Mount Holyoke s u mm er 2017
Alumnae Quarterly
From the Archives to the Stage A conversation with playwright Bryna Turner ’12 IN TH I S I SSU E CLASS NOTES THROUGH THE YEARS REUNION STORIES INSIDE SYCAMORES LITERARY SOCIETY
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President’s Pen
Acting President Sonya Stephens speaks during the laurel chain ceremony at Mary Lyon’s grave in May.
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With each ceremony and event, the seniors are a step closer to the inexorable conclusion of their time as students at Mount Holyoke. — S O N YA S T E P H E N S
Ceremony; and they’ve attended the Last Lecture, given by a faculty or staff member they’ve selected who inspires. With each ceremony and event, the seniors are a step closer to the inexorable conclusion of their time as students at Mount Holyoke—living, moment by moment, and in newly intensified ways, their connections and successes. Emotions are high, and yet more is to come, not only in the commencement ceremony itself but in the contemplation that is Baccalaureate, and in the “communitas” of the magical Canoe Sing (as well as all that precedes it). These ritual-inspired emotions create a common bond—a bond forged by the suffragist-honoring white of our clothing, the placards of the parade, and the sharing of class histories at the alumnae meetings. These are not traditions for their own sake, nor should we think for a moment that such extraordinary exercises are commonplace, even at the most ritualized of graduation ceremonies. In this liminal moment, in fact, Mount Holyoke honors its deepest values and its most historic and present sense of community—across generations, experience, race, and class. And there is immense power in that symbolism.
Deirdre Haber Malfatto
I T I S A N I N E S C A PA B L E and heartwarming truth about Mount Holyoke that we are invested in a tradition of traditions. At no time in the academic year, and at no moment during the career of a student, is this more apparent than during the commencement exercises. Not for nothing did one person, about halfway along the path of this year’s laurel parade, offer up a box of tissues. We laughed at her prescience, knowing that, as the new graduates reached the generous ranks of the fiftieth-reunion class of 1967, who were lining the way to Mary Lyon’s grave, there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the parade. The laurel parade is already a sort of culmination, marking the moment that the graduating class is entered on the roll of the Alumnae Association and joins the lineage assembled to welcome them. By the time of the laurel parade, the graduating students have toasted their success with strawberries and champagne on Pageant Green; they have been “scarved” by their connections class; if they are students of color, they have recognized college mentors in the Stoling
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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 in Laurel
2 LYONS SHARE
18 Reunion 2017: In Stories
5 UNCOMMON GROUND
The origins and evolution of one of the College’s most beloved traditions
A look back at Reunion through the experiences of a few alumnae who returned home
24 In Your Own Words
Button Field theories, making DES connections, discovering Helen Pitts Douglass, celebrating Wonder Woman’s Mount Holyoke roots BOOM! learning conference, Commencement, Alumnae Association names president-elect, faculty retirements, call for essays
36 34 MoHOME MEMORIES Blackstick literary society; a prayer for Mount Holyoke
In our third issue celebrating the Alumnae Quarterly’s centennial we share class notes through the decades
30 Purposeful Anachronisms
36 On Display Sphinx statuette 37 Then and Now Basketball uniforms
Playwright Bryna Turner ’12 discusses her critically acclaimed play inspired by the letters of Mary Woolley and Jeannette Marks
38 A Place of Our Own Canoes
40 CLASS NOTES
Cover: Jenny Anderson; Laurel and Sycamores: Deirdre Haber Malfatto; Sphinx booklet: Raisa Islam ’19
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80 MY VOICE
“Celebration,” a Quarterly crossword puzzle originally published in 1987
10 The Female Gaze Artist-in-residence Susan Jane Walp ’70; authors Marcia Gagliardi Brennan ’88, Kathryn Lacy Marshall ’81, and Helen Schatvet Ullman ’59 12 Ten Minutes With Alumnae Quarterly editor Jennifer Grow ’94 13 The Maven Inez Chase Zimmerman ’52 on the art of the class note
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14 Insider’s View Sycamores
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LETTERS
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FAC E B O O K
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I N S TAG R A M
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Lyons Share QUESTIONING BUTTON THEORIES I was most interested to read in the
latest Quarterly the article on The Button Field (“A Story in the Soil,” spring 2017, p. 34). I have lived on Buttonfield Lane since 1977 and have a box full of buttons (antique and modern) that I have dug up out of the soil while gardening. I have heard many differing accounts of how they got there so was glad to learn possibly the correct one. Incidentally, the use of fabric to encourage plants in their growth was long used by my grandmother, who planted her broad bean seeds over red flannel. She was convinced that the material kept the seeds warm while they germinated and therefore produced better beans. In retrospect, her broad beans were spectacular. —Yvonne Nicholson ’76 via email As a fashion historian and museum curator, I immediately flipped through my Alumnae Quarterly to find the button article when I saw it
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noted on the front cover. I am certainly disappointed that I somehow missed knowing about the Button Field and its purported history while I was a student, but I am glad to know about it now! I have been researching button manufacturing in Hampshire County. The story as presented about the appearance of buttons in the field is confused. I believe that there’s a basic misunderstanding of the historical objects and processes that went into button making and paper making. First of all, the types of buttons pictured are not the sort that would be covered with fabric. Fabriccovered buttons (which were, in fact, a huge industry in Easthampton) were made with solid wood or bone molds, or formed over metal rings. They were not made with buttons that had been drilled with holes for sewing. One has to ask why, if rags were used for paper making—which required them to be cut up and broken down into a wet pulp— would there be any “scraps” left over for the farmer to collect? I think a more likely explanation—if Farmer McElwain really was convinced that scraps from Holyoke’s paper mills made his field more fertile—is that old clothes were collected as rags for paper making, and their buttons were cut off. He was probably specifically collecting the buttons, not fabric scraps—and that would make some sense, if they were bone buttons (which were very common in the nineteenth century). Bone meal is commonly used by gardeners to add phosphorus and calcium to the soil. Possibly, he didn’t bother to sort out the ceramic or metal buttons and just threw them all down. I will definitely have to search out this field and poke around in the soil to see what comes up! —Lynne Zacek Bassett ’83 via email
Things I learned from @aamhc: Frederick Douglass had a wife and she was a Mount Holyoke alum! #SundayReads
@SAR AH LMAU RO SAR AH MAU RO ’ 10
In April, Mayesha Alam ’10 was named a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow. The award, given to immigrants and children of immigrants, will support her doctoral studies in comparative politics at Yale. #PoweredByMountHolyoke
alumnae.mtholyoke.edu
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MAKING DES CONNECTIONS I wanted to thank the Quarterly
and Karen Calechman ’78 for the spring 2017 article and essay on DES (“Building DES Awareness,” p. 6; “Becoming My Mother’s Daughter,” p. 80). As a DES daughter, longtime member of DES Action, and coproducer of the documentary DES: Time Bomb Drug I continue to feel that it’s an important and often overlooked issue in health care, for both women and men. —Deborah Shaffer ’70 via email
Anne Pinkerton
I, too, was given DES when I was pregnant with my second and third children. My second child, a daughter, has been monitoring various potential symptoms for years. She is now 59 and the mother of two college-age sons— both 100 percent normal. My third child is a son, age 57, and the father of two girls, ages 13 and 9. To the best of our knowledge, both girls are fine and show no symptoms of DES. This is a multiple lifetime watch. The physician who prescribed DES for me moved to another city and is now deceased. My recollection is that he prescribed diethylstilbestrol to counter my tendency to have small babies. I suspect that every story will be a bit different. —Ellie Miller Greenberg ’53 via Alumnae Association website The spring 2017 Alumnae Quarterly including the essay that I wrote and the article about the DES (diethylstilbestrol) symposium that I organized arrived at my house in Long Beach, California, as I was attending my mother’s funeral in Connecticut. What a poignant and ironic twist of fate, as my mother could never utter the term DES. Still, I think that she would have been proud of the symposium, where students, faculty, and the Five College population were educated with detailed knowledge and research about this medical tragedy. I have received many emails from alumnae who are also DES-exposed
mothers and daughters. (DES affected boys in utero as well.) I hope that I have helped some of them, and I intend to communicate with each of them if they choose to connect. I’m proud to share that the DES symposium at Mount Holyoke included four students who were involved in hosting and filming; resulted in Kiera Sapp ’17 writing a paper, “DES and the Failures of Modern Biomedicine”; and inspired potentially two collaborative Mount Holyoke student/faculty/DES Action projects in the works. Creating and implementing this symposium and writing an essay about my experience has connected me to many current professors and students. I hope that the College and the Alumnae Association continue to collaborate on events that will benefit both, and connect students with alumnae. Anyone interested in communicating with me on DES, or DES exposure, email Karen@DESaction.org. —Karen Calechman ’78 via email DISCOVERING HELEN PITTS DOUGLASS I didn’t know Helen Pitts Douglass was
a Mount Holyoke grad! (“Right Is of No Sex. Truth Is of No Color,” spring 2017, p. 28). She and my great-great-grandmother, Lucinda Hinsdale Stone, were good friends. Lucinda spent a short time with them in Europe, c. 1888, and had some interesting reminiscences about him in Athens. Sometime after that, she was their guest at Cedar Hill. Lucinda, like Helen, was a reformer—an abolitionist and suffragist. She was especially active in promoting college coeducation—equal opportunities for women to a college education. I am writing her biography, but it covers only her first fifty-plus years (1814-1866). —Elizabeth Jones Harris ’64 via Alumnae Association website
prised to learn that his second wife had been white (her alma mater was never mentioned). I had wondered about how and why such a union could possibly have come about. Thank you for publishing this fascinating article of an alum who lived by her convictions and helped to preserve a monument to a great man’s legacy. —Elizabeth Marino ’95 via email PHONES ON CAMPUS Regarding “Phones on Campus,” (spring
2017, p. 37), I was head of Blue Key for the class of 1966, and my friends were head of student government and judicial board. This gave us the privilege of having a college phone installed in our rooms. The campus phone system supposedly went off at 11:00 p.m., but we discovered that it came back on again twenty minutes later, so we could chat with each other and receive incoming calls. Hard to explain now what a big deal that was! —Ruth Rotundo Whitney ’66 via Alumnae Association website @mhcalums A sunny photo of a glorious pink dogwood outside Kendall yesterday. #MountHolyoke #college #campus #botanicgarden #pink #dogwood #spring #nofilter
A few years ago, I visited Frederick Douglass’s home in DC and was sur-
Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly
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SUMMER 2017
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Lyons Share
MOST POPU L AR POST
MOUN T H O LYO KE ALUMNAE QUARTERLY Summer 2017 Volume 101 Number 3
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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Sara Hyry Barry ’94 Olivia Collins ’18 Alicia Doyon Raisa Islam ’19 Shell Lin ’17 Sara Rottger ’19 Maryellen Ryan Elizabeth Solet
QUARTERLY COMMITTEE
ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS
President Marcia Brumit Kropf ’67 President-elect Maria Z. Mossaides ’73 Vice President Susan Brennan Grosel ’82 Treasurer and Chair, Finance Committee Tara Mia Paone ’81 Clerk Markeisha J. Miner ’99 Alumnae Trustee Elizabeth A. Wharff ’75 Young Alumnae Representative Tarana Bhatia ’15 Chair, Nominating Committee Nancy J. Drake ’73 Chair, Classes and Reunion Committee Melissa Anderson Russell ’01 Chair, Communications Committee Marisa C. Peacock ’01
Lisa Hawley Hiley ’83 Carolyn E. Roesler ’86
Chair, Volunteer Stewardship Committee Charlotte N. Church ’70
The Mount Holyoke Alumnae
Chair, Clubs Committee Elizabeth McInerny McHugh ’87
Quarterly is published quarterly in the spring, summer, fall, and winter by the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Inc. Summer 2017, volume 101, number 3, was printed in the USA by Lane Press, Burlington, VT. Periodicals
Directors-at-Large Katherine S. Hunter ’75 Amanda S. Leinberger ’07 Alice C. Maroni ’75 Executive Director Nancy Bellows Perez ’76 ex officio without vote
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
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Alumnae Information Services Mount Holyoke Alumnae Association 50 College St. South Hadley, MA 01075-1486
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“Yes, I wore my Mount Holyoke shirt. Someone asked me why I didn’t come in costume. I just pointed to my shirt.” —Tina Fiasconaro ’96 “I knew it!” —Stephanie Miller ’10 “I wonder if Elizabeth knew my great aunt Eleanor Dewey Mason, class of 1918, who was also a wonder woman. She went on to get her master’s from Wellesley and PhD from Harvard. Then she started a college of science for women in southern India and traveled all around that country as a single woman. I think she would have enjoyed this movie.” —Sarah Jackson ’01 “So, when is Wonder Woman going to become an honorary Mount Holyoke College graduate?” —Sarah Cornett ’11 “Like all the Wonder Women I met at Mount Holyoke!” —Alice Bertholin Rice ’05 “Someone mentioned it to me, and I was wildly unsurprised and v[ery] proud.” —Brittany Lambert ’16 “Well this explains a whole lot.” —Ellie Kane MHCG’97 “Fabulous! Saw the movie a couple of days ago with my son, who loved it! Proud to know that an MHC grad was the inspiration behind it!” —Amy Spatz ’96
Warner Bros.
EDITORIAL AND DESIGN TEAM
Did you know? Wonder Woman was created in 1941 by William Moulton Marston, husband of 1915 Mount Holyoke College graduate Elizabeth Holloway Marston. The inspiration for the fabulous female character was a bit of a wonder woman herself, earning three degrees and pursuing a career as a psychologist when these things were rare achievements for women. #PoweredByMountHolyoke
alumnae.mtholyoke.edu
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THE FEMALE GAZE
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TEN MINUTES WITH
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T H E M AV E N
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News
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INSIDER’S VIEW
Uncommon Ground
Rob Deza
BOOM Conference Brings Campus Together to Explore Diversity and Inclusion ON MARCH 26 AND 27 Mount Holyoke held a two-day learning conference that engaged the College community in discussions about diversity. “This is to bring the entire community together to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus,” said Acting President Sonya Stephens. “We wanted to create a day when everyone can come together and really think about what it would take to move us from where we are now to where we want to be.” On March 27 classes were canceled and offices closed for the day so students, faculty, and staff could participate in the nearly seventy talks, seminars, poster sessions, discussions, and other events. Among the topics: “Exposing the Myth of Economic Diversity at America’s Top Colleges,” “Transconnections: The Rainbow Connection: Exploring Gender Diversity Across Identities,” and “Facing Mental Illness and How to Support Mental Well-Being at MHC.”
There was even an “Accessible Technology Petting Zoo,” where participants could try adaptive devices, including assistive hardware and Braille. Sessions sponsored by student-run MoZone Peer Education covered “Gender and Sexuality” and “Navigating Race and Ethnicity at MHC.” The keynote speaker was CNN political contributor, professor, and author Marc Lamont Hill, who challenged the Mount Holyoke College community to rise in thought and in deed to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, on campus and beyond. On Sunday, in a session called “‘Peacing’ Together Mount Holyoke,” participants traced their hands, then mixed paint to approximate their skin tone. That was followed by a discussion about how identity, art, and race intersect. “The struggle with race is that so many people still believe that it’s a biological construct,” said Beverly J.M. Bell, director of the
Master of Arts in Teaching program, part of MHC’s Professional and Graduate Education. “Ninety-nine percent of the students in our teaching program are white,” she said. “Yet the students they will teach, someday, in public schools will most likely number about 70 percent students of color. We need to diversify our teacher workforce.” The event grew out of the Plan for Mount Holyoke 2021. The next stage will be to share suggestions from participants with the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Steering Committee, which will present a plan for action. “We’ve known for some time that we needed to be thinking about the inclusion of all students,” Stephens said. “This is not the beginning, nor is it the end. It’s a catalyst for further action.” To learn more and watch a video go to alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/boom. — B Y K AT H L E E N M E L L E N
Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly
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SUMMER 2017
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Welcome, Class of 2017! On May 21, the newest class of green griffins strode across the stage at Gettell Amphitheater in their caps and gowns during the one hundred eightieth Mount Holyoke Commencement ceremony. The nearly six hundred graduates of the class of 2017 are already an accomplished group, having developed social entrepreneurship and employment programs, learned cutting-edge technology, conducted original research, penned op-eds, influenced public thinking, developed conferences, and won top academic honors and fellowships. “This is an extraordinary class of talented individuals who are extremely well prepared to take their passions further to create, innovate, and otherwise make their mark on the professions and communities they will join,” said Acting President Sonya Stephens. “It is my great honor to have been a part of their time here, and I look forward to seeing the difference they will make in the world.” Keynote speaker, labor leader, and activist, Dolores Huerta, told the graduates to live with intention and to work to bring positive change. “What do you want to leave behind?” she asked the crowd. “You want to leave a legacy of justice.”
Debra Martin Chase ’77, representing the College’s board of trustees, convened the ceremony, welcoming the graduating class to the “most wonderful club on Earth,” that of Mount Holyoke alumnae. Senior class speaker Anqa Khan ’17 also spoke of activism, saying, “We have transformed from students interested in a field to graduates with a mastery of making the world a better place.” Photographer and filmmaker Joan Biren ’66, who received an honorary doctorate in fine arts, exhorted the graduates to live authentic lives. “You have an obligation to be a part of the struggle for social justice,” she told them. “It benefits you personally as well as lifting up less-advantaged people.” Kathryn Finney, founder and managing director of digitalundivided, a social enterprise that fosters economic growth by empowering black and Latina women entrepreneurs, urged the College’s newest alumnae to embrace their power. Huerta, who also received an honorary doctorate in humane letters during the event, sent the graduates on their way by rousing them in an empowering chant, “¡Sí, se puede!” (“Yes, we can!”) — B Y K E E LY S AV O I E
Bookstore Moves to Odyssey In July the Odyssey Bookshop became the new purveyor of all things Mount Holyoke College: from T-shirts and sweatshirts to coffee mugs and diploma frames—and much more. The previous campus store, located in Blanchard, closed after Reunion. Visit odysseybks.com for more information.
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Philippa Goold, professor emeritus of Classics, died March 29 at the age of 84. Goold began working at Mount Holyoke in 1967 and retired in 1996. She grew up in Salisbury, South Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), and she studied at the University of Cape Town and the University of Cambridge (Newnham College). While at Mount Holyoke, she served as department chair and dean of studies and also on several committees. In addition to her work at Mount Holyoke, Goold was associate editor of Loeb Classical Library and a consultant to Apuleius Seminar of Groningen University in the Netherlands. Her colleagues extolled her “intelligence, humor, reliable judgment, and unfailing grace” in her retirement citation. Tadanori Yamashita, professor emeritus of religion, died April 5 at the age of 87. Yamashita began working at Mount Holyoke in 1963 and retired in 2005. He was born in Tokyo and attended Tokyo University and Yale University. At Mount Holyoke, Yamashita helped establish the Asian Studies program and cofounded Wa-shin-an with his wife, Nobue. The couple also cofounded a Japanese language school in South Hadley. In 2000 Tadanori was honored with the Order of the Sacred Treasure by Emperor Akihito of Japan. In addition to his wife, Yamashita is survived by their children, Miki Yamashita ’06 and Takeshi Yamashita, and daughter-in-law Elyssa Barrick.
Graduates: Tim Llewellyn; Odyssey and Pai: MHC Office of Communications
In Memoriam
DID YOU KNOW?
There are more than
40 international
alumnae clubs and groups on
six continents
alumnae.mtholyoke.edu
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Alumnae Association Names President-Elect At the Annual Meeting held during Reunion alumnae approved the slate of incoming officers to the board. Among those alumnae who began a term in July is Maria Z. Mossaides ’73, who joined the board as president-elect for one year before becoming president in July 2018. The president-elect position reflects a change in the bylaws of the Association. Current president Marcia Brumit Kropf ’67, whose three-year term was extended by a year, will continue until 2018. “This new role provides for clearer continuity,” says Kropf. “It provides the president-elect with the opportunity to become acclimated to Alumnae Association operations and to develop relationships with the staff, as well as partners at the College, before taking on the role of president.”
Professionally, Mossaides has had a long career in social services. In 2015 she was appointed by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker as the state’s child advocate. Previously she served as executive director of Cambridge Family and Children’s Service. Mossaides, who lives in Worcester, Massachusetts, is the current cochair of The Mount Holyoke Fund and has served in a number of volunteer roles for admission, her class, and the Association—most recently as a member of the Alumnae Trustee Committee. Her daughter, Sophia Apostola, is a graduate of the class of 2004. To view the 2017 board of directors go to alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ board-of-directors.
MHC Poet Wins Glascock On April 1 Anisha Pai ’19 was named the winner of the Glascock Intercollegiate Poetry Competition, the first from Mount Holyoke since 2009 and one of only twenty first-place
of humor and playfulness combined with
winners since the award was founded in 1923.
deep political and emotional urgency.
Pai joins past winners Sylvia Plath, James Merrill, Kenneth Koch, and Katha Pollitt. Mossaides: Lisa Quinones
Pai’s poetry has a compelling sense
Read more at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/
— A N D R E A L AW LO R VISITING LECTURER, ENGLISH
glascock2017.
Common Read Announced
SALT: Student Loan Help
Claudia Rankine’s book Citizen: An American Lyric—a meditation on race, the body, self-identity, and language—has been chosen as the 2017 Common Read. Learn more at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ commonread2017.
Mount Holyoke College has teamed up with the nonprofit organization SALT to help current students and recent Mount Holyoke alumnae manage their money and student loans. All services, including membership fees, are free of charge. Visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/salt.
Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly
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A RT I ST- IN - R ESID EN C E
Reimagining Still Life AR E YO U AN ARTI ST?
Email your submission to quarterly@ mtholyoke.edu.
F OR T WO MON T H S last spring Susan Jane
Walp ’70 was the artist-in-residence in the studio art department at Dartmouth College. Since the 1930s the program has been bringing artists to campus to give students an idea of what it is like to be a working artist. Walp was given a studio in Dartmouth’s new Black Family Visual Arts Center, a place to live, and an open invitation to take part in activities on campus. While there’s no formal teaching responsibility attached to being an artist-in-residence, Walp’s residency created plenty of opportunities to connect with students and members of the community. And, during April her work was exhibited at Dartmouth’s Jaffe-Friede Gallery in the Hopkins
Center for the Arts, giving members of the community a chance to view a mini-retrospective of Walp’s intimate, still-life paintings. An award-winning artist whose work is represented by the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York City, Walp’s connection to Dartmouth began in 1998. She joined the art department as a visiting professor and then served as lecturer until 2012. Returning to campus, she says, gave her the opportunity to focus on her work without distractions. “It’s a luxury for an artist to be away from the responsibilities of home,” says Walp. “It’s a special kind of retreat, to be with one’s work in ways that aren’t necessarily so easy when living in one’s own environment and daily life.”
Four Figs, Two Swans, and Pair of Scissors, 2017. Oil on linen, 101/8 in x 10 in. Courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York. Grapefruit with Black Ribbon, 2000. Oil on linen, 8 in x 8 1/4 in. Courtesy Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.
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The Female Gaze
BO O KS
The Book of You: For My Child, with Love (A Keepsake Journal) Kate Marshall, David Marshall PLU M E
This guided journal offers creative writing prompts, checklists, and myriad ways to share treasured memories and to express your pride in and gratitude for your children.
Raised in an artistically inclined household and enrolled in art classes from an early age, Walp’s sophomore year at Mount Holyoke proved to be a pivotal moment in her life as an artist. After missing two-and-a-half months of spring semester due to illness, she was permitted to make up the missed credits by attending a summer painting program at Boston University’s School of Fine Arts at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts. Because the beginner class was full, she enrolled in the advanced class, taught by painter Lennart Anderson. The experience was transformative, for her health and for her confidence in her work. Finding inspiration in Anderson’s teaching, she would later use his methods of tonal painting in her own work. Like many Mount Holyoke art majors in the late sixties, Walp also took classes with renowned art professor Leonard DeLonga. “He was a great example and model of someone who dedicated their life to their work,” Walp says. “He gave me and many other students the inspiration to do just that.” After she finished her studies, Walp began to explore larger narrative paintings that were semi-autobiographical in nature, primarily from her imagination. When that work “came to its natural end,” Walp started to work from observation, her original training. The first paintings she did during her first winter living in Vermont, where she has lived since 1985, were of single apples. “There was something so satisfying, calming, and healing about that experience of investigating a single form,” says Walp. “I slowly began to add more objects. I thought the turn to still life would be a temporary way to get my feet back on the ground, but now, more than thirty years later, the possibilities keep unfolding.” To learn more about Walp and to view her work, visit susanjanewalp.com. — B Y J E S S AY E R
KATHRYN LACY MARSHALL ’81 has created nine guided journals for celebrating family, love, and personal growth, among them the bestselling What I Love About You and The Book of Us for couples. Kate’s first-year roommate, artist Sarah (Sally) Jackson Tobin ’81, contributed a coloring page to this book.
Life at the End of Life: Finding Words Beyond Words
Western Massachusetts Families in 1790, Volumes 1, 2, and 3 Edited by Helen Schatvet Ullmann
Marcia Brennan
N EW E NG L AN D H ISTO RI C
I NTE LLECT LTD, TH E U N IVE RSIT Y O F CH I CAGO PRESS
Bridging disparate fields, including art history, medical humanities, and religious studies, Life at the End of Life explores the ways in which art can provide a means for rendering otherwise abstract, deeply personal, and spiritual experiences vividly concrete and communicable, even as they remain open-ended and transcendent. MARCIA GAGLIARDI BRENNAN ’88 is professor of art history and religion at Rice University. Her work as artist-in-residence at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, which informed this work, was also instrumental in the creation of her previous book, The Heart of the Hereafter: Love Stories from the End of Life (2014).
G E N E ALOG I CAL SOCI ET Y
In these three volumes The New England Historic Genealogical Society sketches the histories of Western Massachusetts’ earliest families using data from the first census of the new United States. There is even an appearance by Mary Lyon in Volume 3. HELEN SCHATVET ULLMANN ’59 is associate editor of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register. She is the award-winning author of a number of compiled genealogies, including Descendants of Peter Mills of Windsor, Connecticut, and Some Descendants of Roger Billings of Dorchester, Massachusetts. In addition, she is the author of many genealogical articles, as well as the transcriber of Hartford County Court Minutes, Volumes 3 and 4, and Colony of Connected Minutes of the Court of Assistants, 1669–1711.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
See more recent alumnae books at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ summer2017books.
Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly
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SUMMER 2017
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Ten Minutes With
MAGA Z I NE E D I TO R
Telling Mount Holyoke Stories J E N N I F E R G R O W ’ 9 4 has been editor of the Alumnae Quarterly since 2013. Previously she was assistant editor of Williams College alumni magazines for thirteen years and held positions in fundraising and marketing. From 2001 until 2007 she coached the Mount Holyoke novice crew team. She is thrilled to be back at Mount Holyoke and to be celebrating the centennial of the Quarterly this year. On returning to campus: I had been commuting from Florence to Williamstown, Massachusetts, and, with my youngest child about to enter school full time, my goal was to get a job that didn’t require me to spend upwards of three hours in the car daily. When I came to interview for this job and was walking toward Mary Woolley Hall, it was as if I was stepping into my past. I looked up at the window of my first dorm room in Abbey Hall and was nearly overcome with a feeling of coming home. I feel so fortunate to be back here on campus, again. Editor jobs in higher education are few and far between, and what a dream it is to be serving my alma mater.
On getting to know the readers: Mount Holyoke alumnae span at least nine decades, ranging in age from about twenty-one to older than one hundred. And the only thing we have in common is this place, this campus, these words: Oh Mount Holyoke, We Pay Thee Devotion. As an editor, this is a challenge that I embrace. No one subscribes to the Quarterly, I continually remind myself. As individuals, our experiences here on campus have affected each of us in different ways, and our range of interests are impossible to summarize. But when I hear from readers that a story has connected beyond those differences I know we’ve hit on something. If every alumna sees herself or her experience reflected in the magazine once in any given year, I hope that’s We want enough to keep her reading.
alumnae to
see themselves within the pages of this magazine.
On celebrating the 100th anniversary: We have in a closet in the Quarterly office every issue of the magazine, going back a century, and it’s been such an amazing experience to dive into that history in celebration of our centennial. It’s inspiring to work daily amid the history of this place and to know that as we continue this work we, too, are recording history for future readers to discover in these pages.
On the best part of the job: There are too many to list, really. Walking around Upper Lake during lunchtime is always a treat. But I’d say the very best part has been sharing Mount Holyoke with my sister, Sarah, who is a Frances Perkins scholar—and who used to visit me on campus when she was in high school. She will graduate in 2019, the same year I celebrate my twenty-fifth reunion. There are no words to describe how special this is to both of us. Through my sister’s experiences I feel as if I am getting the gift of a Mount Holyoke education for the second time.
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Joanna Chattman
On telling Mount Holyoke stories: I consider myself lucky to be able to tell the stories of Mount Holyoke. Anyone who has spent time here as a student has collected stories of their experiences, and now I have the privilege to listen to those stories—and to seek them out. One of the most fulfilling parts of my job is to recognize the patterns and significance of the stories that will reach alumnae across experiences and generations.
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Joanna Chattman
The Maven
Taking a leave of absence
Joined the PTO
Retired
Ran into an MHC alum at the grocery store
Was laid off
Ate ice cream on Mountain Day
Got a new job
Running for office
Training for a 10K
Planning a vacation
Attended a classmate’s memorial service
Was promoted
Gave birth to twins
YES
t
SHOULD I SUBMIT TO CLASS NOTES?
Applied to grad school
Was in an MHC roommate’s wedding
Adopting a dog or cat
Came to Reunion
Lost a loved one Moved to a retirement community Waiting to hear about postdoc
Filed for divorce Facing a new diagnosis
AR E YO U A MAVE N?
THE CL ASS NOT ES MAV E N
The Art of the Class Note
Pitch us your area of expertise at quarterly@ mtholyoke.edu.
By I N E Z C HAS E Z IMM ER MAN ’52 The class of 1952 just celebrated our sixtyfifth reunion. For sixty-five years the Alumnae Quarterly has arrived in our mailbox every three months! We have progressed from ink wells and blotters to smartphones. We still read our class notes. (As it turns out, class notes continues to be the most popular section of the Quarterly!) For five years I have volunteered as my class scribe. It is a pleasure to remain in contact with those bright young women we knew in 1952. Here are some common questions that I hear and what I’ve learned along the way:
Why should I write in? To write a class note all you need to know is that we want to hear from all members of the class. A fifty-word message has a good chance to appear in its original wording. Most of my editing is done to meet our word limit, set by the Quarterly staff. I love to read long letters. And I hope my classmates will keep sending them. But I will have to select just a few thoughts for my column. Sometimes, if there isn’t much news, an individual’s class note can be quite long.
How can I submit a class note? Contact information for each class scribe appears at the head of each class notes column. n You can also visit alumnae.mtholyoke. edu/scribes to learn the name of your scribe and send an email directly. Scribes love email. n Letters in cursive sent by USPS are
perfectly acceptable. n The telephone is available, also.
What should I write about? I dream of a message from a ’52 who, together with her daughter, class of 1980, has just returned from Oslo or Stockholm with her Nobel prize. While there, they had a delightful conversation with another ’52, whose son also received a prize. In fifty words, please. But I love to hear from any of my classmates about anything—retirement, grandchildren, travel, a new puppy, a new hobby, a recent mini-reunion, or even a personal achievement or challenge.
When should I send my news? Scribes submit their columns at specific deadlines: currently July 15, October 15, January 25, and April 15. Most of us compile news well ahead of our deadlines, but you can send your news at any time! You’ll receive a reminder email from the Alumnae Association several weeks before our deadlines. Magazines are mailed three months after the deadlines, so it’s helpful to keep this timeline in mind when sending in your notes.
Inez Chase Zimmerman ’52 lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, in the house she and her husband bought in 1957. Her three children live in Massachusetts and appear in an instant when she needs help. Her half-acre lot has two brooks, a shagbark hickory, black walnut trees, and Jack-in-the-pulpits. She has served as scribe since 2012.
Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly
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SUMMER 2017
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Sycamores
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TOP: Colonel
Benjamin Ruggles Woodbridge BOTTOM: Mary Lyon, whose visit to Sycamores was noted in the May 15, 1938, Springfield Republican: “Mary Lyon, founder of the seminary, was entertained at the [Sycamore] house. . . . There is a tradition that she once slept in one of the bedrooms which is now a student room. It is certain, at least, that she shared meals with the family on several occasions, for Byron Smith, then a little boy, told of seeing Miss Lyon in the dining room and of being tremendously impressed with her starched cap.”
Deirdre Haber Malfatto (8); Lyon: MHC Archives and Special Collections
Sycamores, located on Woodbridge Street north of the Mount Holyoke campus and named for the grand trees that once lined the building’s path, was built in 1788 by Colonel Benjamin Ruggles Woodbridge. South Hadley’s wealthiest resident and illustrious bachelor wore the hats of a physician, a mill-owner and still-owner, a shopkeeper, and a military man—he led a regiment at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Colonel Ruggles lived in the house for the remainder of his life, and with his death in 1819 the land passed to his nephews, who turned the house into a school for boys. For the next fifteen years, approximately forty young boys attended the Woodbridge Scientific and Practical School, until the building was given up to a succession of private owners. Famed friend to the College and local businessman Joseph Skinner purchased the house in 1915, by which time so many wings had been added on to the original structure it was said the whole house would take flight at any moment. Skinner turned the building into a dormitory for Mount Holyoke students, and the College purchased the building in its centennial year, 1937. As a College residence Sycamores housed approximately fifteen students at a time, usually sophomores, accompanied by a cook, a maid, and a house mother. Tales of hauntings by a master purportedly killed by his cook and bumps in the night were popular in the old house, as was a murmur of a secret tunnel underneath that was once part of the Underground Railroad. (A tunnel was found with the removal of a tree in 1945, but its purpose was unclear.) In 1959 the building was designated the campus religious center and residence of the dean of the College chapel. A few years later it became the quarters of participants in Mount Holyoke’s A Better Chance program for underprivileged local high-school girls, until it was declared a guest house for male visitors in 1985. For a five-dollar deposit, a student’s visiting boyfriend or brother could rent a bed for the night, relieving the “security risk posed by the presence of male guests in the dormitories,” according to a newspaper story published in October 1985. Sycamores served this purpose for about a decade before falling into disrepair. In 1999, the Sycamores Restoration Committee—a group led by South Hadley Historical Society member and Mount Holyoke chemistry professor Kenneth L. Williamson and his wife, Louise—purchased the house and lot from the College. Over the past eighteen years, Sycamores has been restored to its former historical glory and can now be appreciated by visitors as a window into the rich history of South Hadley. — B Y O L I V I A C O L L I N S ’ 1 8
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Insider’s View
Deirdre Haber Malfatto (8); Lyon: MHC Archives and Special Collections
Each room in Sycamores is decorated in the period of its earliest days. Every detail, from wallpaper to furnishings and even displays of personal items, including a pair of shoes, has been restored, bringing visitors back to the building’s original eighteenthcentury roots.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
View a slideshow of more photos at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ sycamores.
Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly
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SUMMER 2017
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The 2017 laurel was delivered the day before the parade and assembled early the morning of. Opposite page: (top) alumnae welcome the class of 1944; (bottom) the class of 2016 gathers before the parade lineup.
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Deirdre Haber Malfatto (2); MHC Archives and Special Collections
A History in Laurel A FAMILIAR AND BELOVED CEREMONY to all who belong to the Mount Holyoke community, the ritual of the laurel parade began 117 years ago, with two wreaths of laurel leaves carried by the president and vice president of the graduating class. In 1902 the wreath was lengthened into “a beautiful garland of mountain laurel made by freshmen,” according to the Springfield Union News & Sunday Republican, which regularly reported on the event. For a time forget-me-nots and lilies of the valley also held a place in the ceremony. The ceremony draws its symbolism from ancient times. The bay laurel that once sat upon the heads of Roman poets evolved into mountain laurel draped across students’ shoulders, symbolizing honor, achievement, and glory. Traditionally, laurel branches are fashioned into twentyyard ropes about six inches thick, then attached together to form one long 275-foot chain that is carried by seniors who walk in the parade, four across. The tradition has been interrupted several times, with laurel replaced during times of scarcity. In 1923, in view of mass destruction of laurel in Massachusetts, the graduating class voted to replace the laurel chain with daisies in order to preserve the evergreen. In the following year, even the daisy became scarce, so seniors carried “only long streams of blue and white ribbon” along with “two huge bouquets of roses,” reported the Springfield Sunday Republican. Decades later, in 1970, students voted to carry signs protesting the Vietnam war instead of the laurel chain. Today, more than a century after its debut, the parade continues, with laurel as its centerpiece. On the day before graduation, members of the senior class prepare to take their place in the parade, lining up in front of Mary E. Woolley Hall to be draped with laurel. Participants dress in white, as they have from the beginning, to honor suffragists who wore white as they fought for the right to vote. As they walk through campus to cheers from friends, family, and members of the Mount Holyoke community, they are enthusiastically welcomed by the alumnae who have returned to campus to celebrate their own reunions. The parade proceeds to Mary Lyon’s grave site, where seniors gather close and pass the laurel chain overhead, draping it on the iron fence. The ceremony concludes as students and alumnae join together in singing “Bread and Roses” to remember those who fought for reasonable work hours and equal pay during the Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile mill workers strike of 1912. And through this tribute to women’s achievements in history the next generation of alumnae are launched, inspired to achieve. —BY S H E LL LI N ’ 17
Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly
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SUMMER 2017
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Reunion 2017:
In Stories
OV E R T WO M AY WE E K E N DS of sunshine and rain clouds, more than 1,700 alumnae and guests from
the classes ending in twos and sevens, and 2015, traveled back to Mount Holyoke from across the globe to reconnect with each other and the idyllic campus they still call home. From thought-provoking Back-toClass sessions with current MHC faculty and staff, to outlandish parade costumes, to catching up with beloved friends, Reunion was filled with celebrations, big and small. Here’s a brief glimpse of some of the stories that alumnae shared with us during their time on campus. To view additional photos and social media coverage and to watch a video, visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/reunion2017.
1957
“Oh we come back a lot. We like to just walk around the campus. It’s so pretty.” Katherine Butler Jones ’57, who lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her husband, cofounded the Roxbury Newton Freedom School, founded the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity Program, and was the first African American to be elected to the Newton School Committee. Katherine also won awards for her historical writing about her family, specifically her great-grandfather, Edward Weeks, who brought slaves to Canada through an Underground Railroad station in the Adirondack Mountains.
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2007
“I’m halfway there!” says an expecting Mariah Cushing Toulouse ’07 at the Picnic on the Green, which included activities such as face (or belly!) painting, balloon animals, a DJ, and a celebration tent for the 100th anniversary of the Alumnae Quarterly.
1957, 1967/Skype, 1977, 2002: Deirdre Haber Malfatto; 1987: courtesy Gretchen Schmelzer ’87; all others: Taylor Scott
1967
“The watch is probably thirty years old, and I wore it proudly for at least twenty, but then the gold on gold made it hard for me to tell the time accurately so I replaced it with an identical watch with a white face. I didn’t know what to do with it until the idea of passing it on to our sister class (2017) occurred to me.” Sue Ellen Utley ’67 talks about her idea to hand down her Mount Holyoke watch. “I’m so happy to be giving it to Juliet Martone ’17, who has been a leader in our class connections. Watches are coming back in business, because you can check the time in meetings without looking at your phone. Traditions last a long time at Mount Holyoke. This is a new one, but maybe it will last fifty years.”
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1942
“I was a champion table tennis player.” Ruth Wilson Millington ’42 was in fact the Pennsylvania state champion and was ranked third by the USA Table Tennis Association by the age of sixteen. Ruth was one of three alumnae attending the class of 1942’s seventyfifth reunion.
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1982
“We were both at our last reunion just sort of chatting—we hadn’t known each other in college—and she mentioned her son went to school near Connecticut College, and I said, ‘Oh that’s funny, so does mine.’ Well it turned out our sons, Noah and Ethan, had become best friends through playing online video games together. So now we’re good friends.” Mary Scheimann ’82 (left) laughs about the beginning of her friendship with Andrea Rossi-Reder ’82. “Come get in this picture so we can send it to them and embarrass them,” she said to Andrea before having their photo taken at the Alumnae Quarterly 100th anniversary booth.
1967
“I read once that life is a process of individualization. Babies and young people all kind of look alike, but as we age we become distinct individuals with our own sets of experiences and with faces that are less typical, more unique. Seeing us—fifty years later—gave me the impression of seeing so many life stories right there before my eyes.” Ellen Ammerman Gouin ’67 joined Reunion I from Normandy, France, via Skype, and reminisced with a group of ten classmates who lived together during their sophomore year in Le Foyer—on Morgan Street, across the street from Abbey-Buckland— when it was the French House. Their house mother, Mademoiselle Gaele Guezennec Fitch, who was a young French master’s student at the time, traveled from her current home in England to join the group on campus.
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1977
“I did some research on Google to see what events occurred in 1977 and noticed that the first Star Wars movie was released that year. I remembered back to how I felt when that first movie took the world by storm just after we had graduated. (And we intended to do the same, of course!) It was so innovative and fresh! And I thought about how— just like our class is still evolving and growing—new Star Wars movies are still being created even forty years later.” Reunion Cochair Judy Flynn ’77 talks about how she came up with the idea for the Princess Leia parade costumes for the class of 1977.
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1947
“My grandma is so excited to ride in the old cars. She’s been talking about it all year.” Hannah Galloway ’17 poses with her grandmother, Janet Eddy Ordway ’47, before they both join in the laurel parade. Janet was a zoology major at Mount Holyoke and later one of only two women in her class at Columbia University’s medical school. She went on to become a psychiatrist at a time when few women were physicians. “My grandma is the reason I was able to go to Mount Holyoke. When I was applying to colleges, we thought of Mount Holyoke, and it just clicked,” says Hannah, who majored in psychology, with a minor in biology and a Five College Certificate in cognitive neuroscience.
1952
“It’s vicious . . . but it has lovely orange roots.” Inez Chase Zimmerman ’52 contributed to the discussion about Oriental bittersweet, an invasive species that Professor Kate Ballantine’s restoration ecology students are working to get rid of in the stream that connects to Upper Lake. Professor Ballantine took alumnae on a tour of the campus field station during Back to Class on both reunion weekends. Before beginning work to restore the stream, which students aptly named “Project Stream,” Upper Lake was becoming more and more polluted due to runoff from the nearby golf course. “Part of our class involves community education and outreach. Just last week we had one hundred students from Springfield here. And we’ve also had a farmers’ market booth, where we hand out flyers and talk to community members,” says Ballantine.
2002
“We were here together, and we come back together!” Sisters Nike Oyeyemi ’02 (right) and Yinka Oyeyemi ’00 (left) both live in New York City and get double the reunion fun. They returned to campus with Nike’s son, Devin Henderson, and their other sister, Shola Oyeyemi. “I fell in love with the campus when moving in Yinka on her first day of college. I loved the idea of a college whose sole mission was to educate and empower women to be leaders in all fields. I was also attracted to the fact that I could double major in philosophy and history—my two favorite subjects!” says Nike.
Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly
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1997
“I love rediscovering my classmates. We come back with new kids, new spouses, new careers, new ideas!” During Reunion Carrie Field ’97 (center) was presented with the Medal of Honor, which recognizes service to the College or the Alumnae Association. Not only has she served on the Association Board of Directors and the College Board of Trustees, but she’s volunteered on her class board and is the president of the Mount Holyoke Club of Hartford.
1972
“Society advanced a century from our freshman to senior year, which was 1968 to 1972. I remember a classmate got married and was given permission to live off campus with her husband. Our house mother took her aside and said to her, ‘I hope you don’t share the secrets of married life,’ with the rest of the girls. But by 1971 or ’72 we were all like, ‘Who cares!’” Marilyn Schapiro ’72 traded stories with classmates and alumnae from the class of 2012 in the Archives during Back to Class.
1992
“Just as the elevator door was about to close, it opened and gave us the surprise of a lifetime.” Christine Parker Stuart ’92 describes the moment that she discovered that her mother, Ilse Acosta Parker ’69, had made the trip to Reunion to surprise her and her daughter and niece, who had traveled with Christine to see Mount Holyoke. “After telling me she wasn’t going to make the trip, she decided she absolutely couldn’t miss her two granddaughters seeing Mount Holyoke for the first time. My mom looked at least ten years younger—I could see in her eyes the young, adventurous woman who traveled from Costa Rica to South Hadley [fifty years ago].”
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2012
“We got pretty rowdy!” Ellie Epstein ’12 remembers the snowstorm that knocked out power on campus for three days and damaged her car during October of 2012. “They had to bus in kids from Hampshire to eat at Blanchard, because their dining hall didn’t have generators. It was weird.” Ellie says a classmate submitted the parade sign on her behalf. “I had no idea this sign was being made for me,” she laughs.
1992
1987
“As a student I had more friends in other classes,” says Gretchen Schmelzer ’87 (top right), “so I go to Reunion not to see friends, necessarily, but to make new ones.” At the class dinner, Gretchen sat down at a table with one person she knew, and three she didn’t. “It made me long for the dinners around the round tables in MacGregor. It was a conversation of hope, possibility, and purpose,” she says, “and I left dinner with the electric feeling that I had left graduation with—after our charge from Maya Angelou—to use our gifts and our privilege to change the lives of others.”
1987
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Congratulations Reunion 2017 Awardees
ALUMNAE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Awarded to an alumna for outstanding achievements and service to society that exemplify the ideals of a liberal arts education, through salaried or volunteer fields of endeavor. KATHERINE BUTLER JONES ’57
POLLY DIX SCHAAFSMA ’57
SUSAN HIGINBOTHAM HOLCOMBE ’62
JUDITH A. LONNQUIST ’62
SHERYL FOULKE KELSEY ’67
SUSAN SHIRK ’67
SUSAN M. FREEMAN ’72
JANE REBECCA HAMMOND ’72
SARAH-ANN LYNCH ’82
BLOSSOM ANDREA DAMANIA ’92
TAHMIMA ANAM ’97
ALUMNAE MEDAL OF HONOR Awarded to an alumna at her twentieth reunion or beyond for long-term eminent service and significant leadership in promoting the effectiveness of multiple areas of the Alumnae Association and/or College. MARCIA BRUMIT KROPF ’67
ELIZABETH REDMOND VANWINKLE ’82
CARRIANNA FIELD ’97
ELIZABETH TOPHAM KENNAN AWARD Awarded to an alumna for outstanding achievement in and contributions to the field of education, honoring the service of former President Elizabeth Topham Kennan ’60 to the College and to higher education in general. HELEN MARIE SHIELDS ’67
ALUMNAE LOYALTY AWARD Awarded to an alumna who has demonstrated consistent effort and active involvement in one area of service over an extended period of time. Volunteer effort may be on behalf of a class, club, affinity group, the Association, or the College. ANN WADHAMS COBRAIN ’47
HARRIET FARBER FRIEDLANDER ’52
ROBIN ROLFE BAGLEY ’57
SUSAN LONG QUAINTON ’57
ELISABETH KRABISCH SANDLER ’57
MARION FITCH CONNELL ’62
MARGARET CREDLE CUNNINGHAM ’62
ANNE WAGNER RAPHAEL ’62
LUDMILA SCHWARZENBERG BIDWELL ’67
ANNE WRIGHT ’67
LYNN TACKET KINCH ’72
HOPE HOCKENBERRY YELICH ’72
STEPHANIE JAFFE GREEN ’77
SUSAN ABERT NOONAN ’82
LISA GAYE TOMPKINS ’82
ABIGAIL M. WOLFF ’82
ELIZABETH MCINERNY MCHUGH ’87
LAURA S. ALTHOFF ’92
LESLIE FU PANG ’97
YOUNG ALUMNA VOLUNTEER LEADERSHIP AWARD Awarded to a young alumna who has demonstrated strong leadership, consistent effort over time, and active involvement in one or more areas of service. Volunteer effort may be on behalf of a class, club, affinity group, the Association, or the College. KAREN MCVEY LOWETH ’07
MARGARET MURRAY TRENIS ’07
TAMAR SPITZ WESTPHAL ’12
WEB EXCLUSIVE
Read more about the award winners at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/awards2017. Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly
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SUMMER 2015
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In Your Own Words Since the very beginning, alumnae have kept in touch through class notes, a distinction of most alumnae magazines. Recent survey results tell us that more than 90 percent of you read class notes in the Alumnae Quarterly. Reading class notes from beginning to end is like reading a reverse life cycle. The oldest classes report on deaths and moving into retirement homes, and the youngest share news of first jobs and graduate studies. In between we read about travel, promotions, marriages, and growing families. Class notes celebrate small moments—alumnae connecting through an MHC Facebook group—and remarkable accomplishments, such as appointment to a state’s highest court. And notes are a source of comfort during hard times, when we read news of divorce, of layoffs, of illness, and of loved ones lost. The work of class notes has always been done by alumnae scribes, who are tasked with compiling news of their classmates and submitting it to the Quarterly editor. Since 1917 more than eight hundred alumnae have served as scribes, a volunteer position that requires a steady commitment
AP R IL 1 91 7 1 847 Susan (Allen) Blaisdell (Mrs. James J.) is living with her daughter, Florence (Carrier) Blaisdell (Mrs. James A.), at Fourth and College Sts., Claremont, Cal. 1 872 Dr. Cornelia M. Clapp is building a bungalow at Woods Hole, where she has spent so many summers during the past thirty years. 1 9 02 BIRTH.—To Frances (Perkins)
Wilson, a daughter, Penelope, born in January, 1917. JULY 1 91 7 1 9 02 Frances Perkins has for some time
breadth of news that alumnae have contributed. We’ve
been doing work of great public importance in her position as Executive Secretary of the Committee of Safety of the City of New York. She has never assumed the name of her husband, Mr. Wilson, and therefore the form in which the notice of her daughter’s birth appeared in our April issue was a deplorable mistake.
included news of some celebrated alumnae whose names
1 9 07 Alice Noyes has finished her work for
might be familiar, and we’ve tried to select notes that reflect
a Ph.D. degree at Cornell University, and will teach in the department of Zoology at Mount Holyoke next year.
and receives little reward beyond our sincere appreciation. According to Quarterly records, the longest serving scribe was Marilyn Marsden Birchall ’43, who took up the pen at graduation and remained at her post until her death in 2008. Here we share notes from past issues that illustrate the
the spirit and the concerns of the alumnae who’ve lived through the decades since class notes began. Class notes is your space in the magazine, and we love to see you claim it as such. Please, keep in touch. —Jennifer Grow ’94, editor quarterly@mtholyoke.edu
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1910s Alumnae in the earliest notes start off with stories of World War I, influenza, and refugees. And we read of alumnae pursuing advanced degrees—a common thread.
SEE MORE AT
alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ quarterly100
1 9 08 Eva (Blatchford) Townsley (Mrs.
Arthur W.) and her husband have a 960-acre farm in Montana, on which they raise winter wheat, corn, spring grains, and flax. They have “proved up” on their homestead and have leased an adjoining quarter section (160 acres) for ten years. . . . They have three children, George, four years old, Martin, three, and Barbara, a year and a half.
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1 913 The class gave up the reunion which
had been planned for this year, and pledged $1,300 for an ambulance in France. OCTOBER 1917 1 845 Miss Mary Hooker observed her ninety-third birthday, August 19, at her home in Longmeadow, Mass. Miss Hooker is the oldest living graduate of Mount Holyoke and the oldest resident of Longmeadow. She is one of two surviving members of her class.
Government in recognition of their services in combating a typhoid epidemic near Chateau Thierry last fall. Miss Pettengill’s unit sailed in July, 1918; since then she has been engaged in turning a 14th century chateau into a modern hospital.
AP R IL 1 921
1 9 08 Clara B. Springsteed has been granted leave of absence from the State College for Teachers, at Albany, to take up Americanization work in the State Department of Education.
JULY 1 921
1 913 Elizabeth L. Davis had a sudden
JULY 1 91 9
and urgent call in July to a position in the Ordnance department of the United States government, for classifying and filing letters and documents. She was released from her obligation to return to the College library and began work in Washington July 17.
1 9 07 Mabel Easton sailed August 20, 1917, under Africa Inland Mission with its general director. . . . Because of the war they did not land until February, 1918. The mission has a station at Kajabe, British East Africa, but apparently does the bulk of its work in the wilds of the Belgian Congo.
1 91 5 Irma (White) White and her husband, Mr. Henry White, started early in July via San Francisco, Japan, China and Siberia for Erivan, Russia, to engage in relief and reconstruction work among Armenian and Syrian refugees. JANUARY 1918 1 91 6 Mildred R. Leeds is studying telegra-
phy and wireless in Hartford, Conn., prior to entering the Marconi Wireless School in New York City and taking the Navy examinations. A PRI L 1 91 8 1 905 Mary Macdonald has been made
principal of the school in Walpole, N.H., where she has been teaching, the former principal having entered the military service. J U LY 1 91 8 1 91 5 Eleanor Gifford received her Master’s degree at Haverford College in June. She is the first woman to receive a degree from that college. JA N UA RY 1 919 1 910 Marion N. Marble died of influenza
in October. Miss Marble was in California with her sister and had been doing nursing work there this fall. A PRI L 1 91 9 1 898 Lillian Pettengill is one of six women
of the American Woman’s Hospital Unit at Luzancy recently decorated by the French
1 9 09 Marjorie (Wheeler) Fisher (Mrs.
George B.) worked during the war as an examiner of Spanish mail in the Postal Censorship Office in New York City. She sails the middle of June to join her husband in Barcelona, Spain, where they expect to live two years. 1 91 5 Elizabeth Harding is one of two girls in a class of twenty with only four girls in all, to receive prizes awarded for the best work in certain studies, at the commencement exercises
of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy.
1 9 09 Noemie Garmirian returned to
America on the Aquitania in January. She was principal of an Armenian school in Adana, but was forced to leave because of danger to her life from massacre and war. 1 898 Nettie C. Burleigh is the first woman to be elected to the Board of Selectmen in Vassalboro, Maine. She has taken an active part in the life of the community where she lives, as an independent farmer and citizen interested in furthering educational and political development of the town. AP R IL 1 923 1 913 Dora Bradbury Pinkham, the only
woman member of the Maine Legislature, made her maiden speech in the House of Representatives. The bill that she introduced favoring the acceptance by Maine of the provisions of the Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act was adopted by the vote of 71 to 63 by the House. 1 922 After a short illness Kathryn Irene
Glascock died on February 23 in St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City. JANUARY 1 926 1 845 The centennial anniversary of the birth of Susan Tolman Mills, the founder of Mills College, was celebrated in the year 1925 at that college. OCTOB ER 1 927
1920s War continues to take a toll on alumnae, who share experiences and achievements—personal and professional. JANUARY 1 921 1 881 Julia (Walker) Ruhl lost her son,
Henry Walker, who died at Buckman, N.M., October 31, from a severe wound received in France two years before. He was the only brother of Mary Ruhl, 1915. EX-1 91 6 Me-iung Ting, who received
her M.D. last June from the University of Michigan, is this year interne [sic] at the Woman’s Hospital and Infants’ Home, 145 East Forest Ave., Detroit, Mich.
1 9 02 Emma Carr was one of the two
women on the faculty of the Institute of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, held for one month after July 4 at Pennsylvania State College. . . . Emma’s subject was physical chemistry. JULY 1 928 1 91 9 Yep, we’ve been out of college almost
ten years. It will soon be time to park husbands, babies, schools, and typewriters in obscurity and take the nearest local to South Hadley. A college of new buildings, a town of new stores, a youthful student body of new ideas, a room on campus, a class costume, trim, slim, and becoming, and many familiar faces will all await you next June.
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JA N UARY 192 9
MAY 1 935
1 855 Adela Wheaton Van Bochove, now
1 899 Adaline Hume Rowe is professor of
our oldest graduate, was at the polls before 10 o’clock the morning of November 4. She helped elect Mr. Hoover.
modern languages at Columbia College, Columbia, S.C. She writes: “I am leading a busy life. After my children were grown I went back to study. My husband is dean of the Engineering school here at the State University, so I live right on the campus. I took an advanced degree in modern languages, majoring in German. I was asked to substitute at a girls’ college four miles from Columbia for a year and they liked my work in German and made me head of German, then head of the modern language department.”
1 926 Fumiko Mitani writes, “During the
most part of the year I am busy teaching English in a girls’ school in the suburb of Tokyo and looking after my two sisters and one brother, who are in Tokyo now, although I must say that (thanks to Heaven!) the life in Japan is never so busy as in America. . . . I think the Americans are crazy in their busy-ness.
1930s The current events mentioned in this decade—the Dustbowl, the rise of Hitler, and birth control clinics—soon will be embedded in the history of the time. F E B RUA RY 1932 1 901 Friends of Caroline Boa Henderson
and anyone interested in the farmer’s financial plight will be moved by her article, “Bringing in the Sheaves—1931,” in the November Atlantic Monthly. She tells, with brevity and vividness, of the harvesting of their Oklahoma wheat crop, of some of her thoughts during the strenuous harvest days, and the depressing outlook all wheat farmers are facing. N OV E M BE R 1932 1 932 Marion Corson is doing “personal
contact” work for the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company in Springfield, Mass. She telephones people all day to get names and addresses of out-of-town friends or relatives to make little personal directories for each customer. Marion says: “It doesn’t have a chance to get monotonous because every person I call is different—some are ‘swell’ and some hang up on me.” 1 932 Ruth Pratt went to Connecticut State Summer Normal School at Yale this summer. Now she is busily engaged in looking for a job—public school music, insurance, bank, department store—anything! M AY 1 93 4 1 92 9 Virginia Apgar received her M.D.
in June from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. On October 1 she began a two-year interneship [sic] at the Presbyterian Hospital, New York.
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1 929 [Betty Parks] and Marge Murray were in Germany last summer, and Betty has written us some of her impressions and experiences. . . . “At first it was a bit of a shock to be greeted upon all occasions with ‘Heil Hitler’ and a raised right arm.” AUGUST 1 935 1 926 Margaret Richter Wendell wrote in
April from Greeneville, Tenn.: “At present most of my pediatric practice (in which I hope some day to specialize) is within my home, in the shape of a captivating two-year-old son. . . . My other interest is a brand-new birth control clinic, which we opened on October 26, 1934. It is the 148th in the United States, but only the second in Tennessee. . . . The need is terrific.” F EB RUARY 1 936 1 91 2 Mina Merrill Selee and her husband
Mr. John A. Selee adopted two little boys (aged five and seven) last March and are still trying to get used to the new order. She writes: “Mothering and editing are not exactly compatible but I manage to do both, sometimes alternately, sometimes simultaneously.” 1 921 Edith Archer Amsden has had her
hands full with a measles epidemic at Hanover. Due to the shortage of nurses, she was called in to help as she had had a nurse’s aide course and 150 hours at the hospital. She gave six hours a day for three weeks to the hospital, and kept house for her husband and 12-year-old daughter. . . . Besides her nurse’s aide work, Edith’s interests are a Red Cross surgical dressing group, hospital auxiliary work, and school and church interests. 1 936 There have been two letters from Kitty
Ketcham who is an Army nurse with the 39th General Hospital somewhere beyond the Pacific. She writes, “We have at last moved
into our own hospital. It is beautiful. We have double rooms and furniture enough so that we can unpack for the first time since we’ve been in the Army. We have abandoned our mess kits in favor of divided trays, so I no longer have to decide whether I want my salad mixed up with my dessert or with gravy on it. It’s almost too good to be true.”
1940s Alumnae continue to write about their parts in the war effort while sharing personal achievements of work and family, too. MAY 1 943 1 91 8 Katherine Woodruff, manager of
the Oneonta, N.Y., office, US Employment Service, is a member of a commission of women leaders of labor, management, education, and civic affairs, appointed by the state industrial commissioner. Their duty is to advise on the growing problems of women in war industry and on necessary changes in legislation protecting working women during the war and setting peacetime standards for after the war. F EB RUARY 1 94 4 1 91 5 Dora Mae Clark, our vice president, belongs to the Motor Corps at Wilson College and drives an emergency ambulance which is a milk truck in ordinary life. “In the dead of a winter night it is rather hard to get dressed and run a few blocks to the station where I pick up the truck and drive through wet and blackened streets to the central control rooms for whatever orders await us.” The relaxation in air raid drills is a relief to her. 1 941 Alice Van Ess joined the WAVES in November and proceeded to Northampton for training as a candidate for a commission.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
Read notes about Chi Nyok Wang, class of 1916, one of MHC’s first Chinese graduates, at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/wang.
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M AY 1 94 4 1 933 Wonder how many of us heard Janet
Brewster Murrow speaking from London over CBS on Feb. 27? She gave a swell talk about the American boys she had seen in the British hospitals she had recently visited. Most of them were there with just the ordinary run of illnesses and only a small percentage were war casualties. The boys are well cared for but all so eager to talk to someone from back home! 1941 Barbara Skirm is working for the Heyden Chemical Co. on the manufacture of penicillin. AUG UST 1 94 4 1 92 9 Eleanor Thomas is with the WRA at Manzanar, Calif. She started there as a teacher to 50 Japanese evacuee youngsters and now, with two Japanese assistant teachers, has a special class at the hospital working with all types of handicaps. Eleanor enclosed excerpts from a letter from Helen Gaw Lin. Helen and her husband, a Yale graduate, are both teaching in Chungking. She writes that prices are 600 to 800 times their normal level and even with two incomes the Lins are having a hard time. 1 93 8 Madeline Sampson Kapinos [sends]
news of Grace Lee. “By going to Columbia summers Little Lee was able to get her B.A. from Mount Holyoke on Founder’s Day 1937 and her M.A. from Columbia in June 1938. Then Grace returned to China to give her services to her people. She worked in Shanghai and Hongkong [sic] for service agencies and the Red Cross and worried about being unable to speak freely of the dangers she could foresee. Then she went to Chungking to work with Mme. Chiang Kai-shek. Her home was destroyed by Japanese bombs and once her bomb shelter was the object of a direct hit. Fortunately she got out alive and continued to manage the placement of hundreds of refugee children in homes, schools and farms.” F E B RUA RY 1 945 1 908 Catharine Hagar Barton’s son Ted was killed in action Oct. 15 in England. . . . He had completed 25 missions as a radio operator gunner on a Flying Fortress and held the Air Medal with two oak leaf clusters. Besides his parents he leaves his wife Anne.
1950s Yet another war, this time in Korea, continues to affect alumnae and what they share, and there is plenty of personal news—from marriages to professional accomplishments. MAY 1 953 1 922 Our deepest sympathy to Sue Greely Wheatly, who lost her son in Korea last fall. 1 94 0 Acquisition of a doctorate, a husband, and a job is reported—belatedly—by Betty Belcher Yudkin. Betty completed work for her Ph.D. in chemistry at Northwestern in September, 1951, and received the degree last June. She was married in December, 1951, to Warren Yudkin, a Yale Ph.D., who is teaching biochemistry at Northwestern. Her job is research work for the Evanston Dental Caries Study. According to Betty: “This is one of the communities where sodium fluoride has been added to the water supply in the hope of improving the dental health of the populace.” 1 952 Carol DeMar and Ellie Romig are
teaching at the American College for Girls in Istanbul, Turkey. Carol writes that they are both keeping busy with classes, learning Turkish, and seeing much of the country. They spent the mid-semester vacation touring Greece and Crete. Ellie recently gained fame, when Mademoiselle featured her in their job notes column. FALL 1 957 1 9 03 Ethel Green Lincoln writes that Marion Bittner, the younger daughter of Ethel’s daughter Betty (MHC ’30), is entering Mount Holyoke this fall and has quite a college pedigree, as she is the 18th member of the Green-Lincoln family to go to Mount Holyoke. WINTER 1958 1 933 Virginia Hamilton Adair is now fulltime assistant prof. of English at California State Polytechnic Coll. The Adairs’ older son Robin has just graduated from boot camp in San Diego. Douglass III, 14, and Katherine, 13, are in high school. She writes that she had a day with Dora Jones Tanner last summer.
1 957 Marriage announcements appear to have won the primary spot here; now that we have our B.A. an MRS. sounds awfully good! Under the heading of fall brides we find Diane Backus, who was wed Oct. 12 to Lt. Charles Wingard, USAF, and Betsey Hartshorn, who, the same day but many miles away, became Mrs. Robert Nebesar. Bob is an intern at a Denver, Colo., hospital. Ann Fleet’s marriage to Pfc. Clement Malin took place on Oct. 26, and the happy newlyweds are now in Texas, where Clem is stationed. Two weeks later, on Nov. 9, Sheila Langert and Franz Schneider took their vows. Franz likewise bears the title of Pfc.
1960s In a decade of dramatic change, class notes reflect updates that have been prevalent since the beginning—those of home, work, life, and death. S P R ING 1 9 65 1 953 Jean MacMillan Howell sends “greet-
ings from Saigon, where life goes on quite pleasantly despite what you may be reading in the papers. It is really an odd feeling to be so close to a war (we can hear the mortar fire every night) and yet be so completely untouched by it. Sometimes I feel there must be something wrong with busily planning children’s birthday parties, ordering new curtains and trying to balance the books of the Internat’l Women’s Club, but these and similar activities fill most days. WINT ER 1 9 66 1 957 Peggy Ayars Laidman writes that
she’s in the rut of homemaking, child-raising (Melisa, now almost 3, not previously announced in this column), volunteer work, etc.—and admits enjoying it. FALL 1 9 68 1 9 66 Every issue I seem to have to bring
you some sad news. Sharon Willett Serrem’s husband Mark was killed in Vietnam. This kind of tragedy always brings the war closer to all of us, and we send Sharon our sympathy at her loss.
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1970s Alumnae news reads overwhelmingly of their places in the work force. S P RI N G 197 1 1 941 Katie Roraback has been in the news
almost daily for several weeks in connection with her duties as defense attorney for Black Panther Ericka Huggins. Recently she took part in a seminar sponsored by the Yale Co-education Office on the subject of “Women in the Law—Trial Lawyers.” 1 946 Dr. Emily Fergus’s (Mrs. James
Merritt) sister Nellie Smith ’41 wrote news of Fergie and her family. Last year Fergie was one of 30 women sent by the US State Department to Russia and various Iron Curtain countries on a cultural exchange program. . . . She felt that medical facilities were “somewhat less up to date than ours.” In Nov. Ferg attended a meeting of kidney specialists—her field—in Washington, D.C. SU M M E R 1972 1 945 Marie Mercury Roth saw her young-
est child Nancy off to first grade and “the perfect job just dropped in my lap.” She teaches quiz and lab for beginning chemistry in the U. of Wisc. Center system, a group of two-year university centers where the basic courses are taught and which feed into the four university campuses. 1 959 Nita Melnikoff Lowey and Steve live in
Holliswood, N.Y. where Nita is president of the Parents Association at the school her children (Dana, Jacqueline and Douglas) attend. The Loweys travel abroad often with the children.
1 9 69 Now that daughters Emily and
Carolyn are 12 and 10, Gerry Lessey Pas wants to trade in her part-time, flexible, low-pay career for a more challenging, responsible, and remunerative way of work. 1 971 Wendy Wasserstein has a wonderful new play called The Heidi Chronicles which opened at the Playwrights Horizon, NYC, in the fall. . . . It has been predicted to be one of the major hits of the season. The first 6 weeks were sold out if that is any indication. 1 973 Glenda Hatchett Johnson has been promoted to manager of public relations at the world headquarters of Delta Airlines in Atlanta. . . . Glenda, who spoke eloquently at Mount Holyoke’s Atlanta sesquicentennial regional conference on being a young black female professional in the South, is active in community affairs. SUMMER 1 989 1 9 63 Ordway Clifford Sherman resumed
single status 2 years ago after a 22-year marriage and has found that life after divorce has its plus side. Ordway lives in NYC and works part time in financial PR. Daniel, 17, is at Salisbury, and Charles, 13, is at Buckley. 1 9 64 “I actually have a business card with my
name on it,” writes Katherine Pfeifer Mack from Takoma Park, Md. “It says ‘Research Admin., Digene Diagnostics, Inc.’ which means I am in charge of the documentation that goes along with the research of the company in developing and promoting DNA pretests for viruses and other bad things. I even own several business suits—quite a change for this medievalist cum folkie.” FALL 1 989 1930 Speaking of workplace wonder-
1980s Alumnae share stories of fighting back, winning awards, pivoting, and continuing to achieve. It could be any decade. W I N T ER 1989
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octogenarians, perhaps you remember Alice Hastings Gaylor, expert in reading. She has completed 33 hours and the practicum for a career in public health ed. Until licensed for that, she works 30–40 hours a week as home health aide for OMNI in New Haven.
1 953 After more than a decade with the New
1 970 After working for over 11 years as a
Haven Register, Joan Message Barbuto was forced out of her med. reporting job when a chain took over the paper last year. Joan sued for sex and age discrimination and won a settlement—a year’s salary and 15 years of paid med. benefits. She now is a consultant, doing a report on parental leave, for the Bush Center for Child Development at Yale.
clinical psychologist, primarily with children, Cindy Farkas Levinson is working as a neuropsychologist with head-injured adults. She had 2 years of postdoct. training from ’83–’85 in neuropsych., focusing on understanding brain behavior relationships. For the past 4 years she has worked part-time to be with son Richard, born April 4, ’85.
1990s The world is changing with perestroika and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and alumnae continue to connect and to achieve. SUMMER 1 99 0 1 951 Edythe Cudlipp Lachlan gave a fasci-
nating report of her ’89 trip to Europe/Asia. “Encouraged by perestroika in Russia and what looked like democracy in China,” she joined a tour which included both countries. The group was in Samarkand when the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square. “With fingers crossed, we flew on to Irkutsk, capital of East Siberia,” where the Amer. Embassy advised the tour group not to take the Trans-Siberian Express train on to Beijing. Getting back to Moscow was a lesson in Soviet bureaucracy. 1 971 Susan Snow’s children Corey, 22, and Heidi, 18, use her name, by their own decision made at age 7. That gives son Arin, 4, and Ariana Susan, born April 3, time to make up their minds, but they are now using the surname of Susan’s husband, Richard Bratt. Heidi was born when Susan was working on her master’s in electron microscopy at MHC, and must have enjoyed those early memories of Clapp lab, as she returns to MHC this fall as a freshman. . . . [Susan] is dir. of Emergency Med. at Cutler Army Hosp., Ft. Devens, Mass. S P R ING 1 994 1 958 Sue Fresh Anderson, class v.p., sent
me an article from the Newark (N.J.) Star Ledger, which pictures US District Court Judge Maryanne Trump Barry in chambers and announces her appointment by Chief Justice William Rehnquist to chair the Comm. on Criminal Law of the Judicial Conf. of the US. 1 9 60 Amidst the predictable headlines of natural disaster and figure skating intrigue, “Women’s Colleges Find a New Popularity” proved a compelling front page piece in the New York Times (Jan. 15). Our very own Liz Topham Kennan, reflecting on a resurgence in applications unprecedented in the last 20 years, remarked, “After the Ivy Leagues and other colls. went coed in the ’70s, there was an expectation that the world of equality had come, that there
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would be a level playing field for men and women in educ. But in fact, the stereotypes have not been broken. The millennium has not come for women’s educ. in a coeducational setting.”
2000s Alumnae share stories of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina, and the Internet takes its hold in life and on the class notes page. W I N T E R 2 0 01 1 949 Maryanna Meyer Ware, still working
as a copy editor, now works for a publisher of 2 magazines about the Internet. “I managed to be hired without an age-revealing resumé,” she writes. 1 984 Kamila Nasir Ud Deen Mazari is co-runner and part-owner of an elem. school in Karachi, Pakistan, that she helped set up in ’97. She does the curriculum planning, conducts teacher workshops and loves interacting with the kids. She says MHC “gave me the confidence to do what I am doing today.” Kamila has a photo of Lower Lake as her computer screen-saver. S P RI N G 2 001 1 97 7 Debra Martin Chase . . . “just wrapped up production on a movie for Walt Disney Pictures. It’s called The Princess Diaries. . . . I am generally very happy in life, having at long last learned that balance is key. Although I, like most people, could not wait to rush through coll., I nostalgically remember the simplicity of those days. FA L L 2 001 1 990 Erin Ellia writes in response to our
plea, “My biggest news this year is that my student loans are paid off! We went to New Orleans in Sept. and Vegas in June, and we’re going to Istanbul for a few weeks sometime this fall. Traveling is what I do with any spare dollars.” W I N T E R 2 0 02 1 951 Exciting news from Elly Ernst
Thompson, who informs us that daughter Holly Thompson ’81 has recently published Ash, a novel set in Japan, where Holly now lives with her family. Elly has visited her twice, taking extended trips to Thailand and China. 2 000 Natalie Wagner witnessed the first
plane hit WTC tower one as she ascended
the NYC subway. She thankfully connected with Molly Thomas, Amy Pete, and Anne Rockwood during the day. Natalie and Anne had walked over the Brooklyn Bridge to muse at NYC’s beautiful skyline a few days prior; ironically, Alix and I had done the same on Sept. 10. S P R ING 2006 1 993 Big news was sent in by Susan Baker Manning. “I was recently thrilled to make partner at my law firm, Bingham McCutchen. Although my regular practice is intellectual property litigation, I’ve spent a huge amount of time in the last year working on a pro bono case on behalf of several men who are imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. . . . This is hands down the most challenging and compelling case I’ve ever had. Beyond that, my wife Kate Manning (Smith ’96) and I are expecting our first child in March. We’re thrilled.” F P Christina Montalvo ’01 in Baton Rouge,
La., working on Katrina/Rita recovery, was assigned to the Baton Rouge Long-Term Recovery Team working with community and city-parish leaders on long-term plans for East Baton Rouge Parish. With an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 residents who will call this area their permanent home, Nina’s expertise with “proposing some ways for them to increase housing units, while beautifying their city and neighborhoods, redeveloping their downtown, and so much more” is the focus of her work. SUMMER 2006 1 978 Carol Higgins Clark’s new book Hitched came out this spring just in time for your summer reading list.
WINT ER 2007 1 974 Cathy Trauernicht invented Ramp4Paws. . . . She writes: “After 10 years of dreaming and planning, my initial foray into entrepreneurship is going very well! I’m selling my patented dog ramp via the Internet (I even had a sale to England!), and through local DC-area retailers.” One of Cathy’s dog “testers” is Chessie, the golden retriever of Potomac, Md., neighbor Kathy Sheehan. 1 989 Diana Nixon Fischer wrote in that,
“after years of painful and failed infertility treatments, my husband James and I filed for adoption, only to find out 3 months later that we (well, I) were pregnant! Karl Cooper Fischer was born on May 26, ’05, 6 weeks early, but healthy and wonderful!”
2010s In the current decade, the news alumnae share is resonant of the past ten decades and continues to feature world events. FALL 2010 1 94 9 Barbara Weiss Blumfield is on the
shore of the Gulf of Mexico, and has not been directly impacted by the oil spill, but worries about it, as do the rest of us. WINT ER 201 2 1 972 In June 2011 Marcella Croce (CG ’72)
successfully organized in her hometown of Palermo, Italy, a mini-reunion of MHC alumnae—mostly foreign students—who lived in Dickinson Hall. SUMMER 201 6
FALL 2006
201 5 The 2015 class scribes would like to
2006 Liz Mullin and Lauren Duffy ’03
wish the class of 2016 some hearty congratulations on their graduation! While it may be hard to believe, class of 2015, we have now been college graduates for over a year. In that time our classmates have explored vast stretches of both the physical and the professional worlds.
were married on Aug. 5 at Abbey Memorial Chapel. It was quite the MHC affair, with over 11 different classes represented, and close to 40 MHC alums and students. . . . After their vacation/honeymoon in Provincetown, Mass., Liz started graduate work at Springfield College in sports psych.
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Interview by ABE LOOMIS
PhotograpH by JENNY ANDERSON
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Purposeful ANACHRONISMS
Playwright Bryna Turner ‘12 discusses her critically acclaimed play inspired by the letters of Mary Woolley and Jeannette Marks
n February, Bryna Turner ’12 made her off-Broadway debut as a professional playwright. Her play Bull in a China Shop— which depicts the lives, loves, and political and romantic struggles of Mary Woolley, president of Mount Holyoke from 1901 to 1937, and her partner, Professor Jeannette Marks—was a resounding success, garnering sold-out shows, a glowing review in the New York Times, and four stars from TimeOut New York, which noted that Turner “neatly dispenses with two hoary shibboleths: that history is perforce dry, and feminists unfunny.” Produced by Lincoln Center, that triumph has opened new doors for Turner: Samuel French has signed on to publish the play, and Lincoln Center has offered Turner a commission for her next play.
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Alumnae Quarterly: Was theatre part of your experience at Mount Holyoke? Bryna Turner: I was a theatre major, which is why this story spoke to me, because Jeannette Marks actually created the theatre department! She started it with a playwriting class. And then it evolved from a playwriting class in the attic of the President’s House to students doing plays, and I think they called it the Rooke Lab shortly after. So it was incredible to discover this story, not only about two women who had such a beautiful love story but also two women who shaped the institution that shaped me one hundred years later.
AQ: What came next? Turner: I moved to New York, with a lot of bravery and optimism [laughter], and then quickly learned that I wasn’t equipped for much in the way of practical things. I didn’t know anyone in the city, and there was a big gap between what I thought I was going to be able to do and what I ended up being able to do. But someone I went to Mount Holyoke with happened to be working at the box office of The Public Theater, and she got me a job there. While the phone wasn’t ringing I was scribbling things down. I was very sure I didn’t want a master’s degree, but I realized that I wanted to dedicate more time to writing and [that] it was going to require taking that extra step. So, I applied for an MFA, and I started at Rutgers University in New Jersey. AQ: Why did you resist the idea of getting a master’s? Turner: I think I had this idea that if I spent my whole life in school, what would I write about, except for school? I needed lived experience. Which is all true. And now I’ve written this play about Mount Holyoke! [laughter] But there’s some lived experience in there. I think I also had this grand idea of entering the real world upon graduation—that the maturation and sophistication would naturally occur in both my life and my work. But it turns out that to become a better writer, you really have to write. A lot.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
View the collection of the letters of Mary Woolley and Jeannette Marks at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/woolleymarks.
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AQ: How did you first discover the story of Woolley and Marks? Turner: I follow Mount Holyoke’s Archives on Instagram, and a few years ago they posted about Mary Woolley and Jeannette Marks and linked to a digital exhibit about their lives and letters. I was totally blown away by their story. Not only was it innately
Drop caps courtesy Jessica Hische; wallpaper: Deirdre Haber Malfatto; production still: Jenny Anderson, courtesy Lincoln Center Theater
urner’s attention was first drawn to Woolley and Marks by a Mount Holyoke Archives and Special Collections Instagram post that announced a 2015 exhibit. In collaboration with student workers, Head of Archives and Special Collections Leslie Fields had painstakingly compiled an online exhibit to accompany a physical one documenting the two women’s lives—and a seminal episode in Mount Holyoke’s history—through photographs and letters. “The archives are available to all, and they are much more than a storage closet for old stuff,” Fields says. “Seeing creative use of the materials, beyond scholarly papers and research, is especially exciting.” For Turner the discovery of the materials was an artistic gold mine—and in the fall her play will return to the campus where its subjects worked, argued, and collaborated, in a production directed by Frances Perkins Scholar Molly Paige ’18. According to Visiting Lecturer in Theatre Arts Noah Tuleja, director of the College’s Rooke Theatre, the play committee’s decision this season was an easy one. “It’s rare that I . . . read a play from cover to cover in one sitting,” he says. “But this one grabbed me right from the start. It’s clever, it has strong characters, it’s funny, it has a nice, sort of modern, feel, but it doesn’t feel thin. It’s a great piece of writing by a playwright who has strong craft, a strong point of view, and something to say. And it’s about Mount Holyoke. It was a perfect fit.” With the new play, Turner joins a tradition of alumnae playwrights—notably Wendy Wasserstein ’71, who also wrote about Mount Holyoke, and Suzan-Lori Parks ’85, who was the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Over the spring the Alumnae Quarterly caught up with Turner for a conversation about her first attempts at playwriting, her creative process, and the success of Bull in a China Shop.
AQ: Did you write plays when you were in college? Turner: My senior year I tried my hand at directing and got a lot of feedback that people didn’t really understand what I was trying to say. It was a French absurdist play, and I was like, “What do you mean you don’t understand it?!” [laughter] But then, because of that experience, I started asking myself: “Well, what are you trying to say?” The following semester, professor Brooke O’Harra was directing Wendy Wasserstein’s Uncommon Women and Others, and I decided to respond to the play from the perspective of my class, 2012. The department allowed me to produce my play right after the original, so we used the same set, and our show started at 11:00 p.m., right when Wendy’s finished. It was an incredible learning experience. And it was the first time that I got to see a play that I had written on a stage, with actors doing it. I realized, this is what I want to do.
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dramatic—a professor falling in love with her student, bringing her along to Mount Holyoke and quickly setting her up to head the English department despite her lack of experience, living together in the President’s House—but it was also incredibly moving to me to see this story of these women who loved each other for forty years against all odds. I loved the gorgeous details in their love story: President Woolley climbing three flights of stairs each night to kiss Miss Marks good night when they both lived in Brigham Hall—Woolley in the president’s suite on the first floor, and Marks on the top floor in faculty housing. Students lived on the floors in between! I immediately wanted to write a play about them. But I tried several times, and it was horribly boring. Dreadful fake historical nonsense. It took some tectonic shifts in my own life to really free the story for me. AQ: Had you steeped yourself in their letters? Or how did you approach generating those characters? Turner: I didn’t dive too deeply into the letters. Sometimes getting mired in too much detail can overwhelm me, and I lose track of the story I’m trying to tell. I didn’t quote them directly, but [I] got such a sense of their inner life from their letters, and [from] some of Marks’ writings and Woolley’s speeches. Marks jumps off the page as a turbulent, moody writer, and Woolley is almost effervescent with optimism. There’s a letter in my play, but it’s completely my own. I’m so indebted to the Archives—especially for all that they’ve digitized! Everyone involved in the production saw the online exhibit. The photos of Marks and Woolley sat with me for months as I worked, and the set designer was amazed by how many photos of the school throughout the ages he was able to find. Plus, [Lincoln Center’s] LCT3 sent out an email to everyone who attended the production to check out the digital exhibit. It’s so lovely to think that so many people got to experience this beautiful story. AQ: Virginia Woolf’s writing is featured in your play. Do you consider her an influence? Turner: I do. And I think she came in, in a second or third draft. Someone was asking me, “What does Marks teach? Is she a good teacher?” And so I was trying to imagine [who] Marks would be influenced by, what was moving [her], and Virginia Woolf just came to mind, because she was doing something so incredible with [her novel] Orlando. She wrote it in the twenties, and it was this incredible exploration of gender and sexuality, but it was disguised with humorous biography, so no one totally knew what to do with it. I think if people had been able to figure it out at the time it would have been censored. But because it was humorous and so strange— it was almost like science fiction—it passed under the radar. And it was this incredible critique of her society at a time, in the twenties, when people had sort of just realized that all these Victorian, flowery, female friendships that were going on in these “Boston marriages” were perhaps not so innocent in the way they thought they were, because they had just discovered that women might have a sexuality of their own. Before that they didn’t think that was possible. And it was just something I was thinking a lot about in regards to these women and what they were trying to do—bucking these social conventions. But then also it’s doing the same thing in genre that this play is trying to do, which is going through a great amount of time very quickly. And it’s a love story, it’s a biography, it’s all of
these things. And it’s strangely funny even though it’s also kind of sad—and it’s a social critique. It’s trying to do a lot. So Virginia Woolf felt like a perfect guide for this play. AQ: You’ve talked about how you wanted to cast people of color in this play. Why was that important to you? Turner: As a queer person, I’ve been left out of a lot of narratives and not included in a lot of history. That’s something I was trying to correct in telling this story—to include women of color felt like the natural and right choice. I feel like it’s something that happens often, where people’s imagination suddenly becomes limited when it comes to race, class, gender. The same sort of lines that come up in the real world come up again in art, and people limit themselves in the same way and sort of restructure the world in the only way they see it patterned. That was something I really wanted to challenge in this play and not use history as an excuse to leave women of color out again. AQ: You were deeply involved in the production in New York—what was it like for you to watch rehearsals? Turner: It was incredible. This was my first professional production. I was working with a director I’d worked with before, Lee Sunday Evans, so it was wonderful to be in the room with her and then all of these incredible actors, and just to see how they engaged with the work. They brought so much of their own imagination and personality to it. The set was this beautiful, sort of abstracted, slightly raked wooden floor, with a beautiful floral wallpaper and a window that at one point opens up for a
A scene from Bull in a China Shop at New York’s Lincoln Center in March.
flashback scene. And the costumes were all historically accurate but in slightly brighter colors. It was amazing to think that here was this idea that I’d had on a day when I was sad, writing in a café, and now here’s this room full of people spending eight hours a day working on this thing and bringing it to life. AQ: Will you be participating in the MHC production? Turner: I hope so! It’s going to be directed by a student, and I think she’s going to be in New York this summer, so we’ll meet up and chat. And then I’m hoping to make it back at least to see it, if not to participate in some way.
Abe Loomis is a freelance writer based in western Massachusetts. Contact him at abe.loomis@gmail.com. Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly
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O N D I S P L AY
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MHC Archives and Special Collections
MoHome Memories
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A Nod to Thackeray
Literary society
F ROM 19 0 9 T O 19 61 a select few upperclass students could be seen wandering around campus with a distinctive black stripe down their forehead and nose and a placard around their neck that read “Blackstick.” These strange signifiers marked students as members of the esteemed literary society on campus. The Blackstick organization began trivially enough, according to one founding member, Frances Warner, class of 1911, “and . . . grew into that tyrannical thing—college tradition.” Members of the club were selected for their prowess in writing and literary pursuits, and the group met to write together and workshop each other’s pieces. Over the years, Blackstick members would compose plays for the dramatic society, have literary teas with invitations to faculty, and host dinners. One such dinner was attended by none other than T. S. Eliot, who was received in 1933 in the North Mandelle private dining room and was heralded by club members as “a provocative and stimulating conversationalist.” The club’s unusual name comes from a fairy in William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1854 story “The Rose and the Ring.” The personification of this “active and officious” fairy, named Blackstick, was found in Margaret Sutton Briscoe Hopkins, an Amherst writer who would often visit campus and advise the students. Briscoe Hopkins was a short-story writer whose work was published in Harper’s Bazaar, and she was friends with Mark Twain. She served as both a role model and inspiration to the members of Blackstick. In 2004 Blackstick resurfaced in the form of a literary journal. The Blackstick Review was the brainchild of Professor Corinne Demas’s Advanced Short Story Writing seminar students and was named by Archives and Special Collections assistant Allison Trzop ’04. By compiling the best works of fiction from each member of the group, The Blackstick Review keeps Mount Holyoke’s spirit of literary excellence alive. And what of Frances Warner? After graduation, her work was published regularly in The Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Magazine. She returned to Mount Holyoke as an English professor in 1916, no doubt inspiring a new generation of Blackstick members to wear their stripe and placard with pride. — BY OLIVIA COLLI NS ’ 18
FRO M T H E A RC H IVES
Uniting a Community A Prayer for Mount Holyoke
In 1919 Charlotte D’Evelyn, a new member of the Mount Holyoke English faculty, received a “Prayer for Mount Holyoke,” written by Abdu’l-Baha, who was then the head of the Baha’í faith after the death of the founder of the faith, Bahá’u’lláh. This significant document was recently rediscovered in Archives and Special Collections and conserved at the Northeast Document Conservation Center. The Bahá’í faith was established during the middle of the nineteenth century, according to Baháiteachings.org, when Bahá’u’lláh began openly teaching the faith, with its “revolutionary messages of human unity, the oneness of all Faiths, the equality of men and women, and the agreement of science and religion, and the establishment of a global system of governance.” Today the Baha’í faith is the world’s newest independent global belief system and the second-most widespread religion after Christianity. In April Professor of History and African American Studies Holly Hanson and other members of Mount Holyoke’s Baha’í community gathered to celebrate the history of this prayer and the installation of a facsimile version at Abbey Interfaith Sanctuary. After the ceremony, the original document was returned to Archives’ stacks to enjoy a long life with temperature and humidity controls. To read a translation of the prayer, visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ bahai.
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.
Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly
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On Display A RT I FACT
The Wise Silence of the Sphinx Bronze statuette
Mounted on a trapezoidal walnut base, the bronze sphinx measures 21/2 in x 11/2 in x 31/2 in.
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Raisa Islam ’19
A S HO E - S IZ E D B RO N Z E STAT UET T E of a sphinx sits in the Mount Holyoke Archives and Special Collections protected by thick layers of wrapping paper. The rust stains on the bronze and dusty edges reveal a trace of age. To discover the original use of the mysterious object, one only needs to seek answers from beneath. The underside of the walnut base reveals a hidden compartment, and inside it a suede-felt booklet titled “The Sphinx Classes” (above inset). The ancient guardian of Egyptian temples has long served as a proud mascot of the sphinx classes of Mount Holyoke students. Beginning in 1919 the statuette was passed on from sphinx seniors to the incoming golden first-years. Along with the sculpture, the graduating class would also write to their “daughters” a message of wisdom, encouragement, and kindness. In 1939, when the class of 1935 passed on the statuette, they included a note, written in capital letters: “You inherit an emblem which offers challenge: challenge to create a work which will stand as timelessly as does our sphinx— challenge to seek and respect her.” The tradition continued for more than forty years, with the last message in the booklet from the class of 1959 that reads, in part, “This emblem of steadfast strength and ageless wisdom carries to you the untellable secrets of the classes to which you are bound by the symbol of the sphinx.” It is unknown why the tradition came to an end. The statuette is now housed in Archives, where any visitor can seek the wisdom of past alumnae housed secretly in a golden sphinx. —B Y S H E L L L I N ’ 1 7
6/30/17 11:25 AM
Then and Now
Basketball Uniforms THE N
N OW
Tucked in the back of a closet in the Kendall Sports and Dance Complex, Bardee Sadlier recently discovered a bunch of vintage athletic wear. Knowing little other than the collection was valuable and interesting, the associate athletic director passed her finds over to Elaine Bergeron, costume shop manager in the theatre department, who unearthed a fascinating early basketball uniform.
Basketball players at the College now wear 100 percent polyester uniforms. Durable, stain-resistant, and machinewashable, the fabric has become the norm for athletic wear of most kinds. Sleeveless V-neck shirts over long shorts with elastic waistbands provide ease of movement; pinholes in the material allow for good airflow.
2017
Late 1890s
The piece, circa 1895, was made of wool, the only choice for athletic garb back then. Despite its weight, the fabric dried well, kept its shape, and didn’t cling to the body—a quality that would have been unseemly for women at the time. Replete with long sleeves, a cinched waist, and full pleated bloomers, the outfit would have also included a neck scarf around the collar, stockings, and boots. Originally dyed Mount Holyoke blue, over time exposure to light has turned this uniform purple.
Deirdre Haber Malfatto
Though the antique attire looks uncomfortable for wear while playing a sport that involves running and shooting baskets, the design took from fashion trends of the day, and many alumnae reported loving their athletic wear,
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Home games are played in solid white uniforms accented with both light and dark blue; away games call for dark blue with accents of light blue and white. Both versions of the uniform are imprinted with paw prints for the Lyons team mascot as well as the College name and each player’s number.
as noted in a letter found among the collection from Jennie Jerome, class of 1911. Students also played a different version of the game back then; instead of five-on-five, they played six-on-six with two offensive players stationed at one end of the court, two defensive ones on the other, and two called “rovers,” who moved up and down the court during play. It is unclear whether numbers were used to identify players or even whether any competitive games were played at that time.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
View more vintage uniforms at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ basketball.
Current Head Basketball Coach Michelle Scecina notes that the change in attire over the years has been adapted to suit the changes in play. Women are playing faster, higher-caliber basketball these days due to the sport’s increased popularity and more opportunities for players to specialize at a young age. Scecina is anticipating new uniforms, arriving this fall. The uniforms will include a sleek racer-back top with a scoop neck and a gradient-like fade design on the shorts. Grey will replace white as the home color, while at away games, the traditional blue will continue to represent Mount Holyoke. —B Y A N N E P I N K E R T O N
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Loved canoe class and Ms. Ruth Elvedt. And of course we all love the canoe sing.
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Deirdre DeirdreHaber HaberMalfatto Malfatto
— G R A H A M R AY ’ 83
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A Place of Our Own
Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly
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My Voice
Celebration
This crossword by Eunice Willson Rice ’34 originally ran in the winter 1987 issue of the Quarterly, in celebration of Mary Lyon’s 190th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the founding of the College. Solution on page 9.
ACROSS 1 Secure 4 Venetian Republic magistrate
64 Exams supply the ___; students, the ans. 66 Hector Hugh Munroe
8 Grand ________, Evangeline’s home.
67 Deprive of wind, as a sail
11 Oldest house on MH campus
68 Can’t you guess?
14 Pilot’s concern: (abb.) 17 Black cuckoo 18 What every human does 19 Practitioner of witchcraft
74 Castilian ceremonial review 75 Campus building homonym 76 Wrack 77 Bordeaux brother
1
2
3
4
17
5
6
8
16
23
24
36
43 47
50
51
59
37
53
71
22 Imbue with color
79 Underground railway
23 “________ Traveler,” well-known tune
81 As far as West Africa: abb.
25 Foreign ingredient 27 End of TGIF respite
85 Abnormally developed sac
28 With 59A: “All hope abandon…?”
86 Deliberate deception 87 Twenty: comb. form
29 Churchillian letter
89 Provide a new crew for
31 Certain records
90 MH governor
32 Malayan wild ox
92 Wood-trimming tool
34 Advocate with importunity
94 MH VIP
127 Madrid Matron: abb.
15 See 68D
96 Type of restraint deplored by editors
128 Chance to display class colors permanently
16 Principle of faith
97 Staggered dizzily
129 British equivalent of 55A
39 The Good Neighbor 41 Uncomfortable lie for golfer 44 Nickname useful to Henry VIII? 45 Spread by rumor 46 With 126A: morning bells are ringing! 48 Saltpeter: comb. form 49 Near Eastern trouble spot 50 The Romans called Tirol “Rhaetia” _______ “______tia” 51 Kingly 53 12 to 3 and 4, 10 to 5 and 2: abb. 55 Edgar A. Poe was a student here: abb. 59 see 28A 60 Penetrating effect of sharp sensation 61 WWII beachhead 63 Yugoslavian coin
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99 Folk remedy for bruises and sprains 100 With 68D, former MH VIP 102 No lab can operate without them: abb. 103 Half a game of pelota 104 Sanskrit language 105 ____C. Bank backerupper: abb. 106 Knave of clubs in loo 108 See 8D 112 ____ gestae: legal term 113 News for a more classical age 118 The kind of faces seen at reunion 120 New Guinea seaport
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93
94
120
121
125
Women’s Branch of RAF
2 Crucifixion abbreviation 3 Goddess of Victory 4 Part of neurological network 5 Conjunctions 6 See 68D 7 Existence 8 With 60D and 108A: every serious student’s goal 9 Sleep characteristic: abb.
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116
117
107 118
108
110
111
119 124
127
128
129
21 Apollo’s priestess at Delphi 24 Required reading for MH graduates (!)
58 “Whose _____doth bind the restless wave”
86 Blackthorn fruit
60 See 8D
89 Tidying up the leaves again
62 Strait between Borneo and Celebes: abb.
88 Primitive stone chisel
26 Campus recreation area
63 Fast food store, for short
91 “When ______ last in the door-yard bloomed”
30 Const. amendment surely favored by MH
65 Wavy: heraldic term
93 Organized a plan for 95 Roman calendar: abb.
33 MH super-celebration
67 Mount Holyoke color 68 With 15D and 6D: freshman ice cream parlor?
96 Maintains in equilibrium
35 Greek Earth-goddess: var. sp. 37 Vesuvius’s rival 38 Every freshman characteristically does this
69 Cinnabar and pyrites, for instance 70 Eight: comb. form
39 Soul
71 Flame passed from one class to the next
40 Latin death deity
72 Chatter mindlessly
41 Air pollution
73 MH father was first to achieve it
42 Pentateuch 43 Siberian nomad’s tent
47 Their luck is proverbial 52 Often precedes “Olde”
124 Victim of Dutch blight
11 Students weren’t allowed to have them in the Good Old Days
125 Periodontist’s degree: abb.
12 Panay native 13 Add
56 Protruberance [sic]
126 See 46A
14 Esteem
123 Egyptian sun-god
109
99
123
44 The one at Gordium was famous
122 Rocinante, for example
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122
10 Use basely for own advantage
121 Che sarà_______
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103 106
126
DOWN
82
95
98
105 114
81 89
102
113
1
80
88
97
112
58
76
78 Serious infection, for short
104
57
73
87
101
56
67
72
86
96
55 63
79
91
33
40
62
78
90
22
54
75
77
16
49
52
20 On the summit of
36 What bubble-gum chewers do ad nauseam
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74
15
45
65
85
21
32
48
70
14
27
38
61
69
13
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60 64
12
26
44
46
100
11 20
30
35
34
68
10
25 29
42
9
19
28
41
7
54 Stylish 57 Less rare than formerly around MH
74 Ex-boot-camper’s first promotion: abb. 78 Frightening 79 Fro’s companion 80 Previously owned 82 All: comb. form 83 U.S. Army's first woman branch: abb. 84 _______ Jane Harrison
98 Sixth sense: abb. 100 “The ______ is too much with us” 101 Mountain nymph 103 Vintage violin 105 Tumultuous contest 107 Way off yonder 109 Intermediate support for bridge spans 110 Tree on the College seal 111 Opening word of famed epic 114 Tricked 115 _______ pro nobis 116 Users of this brought Olympic fame to MH 117 Apprentice politicians?: abb. 119 See 57D
M OU N T HO LYO K E A LU M NAE QUA RT E R LY
6/27/17 1:01 PM
mount holyoke forever shall be . When you invest in Mount Holyoke, you inspire our students to pursue positive change around the world — and to stretch their perceptions of what is possible. x
thank you.
The Mount Holyoke Fund
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6/26/17 1:05 PM
50 College Street, South Hadley, MA 01075
Securing a Seat at the Table 33 percent of women on Fortune 1000 boards graduated from a women’s college
The Women’s College Advantage. #PoweredByMountHolyoke
Learn more at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/poweredbymhc
Data from “Why a Women’s College,” a 2014 study by Collegewise counselors.
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