Add/View
Comments

Mini-Reunions: See Your Pals More Often

From on-campus visits to Las Vegas blowouts, classmates are gathering in ever more diverse locations and vowing to continue the tradition the following year. Organizers know that in between official reunion years, mini-reunions are a great way to stay connected with classmates who are dispersed geographically and professionally but remain united emotionally.

Women from the 1940s and 1950s are most active in organizing mini-reunions, says Joni Haas Zubi, associate director of classes and reunions. Their generally flexible schedules allow them to meet on campus, midweek, and during the school year to drop in on classes with current students, considered a particular pleasure. Overnight stays are usually spent at Willits-Hallowell Center, and meals are scheduled to include talks by faculty or staff members.

This past fall, more than forty 1950 alumnae came back to campus for their second, two-night mini-reunion. “The immediate contact with students was particularly meaningful to us,” said Nancy Marks Perkins, an organizer of the event. “Two students came one of the evenings and talked about their work, and what they’re planning to do in the future. It was wonderful.”

Younger class leaders have more of a challenge finding just the right mix of location, activity, and duration as over-scheduled lives can easily result in get-together burnout. Turning fifty together could be a great hook, thought Ginny Layton-Leal and Cynthia L. Reed, 1980 copresidents. Think ahead, they encouraged classmates in a letter on their class Web site, “Dream about the perfect event to mark your fiftieth and invite an MHC classmate or two to join you.” Also in the works are gatherings at Reed’s beach house, a trip to Las Vegas, and a ski trip.

Coming back to campus, gathering in hometowns, and traveling to tourist-oriented locales all have been on the mini-reunion schedule of the class of 1974. A questionnaire sent to classmates helped structure the offerings and in the last three years, alums have gathered in Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York City, and a spa in Mexico just outside of San Diego.

“They’re a blast,” says Jane Homan Antin, class president. “We always have new people but also people [who’ve gone] to many mini-reunions because they’ve had such a good time.” The one rule she impresses on organizers is that events be relatively affordable— offering inexpensive housing, reasonably priced restaurants, and a weekend schedule, so people don’t have to take a day off work.

Members of the classes of 1946 and 1947 had another idea: last year they climbed aboard the MS Maasdam in Boston, and headed to Montreal via Bar Harbor, Maine; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Quebec City. Wrote travel agent Jean Johnson King ’47 of the thirty-two-strong group journey (photo above): “Lovely trip, lovely weather, and of course the excellent camaraderie between MHC uncommon women and their mates grows stronger and stronger as we edge into the eighties.”—M.H.B.

Photo of class of 1950 alumnae examining notices of current student activities during their fall mini-reunion on campus, by Fred LeBlanc