| April 2018Dear Classmates,
We appreciate your enthusiasm! We had a fantastic response to the letter we sent last October announcing the dates for Reunion, Thursday May 16 to Sunday May 19, 2019, and sharing some of our plans. Hopefully you have ALL marked those dates on your calendars. We’re calling 2018 the “Year of Communications and Class Engagement.” A few years ago we sent you a survey about the type of reunion experience that you most wanted. Your responses helped us to create the theme — Connect • Reflect • Inspire; to constitute a reunion planning committee; and to begin to create a memorable and fun event. This year you’ll have many more opportunities to engage in our planning through Cafe ’69s (also known as mini-reunions); events with the Class of 2019; and responses to Reunion Committee queries about how to celebrate our classmates, about the reunion program and about our reunion book. You will also hear from our reunion gift chairs and class agents about our 5-year gift to the College. Cafe ’69s (aka mini-reunions): We are rekindling relationships and building enthusiasm for the reunion weekend by holding informal gatherings across the country. Already our classmates have held Cafe ’69s in Washington, DC, Cape Cod, Bronxville/Westchester, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. In May several classmates will host an event at the Algonquin Club in Boston on May 22 for classmates in New England, and others are organizing events this spring in the Springfield and New Jersey areas, in New York City and again in San Francisco. We hope that these will be well attended and will help us reach out to classmates who both have and have not attended past reunions. Also, if you’re feeling inspired, please think about organizing your own Café ’69. Just let Linda Giannasi O’Connell (lmoconnell@gmail.com) know—she has great ideas posted on our website mhc1969.online— and send your pictures to Trudy Levy (iminteg@gmail.com) so she can put them on the website. If you would like the class list sorted by state, Linda can send that to you. Class of 2019: Beth Johnson McGregor (epimcg@aol.com) has been our terrific leader in organizing activities with the Class of 2019, which will graduate when we are on campus. She recently sent a survey to the 47 classmates who volunteered to be pen pals with students in our connection class, and they report that a number of meaningful relationships have developed. These students are helping us understand the many ways in which MHC is the same and also very different than when we graduated. The next event with this class is likely to be scheduled during the Leap Symposium in the fall, when students share their stories about summer internships, and we are all welcome to attend that event. Ginna has been to two of them, and they’re fascinating windows into MHC and its students today. Celebrating Our Classmates: The Alumnae Association (AA) recognizes the distinguished accomplishments of several alumnae through awards during reunion weekend. We would encourage you to nominate classmates for these AA awards, but we also want to celebrate as a class our many and varied journeys over the past 50 years. Soon you will receive a letter and survey from Joyce Laquidara Gleason, Rosanne Welshimer Matson, and Linda Whitlock asking you to nominate yourself and/or classmates for recognition of fun and/or noteworthy post-graduate personal experiences—for example, in overcoming challenging times, in helping and nurturing others, in excelling in our paid and unpaid professions and in raising our voices. We all have unique stories, and the hope is to learn from each other and to have fun with these celebrations of our lives. These class awards will be presented during our dinner Saturday night. Reunion Program: You will also be receiving a letter and survey from our Program Chairs Joan Libby Hawk and Julie Dutton Peterson. Reunion weekend will truly be a time to connect with each other, to reflect together and to inspire each other. As we shared in our last letter, the program will be US. To paraphrase Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig’s, not LBJ’s), a reunion given BY us FOR us. A happening wall with our photos, stickers and buttons. Roving Cafe ’69s. Griffin (aka Ted) talks on all sorts of interesting topics—past, present, and future. A play reading. Exhibits of our art work and publications. PLEASE help shape this program by responding to the program survey with ideas for topics, presenters, and special touches so that each of us feels welcome, interested and even inspired during the weekend. Reunion Book: Judy Oliver (joliver@colgate.edu) is chair of the reunion book. Many thanks to one of our classmates who has generously funded the book’s production. Judy would like you to send her scanned photos from college years and reunions right away. This summer Judy will send you a more specific request for personal information and photos to be included in the book. Let’s make this special by responding in droves to her request for information. The book will be designed to help us connect during and after reunion and to reflect on the many different paths our lives have taken. We will write you again in the fall when we’ll be less than a year away from our 50th. In that letter our Class President Marilyn Coburn Kincaid, and the Class Nominating Committee, chaired by Amanda Porterfield (aporterf@fsu.edu), will solicit nominations for class officers for 2019–2024. Please feel free to share any suggestions with Amanda prior to that as well. As always, beg any classmate who may not have shared their email address with the College to do so. Many of our communications about Reunion will be by email. Also, contact either or both of us with questions or comments at any time. We look forward to seeing you next May! Sally Gisel Green Ginna Holmes Moore |
Mount Holyoke College Class of 1969
Connect – Reflect – Inspire
