Judy Cairncross Helgen recently wrote up the memories of hearing President Richard Glann Gettell first coin the term ‘Uncommon Women’ at his inauguration in 1957. She shared it with me, and I share it with you, as a very interesting bit of history, and a legacy for our class. (AKW 2020).

Uncommon Women

During my sophomore year in 1957, Mount Holyoke’s new president, Glen Gettell, gave an inaugural speech titled “A Plea for the Uncommon Woman” — a speech way ahead of its time. Women have been trained mostly for a lifetime of home-making and are often devoted and subservient to the husband and family (as my mother was to my father), Gettell said. But intelligence has no gender. Women have the right to develop careers outside or inside of marriage. We will have an uphill battle against lingering prejudice, but “the determined woman — the uncommon woman — can win out.” Our education would help excite our curiosity to learn for ourselves after college, he said. President Gettell even suggested that couples will need to have an “equal sharing of duties.” This was 1957!
I absorbed every word of that speech. Over the years, as I faced challenges and attempted to find my way in science, Gettell’s call to courage helped sustain my drive, even though I felt more ordinary than “uncommon.” When I graduated from college in 1960, I was unaware that only twenty-seven per cent of those employed in biological sciences in the U.S. were women. A professor who mentored me told me the Zoology Department at Mount Holyoke would not hire men until the men’s colleges hired women on their science faculties. This was before Title IX prohibited gender discrimination in hiring.

Judy Cairncross Helgen

Sue Bradley Cabot and Dana Feldshuh Whyte, co-presidents of our class from 2000 – 2010, wrote the following “History of our Class” to present at the Alumnae Association meeting in 2005, our 45th reunion. I include it in our new webpage as a tribute to us all, but especially to them, who did so much to launch the website initially. Here’s to their creativity! (AKW 2015)

“Because many have requested copies, below you will find the Class History we presented at the Alumnae Association meeting after the Parade.” (Sue and Dana 2005)

“THE CLASS HISTORY”

Poised between “Leave It To Beaver” and The Feminine Mystique, we missed being flower children…. by a few petals.

Before the fitness craze, we wore gym suits and the same sneakers for every sport……..only a few blue jeans on campus, many Bermuda shorts……….but no computers, cell phones, or instant gratification.

TV was rare. We used the Dewey decimal system and kymograph drums and slide rules and balance scales. We signed in at chapel wearing pajamas under our raincoats…. And shorts under our skirts at Gracious Living. We reveled in a community of Unlocked doors and DORM DINING at round tables and bridge and knitting and edgy talk in the Smoker……… and milk and crackers and goofiness at 9:45 p.m.

We watched the Space Age unfold, but we did not travel much. We experienced Vietnam, the end of state-sponsored segregation, the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines, the beginning of hard rock and the sexual revolution… the assassinations, Kent State, urban riots, shopping malls….consumerism… the fall of Soviet communism, the rise of militant Islam……. the end of Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly and the divinely different Hepburns.

“Through orbit loops of caroming contingencies, chance changes, concatenated strings of events….(ah, a quotation, as expected)….”