Search for Mount Holyoke Class of 70 on your Facebook search line and submit your name (as it appears on your personal Facebook page) for membership in the column to the right side of the current posts.  You will be accepted and then you’ll be able to invite other Class of 70 friends to join. It is a great way for us Uncommon Women to keep in touch and to keep abreast of 50th Reunion plans. Your class Reunion Committee needs current e mail addresses in order to keep you in the loop. If you have recently changed your e mail or are not getting the quarterly class E–Blasts,  please send your e mail address to Jill Vollmer Blackwood at jblackwood48@gmail.com 

Class Letter Holiday Greetings, Classmates! Around the country with many of you… Once again, I have been delighted to be able to reconnect with some of you…after more than 50 years!… as I have traveled for business, board or volunteer work this fall. A couple of these fun events from Cleveland, OH and Sarasota, FL are highlighted below. The most recent was this past weekend in New York City at the MHC Vespers performance. We can all be very proud of students from the classes of 2019 and 2020, who gave a beautiful concert before a packed audience at St. Bartholomew’s Church. The city was all dressed up for the holidays and the cold winter air added to the merriment!   I would love to see more of you in the remaining 18 months before our 50th reunion and will reach out as I have promised in my class letters.  And be sure to click on the photos I am attaching to see old friends… Recent highlights:  For photos, click here…. • Cleveland in October with Judy Harris Rawson at the Museum of Art. We had a great discussion about how our class would define “uncommon” in our lives today, a conversation worth having in South Hadley in May 2020! • San Francisco in October at the reception for new President Sonya Stephens, hosted by the MHC Club of Northern California. It was an impressive turnout and a special pleasure to see Carol Verburg, Barbara Cooke Monks and Jamie Wirene Schwarzfeld there as well as many younger and older Bay Area alums. • Sarasota, FL in November with Georgia Grimm Walters and Elizabeth Marcus Russell. Both of these classmates were in different majors in college than I was and we had fun sharing stories of life then as well as now. Elizabeth and I also discovered that our paths had crossed in the bottled water industry 20 years ago with no idea that we had been college classmates! Unfortunately Elizabeth had to leave our meeting before I thought to pull out my phone for a photo, so please check out her photo on her personal profile on the Alumnae Association database and “photo shop” her into this picture in your minds! • New York City in December with the 4 of us who attended the Vespers concert: Helen Disenhaus, Charlotte Church, and Katy Hart.  Our version of a “mini mini” reunion at a festive time of year! I hope looking at these photos reminds us all of the friends we made during our time at Mount Holyoke and will inspire you to reconnect with classmates in the months ahead. And then there is our reunion weekend itself….! Still Uncommon After All These Years: We have our reunion theme (above!) and now we have DATES! Please mark Thursday, May 14 to Sunday, May 17, 2020 on your calendars…paper and digital…as the red letter days for our 50th reunion in South Hadley.   More information will be forthcoming with our February/March class letter.  In the meantime, your 3 reunion co-chairs, Barbara Cooke Monks, Jane Hiller Farran, and Yvonne Watford-McKinney have been engaged in organizing the committees needed for our weekend events, recruiting volunteers and developing a compelling list of 50 reasons to attend this once-in-a-lifetime event.  Barb has designed unique Reunion Volunteer T-shirts (yes, in red!), in case you need a reason to get more involved! More volunteers are definitely needed so please reach out to one of our co-chairs to offer your services.   Barbara Cooke Monks: bcmonks@gmail.com Jane Hiller Farran: jane.farran@gmail.com Yvonne Watford-McKinney: ywmck@bellsouth.net Our reunion weekend starts on the Thursday afternoon before commencement weekend when we don the graduating seniors, who are also our Connections Class, with scarves in their class color (a ritual known as “scarfing”) and hold a reception in their honor. That evening, our first dinner together will be in the new Dining Commons, which is now part of Blanchard. The food is varied and excellent. Be prepared to be treated like a rock star! We even have on-campus transportation to convey us to events! Special thanks to Yvonne Watford-McKinney… who was back on campus in November for the first time since graduation to attend the Black Alumnae Conference, and shared her thoughts for this class letter. And the bottom line remains…  We may all have mixed emotions from our college years, but sharing reunion with the women who were part of our lives then can bring us new connections and perhaps new possibilities as we reconnect through experiences and lives…each uniquely uncommon!…in the 5 decades since 1970. Staying Connected Our class webpage: new.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/1970 Facebook: Keep up with news of your classmates! We have our own class Facebook page: Mount Holyoke Class of 70. You can also contact Jill Vollmer Blackwood at jblackwood48@gmail.com to join. Deadline for Class Notes in the Quarterly: January 25.  Please send your news or even your holiday letters to Diane Mayer Murphy (dmurphy@cminc.com) or Ellen Cochran Hirzy (ellenhirzy@gmail.com) Alumnae Association website: Check out “Find Your People” and update your own profile!  alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/directory   Wishing you special moments of joy during the holidays and good health throughout the year ahead, Happy Holidays to all of you! Ann Ann Richardson Berkey Class President