March 2013 Letter
Dear Classmates,
I was recently looking at a classmate’s photos of herself and her best friend taken in the late 1950s, both wearing sun suits and ankle socks with t-strap sandals. The photo captured the pure joy of playing with a friend on a glorious summer day. It struck me that those childhood years were a time when we were open to all sorts of possibilities and people, and reveled in the pure pleasure of spending hours with a best friend. It was a time when a friendship could be cemented by simple things we had in common – the pesky younger sibling you both had to watch, or the fact that you shared chocolate chip as your favorite ice cream flavor, or that she thought your super curly hair was beautiful (when you didn’t). In many ways we’ve reached that stage again – life, and years, have tempered a lot of the differences that were all too apparent when we graduated in 1974 – with all those questions about who we were and how we measured up to our classmates, or even to our close friends. The 74 Turns 60 birthday celebrations during the past year have brought us back, in many ways, to the enthusiasm for friendship we had in our early years, and the pure pleasure of connection with someone who is exactly the same age and shares the same memories of world events. These friends, old and new, now often provide a gentler, more forgiving perspective on choices we’ve made, and take joy in our accomplishments. It seems we are eager to connect with other people, share that old pleasure in just hanging out, exchanging stories and discovering that someone thinks your super curly – but now gray – hair is beautiful (when you don’t).
Our strength as a class is that our friendships formed when we were 18 or 20 have remained strong, and that we continue to welcome more classmates into our lives as friends. All of the 74 Turns 60 events included classmates who had never attended a mini-reunion, or those who had never ventured far from their close-knit group of college friends, and each one left feeling she is part of a very special sisterhood.
A wonderful group of classmates hosted 60th birthday events from the Arizona desert to the island beaches of Nantucket and I would recommend a career as event planners for all of them! They gave generously of their time and resources to make each event one that ended with all of us swearing to get together again as soon as possible!
Cathy Trauernicht served as our 74 Turns 60 coordinator, suggesting dates, locations and logistics for hosts who in turn put together weekends that were full of fun events and made everyone feel welcome.
Marcia Halstead James, of Scottsdale, Arizona planned the first gathering in March 2012. She was ably assisted by Kathe Munz Shinham and Susan Mercer Hinrichs for a weekend that highlighted southwestern cuisine, culture, flora and architecture. April featured a tour of the battlefields of Gettysburg organized by Jean McKeever followed by a spa weekend in Hershey, Pennsylvania (chocolate facials, anyone?) planned by Beverly Lang Pierce. The May celebration at Melissa Thornton’s Bold Colorful Life Inn in Boothbay, Maine was postponed (we look forward to a new date!), and our next gathering, in October, took us to the island of Nantucket in Massachusetts. Heather Barlow Sheldon hosted a birthday party at the Carlisle House Inn which she purchased five years ago to pursue her dream as an innkeeper. Heather planned yet another wonderful weekend that included everything from ghost stories to the sight of dozens of seals watching us watch them on the beach. November brought classmates to an action-packed weekend in Encinitas, California where Mary Poteet’s enthusiasm and graciousness were as impressive as the scenic coast.
The bookends of the 74 Turns 60 events were the annual Vespers concerts which bring student singers and musicians to Boston and New York City in alternate years. Jamie Kotch delivered new verve to our usual pre-concert dinner by organizing a reception in Boston in December 2011 where we invited other classes to join us at the College Club. Jamie was assisted by Jane Homan Antin, Debby Hall and me. In New York, Paula Gerden has traditionally, and very generously, hosted a post-concert dinner, and in December 2012 that event was even bigger – and featured a birthday cake of course. Jane Zimmy and LaVida Dowdell joined with Paula to host a weekend that included a get-together in Brooklyn and a ticket upgrade generously underwritten by Jane so that our class had premier concert seats.
And we have more ideas for gatherings in the future!
But the big event is our 40th Reunion. We will gather for Reunion I, the college commencement weekend of May 16 – 18, 2014, with the seniors carrying the laurel chain and all the excitement of the graduation ceremony and almost-alumnae-students in the dorm with us. Our class still holds the attendance record for any 25th reunion class and always hits high attendance numbers. We know how to party, but most of all, we know how to be friends, and that’s what keeps our reunion numbers so impressive. Let’s set a record for our 40th!
Reunion planning is going strong under the able leadership of Jane Homan Antin (thanks also, to Gail LaBroad LaRocca and Doris O’Keefe who attended the Reunion Planning Workshop). You will be hearing a lot from Jane in the coming months! We are eager to have your input. This is 74’s reunion – all 400-plus of us. Please contact Jane at jantin1@partners.org to share your ideas and inspirations about what will help to make this your best reunion.
The most important thing you can do right now is to send the Alumnae Information Services (ais@mtholyoke.edu) your current email address and contact information. More and more class communication is via blast email so please take the time to open those emails and read them!
Also, join our Class of 1974 Facebook page and check our class website https://new.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/1974/ as plans for Reunion progress.
And lastly, many thanks to Marian Buff Spencer for designing the letterhead and creating the save-the-date reunion magnet! Buff designed magnets for our 25th and 35th reunions as well!
Until next year in South Hadley!
Carole LaMond
Class President
CLaMond@aol.com
1974 Class History
by Denise McLeod Thomas
In the law, a document that stands up to challenges to it authenticity for a period of at least 30 years is said to be an ancient document. Congratulations Class of 1974, your degree is now an ancient document. We all know that our degree is just as good today as it was when it was awarded to us 30 years ago. It has stood up to the challenges of additional education, career responsibilities and even the challenges of raising a family. What has changed is the girl we each were on the application that the Admissions Committee based its decision to grant our admission to this college. That is where our history begins.
In times past, our class president has stood in this place and reminisced about our protest of the Vietnam War at Westover, the streaking on Skinner Green, and the bell-bottom and hip hugger pants that we wore. Certainly those events are in our history. However, today, I want to focus on a part of our history that is very personal to me and that represents a fundamental change in the very essence of who we were and who we became as a class.
In September 1970, our class set a record that has never, ever in the history of Mount Holyoke been matched. True to its commitment to creating a diverse educational environment, the college admitted 44 African American students in the class of 1974. Fourteen of those students were participants in the first and only Mount Holyoke Summer Program of 1969 and 1970. The Summer Program represented Mount Holyoke’s commitment to a group of “disadvantaged” African American students with potential. I was one of those students. We were the best and the brightest students that our communities produced. We didn’t know that we were “disadvantaged.” During those summers we were introduced to unfamiliar literature from around the world and to math problems with no numbers! The mission of the Summer Program was to develop our writing and math skills so that they would be on par with the typical Mount Holyoke applicant.
I was born in Kansas two years before the historic Supreme Court decision Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka. For me, the fifth child in a family of ten people, Mount Holyoke was somewhere over the rainbow. The ripple effect of my acceptance to Mount Holyoke was enormous for it instantaneously changed the destiny of three generations in my family. My mother declared, “If Denise can go to college, so can I.” Ironically, she enrolled in a small women’s college in the metropolitan Kansas City area. Together, she and I became the first in our family to go to college and to earn degrees. I became a daughter of Mount Holyoke with all of its rights and privileges. Just a few days ago, on May 24th, our mutual birthday, my daughter Jamila graduated from Yale University. Mount Holyoke chose me all those years ago and that choice created choices for my mother, my daughter and me. But more than that, it preordained a change in the communities we have served and are serving. My mother’s work and education in the mental health field played a small, but significant role in the awarding of accreditation to the Western Missouri Mental Health Center. She was a foster mother to several mentally challenged young women, teaching paraprofessional in an inner city, public high school, wife and mother to a whole passel of children. I have served as Public Defender, a volunteer with the Dekalb County (GA) Volunteer Lawyers’ Foundation where I represent indigent clients in civil matters, Counselor and Attorney at Law, Judge, wife, mother and mentor to dozens of young people who deserve an over-the-rainbow experience like the one that Mount Holyoke gave to me. My daughter Jamila, through the Teach For America Program, will teach in an “under-served” elementary school in the Atlanta Public School System much like the one I attended as a child in Kansas City. She wants to teach to honor all the excellent teachers she had especially in public schools.
Despite the valiant efforts the college made to create a diverse environment for us, as a class, we were faced with struggles that had nothing to do with academics but yet had everything to do with education. Most of us had had little or no contact with people of different races. In that respect, we were all “disadvantaged.” At first we noticed our differences. Some of us had huge clouds of Afro-styled hair surrounding our heads while others of us pressed long manes of blonde, auburn and red hair on the ironing boards in the dorm. And we danced to a different beat. We listened to different music. We had to be careful about what we said to each other and how we said it, lest feelings would get hurt. Feelings got hurt, often.
But then the traditions of Mount Holyoke kicked in. We were elfed. We participated in Student Government. We discussed in class. We learned to swim. We declared majors. We lingered after dinner. We elfed our little sisters. We worked on Choragus. We took a break with milk and crackers. We performed in Junior Show. We road-tripped to Williams and Dartmouth. We wrote senior comprehensives. We became worldly-wise. We created new traditions. We exchanged ideas. We became US…disadvantaged no more.
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said something to the effect that all things are in motion and nothing is at rest. You cannot go into the same river twice. To him your very presence changes the content of the river and you in the process. Likewise, Mount Holyoke changed us and we changed Mount Holyoke. Our ancient document symbolizes that legacy of the history of the Class of 1974.
