Hello everyone in the Class of 1969! Time to think seriously about returning to MHC for our 45th reunion on May 23-25, part of Reunion II. Registration will open in March; I don’t know the exact date yet. But we want everyone to come to a great party!
Your Reunion Chair, Ida Quackenbush Nystrom, inystrom@earthlink.com, says, Although we will not have a reunion booklet for 2014, we do have some questions for the class so that we can have up-to-date parade signs. I am sending an e-blast about this. Please respond to her as soon as you can, so we can have great signs!
Clean-up coordinator: Julie Van Camp, jvancamp5@gmail.com, will coordinate this, though I’m certain she’ll welcome any and all help. Please contact her directly!
Nametag coordinator: Susan Hardy, susan.e.hardy@valley.net, will prepare these.
Costume coordinators: We have two, Marzy Tolmach Bauer, marzytbauer@gmail.com, and Cathy Trebelhorn, candrtreb@verizon.net, planning this.
Saturday Night Dinner coordinator: Sally Mosser Haggerty, sally.haggerty@rcn.com, has taken this on again, and is also planning hospitality plates of finger foods to welcome us back to campus on Friday evening. Please check directly with her if you’d like to help!
Hospitality coordinator: Linda Giannasi O’Connell, lmoconnell@gmail.com, is our coordinator, and I know she’ll be happy for help covering both the desk at Mary Woolley Hall and in our assigned dorm. She also writes:
My committee would like to do Show and Tell on Friday, arrival day, with a display of our oeuvre: books, CDs, articles, artwork, crafts. We also want to organize a musicale in the living room on Friday. Call or e-mail Linda with offers to play your musical instruments, and/or display your work! There’s a lot of talent in our class. Let’s show it off!
Website and Program coordinator: Trudy Levy, iminteg@gmail.com, writes:
Website Notes
Online News about the Reunion can be found at our reformatted website at https://new.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/1969/ and our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/156670301051275/. We will post official information, such as schedules, who is in charge, etc. on the website. We have already included an archive from the last (40th) Reunion which includes photos for those who want to travel memory lane.
The Facebook group privacy setting has been set so that only members can see the postings, so feel free to use it to exchange information. Also, we can post pictures, per FB rules. Please also promote the group to other class alumna who are on FB.
Trudy may occasionally post information from one site to the other.
Reunion Program
In addition to the Alumnae activities, your program committee is developing spark points to encourage conversation—as if we needed that—along the Reunion theme: Transformation: Never Fear/Change. Here are some ideas that we are proposing:
Friday Night:
Create a Transformation Collage.
Everyone bring two images showing a transformation in their lives during the last five years. It can be about yourself, your house, a room, a locale, a life style, a sport, or whatever has been a significant change in your life. We will post these “before and after” photos on the wall for all our class to see. And post a photo of the collage to the Facebook group for those who can’t be there.
Saturday Afternoon:
We are scheduled for our class photo shoot right in the middle of the afternoon, but we intend to bookend that slot with two short Talk Tanks, similar to the ones we did last year, whose topics are amazingly apt this time. Anyone like to volunteer to lead ones of these groups? They are more fully developed on the website.
- Life Transitions and Alternatives: Retirement, Redirection, Retraining
- Now and Then: the U.S. and Us?
- If WE Ran The World: A Wish List
- Being Green
- Living Well
- Being Female
- Newly added from the Facebook page:
- Talking with current students
- How we can create internships for current students
- Books we have enjoyed
Saturday night: Live piano! Thanks Ray Kimball.
Also, the Alumnae Association plans “Back-to-Class” sessions on Friday of Reunion weekend, as it has done for a number of years. The theme this year is “transformation,” in its widest sense (personal, political, economic, scientific etc.), in keeping with the “Never Fear/Change” campaign branding.
Other noteworthy items:
Dues: Dues are $40 for the five-year cycle. Our Treasurer, Kitty Howell Cannon, rick@cannonrick.com, can tell you if you’ve paid already, and will happily accept payments!
Nominating Committee: Our committee has assembled nearly all the slate for our 50th reunion (the cycle runs from 2014-2019), and would be happy to hear from those interested in running for office! Members of the Nominating Committee are Rosemary Sullivan Kimball, chair, rosemarykimball@yahoo.com; Maggie Brooks, marguerite.brooks@yale.edu; Susan Simone Garland, garland26@verizon.net; and Amanda Porterfield, aporterf@fsu.edu.
Here is the proposed slate: (Many officers have volunteered for another stint, and some are still vacant!)
President: Marilyn Coburn Kincaid mckincaid@swbell.net
Vice President/Reunion Chair: [No nominee at present. As the upcoming 50th Reunion is a “biggie,” we will also need a Co-Chair, or possibly even two]
Secretary: Susan Strong Savage savage-s@sbcglobal.net
Treasurer: Kathryn Howell Cannon rick@cannonrick.com
Head Class Agent/Reunion Gift Chair: Marcia Lepri Coleman marcialcole@comcast.com
Historian: Anne Wilder Borg anneborg@cox.net
Scribe: Ida Quackenbush Nystrom inystrom@earthlink.com
Web Mistress: Trudy Levy iminteg@yahoo.com
Nominating Committee
Member: Maggie Brooks marguerite.brooks@yale.edu
Member: Amanda Porterfield aporterf@fsu.edu
This slate is proposed for approval at our Class Meeting, Saturday afternoon. Nominations can also be proposed from the floor. We will update on the website as the slate is completed.
Alumnae Association giving: Marcia Lepri Coleman, marcialcole@comcast.net, our Gifts Chair, writes:
Hello all! Our fundraising for our Class of 1969 45th Reunion Gift (through the Mount Holyoke Fund) is in full swing. I am happy to report that we are making great progress towards our dollar goal of $130,000 thanks to the generosity of 111 classmates. Most of these classmates donate every year and many increased their gift this year in honor of our 45th Reunion. THANK YOU to these generous women!
However, we are only about halfway to our participation goal of 55%. We need 99 more donors from our Class to recognize the contribution that Mount Holyoke has made to their lives by making a Reunion gift. If you have not yet made a gift to the Mount Holyoke Annual Fund this year, PLEASE consider sending a gift today (no amount too small!)!
My deepest thanks go to our great team of Class Agents (Katherine Turner Alben, Marzy Tolmach Bauer, Pat Cantor, Gillian Dale, Lynn Dickensheets Greacen, Belle Igleheart Hagey. Elizabeth (Betty) Long, Ida Nystrom, and Julie Van Camp). They contribute time and treasure year after year to help support Mount Holyoke!
I am looking forward to seeing many of you at Reunion!!
If you have not done so, or at least not done so recently, please visit the Alumnae Association website, http://alumnae.mtholyoke.edu, and create your page. This is a secure page, available only to other classmates. This is where you put in all contact information, maybe a picture, and other information you might want to get out there. (You can also hide anything you don’t want others to see, for whatever reason.) You can also create a permanent MHC e-mail address (actually a forwarding e-mail). Please check this out; this is the site that I and other class officers rely on to contact you! In particular, please add or confirm your e-mail address. Our class saves money when we don’t have to use snailmail for correspondence, although this letter is sent to all classmates by snailmail, as well as posted on our website.
Our Class Scribe, Ginna Holmes Moore, ginna.moore@gmail.com, writes,
Good morning, Uncommon Ones! Please send me news!
And again, from your president, please plan to come to our 45th! It won’t be complete without you! Every member of our class is noteworthy and important. Our class has had great reunions in the past, and I fully expect that to continue. Please check over this letter to see the fun things our classmates have planned for the weekend. Remember those dates, May 23-25, 2014!
All the best to 1969! Think Simple/Green!
Marilyn Coburn Kincaid
Class President
mckincaid@swbell.net
mckincaid@alumnae.mtholyoke.edu