Judy Cairncross Helgen recently wrote up a piece recounting her recollection of hearing President Richard Glenn Gettell’s Inaugural Address to the college in 1957, in which he used the term ‘Uncommon Women’. Read Judy’s interesting essay HERE. It is a piece of our history.
Class of 1960
Mount Holyoke College
Judy: I have been married since 1960 to an uncommon woman, Ann Kingman, MHC ’60, who also heard Gettell’s speech in 1957. Any idea where G might have gotten the phrase ‘uncommon women’? I’ve been looking at Mary Lyon, Margaret Fuller, Agatha Christie, Emily Dickinson, Henry Wallace (‘common man’), and Adlai Stevenson’s speech at Smith in 1955. Thanks to the plays of Wendy Wasserstein’ 74 and Joan Tower’s fanfares, the phrase has become a commonplace today.
p.s. My grandmother and mother were also uncommon women.