneur, social media visionary, investor, writer, and television correspondent.

Read more at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/huerta.

Alumnae Kudos In January Elaine Chao ’75 was confirmed as US Secretary of Transportation. See alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/chao.

In March Bryna Turner’s ’12 play Bull in a China Shop, inspired by the real letters between Mary Woolley and Jeannette Marks, debuted off-Broadway to rave reviews.

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Building DES Awareness On March 2 more than fifty people gathered in Cleveland Hall to attend the symposium “DES: A Population Health Tragedy.” Students, faculty, and DESexposed individuals from around the greater campus community gathered to learn more about diethylstilbestrol (DES), a synthetic estrogen given to pregnant women in the 1940s through 1970s, and the effects of its use. Originally prescribed to support “at risk” pregnancies to prevent miscarriage and ensure a healthy outcome, the drug instead resulted in miscarriages and has been proven to cause cancer, infertility, cysts, and other lasting health concerns in future generations.

The event was the brainchild—and passion project—of Karen Calechman ’78, a DES daughter who spoke at the symposium (and whose essay can be read on page 80). Other speakers included Suzanne Robotti, executive director of DES Action, a nonprofit organization with a mission to identify, educate, empower, and advocate for DES-exposed individuals, and Elizabeth Myers, director of special collections at Smith College, who is overseeing the archives of DES Action, housed at the Sophia Smith International Women’s History Collection.

“I’m so encouraged that students and professors want to continue this work in bringing more awareness to DES,” says Calechman. “As a DES daughter whose health will forever be tied to my mother taking DES during her pregnancy with me, it is crucial that we continue to push for more research and education on DES and its effects.”

For more information on DES go to desaction.org.

Calechman (right) and her mother

Chao, Huerta, and Zeiler: MHC Office of Communications; Bull in a China Shop: Sara Krulwich; DES: Courtesy Karen Calechman ’78; Smith: Courtesy Dana Feldshuh Whyte ’60

Huerta to Speak at Commencement

If you are not half in love with Woolley by the end of that opening scene, I wonder whether you slipped into a heavy slumber before the performance began.

—T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S

alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

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News

In Memoriam Professor Emeritus Curtis Smith died on February 15 at the age of 93. After serving four years in the US Army during World War II, Smith attended the University of Chicago, where he earned his undergraduate degree and his doctorate. He arrived at Mount Holyoke in 1955 with an exceptionally broad background. He was a gifted experimentalist and had physics, chemistry, optics, and electronics as well as physiology and anatomy at his fingertips. He had a flair for designing and building equipment to meet any challenge, for any thesis or course in the sciences. He loved to repurpose government surplus, which he regularly harvested from a depot in Taunton, Massachusetts. For decades, there was hardly a piece of equipment in the biology department on which Smith had not put his personal touch.

Perhaps most important to Smith and to his students was his teaching, nourished by his unshakable belief that every student wanted to learn. He was a founding member—and then chair—of the College’s neuroscience program. At first his experimental work was at the intersection of biochemistry and neurobiology, but later he studied higher mental functions, especially memory. His book, Ancestral Voices: Language and the Evolution of Human Consciousness (1984), weaves together many strands of biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science.

Smith participated in the development and teaching of several interdisciplinary courses. He taught Information Theory before that subject was widely recognized and was one of the early adopters of personal computing at Mount Holyoke. For a while, his personal computer was a gigantic Army surplus UNIVAC that filled the longest wall of his lab.

During his career Smith supervised eighty-two honors theses, never turning away a student. In 2001, nineteen years after he retired as the Norman Wait Harris and Emma Gale Harris Foundation Professor of Biological Sciences, he taught his January Term course, The Structure of Memory, for the last time, to sixty-seven students.

Smith was interested in everything, but nothing brought him more joy than his family. His wife of fifty-two years, Elaine, passed away in 1999, leaving him bereft.

In 2007 Smith found happiness again in his marriage to Dana Feldshuh Whyte ’60, who survives him. He is also survived by a sister, three children, a stepson, and their families, including many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

— B Y S TA N R A C H O O T I N , P R O F E S S O R O F B I O L O G Y

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The Mount Holyoke College community is saddened by the death of Paige Zeiler ’18, who died January 31.

Known as “Gigi” to her many friends, Zeiler lived in Porter Hall, studied psychology and religion, and was a member of Vocal Jazz Ensemble and Chorale.

Zeiler is remembered for her inimitable laughter—which would start with a giggle and build to a crescendo of sound—and for her magical way of injecting happiness into even the darkest day.

Zeiler’s generosity of spirit touched everyone with whom she came into contact. Sonia Mohammadzadah ’18 met Zeiler in their first year, when both were residents of Ham Hall.

“She was my best friend and biggest fan,” says Mohammadzadah, a member of several singing groups. “She would come to every performance I was in and sit in the front row to cheer me on.”

Zeiler also carried her sunny disposition into her classes. Susanne Mrozik, associate professor of religion, taught Zeiler in her class on Buddhist ethics.

“Gigi brought a lot of joy, creativity, and love to the classroom,” says Mrozik. “All of us in the religion department will miss her.”

Among Zeiler’s survivors are her parents, a sister, her maternal grandparents, and her paternal grandmother.

A celebration of Gigi Zeiler’s life was held in February at Abbey Memorial Chapel and featured performances by the V8s and The Mount Holyoke College Combined Student Chorus, including members of the Glee Club, the Mount Holyoke College Chorale, Chamber Singers, and the Vocal Jazz Ensemble.

FebruMary 2017 The fourth-annual FebruMary—a monthlong celebration of Mary Lyon that includes a class contest fundraising challenge—was a success! More than 2,800 alumnae donated, and the celebration was capped off with a 220th birthday party for Mary Lyon, complete with cake, at Archives on Feb. 28.

Comprehensive Quarterly Survey View results from our recent reader survery at alumnae. mtholyoke.edu/readersurvey.

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly

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College Welcomes New Staff Tiffany Espinosa joined Mount Holyoke as executive director of the Professional and Graduate Education program (PaGE) on February 1.

Espinosa brings fourteen years of experience in professional outreach and education to the position. In her most recent role as assistant provost for the Welch Center for Graduate and Professional Studies at Goucher College, she helped create four new graduate programs, designed professional development opportunities for faculty, developed new policies, and increased accessibility and flexibility for students.

As executive director of the PaGE program, Espinosa will shape programs and courses offered, including graduate degree programs, the post-baccalaureate premedical program, professional development opportunities, and courses for academic credit and personal enrichment.

“Tiffany comes to Mount Holyoke with a wealth of professional experience,” says Acting President Sonya Stephens. “Her ability to build relationships with faculty and to see opportunities for the development of programs consistent with the mission of the College impressed the search committee and is precisely what is needed to carry PaGE forward.”

The focus of Espinosa’s research, teaching, and practice is strengthening communities through engagement and diversity, economic development, and public-private partnership. She is a strong proponent of applying liberal arts ideals to entrepreneurial programming.

“I am really excited to lead this next stage of evolution for Mount Holyoke, and I look forward to building on the College’s distinctiveness, value, and reach through graduate

Welcome #MHC2021 Congratulations to the members of the Class of 2021 accepted early decision to Mount Holyoke!

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and professional programming,” says Espinosa. “There are rich opportunities for us to build on the existing foundation and prepare the next generation of leaders to make meaningful and sustainable impacts in the world.”

Statistical modeling expert Polly Prewitt-Freilino joined the College in January as director of institutional research and effectiveness.

In her role at Mount Holyoke, Prewitt-Freilino will gather and analyze data on academic and scholarly programs in order to provide consistent, standard, and objective metrics to support the College’s enrollment, planning, and policy decisions.

“Polly’s work at liberal arts colleges and her direct experience with our regional accrediting agency make her uniquely qualified for moving Mount Holyoke forward,” says Lenore Reilly, senior advisor to the president.

Prewitt-Freilino envisions the role of director of institutional research as one of helping College leaders to make informed decisions on issues related to student success and academic program development and of enhancing the College’s

position among institutions of higher education.

Previously, Prewitt-Freilino was director of institutional research and assessment at Wheaton College, and before that she was associate vice president and chief institutional research officer at Becker College.

“I look forward to helping the Mount Holyoke community realize the advantages of good information and data analytics in enhancing its position as a premier liberal arts college for women,” Prewitt-Freilino says.

Espinosa (top) and Prewitt-Freilino

Spring Break Trip Four members of the Mount Holyoke Outing Club, accompanied by advisor and Alumnae Assocation staff member Danielle Lund, skied in the back country of Maine over spring break. Follow them on Instagram: @mhc_outing_club.

Support the Founder’s Fund Your gift to the Founder’s Fund at the Alumnae Association helps us support the activities of alumnae around the world. Visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ff.

alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

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News

Leaving a Mark

Centennial Celebration

MHC Office of Communications (7); Mary Lyon and MHC News: MHC Archives and Special Collections; Outing Club: Danielle Lund; Europe: Wikimedia Commons

In February members of the greater Mount Holyoke community were given the opportunity to sign a steel beam that would be installed in the new Community Center—or “Super Blanch.” Over two days, hundreds of students, staff, faculty, and friends of the College came to the stage of the Blanchard Great Room and signed their names and left messages on the beam, joining this longstanding construction tradition.

For more on the Community Center project, including a construction timeline and webcam, visit mtholyoke.edu/communitycenter.

The Mount Holyoke News—like the Alumnae Quarterly—turns one hundred this year. Still a weekly, today’s student paper features stories about current events on campus and in the world.

Published every Thursday during the semester, the paper also has a website (mountholyokenews.com), maintains a social media presence with Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts, and is exploring ways to publish more frequently.

The history of the Mount Holyoke News is being celebrated in a special, student-curated exhibit at Archives and Special Collections through June.

Recommend an Alumna

Be a Part of the MHC LGBTQ Alum Oral History Project The Mount Holyoke Archives and Special Collections (ASC) has embarked on a project to document the campus experiences of LGBTQ alums at the College. Alums who were aware of being LGBTQ and/or out while at MHC are being interviewed about their experiences on campus. ASC is particularly interested in earlier classes and in documenting an inclusive history of LGBTQ students. The interviews are an hour long, video recorded, and done on campus. They will be transcribed and made available to researchers. If you would like to be interviewed during Reunion or at another time during the year, please email archives@mtholyoke.edu.

Don’t Miss Upcoming PaGE Application Deadlines: alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/page.

Join an Alumnae Association Trip Abroad We invite you to join one or more of the Alumnae Association’s travel opportunities this year, including trips to Europe and Iceland. For more information and to register, visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/travel.

Each year the Alumnae Association recognizes the unique accomplishments of alumnae through several distinguished awards. By recommending an alumna, you can help the awards committees identify those in our community who are really making a difference.

In 2018 the Alumnae Association will debut the Innovator Award. This award celebrates alumnae who demonstrate creative leadership by identifying an opportunity or need and capitalizing on it through a new initiative, program, direction, or collaboration.

For more information and to recommend an alumna for the Innovator Award or other awards visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/award.

The Great Journey through Europe, June 14–24, 2017

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly

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Exploring The Angled Road Amherst, Massachusetts, about how Emily Dickinson, class of 1849, had hand sewn her poems into fascicles, Dietrich became inspired. The group selected Dickinson’s “Experience is the Angled Road” and held an “intense” three-hour seminar examining the poem. From there, each member went on to write or select from their existing work a piece that best represented Dickinson’s themes of growth and change. Participants shared their pieces L E F T T O R I G H T, S TA N D I N G : Greta Climer ’91, aloud, received feedMary Ann Sparklin Woodruff ’60, Emily Dietrich ’85, Mary Dowd Dicker ’66, Darla Willis Kennerud ’89; back from one another, S E AT E D : Teri Kieffer Bicknell ’89, Elizabeth and even started a blog Burr-Brandstadt ’91, Jules Dickinson ’77, Sue Cochran detailing their writing Swanson ’60 processes.

I N J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 3 Emily Dietrich ’85 In April 2016, with layout and production help started a writers’ group open to members of the from Dietrich’s husband and cover art by Krista Mount Holyoke Club of Puget Sound, in Lee Johnson ’85, The Angled Road was published.

Washington state. The group, which was first “We have a huge variety of age, genre, and suggested by then-president Lisa Tompkins ’82, experience [within the group],” says Dietrich, offers alumnae the opportunity to get together who describes The Angled Road as a collection of and share their interest in the written word. poetry, essays, short stories, and historical pieces, “When you are this far away from Mount most of which recall the unique personal experiHolyoke, it’s really meaningful for recent graduences of the women who contributed to the effort. ates to see the connection with the College can last For Dietrich and the rest of the group, the your whole life,” says Dietrich. production of The Angled Road has brought The writers’ group began modestly, with a forth literary opportunities, ones that they handful of members meeting every other week to never anticipated, including an invitation to the share a bit about their lives, receive feedback on University of Washington’s Emily Dickinson personal writing projects, or use the time to write. event, being selected as panelists for Indie “What we all have in common is a willingness Author Day at a public library, and hosting a to be supportive and find a way to give feedback poetry reading. that we can trust. There’s so much understood “The opportunities and the way the book has [among us], and ultimately it has made it so we turned out have astonished us,” says Dietrich. can take more risks and be really supportive of “We can hardly believe this has been happeneach other,” says Dietrich. ing for us. And we still have fun and enjoy each For some time the group discussed publishother.” ing a collection of their work, but members had To learn more or to purchase a copy of The trouble settling on a theme. After learning about Angled Road, visit mhcpugetsoundwriters.com.

— B Y J E S S AY E R a program at the Emily Dickinson Museum in

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BOOKS

Grip, Give and Sway Kathleen Wakefield SI LVE R B I RCH PRESS

Grip, Give and Sway is a 104-page poetry collection examining the resiliency of the human spirit, detailing close observations of the natural world, and focusing on eternal questions surrounding love, family, doubt, and loss.

KATHLEEN WAKEFIELD ’76 is the

author of Notations on the Visible World, winner of the 1999 Anhinga Prize for Poetry and recipient of the University of Rochester Lillian Fairchild Award. She has received grants from the New York State Foundation for the Arts, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, and Mount Holyoke College. She taught creative writing at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Rochester.

A Late Spring, and After Robert B. Shaw PI NYO N PU B LISH I NG

In this book of poetry Shaw explores the depths of experience, childhood, and memory of his midwestern roots. The heart of the book is a series of meditations on his wife’s illness, passing, and what remains after—the vivid memories of time well spent.

ROBERT B. SHAW ,

retired Mount Holyoke College Emily Dickinson Professor of English, is the author of six books of poetry, including Aromatics, which was co-winner of the Poets’ Prize. For his prose work Blank Verse: A Guide to Its History and Use he received the Robert Fitzgerald Award.

Courtesy Mount Holyoke Club of Puget Sound

WRITI NG

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The Female Gaze

I NT E R IO R D ESIG N

Troubled Refuge Chandra Manning KNO PF

Courtesy Janis Luedke ’76

Drawing on records of the Union and Confederate armies, the letters and diaries of soldiers, and transcribed testimonies of former slaves Troubled Refuge allows readers to accompany the black men, women, and children who sought out the Union army in hopes of achieving autonomy for themselves and their communities.

Manning probes the particular and deeply significant reality of the contraband camps: what they were really like and how former slaves and Union soldiers warily united there, forging a dramatically new but highly imperfect alliance between the government and African Americans.

Creating Beautiful Spaces AR E YO U AN ARTI ST?

Email your submission to quarterly@ mtholyoke.edu.

A FTER SPENDING her junior year of col-

lege in Colorado and living in the Southwest for nineteen years, Janis Luedke ’76 began the process of committing to a career in interior design.

Inspired by elements in her environment—light, mountains, the sky—and using materials that are sustainable and recyclable, Luedke strives to intertwine nature and sustainability for her clients and the spaces she creates. “My focus is specifically on creating warm and inviting environments, bringing nature indoors using elements such as color, texture, art, lighting, etc.

Thus my tagline—‘Interior Design & Art for Sustainable & Healing Environments,’” she says.

“Beyond that, color is my life.”

At Mount Holyoke, Luedke had the opportunity to develop her two passions: psychology and art. A major in psychology helped her to form an understanding of the way people think and CHANDRA MILLER behave. Luedke also took two courses in the art MANNING ’93 received a department, where she was able to explore her master’s in philosophy from interest in painting. After graduating she held the National University of various jobs, until her passion for painting and Ireland, Galway, in 1995 and creating led her to go back to school to get her a PhD from Harvard degree in interior design. She says, “My love of University in 2002. She color and texture led me to taught history at Pacific become an artist as well, Lutheran University in and my creative expression Tacoma, Washington, and has often spilled over from was associate professor one medium to the other.” of history at Georgetown Forty years later—and after University. She a move back to the East serves as special Coast a decade ago—she is advisor and dean making her dream a reality. of the Radcliffe Luedke has designed Institute for various spaces within Advanced Study health care and residential at Harvard settings. Her designs and University. her influence can be found throughout Massachusetts at the Holyoke Health Center in Holyoke, Anna WEB EXCLUSIVE Jaques Hospital in See more recent alumnae Newburyport, Sydney books at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ Pacific Dormitory at spring2017books.

MIT in Cambridge, and

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Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, both in Boston. These spaces are all designed with the intention of being calming and stress-free environments— a goal realized in part through the use of natural elements and earth-friendly products.

Baystate Health D’Amour Center for Cancer Care

Luedke credits her mother with instilling in her an interest in homey environments. In junior high, with the help of her mother, Luedke decorated her bedroom with bright fabrics and white wallpaper with yellow pinstripes.

She became more interested in interior design at Mount Holyoke when she lived in South Mandelle and Brigham. She displayed a poster of Stonehenge at sunrise as well as plants, lamps, and welcoming and flowing textures in the form of draperies and tapestries. Her dorm, she says now, was a “microcosm of my current house.” Luedke has focused on designing her own home as a space where her love of color can shine. Students were not allowed to paint dorm room walls at Mount Holyoke, but Luedke has made up for that lack; the walls of her home are a colorful panorama of eleven different hues. To see pictures of her residence and more of her work, visit jalarts.com.

— B Y A M Y YO E L I N ’ 1 8

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Ten Minutes With

CHICAGO PO L I CE S E RGE A NT

A Call to Serve Initially thinking she would embark on a career as an entertainment lawyer, a turn as a paralegal led M O N I Q U E W A S H I N G T O N ’ 9 1 into public service, which propelled her toward a master’s degree in criminal justice and her job as sergeant for the Special Victims Unit (SVU) of the Chicago Police Department.

Washington says she is often asked if she was ever fearful when embarking on her profession. But she says fear didn’t play a role. Instead she embraced the opportunity to shift her focus toward helping victims of crime. And she has never looked back. to figure out that I didn’t want to be a lawyer.

However, it was when I was managing the firm’s pro bono program that I became passionate about public service. While researching and vetting the different kinds of cases, I became very interested in the criminal cases. So I decided to get a master’s degree in criminal justice and, at the time, Loyola University Chicago was one of the few schools that had a graduate program.

The joy comes in being able to provide some sort of relief or comfort or assistance to victims and their families during some of the most distressing times of their lives.

On her work in the special victims unit: On any given day I may be providing field supervision for a child abuse case where a victim is in critical condition in a hospital, meeting with a domestic violence victim who may be afraid or unwilling to come to our office, meeting with the parents of a juvenile offender who are asking for help with their child, or out with my team looking for a missing elderly person with dementia. I definitely make a point of going out on cases involving female victims if I do not have a female detective available. Some days I may be doing several of these things.

It is certainly a difficult job, and it’s very often emotionally draining because a lot of what we are dealing with in SVU is the victimization of children and the elderly.

But the joy comes in being able to provide some sort of relief or comfort or assistance to victims and their families during some of the most distressing times of their lives.

There is nothing better than being able to help another human being.

On how Mount Holyoke influenced her: I know that my experience at Mount Holyoke definitely helped shape who I am as a person, and who I am as a person has shaped the type of police sergeant that I am. I learned that it was OK to take pride in being a capable woman who could express independent thoughts and opinions. I also learned the importance of helping other women and extending one’s self in support of another person.

WEB EXCLUSIVE

Read more of Monique's interview at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ moniquewashington.

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Washington: Kelsey Ingram; turf artwork: Raisa Islam ’19

On figuring out what she didn’t want: I did pretty well in my politics classes (thank you, professors Walter Stewart and Gita Choudhry), so I figured I would go to law school. . . . But the turning point came [when] I was visiting an aunt and we were discussing my plans after graduation. She suggested that before I apply to law school, I take a year off and work at a law firm to see what lawyers do. It did not take me long

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Washington: Kelsey Ingram; turf artwork: Raisa Islam ’19

The Maven

T HE NAT U RA L YA R D MAVEN

Rethinking Your Turf

By JANET TE R OS ENBAUM ’07 In the 1700s European aristocrats invented a new landscaping feature: the lawn. Intended as a status symbol, lawns leapt across the ocean to estates in America, then spread throughout the country with the rise of the suburbs.

Today lawns are a staple of our suburban scenery.

But all of that green grass comes with a cost. In the eastern states, lawns slurp up one-third of household water use, according to Columbia University’s Earth Institute. In the West, that number can reach as high as 60 percent.

Lawn mowers and other yard equipment are estimated to produce “up to 5 percent of the nation’s air pollution and a good deal more in metropolitan areas,” according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. This pollution includes greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

Fertilizers and pesticides, commonly used on domestic lawns, are known to have toxic effects on humans and wildlife. And, while our groomed greenery may give us a sense of pride, numerous studies have found that being in the presence of naturally growing plants has health benefits—including a boost to memory and attention, relief from stress, and faster recovery from illness—that far outlast a perfect outdoor carpet.

Go bold Despite the negative effects of maintaining a pristine lawn, some aren’t ready to cede their turf. They want a place for the kids to play, or they may fear conflict with lawn-loving neighbors. Not to worry: there are plenty of ways to reduce the environmental impact of your yard without giving up the grass. n Let it go brown in August. Summer dormancy is a

Go small If you’re ready to go further, consider shrinking the lawn itself. Replace traditional lawn grasses in low-traffic areas with “low-mow,” “no-mow,” or “eco” grass mixes, which need minimal maintenance. Or, turn a section of lawn into a vegetable bed or native plant garden. Organic, homegrown veggies are healthier and cheaper than what’s available at the supermarket, and native plants require minimal maintenance and provide vital habitats for local animals.

Go natural In most countries outside the United States, sprawling lawns have never been the norm. Instead, most people enjoy cozy gardens full of flowers or vegetables. While some appreciate having an open lawn for hosting summer barbecues or impromptu soccer games, many of us could get more use out of our yards by growing our own food or encouraging birds to enliven our space. With simple changes, all of us can spend less time mowing our lawns and more time enjoying healthier, safer, quieter neighborhoods.

Janette Rosenbaum ’07 is a master’s student in environmental studies at the University of WisconsinMadison. She is writing a thesis on the history of lawns and their environmental impacts. Her quarter-acre yard in Madison has hosted more than fifty species of birds and produces no waste. She writes about sustainable gardening at whatsinthatyard.wordpress.com.

natural, healthy state for lawn grasses. You’ll conserve water and reduce the need for mowing. n Ditch pesticides. The vast majority of insects are

harmless to us, our pets, and our favorite plants. Many pesticides, on the other hand, are carcinogenic. n Eschew commercial fertilizers. Grass clippings, left on

the lawn, make a great natural fertilizer. So do fall leaves and composted kitchen scraps. n Shrink your mower. Trade in your ride-on for a gas-

powered walk-behind, gas for electric, or electric for manual. The smaller the mower, the less pollution it makes—and the lower the risk of injury.

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The Alumnae Quarterly Office n In 1917 the Alumnae Association spent $2.60 on a brass plaque that now marks the office of the Alumnae Quarterly on the third floor of Mary E. Woolley Hall. n The complete history of the magazine’s office space is unknown, but we know that the Alumnae Association offices were first located in Student-Alumnae Hall (the current Mary E. Woolley Hall) and later moved to Dwight Hall before returning to Mary Woolley in the eighties. n We also know, from a conversation with Gale Stubbs McClung ’54 a few years before she died, that during her tenure as editor (1962–1989) much of the magazine production was done on the dining room table of her Amherst home. n The current office, which has been the home of the

magazine since 1989, features expansive windows overlooking Route 116 and views—if you peer out to the left— of one of the most colorful trees on campus during a few short weeks each fall. n In addition to two work stations, the office includes a meeting space—a round table, where the Quarterly editorial staff comes together on a weekly basis to discuss ideas for upcoming issues, share updates on the progress of the current issue, and view design elements.

n All back issues of the magazine—bound into hardcover volumes by year—are shelved in a closet that also houses Mount Holyoke yearbooks and a few other historical College publications, all referenced often.

— B Y J E S S AY E R

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James Gehrt (4); bulletin board and fish: Millie Rossman

n A large bulletin board along one wall is a display of current layouts of magazine pages—for consideration and discussion and as an important visualization of an issue coming together as a whole.

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Insider’s View The most recent addition to the Quarterly team is Tonks, a betta fish who serves as muse and provides endless entertainment.

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly

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A History through Letters In its very first issue the editors of the Alumnae Quarterly invited readers to send feedback, and in its second issue— published in July 1917—letters from alumnae were included.

In the 1930s and for most of the 1950s several issues did not include letters, but it’s no exaggeration to say that the voices of alumnae readers have been an important presence in this publication since the beginning.

As we paged through past issues for this feature, it was impossible to read every letter published during the past century. (And it’s impossible to know how many more were received but didn’t find their way onto the printed page.)

There are simply far too many to count, or even to summarize.

So in the pages that follow we offer a look at just a few ways in which letters have played a role in the history of the publication—reinforcing content within the editorial pages, beginning discussions, even sparking controversies. And while at first we considered including excerpts much briefer than these from perhaps twice as many letters as you’ll see here, it became clear that giving you, our current readers, the opportunity to read for yourself more of the original content offered more value. The voices of these alumnae writers are more whole—and more authentic—than can be captured in a brief excerpt. And so, even though most letters still are excerpts, we decided on a longform presentation.

The placement of the letters in the Alumnae Quarterly has changed over the years. In the beginning they were in the back of the magazine, and a single letter could run as long as a page.

Often they were printed without a signature. Today our letters policy is that we will include remarks submitted in response to content in the magazine. We run those letters—and blog and Facebook comments, and tweets—in the opening pages of each issue.

However readers want to share with us their thoughts, we are grateful to hear them. And we hope to hear from you.

—Jennifer Grow ’94, editor quarterly@mtholyoke.edu

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SEE MORE AT

alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ quarterly100

“Dangers and needs of their Alma Mater” The very first letter to the editor, printed in the July 1917 Quarterly, is written by a graduate of the class of 1917, a new alumna who sends a letter that runs more than a full page. Below is the second half of that letter.

Editors respond that they hope the letter will “call out other opinions” and that the “student body should be given new light on alumnae ideals.”

JULY 1 91 7

There is something perennially satisfying to our affectionate natures in the thought of our college as our Alma Mater and of all her students past and present as our sisters. Our joy in the sweet analogy sometimes gives us an almost belligerent desire to defend our family. Nothing could be nobler, we feel, than to spread the happy propaganda of praise which has for its purpose letting the world know that Mount Holyoke, though not widely enough appreciated, is the finest of colleges.

On the eve of graduation this crusading impulse alternates with a feeling of disappointment. I suppose that an individual’s college course must always be disappointing; we come with such high hopes; we suppose that college is a place where the conversation is always stimulating, intellectual, and lively; we see ourselves as prominent in college affairs as we were at our high school commencement. Wonderful that we can forget for a short period in our lives that we have any limitations.

But when we see our college course in retrospect limitations crowd to the fore, many of them, we realize, entirely personal, but too many of them, on the other hand, set by our environment.

It is not merely that an individual is disappointed because she has not made her college course what she should have made it; she feels troubled because something is wrong with her family. Just as one may love one’s mother supremely without thinking that she is the most wonderful woman in the world, so we may love our college with a quieter and more tender devotion while we remember and are hurt by her defects. Loyalty

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does not impel us to be silent or to speak only praise; it impels us to speak most about what we think is most wrong. Because we love our college its unlovely qualities and its limitations rouse resentment in us.

I hope that the Alumnae Quarterly and the Graduate Council presage a more unified effort on the part of the past students to think about the college and to bring an opinion to bear which may affect more vital matters than the location of senior steps. I believe that the alumnae always have been thinking about us; and yet the student body connects alumnae chiefly with reunions, building funds, and traditions which have no great influence on the intellectual life of the college.

Why is it that we have no time for the things that are worth most? Can any one who has been learning how to plan her time in business or professional pursuits look back and tell us?

Whenever we are reproached for not reading, for not having more information about current topics, for giving so little attention to physical exercise that we often go backward rather than forward in strength, we defend ourselves in our trite but sincere fashion, “I don’t have time.” The chief reason for this difficulty is that we have very little unbroken time for study. With our double rooms I hardly see how we could abolish the ten o’clock rule. Possibly changing the chapel hour would help to some extent. If you want to study in the morning now the breakfast hour and chapel hour break up the time seriously. By having chapel after dinner at night or even at noon or in the middle of the morning we should gain a fresh uninterrupted hour before classes.

At any rate it does not seem right that we should have gymnasium work in the morning. Beyond any question if we could find a more ideal arrangement for our work we ought to be able to study as much as we do now and still have surplus time.

Another thing which sometimes troubles us when we “have time” to think about it is the state of our manners. The explanation of our lapses is not always to be found in carelessness.

Sometimes a girl does not realize that things which she does are incorrect because she never in all her life has stopped to give attention to such matters. On the other hand some of us think too much of the value of casual social intercourse for giving social graces and think too little of our studies. Whether it is true or not that the type of entering students is changing so that we have more girls with poise and assurance of manner and fewer girls who study hard because they appreciate the necessity of making everything count, it is true that we are always in danger of not putting a sufficiently strong emphasis on the intellectual side of college life.

If I have given a dark picture of the condition of our college it is because I think that alumnae should realize the dangers and needs of their Alma Mater.

Of course there is a happier side; we who are graduating feel the motherliness and kindness of our college as we never have before. She has been generous and she has treated us as individuals. It is due in large measure to ourselves that we are not satisfied with the progress we have made; we have not conquered our own limitations; we have let ourselves be hurried and careless. When I think of my Alma Mater as a pure divinity my prayer to her is this: “Forgive me for not having been able to receive fully the best that you offered me.”

—A Member of The Graduating Class

and prove that her daughters are both willing and able to work shoulder to shoulder with women from other colleges in the general effort for uplift; that is by becoming active members in our College Club. In the membership list of the College Club to which the writer belongs, out of approximately four hundred members, there are four representing Mount Holyoke—this from a local association numbering about forty actual residents of the city. Mount Holyoke women cannot afford not to join with other college women in the organization which avowedly represents the best intellectual, social, and civic interests of the educated women of their city. It does not reflect glory upon themselves or their Alma Mater to stand aloof from such an organization.

Let us not be slackers in our support of any interest that furthers the influence of our Alma Mater.

“Pay her dues and attend the meetings” Lois Roberts Hallett, class of 1904, sums up how alumnae can support their beloved alma mater in a letter that runs twice as long as what we share here.

AP R IL 1 91 8

At the recent meeting of the Graduate Council, the writer was impressed by the emphasis laid upon the special need of our Alma Mater for the loyal support of every alumna, in special degree as the times of stress lay unusual burdens upon the college.

Most of us cannot give large sums of money to the college, nor can we devote a great deal of time or energy towards helping on the larger efforts of the General Alumnae Association. But the General Association is after all just about as strong and effective as the sum total of the local associations.

There are surely two ways at least in which practically every Mount Holyoke alumna can support her local association and by so doing show her loyalty to the college. She can pay her dues and attend the meetings.

For the payment of dues is by no means the whole duty of a loyal alumna. A live organization cannot exist without meetings to carry on its work, and these meetings amount to little if they have only a scattering attendance from the local membership.

All Mount Holyoke women worthy of the name are busy. Our time is valuable. Our efforts are needed in many directions, but few of us are so busy that we cannot meet the obligations which are expected of us and which are met by others.

There is a third way in which many of us who live in cities can show our loyalty to Mount Holyoke

—Lois Roberts Hallett, 1904

“No college can afford to ignore its past” The first response to content in the magazine comes from Anna Stevens Reed, class of 1869, who comments on an October 1917 article, “Women’s Colleges in Fiction,” which mentions two of her stories—both of which take place at Mount Holyoke. Below is an excerpt.

JULY 1 91 8

The veteran author has become philosophical enough to be gratified that her books are remembered at all, when twenty years have gone by since the publication, but she is moved to inquire whether it is a fair criticism to single out a minor character for condemnation, ignoring completely the purpose and general trend of the book.

No one person can tell all, or suit all. Some who lived through the scenes described, and who were strangers to me, were either great hypocrites or else sincere when they wrote that this was a good picture of life at Mount Holyoke during that period. To have had the warm approval of teachers and missionaries is very consoling. To have been able to give moderate pleasure to a number of one’s own contemporaries is quite enough. If Young Holyoke finds Mount Holyoke Days “fragmentary,” that’s a pity, but one can survive. It is also true that no college can afford to ignore or belittle its past, or any honest effort to portray the same. If you will give this protest a place in your columns it will oblige, Yours sincerely, Anna Stevens Reed

M OUNT HOLYOKE A LUMNA E QUA RT ERLY Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly

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“I am always thinking of the alumnae” Florence Purington, class of 1886 and first dean of Mount Holyoke, writes from Tsinare, China, during a trip abroad spent visiting institutions and meeting with Mount Holyoke missionaries. Below is an excerpt.

JA N UARY 1927

Surely no two travelers ever had a more wonderful trip than Miss Greene and I have had through Japan and Korea and China. When our ship docked at Yokohama there were three Mount Holyoke graduates on the pier waving a large blue banner, and from that time on we have arrived in only one or two places where alumnae have not been waiting to greet us and to give us assistance. Moreover, they have had our sightseeing all planned for us, so that we need miss no important places, nor lose time in finding them.

We have been fortunate in being able not only to see the usual sights that attract the attention of tourists, but our Japanese and Chinese friends have made it possible for us to see the homes of the better class and also of the very poor. We dined one night at Aya Ebina’s home in Kyoto. We had truly Japanese food served in Japanese style and eaten with chopsticks, and after dinner Mrs. Ebina played for us on the koto. Aya also took us one day to a ceremonial tea that was served in the home of a descendant of the man who invented the ceremony.

Our four Chinese girls in Tientsin entertained us most royally, and gave us several elaborate Chinese dinners.

Nora Hsung’s parents invited us to visit their orphanage in the Western Hills near Peking, and to have tiffin with them. There we ate bird’s nest soup for the first time, and had other delicacies such as shark’s fins. The orphanage of 1,500 boys and girls we found most interesting, and we were carried about from building to building in chairs borne on poles, each carried by four men.

It has been our good fortune to visit, among other institutions, the Women’s Christian College in Tokyo, Kobe College in Kobe, Ewha College in Seoul, and Yenching College in Peking.

I must add a word about the very interesting private school of which Yoshi Kajiro, 1897, has been principal for 28 years. She is a regular General, and everything moves with order and dispatch. Her methods are modern and progressive, and her 600 girls have the greatest admiration for her. The regard in which her alumnae hold her is shown by the fact that they have built her a home for her own use. I was looked upon by the pupils with veneration, because Miss Kajiro told them that I used to be her teacher and called her “Yoshi.” We sang the Holyoke song—“Long ago she rose and stood” for them, and they were greatly entertained.

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You will want to know about our College missionary, Miss Hoyt. Our last visit in Japan was on her, at the Matsuyama Girl’s school. It is located on a beautiful green hillside. The hill is capped by an old feudal castle, and the city lies at its foot. Miss Hoyt has plans completed for new buildings, which are greatly needed, and I presume by this time ground has been broken for the Gymnasium and Home Economics building. Her broad educational policy, her strong religious influence, and her wise foresight in planning for the school filled me with admiration. She is living in very inadequate quarters, but she has already partly enough money to erect a comfortable house, where it will be possible for her to entertain the friends of the school.

She spoke most warmly of what the Mount Holyoke girls were doing for her and her school.

I wish I could tell you of all the alumnae I have seen and of the interesting things they are doing, for there are many others who are as worthy of mention as those of whom I have spoken, but time fails me.

I am always thinking of the alumnae, and thanking them in my heart for making this rich experience possible.

Sincerely yours, Florence Purington Tsinare, China, Nov. 3, 1926

“War came in earnest” Margaret Adriance Withington, class of 1920, writes of the effects to her community as a result of the Pearl Harbor bombing. Below is an excerpt.

F EB RUARY 1 943

The startling news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor came to us from Sunday School children and at first unbelievingly we went on with church as usual.

Then the ominous reality sent us to our tasks— Arthur and I worked at Red Cross on our church grounds and Ted assisted the head of Civilian Defense [OCD]. While Arthur and I climbed on chairs blacking out with blankets for the first night of 344 succeeding ones, Ted had his first experience in blackout driving as he took the OCD head over the island checking on the communications centers. It was nearly 3 a.m. when he returned.

Our very mixed racial community changed overnight. The lazy fat Hawaiian with a flower lei on his hat could be seen with an OCD band on his arm, guarding bridges. An old Portuguese woman taught the local bakers how to make potato yeast when there were only two days’ supply of yeast on the island. Filipinos started filing bolos (long knives) which they were allowed to use in Kauai volunteer drills. The Boy Scouts, many of them of Japanese heritage, worked hard as messengers with all available bicycles.

As you probably know, no bombs landed on this island that day, but an enemy plane did land on a

small island off our coast. I later met the Hawaiian woman who killed the pilot with a rock. She is an average-sized, sweet person and not the heroic Amazon that one might expect.

Our first alert came when we were on our way to have Carols at the Tubercular Hospital. As we drove along with our group—sirens screamed, mill whistles blew and guards ordered us to take cover. Few completed shelters existed then so after some worried time under trees at the side of the road, we proceeded and sang in the darkened wards the old familiar Christmas music, and drove slowly home in darkness.

War came in earnest, in the middle of the night when Kauai was shelled, probably from a submarine. Waking suddenly, we only had a minute’s thought of thunder until we heard the shining and crashing of shells. Arthur got himself calmly dressed, put Skippy on her leash while Ted and I with an attempt at calming words, groped with flashlight for our “not so neat” clothes. Star shells and moonlight illumined outdoors as we gathered in the air-raid shelter with neighbors, Japanese maids, church janitor with his wife and baby, a motor corps girl reporting to Red Cross, etc.

Soon the firing stopped and so did our trembling stomachs and legs. Ted finished his A.R. [air raid] warden’s inspection and we tried to rest with our clothes on. We all learned that night to have everything in readiness on a chair by our beds. The next morning, we went to inspect the damage to the road, the burned cane field, the shrapnel holes in our friend’s house (no one injured).

As a family, we have learned new ways of living under strict martial law. Each trip to the store discloses some new lack of food, and then again we are surprised that a shipload has come in. We had no apples for ten months, eggs are $.95 a dozen when there are any, potatoes are a feast or a famine, and so it goes. Arthur’s five hens have helped us. We also have our own papaia trees, limes, avocadoes and bananas. We have added an electric roaster as tank gas is shipped in. Arthur has equipped our shelter with even paper cups for water and a waste basket to throw them in. He drills regularly at school for gas attacks and going into the shelters. Any child who comes to school without his registration card and gas mask has to go home and get them. We each have evacuation kits ready: clothes, blankets, and food for “four days in the hills.” We each carry a thumb printed registration card, ration card for butter, rice, poultry feed, gasoline, a statement that we know how to disable our car, and new paper money with Hawaii printed on it.

—Margaret Adriance Withington ’20 Lihue Union Church; Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii November 15, 1942

WEB EXCLUSIVE

Watch a graphic interpretation of Margaret Adriance Withington’s letter at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/letters.

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“Mary Lyon would be ashamed” Louise Blodget Mitchell, class of 1927, writes after hearing Dean Harriet Allyn speak to the New York Club about the new curriculum. Below is an excerpt.

In the same issue, Alumnae Association President Jessie Scarborough, class of 1925, responds, saying, “As organized Mount Holyoke alumnae, I believe our responsibility is that of seeing that the best possible education is available at Mount Holyoke for those best qualified to put it to serviceable use.”

M AY 1 947

I was struck particularly by what Miss Allyn said in relating this most modern version to Mary Lyon’s curriculum. Mary Lyon, we were told, wanted hers to be both “serviceable and satisfying.” It reminded me of the emphasis in Miss Woolley’s day on the idea of service— an idea many of us as undergraduates found it fashionable to poke fun at. Speaking for myself, I don’t find it funny any more.

The rest of the Quarterly’s pages—the “front of the book”—bear eloquent testimony to the many ways in which individual alumnae are serviceable.

And many, less spectacular than Eleanor Mason in India, function well in community and national groups of various kinds. But as organized Mount Holyoke alumnae we do nothing.

Dean Allyn made it clear how difficult a job the re-thinking of the curriculum was, for faculty and administration. It would be difficult to rethink the function of the Alumnae Association and its satellite clubs. But this is an age which, above all else, demands re-definition and clarification of thinking.

As our function is now understood, it seems to me a pallid and stultifying thing. I am grateful in the deepest sense for a splendid education, and want to continue supporting the institution responsible. But I’d like the chance, as a Mount Holyoke graduate, to do something besides sing the songs of dear old Alma Mater.

Here in New York we are in the final stages of a heartbreaking last-ditch fight to save publiclysupported child care centers, for the children of working mothers, from the political reaction current in Albany. Not a single group of college women has given us any support. I use this only as an example. You could name almost any civic enterprise and get the same answer.

Tom Paine said long ago: “The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the options of men change also. . . . That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age, may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another.”

I think Mary Lyon would be ashamed of us.

—Louise P. (Blodget) Mitchell ’27

“Get down to basics” Beginning in winter 1960, the section of alumnae letters is titled “Speaking Up.” And this alumna—who signs her name “Bewildered”—does just that. Her letter is shared in full.

S P R ING 1 9 61

It was with profound interest that I read Mary Emerson’s article on the challenges facing the liberal arts college for women, since this has been a subject of deep concern to me for some time. A history major at Mount Holyoke, steeped in the curriculum of philosophy and the arts, the trauma of marriage and raising three small children has almost been more than my system could bear. I really must have believed that life was going to be all gracious living, lectures, intimate seminars, and creamed chipped beef after graduation. To discover that my education had totally unprepared me for the harsh realities of living was a rude shock. (It might have led to schizophrenia, except for an understanding husband.)

Mrs. Emerson is certainly paving the way to a vital change in the curriculum when she suggests such freshman courses as Dating, Choosing a Mate, Personal Hygiene, and so on.

Obviously, the Administration is not going to do anything about it if it persists in its intransigeant position that liberal arts means history, music, art, chemistry, and other subjects which immediately prove to be worthless to young brides and girl mothers.

But it seems to me that she herself skirts the real issues. What Holyoke must do for its students is get down to Basics. The following, then, is my own list for the ideal freshman curriculum: Baby Salad Tossing—Introduction to Garlic Salt Choosing an Obstetrician History of the Diaper Rash in the Near East Analysis of Husbands as Men—Basic Sex Very Personal Hygiene

It is a little disturbing to read Mrs. Emerson’s statement that “catalogues have been notably neuter in the past.” Up until now, the sex of the Mount Holyoke catalogue hadn’t bothered me; now I realize that here indeed is a whole new fertile field for redevelopment. Actually, why not state in the catalogue that every girl is required to do a four-year independent project on “Fertility and the Modern Cake Mix”? Then if we changed Holyoke’s colors to pink instead of blue and white, our feminity would go unchallenged forevermore.

Sincerely, Bewildered Westport, Connecticut

“Does this mean that these women do not work?”

The following letter from Jill Dardig ’69 elicits an apology from the Quarterly editor: “[We] goofed! The wives of our trustees should have been given equal credit.”

S P R ING 1 974

In reading the biographical sketches of the current MHC trustees, I was surprised to note the following inconsistency: In all ten (out of 12) sketches of female trustees where a husband was mentioned, his job was also briefly described.

In contrast, in the 15 sketches of male trustees, only four wives’ names and two of their jobs were noted. Of these, every woman had some connection with MHC. The other women were referred to only as wives and no positions were described.

Does this mean that these women do not work, either in or out of the home? Perhaps you can explain and remediate this omission in a future issue.

—Jill C. Dardig ’69

Once having mastered these basics—and I certainly feel that an independent piece of research should supplement the classroom lecture— students could go on in junior and senior years to a more enriched curriculum: Advanced Salad Tossing Applied Refrigerator Defrosting Intellectual History of Bleaching and Bluing Advanced Analysis of Husbands as Men Choosing a Marriage Counselor

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“Change the tone of things” In this letter, Marla Allisan ’78 suggests a change in language on reunion registration forms.

S P RI N G 1980

When I received my first notice of a reunion at Mount Holyoke I was delighted as well as concerned. After reading the registration card which says, “Does husband hope to attend?” and “Does husband plan to attend?” I suddenly saw the long road ahead to fifty years hence when the little card will still inquire after husbands rather than lovers or life companions.

I am one of many alumnae who feel quite joyful at the thought of never marrying, and who would like to write of her companion or lover in the class notes (husband is no different), and who might like to bring her or him to reunion. I am speaking for those who are lesbian, who are single with close friends, and who live with a man but not in wedlock. I am sure there are many happily single women who see that card or who read the overwhelmingly marriage-oriented class notes and who wonder when Mount Holyoke will acknowledge that there are “significant others” besides husbands.

It is incumbent on us as alumnae to change the tone of things. Therefore, my note on my return card said that I plan to be at reunion, and my companion plans to be there as well.

I invite my sisters to join me in writing honest class notes (as honest as is comfortable and appropriate). I don’t want to have to wait until reunion to know how you wonderful “single” women really are.

—Marla Ruth Allisan ’78 Allston, Massachusetts

“The reader shifts uneasily in her chair” Here Elizabeth Wade Grant ’47 shares a sentiment that we continue to hear today.

FA L L 1 984

A special word of congratulations for your decision to include the articles on depression and alcoholism in the last two issues. And special appreciation to the women who had the courage to provide the material for each subject.

You must know that readers of the alumnae magazine open each issue with ambivalent feelings (and this attitude, I find, is widespread!). On the one hand it is exciting to read about the truly remarkable women and their

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varied accomplishments, and the reader feels a certain pride in the College because of these outstanding alumnae. On the other hand, the reader sometimes feels overwhelmed by one relentless success story after another, with no indication in any of the accounts of a bout with defeat, doubt, or even just dry, routine stretches of life. The reader shifts uneasily in her chair, wondering how she could be such an underachiever, or a downright failure, and still be a graduate of the same college. The courage of the women who wrote about depression and alcoholism, and their will to conquer, are every bit as strong and admirable in them as in the parade of successful and charming women about whom we usually read.

—Elizabeth Wade Grant ’47 Durham, North Carolina

I have been following with interest the discussion about lesbianism at Mount Holyoke in recent issues of the Quarterly. I applaud Mount Holyoke for taking steps to open dialogue about lesbianism and for helping to educate students about their sexual differences.

—Ann E. Fry ’85 Everett, Massachusetts

“Hope that some of the old elegance returns” Karen Muller ’70 shares feedback about the magazine’s design, a common topic over the years.

SUMMER 1 994

“I will computerize and order the list” The origins of Lyon’s Pride can be traced to a letter from Donna Albino ’83, who now serves as president of the group for queer alumnae/i.

FALL 1 986

There is a need for lesbian alumnae to be able to find each other. Any lesbian alumna willing to be a contact in her area, please send name and address and/or telephone number to me.

I will computerize and order the list, and anyone wishing a copy can get one for the small price of a self-addressed envelope. For confidentiality, this list will not be available to anyone not listed herself, and should not be used for mailings, ads, chain letters, housing, or pen pals.

—Donna Albino ’83 Cambridge, Massachusetts

“Educate students about their sexual differences” The letter below by Ann Fry ’85 is only one of dozens on the topic and ran in the same issue as this note from the editor: “We have aimed to include at least a portion of every letter on this subject received before our deadline. Because we have covered such a broad range of viewpoints in the past two years, our editorial judgment is to publish no further letters on the matter. Letters to the Alumnae Office or the Alumnae Association board are of course always welcome.”

SUMMER 1 988

I agree that the Quarterly was probably due for a new look. . . . But . . . I found the new design off-putting because it’s a jumble of type styles and page layouts. . . . Just because graphics can enhance a page of text, and our new typesetting programs enable us to do nearly anything, doesn’t mean we have to use all the bells and whistles.

Simple can still be the most elegant—and the most readable. I understand you can’t change the design back quickly, but I hope that some of the typographic frills disappear from frequent use and that some of the old elegance returns.

—Karen Muller ’70 Chicago, Illinois

“Neither should the opportunities in higher education be the same” Elizabeth Dippel Archambeault ’65 is one of many alumnae who write in response to a winter 1998 letter from Ellen Cochran Hirzy ’70 calling for Mount Holyoke to go coed. Below is an excerpt.

SUMMER 1 998

I have always felt, very strongly, that MHC should remain a women’s college . . . the primary reason [being] the need for choice. Just as all individuals are different, so are their educational requirements, especially with regard to philosophy, ambiance and personal support. Both my daughters wanted coed colleges, but I did not. For the small minority of women who would like a single-sex school, choice must be available.

Secondly, I believe single-sex education works more effectively at the college level. For me, the daily social interaction with males was needed in high school, but college was primarily an

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academic undertaking. Having members of the opposite sex present all the time would have been a distraction. Also, as studying was the main activity at MHC, my peers regarded working hard as perfectly acceptable.

Third in importance are the unique attributes of a women’s college—beginning with the strong, lifelong friendships one makes. Approximately half the friends made by a female student at a coed college will disappear eventually after graduation—because what man keeps up with women friends after he (they) are married to someone else? Also, although the phrase “supportive atmosphere” is overworked, the professors and administrators at MHC do genuinely care about students, and, in my case, their concern made my four years there among the best of my life.

Certainly the skills to deal with the world as it is can be learned many places—even a coed campus—but they can also be acquired on the job or any women’s college, provides is [sic] a unique and rare women’s world which cannot be encountered elsewhere. Such an experience does change one’s life. After many years of operating in the “real world”—working, rearing a family and volunteering, would I choose Mount Holyoke again?

Emphatically, Yes! There are many excellent, small, coed, liberal arts colleges, but there are few women’s colleges of the caliber of Mount Holyoke. Higher education today must be a potpourri of small, large, urban, rural, liberal arts, technical and single-sex or coed. Just as all individuals are not alike, neither should the opportunities in higher education be the same.

—Elizabeth Dippel Archambeault ’65 Sunnyvale, California

“These may be unpalatable truths” In the same issue Townsend Feehan ’84 shares an opinion in support of a coed Mount Holyoke. Below is an excerpt.

SU M M E R 1 998

It was my experience that single-sex education was already an anachronism when I arrived on campus (autumn 1980), at least in the liberal arts. I found a stark contrast between the theory on which the system was based—that young women would flourish in an environment in which they could develop unhampered by competition from male colleagues—and the reality, in which sometimes brilliant professors lectured to classrooms of interested but largely passive students.

During my junior year at Wesleyan, and at classes taken at Amherst . . . I had the chance to make comparisons. It was true that the

presence of men in the classroom could have a distracting effect on female students (and vice versa). But the same distractions are there in real life, and I am deeply convinced that the earlier a young woman learns to deal with them, the better.

Furthermore, the fact of the school being single-sex is bound, increasingly, to deprive it of top-quality high-school graduates for whom this is a turnoff. It was my observation already in the early 1980s that, with notable exceptions, the caliber of my peers was not what it appears to have been in my mother’s day at Smith (nor, in terms of intellectual curiosity, confidence and seriousness of purpose, could Holyoke compare with Wesleyan).

These may be unpalatable truths, but I for one would be a much more engaged alumna if the College took . . . the cryingly logical step of going coed.

—Townsend Feehan ’84 Brussels, Belgium

“The editor does not respond ” A 2001 reorganization of the Alumnae Association eliminates the position of editor of the magazine. The letter below from Margaret Dealy Griffel ’45 is one of nearly a dozen sent to the magazine expressing disappointment. For seven years—twenty-eight issues—the magazine is led by a managing director of print and online magazines, until, in spring 2008, the position of editor is reinstated.

S P R ING 2001

I find many aspects of the revamping of the Alumnae Quarterly attractive and attentiongetting. The magazine has immediacy. I was pleased to see the essay of appreciation for the work and dedication that Sabine [Haberland] Cray ’72 brought to the editorship of the Quarterly, and also the note of thanks to Sabine from the Association board of directors. However, I see no clear explanation for the dismissal of Sabine as editor, nor for the elimination of the position of editor.

does not respond. This concerns me, because the Quarterly is an extremely important link between the alumnae and the College, and this link needs to remain personal.

—Margaret Dealy Griffel ’45, class president Albany, New York

“Very trendy!”

Beginning with the summer 2005 issue all letters—indeed, all content except class notes—can be viewed online and easily accessed from our website, alumnae. mtholyoke.edu. In fall 2013, the letters section was renamed from “Viewpoints” to “Lyons Share,” in part to reflect the different ways in which alumnae today respond to content across several platforms, many digital. We receive emails, comments on our Facebook page and website, tweets and retweets, in addition to the occasional typewritten—or more rarely—handwritten notes that arrive via the US Postal Service. With our most recent redesign, alumnae opinions were captured around the College’s never fear/change campaign, which debuted shortly before the magazine was printed.

In her brief letter—one of many received— Phyllis Altrogge ’57 eloquently represents the sentiments of both sides of the issue expressed by our fearless alumnae.

FALL 2013

Invoking an unqualified call for “change” implies a rejection of our history and traditions. Yes, the future must welcome change, but we need also to have a decent respect for continuity with our past.

—Phyllis Altrogge ’57

I have a weird feeling that comes from the apparent disembodiment of the center of the Quarterly. I do not write to the editor; the editor

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Four alumnae talk about the sometimes unexpected turns in their career paths

By Maureen Turner

erhaps, like many parents, you put your career on hold to raise a family.

Or an economic downturn wreaked havoc on your field and forced you to change jobs. Maybe careers not open to women only a few decades ago are now possible for you to explore. Or perhaps you’re feeling burned out in your current job and have a desire to do something more fulfilling, something different, something new.

Whatever your reason for changing jobs, you’re not alone. According to 2014 data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the typical American worker stays in a job for just four-and-a-half years. And while some of those workers will stay in the same field for most, if not all, of their working lives, for many the change is more dramatic—what’s commonly known as a “career pivot.”

Illustration by Zara Picken

In 2015, the Mount Holyoke Career Development Center sent a survey to alumnae asking about personal career pivots. More than two hundred of you responded, answering questions about how your professional paths have changed course, what prompted those changes, what was most difficult about pivoting, and how you made it work (or, in some cases, didn’t—leading to yet another pivot). Many of you acknowledged that you’re still figuring it all out, trying your hands at various jobs in search of the right one—or, at least, the right one for right now. A handful of you shared stories at a panel discussion, “Career Pivots: Catalysts, Challenges, and Dividends,” at Reunion 2015.

Here, we share the journeys of four MHC alumnae, each of whom pivoted at one point—or more—in her career. Their unique stories show us that when it comes time to pivot, perhaps the most important indicator of success is feeling prepared to take on change.

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Liz Murphy Fenwick ’85 isn’t sure she’d describe herself as a “career pivoter”; rather, she says with a laugh, “I kind of spun continuously.”

At Mount Holyoke, Fenwick majored in English literature, with a minor in creative writing and medieval studies—‘“which my parents, quite rightly, called ‘preunemployment.’” But she did land a job after graduation, writing a history of Oyster Harbors, a small private island off Massachusetts, not far from where she grew up. The experience, she says, taught her a valuable lesson: “That I never wanted to write for a committee again.” So, she says, “I left my dream of writing behind at that point and went off to earn a living.” Fenwick followed her father into the insurance business, becoming a broker, and in 1989 moved to England, where she met her now-husband, Chris.

For the next couple of decades, Liz Murphy Fenwick ’85 Fenwick assumed a role she calls “trailing spouse.” Chris’s career in the oil business necessitated frequent relocations, taking the couple around the globe—from London to Calgary, back to London, then Moscow, Houston, Jakarta, Dubai, and, in November 2016, back to London.

Along the way, the couple had three children.

“Trailing spouse” is not a job for the faint of heart.

Chris’s job transfers came with little warning, leaving the family, in some cases, just weeks to prepare for an international move; at one point, Fenwick found herself moving from Moscow to Houston with a newborn. As her kids got older, the biggest challenge was changing schools, especially for her older son, who, like Fenwick, has dyslexia.

While in Moscow, Fenwick became head of the corporation’s spouses’ association, a volunteer group that supported families as they navigated both the typical

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tasks of moving and the deeper challenges of adjusting to a profoundly different culture. She relished her role as an advocate for the families and found that the position also had personal benefits: “It reminded me I still had a brain,” she says. Fenwick began writing again, nonfiction pieces about traveling with children, raising “third-culture kids,” and “the whole expat experience, because I’d become something of an expat expert.”

In 2004—almost twenty years after she graduated with her creative writing minor—Fenwick turned back to fiction. In 2012 she published her first novel, The Cornish House, which was shortlisted for a new writers’ award by the Romantic Novelists’ Association. Since then, she’s made up for lost time, publishing three more successful novels and a novella. The fifth book in her series, The Returning Tide, was published in March. (The books are all set in Cornwall, where her family spends half the year.) Fittingly for an author who describes herself as a “global nomad,” her books have been translated into a dozen languages.

Fenwick has come a long way from the “painfully shy” student she was in college. Mount Holyoke, she says, “gave me the courage to be different, to take a step outside the boundaries. . . . I think of the timid person who went into Mount Holyoke and the still somewhat timid person who came out, and it’s only later that I’m able to call on that strength that was seeded when I was there.”

Fenwick doesn’t regret the detours that led her to postpone a professional writing career. Although she never expected to become a “traditional mum,” she says, being with her children full time when they were young “was a blessing.” And, she adds, her later-in-life career is proof that a woman can devote part of her life to parenting and then go on to other meaningful work.

Besides, Fenwick notes, while her twenty-two-yearold self dreamed of being a writer, she had neither the life experience nor the courage to do it. That came after a couple of decades traveling the world. “The world is very different depending on where you sit, and to judge it from only one place limits you and limits the world,” she says.

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A happy accident landed Rinda Yust Allison ’60 her first job in chemistry.

One day not long after she graduated from Mount Holyoke, she went to meet her then-fiancé at the University of Chicago, where he was a law student.

Accidentally getting off the bus at the wrong stop, she found herself in front of a science lab. Allison, who’d majored in chemistry with minors in math and physics, was looking for a job, so she went inside to see if the department had any openings.

“They interviewed me on the spot,” recalls Allison, who ended up landing a job in a chemistry lab, working on light transmission research for the United States Department of Defense.

Allison was the only woman in the lab, and she earned less than her male colleagues. “I didn’t complain,” she remembers; indeed, she was pleased to be earning more than was typical for the wives of law students, most of whom worked as support staff at the university. “I felt lucky—which is crazy,” she says.

Allison spent many productive years in the science field, as a researcher and an environmental journalist. When she started a family, she shifted to a part-time schedule. And as her three children grew, she became involved with the League of Women Voters in her hometown of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, outside of Chicago.

“I found I just loved government, particularly local government,” says Allison. She served on the Glen Ellyn Village Board, then ran for village president, losing by a narrow margin.

“I thought, ‘I’ll show them. I’ll do the hardest thing I can think of: go to law school. Then they’ll be sorry.’

“They weren’t sorry,” Allison says with a laugh. “But I did go to law school, and I was very happy.”

In 1989, when Allison entered law school, she was fifty, the oldest student in her class. “It’s funny, because when I was forty I felt I was too old to do it. But when I was fifty, I didn’t feel I was too old at all,” she says.

In part, that may have been due to the fact that her children were older and more independent. And in part, she says, it was due to timing. “In the [1980s], opportunities for women were opening so much, and so rapidly, that I felt this was something I could do.”

While Allison explored different areas of law in school, in the end her passion remained the workings of local government, where, she says, “You meet the Constitution up and

down, back and forth, every day.”

After graduating, she joined a firm and spent seventeen years working with local school boards, libraries, planning commissions, and zoning boards. Now retired, she’s returned to her volunteer work with the League of Women Voters.

Allison credits Mount Holyoke with preparing her to take on new challenges with the confidence that she could master them. “A liberal arts education is learning to learn from learned men,” she recalls a dean telling a class. “Today we would say, ‘from learned people.’ But we did learn how to learn. . . . If you’ve gone to Mount Holyoke, you can learn anything.”

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Rinda Yust Allison ’60

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Sarah Sharer Curley ’71

“Some of my friends said that when they were eight years old, they knew they were going to be a lawyer,” says Sarah Sharer Curley ’71. “But I never dreamed that I would be in the legal field.”

Curley, in fact, had a long and successful legal career, specializing in bankruptcy law and litigation in Manhattan and, later, Milwaukee.

In 1986 she was appointed the first woman federal bankruptcy judge for the District of Arizona, and in 2009 she became an adjunct professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University (ASU).

But at eight years old, Curley was roaming her suburban Chicago neighborhood with her beloved camera and spending her Saturdays in art classes at a local studio. When she got older, she mastered the elevated train (the “El”) so she could visit the Art Institute in downtown Chicago. Though she majored in history at Mount Holyoke, she filled the free spots in her schedule with art and art history classes.

Curley expected to work in the art field after graduation, perhaps at a museum or as a buyer for a department store that sold art. But when her then-husband entered law school, she needed to find a job that would support them both. She took a position as office manager at a law firm, then, later, as an administrative assistant at a nonprofit.

At home, listening to her husband talk about his courses, she became increasingly intrigued by the law.

So in the fall of 1974, as her husband entered his final year of law school, Curley entered her first, at New York Law School. The summer after her

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second year, she landed an internship with a bankruptcy judge. “And I never looked back,” she says.

Curley loved the diversity and problem-solving aspects of the bankruptcy field. One day, she says, “it’s taking individuals who are struggling— they’ve made some unwise decisions in their lives, or they’ve had medical issues or other setbacks—and through bankruptcy laws you can help them get on the right path.” Other days, she’d find herself working with major corporations that had filed bankruptcy petitions seeking to restructure complex debt obligations. “Those were the sophisticated transactions that, quite frankly, were intellectually exciting,” she says.

Much as she loved the work, after forty years in the legal field, Curley was ready for a change. In 2014 she retired and turned her attention back to an old love: art.

Over the years, Curley had taken classes in photography, painting, and sculpture at local art museums and community colleges. “It was always important to me,” she says. “I would get to the point, intellectually, where I would say: I just can’t focus only on logic and legal issues anymore. I need to explore my imagination and visual arts and channel my creativity.” As she transitioned into retirement, she wanted to make art a bigger part of her life—not as a hobby, but as a second career.

Curley reached out to a fellow Mount Holyoke alumna, Betsy Fahlman ’73, an art history professor at ASU who connected Curley with other faculty members.

Making a career shift later in life, Curley says, “my big concern was I didn’t think people were going to take me seriously. . . . They’re going to think I’m a dilettante.” In fact, she’s

continued to build on her skills—one of her newer interests is cyanotype, a photographic process developed in the late 1800s, which she uses in mixed-media projects, making prints directly on silk and cotton—and has developed a serious body of work, some of which has been in national juried art shows. (Her portfolio can be seen at sarahcurleyart.com.)

At first glance, law to art may not seem a natural career pivot. But to Curley, there’s a connection: “To do well in the bankruptcy field, you have to be creative. . . . People come in with problems for which there is no easy solution. One can check the statutes or case law, but there’s nothing there that an attorney may easily rely on to solve the problem or a judge may consider to rule on the issue. . . . Having that creative mind assists in coming up with a solution.”

As a student, Curley says, she was somewhat ambivalent about Mount Holyoke—specifically, about being at an all-women’s college. It wasn’t until years later that she came to appreciate the intellectual confidence that atmosphere gave her. “In classes, I had to speak up.

I couldn’t defer to the guy next to me,” she says. “When I entered the bankruptcy field, which was then dominated by men, I had the confidence to say, as the only woman at boardroom discussions, ‘I disagree with your positions, and here’s why.’ I had the confidence to attend hearings and say, ‘Judge, I am here on behalf of this client. Here are my positions on the various legal issues that need to be determined—I request that you rule in my favor.’ And as a judge, I believe I was fair, able to render impartial rulings.”

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Sarah Robbins Kelley ’02 describes herself as a “power networker.” It’s a skill that’s helped her change careers five times since graduating from Mount Holyoke, in diverse fields including yacht design, web development, sales and marketing, and research and development.

Today, aptly enough, Kelley works for a recruiting firm, helping other people change careers.

More than once, Kelley left a job without a new one lined up, then promptly found a new opportunity.

Several times, a chance encounter or an out-of-the-blue call to an old friend or a new acquaintance has led to a job. She believes her talent for forging professional connections is in part a function of personality and in part is due to the environment at Mount Holyoke, where professors were always accessible to students. “It made me feel comfortable approaching people and asking for help,” Kelley says. “That’s carried me so well through all my careers.” So has the breadth of classes she took: science, philosophy, education, sociology. “I was the poster child for taking advantage of the liberal arts education.”

Kelley had planned to go to medical school after college until an internship experience changed her mind.

“I was graduating with this biology degree and knew I didn’t want to do anything with it. That was challenging— to my parents, too.” In the end, a senior semester with the Sea Education Association environmental studies program, sailing across the Pacific Ocean, led her into the sailing industry.

Over the years, Kelley has changed careers for a variety of reasons: after a few years managing yachts in Newport, she grew tired of the party life of a resort town

WEB EXCLUSIVE

Watch a video about how the Career Development Center prepares students for the future of work at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/cdc.

and moved to Maine to work for a boat manufacturer.

When the economy crashed in 2008, she lost that job but quickly found work as creative director of a start-up website. Not long after leaving that job, Kelley went on an Outward Bound course as part of a leadershipdevelopment program run by the state of Maine; by the end of the weekend, she’d been offered a job with Outward Bound, where she worked for several years.

Kelley believes that Mount Holyoke left her primed to seek out new opportunities. “I think that comes from [studying at] a women’s college. We didn’t have to compete for leadership positions, and so much was available to us that I’ve never thought: ‘well, that’s not for me.’”

Being part of an alumnae group full of so many high-powered, successful women, however “can be a double-edged sword,” Kelley says—the sharpness of which she’s felt since leaving her last job, a demanding position in research and development with a medical-device company. Her new job in recruiting is less stressful and allows her to work from home, a nice perk for her family, which includes two young daughters. Still, she says, “I hate the term, but I do feel like it was a downshift for me,” one that comes with both less responsibility and less money. “That’s working for my family, but I still feel some guilt. . . . I have this strong background, educational and professional, and I felt like I should honor that by holding a position that’s worthy of that background.”

Kelley has heard other alumnae express similarly conflicted feelings about subordinating career goals to family needs. “From the moment we stepped on campus we were told we were uncommon women. . . .

We were prepared to change the world and be leaders.

And are we doing that if we’re stepping off of the career track?” she asks.

It helps, she says, to hear about the sometimescircuitous career paths other alumnae have taken.

“It’s significant when we hear about women who came before us who are changing careers successfully in their fifties and sixties. It gives me comfort to know I can change careers, I can get off track, I can even mess up.

Sarah Robbins Kelley ’02

. . . This will not be my last career pivot.”

Maureen Turner is a journalist from Northampton, Massachusetts.

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RIGHT IS OF NO SEX.

TRUTH

IS OF NO COLOR. The daughter of abolitionists and a leading suffragette, Helen Pitts, class of 1859, fought for civil rights long before her marriage to Frederick Douglass

WRITTEN BY H E A T H E R B A U K N E Y H A N S E N ’ 9 4 ILLUSTRATION BY P I E R R E M O R N E T

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H

elen Pitts Douglass, class of 1859, and her husband climbed excitedly into a hansom cab outside the Grand Central Hotel in Lower Manhattan, her slight frame contrasting with his powerful build. It was noontime, and the city wore a cap of clouds that kept the day warm. At that hour the street would have been crammed with other horsedrawn buggies, kicking up dust as they went. As the couple made their way down Broadway they likely saw people rushing between shops beneath striped awnings overhanging the sidewalks. En route to the pier where they would meet their steamship the two may have caught a glimpse of the newly completed Brooklyn Bridge. It was September 12, 1886, and Helen and her famous husband, Frederick Douglass, were headed to London.

In the two years since they had married, the couple’s resolve had been tested. Tribulation came not from under the shingled roof of their home, Cedar Hill, in Washington, DC, but from beyond—from their families, friends, colleagues, and, certainly, from many strangers. The problem for most people clucking their tongues disapprovingly was that Douglass, the famous orator and social reformer, was black, and his not-sofamous second wife was white.

A BEING OF INFINITE SCOPE

However revolutionary the act of marrying across racial lines was at the time, Helen was a product of her upbringing. She grew up in Honeoye, in upstate New York, a hamlet in what is now called Richmond. Her grandfather founded the village (originally called Pittstown) after fighting in the American Revolution.

Helen herself was a ninth- or located smack in the midtenth-generation descendant dle of Main Street, was an As the corresponding of six Mayflower passengers important link between secretary for the who formed a long line of the towns of Naples and feminist, moral-reform maverick minds. Her kin Avon, a way station that newspaper, The Alpha, included powerful political, Douglass had helped Helen Pitts chose literary, and religious figures Gideon Pitts establish. letters for publication who inspired and influenced Over a decade, the Pitts and moderated heated thought and action. From one family hid in their cellar discussions on everything from women’s family branch her presidenrunaway slaves transright to vote and sexual tial relations included John ported via a false-bottom reproductive health, Adams and John Quincy hearse from a Naples to whether or not Adams and from another undertaker. By some a woman should be Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin accounts, more than six blamed for inciting D. Roosevelt, and Rutherford hundred former slaves men’s ardor with a B. Hayes. Other distant coustraveled through the Pitts’ low-cut dress. ins included William Cullen basement passageway.

Bryant, Henry Wadsworth In 1857 socially conLongfellow, and Henry David scious Helen landed in Thoreau.

South Hadley. There were By 1838, the year Helen was born, the three classes on campus in those days, and influential religious leadership in Honeoye eighty-eight students in her cohort. She was preached that slavery must be abolished among a growing number of young women and that congregants must join the fight. In from all over New England who were leavthe eyes of their minister true Christians ing home for a seminary education, a move actively resisted slavery, and the Pitts famthat the feminist-leaning Pitts family greatly ily did so avidly. Reform-minded politics led encouraged. (Two of Helen’s sisters also purHelen’s father, Gideon, to invite a prominent sued higher education: Jennie, class of 1859, anti-slavery speaker to Honeoye in 1846. at Mount Holyoke, and Eva at Cornell.)

Helen was eight years old when Frederick At the time, Mount Holyoke compleDouglass first came to the town, captivatmented students’ religious upbringing, and all ing audiences with his booming voice and students worked to keep the campus running obvious intellect. On that occasion, and for by cooking and cleaning. It was otherwise a decades beyond, Douglass was an honored unique place for young women to pursue their guest in the Pitts family home. studies of languages, literature, philosophy, Years later Helen would doubtless and science, and participate in discussions have known her home was a stop on the with other intelligent women. They were Underground Railroad. The Pitts mansion, required to do calisthenics daily but took time

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out for fun—frequent sledding outings and trips throughout the Pioneer Valley. It cost $75 per year to attend Mount Holyoke in the late 1850s, a considerable sum even for the wealthy Pitts family.

Helen would have felt at home among her many social-reform-minded classmates.

Long before she arrived on campus the sermons and speeches of the celebrated Henry Ward Beecher (brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin) were a hot topic. Beecher had been educated at Amherst College, and his sister Catharine was, like Mary Lyon, a pioneer in women’s education.

Until her death in 1849, Mary Lyon and the Beechers had been close. Slavery and liberty were inherently incompatible, Beecher preached, and “one or the other must die.”

In opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, many Mount Holyoke students sympathized with the anti-slavery cause. When the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed in 1854, it was known on campus as the “Downfall of Liberty, 1854.” The legislation repealed the Missouri Compromise, allowing slavery in the territory north of latitude line 36° 30´N, and led to protests that were a prelude to the Civil War. On Independence Day that year, students wore black armbands and draped everything they could in dark fabric. The abolitionist sentiment prevailed, as described in an essay by Anna Edwards, class of 1859. “The African has . . . suffered cruelly at the hands of our countrymen,” she wrote, and “doing our utmost for their emancipation from the bondage of Satan” was a priority.

A shift was also taking place in thinking about the purpose of educating women.

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Margaret Fuller’s book Women in the Nineteenth Century was read aloud on campus during Helen’s time. In it, the women’s rights activist and literary critic wrote, “So much is said of women being better educated, that they may become better companions and mothers for men. . . . But a being of infinite scope must not be treated with an exclusive view to any one relation. Give the soul free course, let the organization, both of body and mind, be freely developed, and the being will be fit for any and every relation to which it may be called.” Unlike most of her classmates, who spent just one or two years at Mount Holyoke then moved on swiftly to marriage and motherhood, Helen finished her degree.

POSSESSED OF A FIERY TEMPER

Helen entered adult life in the midst of the Civil War. Instead of remaining in the relative safety of Honeoye she took a teaching job in Norfolk, Virginia, in May of 1863. Just a month earlier, the Brute Street Baptist Church had opened a school exclusively for freed slaves, a project of the American

Missionary Association (and an extension of the school across the river that became Hampton University). As she had indicated in an earlier class letter, it was the job Helen had been hoping to land.

Roughly twenty more teachers arrived in Norfolk by September of 1863, and by the end of that year there were more than three thousand students of all ages at the school.

Teaching in Norfolk was a dangerous social experiment. Just a year prior the city had been surrendered to Union forces, and many Confederate sympathizers in town were up in arms about a school for African Americans and tried to have it shut down. The unrelenting harassment of her students angered Helen. She “immediately caused the arrest of the offenders and they were all fined,” said O.H. Stevens, a longtime Pitts family friend, in an interview years later. Amid angry residents and rampant disease, Helen taught for over a year. Only when falling ill (most likely with tuberculosis) did Helen return to Honeoye, where she was bedridden for years.

In the late 1870s Helen moved to Washington, DC, to live with her uncle Hiram on property adjacent to Cedar Hill, the stately

MHC Archives and Special Collections

Frederick Douglass with Helen Pitts Douglass (seated, right) and her sister Eva Pitts (standing, center).

home of Frederick Douglass and his longtime wife, Anna Murray. While there Helen became an officer for the feminist, moral-reform newspaper, The Alpha. As the corresponding secretary she chose letters for publication and moderated heated discussions on everything from women’s right to vote and sexual reproductive health, to whether or not a woman should be blamed for inciting men’s ardor with a low-cut dress. The newspaper was well respected, at least among its readers, who were largely female professionals. Not long before Helen took her post, a letter from Clara Barton (famous Civil War nurse and founder of the American Red Cross) appeared in The Alpha. “May your hands and hearts be strengthened and upheld to the rich harvest of the seed you are so nobly sowing,” she wrote.

Unlike most of her peers, Helen remained unmarried well into her thirties, childless and earning her own living. In 1878 and 1879, Helen taught in Indiana alongside her sister.

During that time she and Douglass wrote to one another; their correspondence shows a growing affection and shared interest in literature and politics. While in Indiana, Helen again clashed with locals over racial issues.

The local newspaper wrote that she was “sprightly and a good scholar, though unfortunately possessed of a fiery temper which frequently brought her in trouble and caused her to hand in her resignation as teacher of the grade before close of the term.”

Helen then returned to DC to Uncle Hiram’s house and took a job as a clerk in the federal pension office, where she worked for two years. Douglass was the Recorder of Deeds for the District at the time, and when a clerkship opened up in his office in 1882 he hired Helen. Within months Douglass’s wife died, and he sank into depression. He sought solace up North for a time with old friends, including the Pitts family.

Sometime in the next year, 1883, Helen moved into her own apartment in downtown Washington, DC. She and Douglass continued to see one another every day and to exchange ideas. In addition to their politics, “they bonded over gardening, traveling, theater, art,” says curator of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site Collection, Ka’mal McClarin. Their esteem for one another was evident, and somewhere along the way it grew into more.

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In January 1884, Helen and Douglass rocked their families, and the nation, when they exchanged “I dos.” The couple foresaw dissent and told no one of their plans. It was tantamount to slipping off to Las Vegas to elope when they were married at the home of mutual friend Reverend Francis Grimké (who, like Douglass, had one black parent and one white one). They left his home, wrote Grimké later, “all radiant and joyful.” Douglass’s children were invited to the wedding dinner that night though none felt fit to celebrate, and Helen’s mother and sister, who were unexpectedly in the nation’s capital that day, only learned of the wedding in the next day’s headlines. “A Black Man’s Bride,” blared the front page of the National Republican (Washington, DC), which also referred to Helen as: “The Woman Young, Attractive, Intelligent, and White.”

Other newspapers were equally damning of the union and, in many cases, wildly inaccurate in their reporting. The claim that the marriage constituted miscegenation and was illegal no doubt rankled the Douglasses, both crusaders for racial equality. Many accounts, including in the New York Times and Washington Post, misreported that Helen was younger than Frederick’s oldest child, putting their age difference at roughly forty years. In truth, Helen was forty-six and Frederick, by best estimates (having no record of his birth into slavery), was sixty-seven years old. The Weekly News, a Pittsburgh-based, African American-run newspaper, was full of contempt over the union: “Fred Douglass has married a red-head white girl. Good-bye black blood in that family. We have no further use for him. His picture hangs in our parlor, we will hang it in the stables.”

While the couple responded to very few of the derogatory comments, they did occasionally express themselves in public. Of the union, Helen said simply, “Love came to me and I was not afraid to marry the man I loved because of his color.” Shortly after the wedding, Douglass wrote to old friend and fellow activist Amy Post: “I have had very little sympathy with the curiosity of the world about my domestic relations. What business has the world with the color of my wife? It wants to know how old she is? How her parents and [friends] like her marriage? How I courted her? Whether with love or with money?

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Whether we are happy or miserable now that we have been married seven months? You would laugh to see the letters I have received and the newspaper talk on these matters. I do not do much to satisfy the public on these points, but there is one upon which I wish you as an old and dear friend to be entirely satisfied and that is: that Helen and I are making life go very happily and that neither of us has yet repented of our marriage.”

A few well-known personalities, some longtime friends, came to their defense.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with whom Douglass had a tumultuous working relationship, congratulated the couple, wishing “that all the happiness in a true union be yours.” She said, “In defense of the right to . . . marry whom we please—we might quote some of the basic principles of our government [and] suggest that in some things individual rights to tastes should control.” Ida B. Wells, the anti-lynching crusader, was a frequent guest in the Douglasses’ home during their eleven-year marriage. In her autobiography she recalled, “The more I saw of them, the more I admired them both for the patient and uncomplaining way they met the sneers and discourtesies heaped upon them, especially Mrs. Douglass. . . . The friendship and hospitality I enjoyed at the hands of these two great souls is among my treasured memories.”

At home in Honeoye, locals had a better sense of the close acquaintance between Douglass and the Pitts family, and the couple’s

shared intellectual interests and social justice sensibilities were understood. O.H. Stevens said at the time of Helen, “She recognized in him a great man and possibl[y] lost sight of his color on just that account. She is a woman of great force of character and would not have taken this step without considering all the results of the alliance. . . . I don’t think the marriage will be unhappy, because both Mr. Douglass and Miss Pitts doubtless knew just what they were doing when they were married. They both are intelligent enough to have foreseen that it would cause widespread comment and they were doubtless prepared to face and disregard all unpleasant notices of the marriage.” The local newspaper, the Livonia Gazette, took it a step further saying, “To deprive them of rights and privileges granted to other intelligent people in the matter of marriage is a proposition repugnant to all justice.”

Their families, however, did not offer the same support. It was understandable that his children were upset, says curator McClarin.

They had lost their mother, to whom Douglass was married for almost forty-five years, less than two years earlier. But Helen’s father, despite having been an abolitionist vociferously opposed to slavery, was also outraged.

He refused to see the couple and died four years later having never again spoken to his oldest child and having cut her out of his will.

Helen’s mother and siblings were also initially obstinately opposed to the marriage, however, several softened with time.

Cedar Hill, the Douglass family home in Washington, DC, in 1963.

Courtesy of National Park Service

A BLACK MAN’S BRIDE

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News of the union met with mixed reviews securing his legacy. While Douglass’s will had within Helen’s Mount Holyoke network. One left almost everything to Helen, including classmate, Rachel Cowles Hurd, wrote, “By Cedar Hill, his children fought its legitimacy. the way—is it really our Helen Pitts who has (It was witnessed by two people, not the three married Fred Douglass? How could she? I required by law.) Helen secured a loan to buy never discovered it till I saw by the papers the house from the children and then took to that he married a lady from Honeoye, NY, the lecture circuit, earning money to pay the named Pitts. Well our class has distinguished mortgage. She was again, now in her miditself!” Apparently Rachel was in the minority fifties, working to pay her own bills. Her topin disapproving of the marriage. Helen and ics were “Modern Egypt”; “the Hittites”; and Douglass were enthusiastically invited to the the “Convict Lease System.” The cost of bookclass of 1859’s twenty-fifth reunion. In April ing her for an event was $25. While her lec1884, Helen replied, “We wish to do so, but Mr. tures were generally well attended, the topic Douglass has so many engagements that I canof the convict lease system (basically the newnot say positively.” Almost as an afterthought, est form of slavery) was of particular interest. or a defense of their union, Helen added, “[As] One Rochester newspaper reported, “The well as I know Mr. Douglass I am constantly capacity of the First Universalist Church surprised by some new revelation of the purity was tested last night when Mrs. Frederick and grandeur of his character.”

Douglass told for the second time in this city, After they married, Douglass continued her thrilling tale of the horrors of the chain a rigorous schedule of writing and public gangs and the crimes of the Convict Lease speaking all over the country, on racial tenSystem of the South. All seats were filled and sions and women’s rights. It was, by most chairs were placed in the aisles to accommoaccounts, a productive and happy time. date the audience that listened with breathDuring that period, he wrote, “What can the less interest.” world give me more than I already possess?

Rev. Grimké, the family friend who had I am blessed with a loving wife, who in every married the Douglasses, described Helen’s sense of the word is a helpmate, who drive to save Cedar Hill enters into all my joys and sorrows.” as a monument to Helen ran the busy household, hanFrederick: “It posdled much of the correspondence, sessed her, she could Douglass’s children and likely acted as a sounding board not throw it off.” In were invited to the for Douglass’s ideas. (Some of his 1900 Helen succeeded wedding dinner, lengthy speeches appear to be writin having Congress though none felt ten in her hand.) establish the Frederick fit to celebrate, and Douglass Memorial and Helen’s mother and EVER MEMORABLE Historical Association, sister, who were unexpectedly in the But the pair did tire of the nearwhich would mainnation’s capital that constant personal scrutiny, and it tain Cedar Hill and its day, only learned of was from that world of inquiry that contents after her the wedding in the Helen and Douglass chose to escape death in 1903. next day’s headlines. to Europe, at least for a while. As preMount Holyoke dicted, the trip abroad was a breath friend Mary Millard of fresh air. “They got some looks and Dickinson, class of smirks, but for the most part in Europe they 1860, was by Helen’s side near the end. didn’t get commented on,” says historian “Helen was true to her convictions to the McClarin. In the diary she kept of the nearly last. She lived in an ideal world and could yearlong journey, Helen wrote, “People will not live long enough to realize her hopes,” look at Frederick wherever we go but they she wrote. Even thirty years after her death, wear no unpleasant expressions. . . . Many Grimké defended Helen’s character when he have a decided appearance of interest.” wrote, “Helen Pitts was no common, ordinary After Douglass’s sudden death in 1895, white woman. She was educated, a graduHelen’s focus changed from supporting his ate of one of the best colleges in the country, ambitions and their shared ideologies to and well read, refined and cultivated, a lady

in the best sense of the term.” He recalled, “Among the very last things that she said, as she lay on her dying bed, was: ‘See to it that you do not allow my plan for Cedar Hill to fail.’ That was her dying admonition. I can see the look in her eyes now, and hear afresh the touching tones of her voice as she uttered those words. And it is gratifying to be able to say, ‘It has not failed.’”

“She was ahead of her time,” says McClarin, curator of what is now a national historic site.

After Helen’s death, the memorial association joined forces with the National Association of Colored Women, and the house was opened to visitors in 1916. In 1962 Cedar Hill was added to the national park system. The National Park Service (NPS) now safeguards the extraordinary property, preserving roughly 80 percent of the original furnishings. It appears as if the couple merely has stepped out for one of their walks and might return at any moment. The NPS also carries on the educational mission so important to both of its remarkable residents; the site is a tribute to their labors and is as much Helen’s legacy as it is Douglass’s.

According to McClarin, “Mr. Douglass really was fortunate to have two outstanding women in his life. Helen was a true confidante and soulmate and a great supporter of his causes.” Summing up Helen’s later life as well as anyone, Ida B. Wells wrote, “Let us not fail to do honor to the second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass. . . . She loved her husband with as great a love as any woman ever showed. She endured martyrdom because of that love, with a heroism and fortitude.”

Heather Baukney Hansen ’94 is an independent journalist who “met” Helen Pitts while doing reporting at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site for her book Prophets and Moguls, Rangers and Rogues, Bison and Bears: 100 Years of the National Park Service.

WEB EXCLUSIVE

View a slideshow of more photos at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/pittsdouglass.

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O N D I S P L AY

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T H E N A N D N OW

MoHome Memories

A Story in the Soil The Button Field

ACROSS FROM THE COLLEGE , nestled between Ashfield and Jewett Lanes, observ-

ers are confronted with a small street sign for Buttonfield Lane. Long before the houses clustered around the road were built, the area was a small, scrubby field, unremarkable in nearly every way. But this unassuming patch of earth, called a “sand-blow field” by South Hadley residents of old, has a secret—buttons.

Since at least the 1880s, upperclass students at the College would pull pranks on firstyear students by telling tall tales of the Button Field. Incredulous students were guided to the field and encouraged to select their own buttons, and even the upperclass students found a use for it, traveling across the street to select buttons for sewing projects.

Some seniors claimed there was a factory that burned down and scattered buttons over the dirt; others tried to convince the younger classes that the buttons sprouted up of their own accord, like weeds. Yet truth is stranger than fiction, and the true story of the Button Field sounds like a real whopper.

Before the construction of Mount Holyoke’s original Seminary Building, much of South Hadley was farmland. One farmer, a Mr. Andrew McElwain, had a rather unorthodox idea for how to fertilize his barren lands—he took his cart down to the Holyoke Paper Mill and asked for their scraps. In the early 1800s, the mill used old rags as a base for their paper.

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FRO M T H E A RC H IVES

Found Medicine A cure from the past

McElwain convinced the mill that giving him their waste was economical for both parties, and he hauled the rags back to his field. As the mill waste decomposed in his fields, his crops reportedly flourished. But the buttons attached to the rags did not decompose, and when he eventually sold the land to the College, the buttons remained in the soil, rising to the surface with the frost each winter to dazzle an unsuspecting first-year.

Though the Button Field was never built upon by the College, it did serve its purposes: during the Spanish influenza quarantine in 1918, bonfires called corn-roasts and bacon-bats were held in the field nearly every evening to make up for the fact that Mount Holyoke girls were not allowed to leave town or receive guests. And a few decades later, as cigarettes became a common habit for college girls, the area became known as the “Butt-On-Field” due to its popularity as a smoking spot.

— BY OLIVIA COLLI NS ’ 18

Button field: MHC Archives and Special Collections; flu pills: Millie Rossman

The 95-year-old glass bottle is approximately 2 3/4” tall, 3/4” deep, and 11/4” wide.

And still filled with pills!

During January staff from Mount Holyoke’s Archives and Special Collections worked with a team of students to inventory and rehouse oversize and odd materials in the Archives stacks. A box from the class of 1922 revealed, among other treasures, this medicine. Labeled “For Flue,” the bottle of pills was apparently brought to campus in the fall of 1918 by a student from Nebraska.

The instructions read “two to five to be taken as necessary.” Over the course of a few weeks that September more than a quarter of the College’s student body of 864 were sickened by the flu pandemic—part of the worst flu outbreak the world had ever seen. Sadly there was one student death: Elizabeth M. Smith, class of 1922, a first-year from Pennsylvania. Archives staff are awaiting chemical analysis of the pills to determine what the medicine was or may have been. To read more about the flu at Mount Holyoke, go to alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/MHCflu.

Keep up with Mount Holyoke Archives and Special Collections at mhc-asc.tumblr.com or follow them on Instagram and Snapchat at mhcarchives and on Twitter @ASCatMHC.

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On Display WEB EXCLUSIVE

View a slideshow of past covers of the Quarterly at alumnae. mtholyoke.edu/issues.

ART I FACT

How It All Began T H E F I R S T I S S U E of the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly

debuted in April 1917 at a time when resources were tight. The country was at war, and paper was scarce. The editors made efficient use of sixty-six pages, with the text-heavy look of the time. Articles were dense and focused on detailed College news as well as alumnae careers. Students and faculty contributed most of the content, often transcriptions of talks or addresses.

The issue was smaller in size than the current magazine, at six inches by nine inches. And it would be decades before color was introduced. But much is familiar today. Class scribes and their notes appeared in the very first issue. Deceased alumnae were given a “Necrology” section, which included the March 25, 1917, death of

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Elizabeth Storrs Mead, “first president of Mount Holyoke College, from 1893 to 1900.” And editors asked outright for feedback from readers, establishing from its very first that this was to be a publication for alumnae.

The editorial content of the magazine concluded with a list of about forty alumnae under the title “Addresses Desired”—essentially a call for information updates about lost alumnae—and, on the next page, a detailed schedule for commencement weekend 1917.

An annual subscription cost $1.00 “payable in advance.” And an eight-page advertising section, complete with index, was crucial in funding the project. The magazine went ad free in 1968, and in 1975 the subscription fee was eliminated.

James Gehrt

Our inaugural issue

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1976

Phones on Campus listening to their favorite playlists as they get ready for class.

As a Mount Holyoke senior, Nancy Bellows Perez ’76 (pictured right) was a substitute teacher. On the days that she was called in to teach, the phone would ring at 5:45 a.m., on the third-floor hallway of Abbey Hall.

Before meal times, students use group messages to gather friends to a dining hall.

During campus events, they take photos of memorable moments—sometimes their performing friends, and sometimes renowned speakers. At Kendall, during a workout, some students hop on a treadmill or elliptical machine and tune in to their favorite Netflix series.

“I was hated by everyone on the floor,” says Perez, currently interim executive director of the Alumnae Association. “I was the heaviest sleeper. Someone would have to answer the phone and then pound on my door to wake me up.”

1976: Susan Sanders Fier ’76; 2017: Tim Llewellyn

While students were permitted phones in their rooms as early as 1972, most relied on the hall phones—still with a dial and a long, curly cord. Incoming calls were answered by any nearby student—putting a burden on the student whose dorm room was closest to the phone. And if the person being called wasn’t available, whoever answered the phone would leave a message on a piece of paper and tack it to a bulletin board on her door—a necessity of the times.

Outgoing calls had to be made collect, an expense greater than an incoming call. Many students had tricks to call home collect to themselves so that their parents knew to hang up and call them right back.

Privacy was also an issue.

“We heard people fight with their parents and break up

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Then and Now

THE N

In the library, phones can be a nightmare for procrastinators.

Students who plan to use their phones as reference tools or to listen to classrequired recordings often find themselves instead on social media. Many resort to apps that can block certain websites for a time to force them to focus. But even during finals, study tables are often crowded with coffee cups, Red Bulls . . . and cell phones. with their boyfriends,” says Perez. And whether or not their conversations were of a private nature, residents were also reminded to keep their voices down, especially during “quiet hours”—after 11:00 p.m. or before 9:00 a.m.

—B Y J E N N I F E R G R O W ’ 9 4

N OW

2017 Today, most students carry Smartphones with them everywhere they go and rely on apps as they navigate through their days. On a typical morning, students grab their phones before getting out of bed, even relying on the alarm clock function to be sure they wake in time for class. They scroll through Facebook and turn on Spotify,

Despite the ubiquity of phones on campus, rings and beeps in classes attract annoyed eyes.

That’s why students aren’t allowed to use their phones during class time. Occasionally, a professor’s phone will chime, however, eliciting smiles from the students.

—B Y S H E L L L I N ’ 1 7

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly

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SPRING 2017

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I spent a lot of time under that bridge, collecting cadissfly larvae for bio class.

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Deirdre Haber Malfatto

— E L I Z A B E T H ( L I Z ) KO R M O S ’ 7 3

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A Place of Our Own

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Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly

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SPRING 2017

39

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My Voice

ESSAY

Becoming My Mother’s Daughter

By K AR EN CAL E CHMAN ’78

Pitch your topic at quarterly@ mtholyoke.edu.

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alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

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but together they have caused me much harm, anxiety, and fear. I am continually watched and examined by specialists. Besides an incompetent cervix, I have had irregular cervical cells, a miscarriage, and two premature, low birthweight babies. I have twice the risk of developing breast cancer than unexposed women my age. And as new conditions appear, I continue to be an anomaly to my doctors. They exclaim, “But, you are too young to have this,” or “You don’t fit the profile of a patient who would have this condition.”

The emotional toll on me and my family can’t be measured. I have gone from denial to fanatic focus on my health. My mother can’t even speak about DES exposure. It is much too painful for her, and she was not raised to speak up. It wasn’t until I came to Mount Holyoke that I found my voice. I speak loudly now. As I continue to live with the unknowns of DES, I make it a priority to educate the current generation, who will become doctors, researchers, and advocates. I do everything I can to assure that FDA oversight of new medications is stricter than it was for DES. Perhaps most important, I support other DESexposed individuals by listening to their stories. I feel strongly that it is my responsibility to ensure that we learn from this medical tragedy, so it never happens again.

Karen Calechman ’78 is an educational and outreach manager. She initiated and led the effort to hold “DES: A Population Health Tragedy,” a symposium held at Mount Holyoke College in March. Read more on page 6.

Brian Rea

HAVE AN O PI N I O N TO S HAR E?

I AM A DE S DAUG H T E R . DES—diethylstilbestrol —was a synthetic estrogen prescribed to millions of pregnant women, from about 1940 to the early 1970s, in the mistaken belief the drug prevented miscarriage and ensured a healthy pregnancy. Instead, DES harmed the mothers who were prescribed it, their children exposed in utero, and now grandchildren, and possibly beyond.

It is estimated that as many as ten million people have been affected.

As conditions My DES story began during my sophomore year at Mount Holyoke, appear, I but my DES history began in the womb. During midterm exams, I continue to be received a frantic phone call from my mother. Between her sobs, she an anomaly to explained that she had taken a medication prescribed by her obstetrician, my doctors. from the second trimester through the end of her pregnancy with me, to prevent a miscarriage. Her current gynecologist was compelled to look at Mom’s old records because he had recently read about in-utero DES exposure being linked to a rare vaginal and cervical cancer—clear cell adenocarcinoma. A cancer that was only seen in older women was now being diagnosed in young women who were exposed to DES in utero. Mom’s doctor discovered that she had taken DES, and that I might be at risk for cancer. She begged me to rush home to have my first gynecological examination, to see if—and how—I, too, may have been affected. Though completely shaken by the call, I struggled to maintain my composure. I urgently wanted to leave campus and promised to go home after midterms ended. This time became not only a significant permanent memory of my sophomore year at MHC but also a turning point in my life.

During my first examination, at age 19, I was found to be a “classic case of DES exposure.” I had a tipped uterus and cervical adenosis (irregularity in the cells lining the cervix). I learned that I would have to be carefully watched for cancer. During a routine gynecological examination a couple years later in Washington, DC, the doctor became excited as he asked if he could invite his interns and residents to view my cervix. I was “a textbook case.” On the verge of tears, my legs in stirrups, I meekly replied yes.

The conditions that I have developed over the years— and that have been proven to be the result of my DES exposure—are numerous, and so far not life threatening,

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“Days after arriving on campus, I remember thinking, ‘This is the first time I have been in a place where it is OK to be female and smart.’ To me, that was the greatest gift.”

A lifelong advocate for women and children, Maria Mossaides ’73 credits Mount Holyoke with preparing and encouraging her for every role she has held. Now leading the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Office of the Child Advocate, Mossaides uses her knowledge and passion to ensure the safety of the state’s most vulnerable children.

Grateful for scholarships she received at Mount Holyoke, Mossaides began giving back to the College soon after graduation. She recently established a deferred gift annuity that will provide her with guaranteed income in retirement and help to pay it forward, giving access to a new generation of women.

Contact Anne Vittoria FP’05, director of gift planning, at 413-538-2637 or at giftplanning@mtholyoke.edu.

Read Mossaides’ story and explore gift annuities at: mtholyoke.edu/go/mossaides

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Giving back and paying it forward.

Gift Planning

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50 College Street, South Hadley, MA 01075

A Woman’s Place Is in the House... and the Senate.

Women’s college alumnae make up 2 percent of the graduate population yet comprise more than 10 percent of women in the US Congress.

The Women’s College Advantage.

Learn more at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/poweredbymhc #PoweredByMountHolyoke Figures based on 115th Congress as of January 2017

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