10/12/19: Judy Kennedy sent the following letter to the Alumnae Quarterly in response to their mistaken citing of the origin of the term “Uncommon Women”.
FACTS MATTER
Wendy Wasserstein ’71 was certainly a brilliant “uncommon woman,” but “the original Uncommon Woman” (MoHome Memories, summer 2019, page 34), not so fast! While her play, “Uncommon Women and Others” certainly cemented MHC’s claim to the phrase, let us not forget that it was President Richard Gettell who first said it in his inaugural address to the college entitled “A Plea for the Uncommon Woman” at Convocation in 1957, opening with his equally memorable salute to the Class of 1961, “Fellow Freshmen.” It was at that moment that the “Mount Holyoke community quickly took ownership,” not twenty years later when the play was first produced in 1977. — Judith Marshall Kennedy ’61
Judith M Kennedy
Mount Holyoke Class of 1961
PO Box 60
North Conway, NH 03860
(603) 356-6884
PS to the Quarterly Staff — A plea from me and my classmates from the Great Class of 1961 for you to reprint President Gettell’s “A Plea for the Uncommon Woman” in its entirety in the Quarterly at some point. I have searched for it on the college website, and while referenced there , it does not appear to be accessable (or any where else that I could easily find, for that matter). –Judy
