Class Notes are submitted to the Quarterly 4 times per year by our trusty scribes. Please submit your news no later than the following dates:
- January 15 for May issue
- April 15 for August issue
- July 15 for November issue
- October 15 for January issue
If you don’t write in about yourself, we don’t know what’s happening — brag a little! Scribes are forced to write about their close friends over and over if they don’t hear from anyone else. How do you submit? Send an email to: scribe70@mtholyoke.edu
Diane Mayer Murphy
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Latest class notes:
50TH REUNION: MAY 14–17, 2020
scribe70@mtholyoke.edu
Class website: alumnae.mtholyoke. edu/1970
Reunion Co-Chair Yvonne Watford McKinney reflects on
our upcoming 50th: “The other day I came across this line in a delightful old book by Lucy Maud Montgomery, “The Golden Road.” ‘Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.’ That sums up the reasons we have reunions: The chance to recapture old times, to bask in the pleasures of shared
memories, to summon up sweet youth and delay, as it were, time’s effect on our ability to retrieve stored recollections. None of us can deny the transience of time. The years seem to pass more quickly
as we age, and with the passing of years we often fail to remember the people, places and events that had a hand in who we have become. Perhaps that is why this 50th reunion of the class of 1970 is so important.
“In May 2020 we will have a wonderful opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with each other and with the institution that brought us together so many years ago. Our reunion will be the occasion where we celebrate each other’s lives during and post MHC; where we get physical together while showing off our prowess in the gym and on the tennis court; where we hear from a keynote speaker on topics that concern us all; where we talk about old and new times during the intimacy of shared meals; and where we take pleasure in being together while enjoying the beauty of the campus in the spring.
“We will also enjoy art and memorabilia displays, the Laurel Parade, a welcome ceremony with the class of 2020, dancing to our favorite old tunes and so much more. And we will gather in Abbey Chapel for a memorial service officiated by minister Patricia Sobers Mitchell.
“The reunion committee has assembled 50 reasons why you should attend our reunion May 14–17. You can explore them on our class website (see address above). For me, the most important reason, and the reason I will attend, is: There is no reunion without you! See you there!”
Nancy Affleck McKenzie spent a week on the Big Island of HI visiting Kate Brucatti Delaney and Kate’s husband Tom. A high point of the trip was a visit to the summit of Mauna Kea.
Julie Solso Guelich retired last spring from Normandale Community College, Bloomington, MN. Over 44 years she was a math faculty member and math and com- puter science department chair; dean of STEM; and vice president of academic affairs (provost). Julie and her husband Bob live in sub- urban Minneapolis. Daughter Jill and her husband also live in the Minneapolis area with Julie’s first grandchild, born in April 2018. Son Bobby and his wife live in NYC. Julie and Bob are looking forward to spending time with their children and granddaughter, tutoring, volunteering, reading, traveling and generally continuing to contribute and learn.
Class Notes April, 2019
Barbara Cooke Monks reminds us that our 50th reunion is just a year away. “Save Thursday, May 14–Sunday, May 17, 2020, for the huge celebration on campus. If you need a reason to attend, go to new.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu or our Facebook page (Mount Holyoke Class of 70), where you’ll find many reasons among the 50 listed. Your reunion chairs (Barb, Jane Hiller Farran, and Yvonne Watford-McKinney} like the last one best: “There is no reunion without you!” These classmates and many more have been planning programs and activities specific to our class that are in addition to those offered by the Alumnae Association. Our Class of 1970 will celebrate its 50-year milestone, and as our reunion theme reminds us, we are all “Still Uncommon After All These Years!”
Carol Verburg writes: “As we gear up for our 50th reunion, I’ve been e-chatting with members of our class and our connection class of 2020, who are about to present their Junior Show. I wrote the script and many of the lyrics for ours, and it’s been fun to nostalgia-trip with some of us and some of them—as well as to marvel at the strangeness of history, which put our class and our Junior Show, the pioneering rock musical We Could Save the World, on the front lines of opposition to a failing foreign war and corrupt U.S. President. Meanwhile, I continue to write mysteries and occasionally dip back into theater. My flash-fiction story ‘Birdbrain’ will be published in late March as part of the Sisters in Crime of Northern California anthology Fault Lines. My longer story ‘Scandal at the Savoy: The Monocle Murder’ will be published in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine in late 2019. Meanwhile I’m hard at work on book 3 in my series of cozy-noir novels narrated by an MHC alum and international investigative journalist, Gandy Knight: A Cory Goodwin Mystery—the sequel to Silent Night Violent Night and Another Number for the Road.”
We send condolences to Susan Spar on the death of her husband, Richard J. Adams, on Nov. 4, 2017, after a 3-year battle with melanoma. Susan writes: “Our home survived the Sonoma fires, but I lost my best friend. I was 46 when I married for the first time in 1993, and we had a wonderful, fun, loving marriage.” Susan worked in television production in NYC from 1970 to 1984, then graduated from Columbia Law School and moved to LA in 1987 to practice corporate law. She and Richard retired to Santa Rosa in 2007. Volunteer work at Sonoma Humane Society and a bereavement group at Sutter Hospital have given her strength. “Facing the future at our age isn’t easy, but I have dear family and friends, and I’m grateful that I ‘m learning I’m more resilient than I knew. Cherish your loved ones, and don’t ignore health warning signs (Richard had ignored his melanoma, which was in a not visible place, until it was too late).”
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