Charting the Alumnae Life Cycle: Class Notes through the Years
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In Your Own Words
Since the very beginning, alumnae have kept in touch through class notes, a distinction of most alumnae magazines. Recent survey results tell us that more than 90 percent of you read class notes in the Alumnae Quarterly.
Reading class notes from beginning to end is like reading a reverse life cycle. The oldest classes report on deaths and moving into retirement homes, and the youngest share news of first jobs and graduate studies. In between we read about travel, promotions, marriages, and growing families. Class notes celebrate small moments—alumnae connecting through an MHC Facebook group—and remarkable accomplishments, such as appointment to a state’s highest court. And notes are a source of comfort during hard times, when we read news of divorce, of layoffs, of illness, and of loved ones lost.
The work of class notes has always been done by alumnae scribes, who are tasked with compiling news of their classmates and submitting it to the Quarterly editor. Since 1917 more than eight hundred alumnae have served as scribes, a volunteer position that requires a steady commitment and receives little reward beyond our sincere appreciation. According to Quarterly records, the longest serving scribe was Marilyn Marsden Birchall ’43, who took up the pen at graduation and remained at her post until her death in 2008.
Here we share notes from past issues that illustrate the breadth of news that alumnae have contributed. We’ve included news of some celebrated alumnae whose names might be familiar, and we’ve tried to select notes that reflect the spirit and the concerns of the alumnae who’ve lived through the decades since class notes began.
Class notes is your space in the magazine, and we love to see you claim it as such. Please, keep in touch.
—Jennifer Grow ’94, editor
quarterly@mtholyoke.edu
1910s
Alumnae in the earliest notes start off with stories of World War I, influenza, and refugees. And we read of alumnae pursuing advanced degrees—a common thread.
APRIL 1917
1847 Susan (Allen) Blaisdell (Mrs. James J.) is living with her daughter, Florence (Carrier) Blaisdell (Mrs. James A.), at Fourth and College Sts., Claremont, Cal.
1872 Dr. Cornelia M. Clapp is building a bungalow at Woods Hole, where she has spent so many summers during the past thirty years.
1902 BIRTH.—To Frances (Perkins) Wilson, a daughter, Penelope, born in January, 1917.
JULY 1917
1902 Frances Perkins has for some time been doing work of great public importance in her position as Executive Secretary of the Committee of Safety of the City of New York. She has never assumed the name of her husband, Mr. Wilson, and therefore the form in which the notice of her daughter’s birth appeared in our April issue was a deplorable mistake.
1907 Alice Noyes has finished her work for a Ph.D. degree at Cornell University, and will teach in the department of Zoology at Mount Holyoke next year.
1908 Eva (Blatchford) Townsley (Mrs. Arthur W.) and her husband have a 960-acre farm in Montana, on which they raise winter wheat, corn, spring grains, and flax. They have “proved up” on their homestead and have leased an adjoining quarter section (160 acres) for ten years. . . . They have three children, George, four years old, Martin, three, and Barbara, a year and a half.
1913 The class gave up the reunion which had been planned for this year, and pledged $1,300 for an ambulance in France.
OCTOBER 1917
1845 Miss Mary Hooker observed her ninety-third birthday, August 19, at her home in Longmeadow, Mass. Miss Hooker is the oldest living graduate of Mount Holyoke and the oldest resident of Longmeadow. She is one of two surviving members of her class.
1913 Elizabeth L. Davis had a sudden and urgent call in July to a position in the Ordnance department of the United States government, for classifying and filing letters and documents. She was released from her obligation to return to the College library and began work in Washington July 17.
1915 Irma (White) White and her husband, Mr. Henry White, started early in July via San Francisco, Japan, China and Siberia for Erivan, Russia, to engage in relief and reconstruction work among Armenian and Syrian refugees.
JANUARY 1918
1916 Mildred R. Leeds is studying telegraphy and wireless in Hartford, Conn., prior to entering the Marconi Wireless School in New York City and taking the Navy examinations.
APRIL 1918
1905 Mary Macdonald has been made principal of the school in Walpole, N.H., where she has been teaching, the former principal having entered the military service.
JULY 1918
1915 Eleanor Gifford received her Master’s degree at Haverford College in June. She is the first woman to receive a degree from that college.
JANUARY 1919
1910 Marion N. Marble died of influenza in October. Miss Marble was in California with her sister and had been doing nursing work there this fall.
APRIL 1919
1898 Lillian Pettengill is one of six women of the American Woman’s Hospital Unit at Luzancy recently decorated by the French Government in recognition of their services in combating a typhoid epidemic near Chateau Thierry last fall. Miss Pettengill’s unit sailed in July, 1918; since then she has been engaged in turning a 14th century chateau into a modern hospital.
1908 Clara B. Springsteed has been granted leave of absence from the State College for Teachers, at Albany, to take up Americanization work in the State Department of Education.
JULY 1919
1907 Mabel Easton sailed August 20, 1917, under Africa Inland Mission with its general director. . . . Because of the war they did not land until February, 1918. The mission has a station at Kajabe, British East Africa, but apparently does the bulk of its work in the wilds of the Belgian Congo.
1909 Marjorie (Wheeler) Fisher (Mrs. George B.) worked during the war as an examiner of Spanish mail in the Postal Censorship Office in New York City. She sails the middle of June to join her husband in Barcelona, Spain, where they expect to live two years.
1915 Elizabeth Harding is one of two girls in a class of twenty with only four girls in all, to receive prizes awarded for the best work in certain studies, at the commencement exercises of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy.
1920s
War continues to take a toll on alumnae, who share experiences and achievements—personal and professional.
JANUARY 1921
1881 Julia (Walker) Ruhl lost her son, Henry Walker, who died at Buckman, N.M., October 31, from a severe wound received in France two years before. He was the only brother of Mary Ruhl, 1915.
Ex-1916 Me-iung Ting, who received her M.D. last June from the University of Michigan, is this year interne [sic] at the Woman’s Hospital and Infants’ Home, 145 East Forest Ave., Detroit, Mich.
APRIL 1921
1909 Noemie Garmirian returned to America on the Aquitania in January. She was principal of an Armenian school in Adana, but was forced to leave because of danger to her life from massacre and war.
JULY 1921
1898 Nettie C. Burleigh is the first woman to be elected to the Board of Selectmen in Vassalboro, Maine. She has taken an active part in the life of the community where she lives, as an independent farmer and citizen interested in furthering educational and political development of the town.
APRIL 1923
1913 Dora Bradbury Pinkham, the only woman member of the Maine Legislature, made her maiden speech in the House of Representatives. The bill that she introduced favoring the acceptance by Maine of the provisions of the Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act was adopted by the vote of 71 to 63 by the House.
1922 After a short illness Kathryn Irene Glascock died on February 23 in St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City.
JANUARY 1926
1845 The centennial anniversary of the birth of Susan Tolman Mills, the founder of Mills College, was celebrated in the year 1925 at that college.
OCTOBER 1927
1902 Emma Carr was one of the two women on the faculty of the Institute of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, held for one month after July 4 at Pennsylvania State College. . . . Emma’s subject was physical chemistry.
JULY 1928
1919 Yep, we’ve been out of college almost ten years. It will soon be time to park husbands, babies, schools, and typewriters in obscurity and take the nearest local to South Hadley. A college of new buildings, a town of new stores, a youthful student body of new ideas, a room on campus, a class costume, trim, slim, and becoming, and many familiar faces will all await you next June.
JANUARY 1929
1855 Adela Wheaton Van Bochove, now our oldest graduate, was at the polls before 10 o’clock the morning of November 4. She helped elect Mr. Hoover.
1926 Fumiko Mitani writes, “During the most part of the year I am busy teaching English in a girls’ school in the suburb of Tokyo and looking after my two sisters and one brother, who are in Tokyo now, although I must say that (thanks to Heaven!) the life in Japan is never so busy as in America. . . . I think the Americans are crazy in their busy-ness.
1930s
The current events mentioned in this decade—the Dustbowl, the rise of Hitler, and birth control clinics—soon will be embedded in the history of the time.
FEBRUARY 1932
1901 Friends of Caroline Boa Henderson and anyone interested in the farmer’s financial plight will be moved by her article, “Bringing in the Sheaves—1931,” in the November Atlantic Monthly. She tells, with brevity and vividness, of the harvesting of their Oklahoma wheat crop, of some of her thoughts during the strenuous harvest days, and the depressing outlook all wheat farmers are facing.
NOVEMBER 1932
1932 Marion Corson is doing “personal contact” work for the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company in Springfield, Mass. She telephones people all day to get names and addresses of out-of-town friends or relatives to make little personal directories for each customer. Marion says: “It doesn’t have a chance to get monotonous because every person I call is different—some are ‘swell’ and some hang up on me.”
1932 Ruth Pratt went to Connecticut State Summer Normal School at Yale this summer. Now she is busily engaged in looking for a job—public school music, insurance, bank, department store—anything!
MAY 1934
1929 Virginia Apgar received her M.D. in June from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. On October 1 she began a two-year interneship [sic] at the Presbyterian Hospital, New York.
MAY 1935
1899 Adaline Hume Rowe is professor of modern languages at Columbia College, Columbia, S.C. She writes: “I am leading a busy life. After my children were grown I went back to study. My husband is dean of the Engineering school here at the State University, so I live right on the campus. I took an advanced degree in modern languages, majoring in German. I was asked to substitute at a girls’ college four miles from Columbia for a year and they liked my work in German and made me head of German, then head of the modern language department.”
1929 [Betty Parks] and Marge Murray were in Germany last summer, and Betty has written us some of her impressions and experiences. . . . “At first it was a bit of a shock to be greeted upon all occasions with ‘Heil Hitler’ and a raised right arm.”
AUGUST 1935
1926 Margaret Richter Wendell wrote in April from Greeneville, Tenn.: “At present most of my pediatric practice (in which I hope some day to specialize) is within my home, in the shape of a captivating two-year-old son. . . . My other interest is a brand-new birth control clinic, which we opened on October 26, 1934. It is the 148th in the United States, but only the second in Tennessee. . . . The need is terrific.”
FEBRUARY 1936
1912 Mina Merrill Selee and her husband Mr. John A. Selee adopted two little boys (aged five and seven) last March and are still trying to get used to the new order. She writes: “Mothering and editing are not exactly compatible but I manage to do both, sometimes alternately, sometimes simultaneously.”
1921 Edith Archer Amsden has had her hands full with a measles epidemic at Hanover. Due to the shortage of nurses, she was called in to help as she had had a nurse’s aide course and 150 hours at the hospital. She gave six hours a day for three weeks to the hospital, and kept house for her husband and 12-year-old daughter. . . . Besides her nurse’s aide work, Edith’s interests are a Red Cross surgical dressing group, hospital auxiliary work, and school and church interests.
1936 There have been two letters from Kitty Ketcham who is an Army nurse with the 39th General Hospital somewhere beyond the Pacific. She writes, “We have at last moved into our own hospital. It is beautiful. We have double rooms and furniture enough so that we can unpack for the first time since we’ve been in the Army. We have abandoned our mess kits in favor of divided trays, so I no longer have to decide whether I want my salad mixed up with my dessert or with gravy on it. It’s almost too good to be true.”
1940s
Alumnae continue to write about their parts in the war effort while sharing personal achievements of work and family, too.
MAY 1943
1918 Katherine Woodruff, manager of the Oneonta, N.Y., office, US Employment Service, is a member of a commission of women leaders of labor, management, education, and civic affairs, appointed by the state industrial commissioner. Their duty is to advise on the growing problems of women in war industry and on necessary changes in legislation protecting working women during the war and setting peacetime standards for after the war.
FEBRUARY 1944
1915 Dora Mae Clark, our vice president, belongs to the Motor Corps at Wilson College and drives an emergency ambulance which is a milk truck in ordinary life. “In the dead of a winter night it is rather hard to get dressed and run a few blocks to the station where I pick up the truck and drive through wet and blackened streets to the central control rooms for whatever orders await us.” The relaxation in air raid drills is a relief to her.
1941 Alice Van Ess joined the WAVES in November and proceeded to Northampton for training as a candidate for a commission.
MAY 1944
1933 Wonder how many of us heard Janet Brewster Murrow speaking from London over CBS on Feb. 27? She gave a swell talk about the American boys she had seen in the British hospitals she had recently visited. Most of them were there with just the ordinary run of illnesses and only a small percentage were war casualties. The boys are well cared for but all so eager to talk to someone from back home!
1941 Barbara Skirm is working for the Heyden Chemical Co. on the manufacture of penicillin.
AUGUST 1944
1929 Eleanor Thomas is with the WRA at Manzanar, Calif. She started there as a teacher to 50 Japanese evacuee youngsters and now, with two Japanese assistant teachers, has a special class at the hospital working with all types of handicaps. Eleanor enclosed excerpts from a letter from Helen Gaw Lin. Helen and her husband, a Yale graduate, are both teaching in Chungking. She writes that prices are 600 to 800 times their normal level and even with two incomes the Lins are having a hard time.
1938 Madeline Sampson Kapinos [sends] news of Grace Lee. “By going to Columbia summers Little Lee was able to get her B.A. from Mount Holyoke on Founder’s Day 1937 and her M.A. from Columbia in June 1938. Then Grace returned to China to give her services to her people. She worked in Shanghai and Hongkong [sic] for service agencies and the Red Cross and worried about being unable to speak freely of the dangers she could foresee. Then she went to Chungking to work with Mme. Chiang Kai-shek. Her home was destroyed by Japanese bombs and once her bomb shelter was the object of a direct hit. Fortunately she got out alive and continued to manage the placement of hundreds of refugee children in homes, schools and farms.”
FEBRUARY 1945
1908 Catharine Hagar Barton’s son Ted was killed in action Oct. 15 in England. . . . He had completed 25 missions as a radio operator gunner on a Flying Fortress and held the Air Medal with two oak leaf clusters. Besides his parents he leaves his wife Anne.
1950s
Yet another war, this time in Korea, continues to affect alumnae and what they share, and there is plenty of personal news—from marriages to professional accomplishments.
MAY 1953
1922 Our deepest sympathy to Sue Greely Wheatly, who lost her son in Korea last fall.
1940 Acquisition of a doctorate, a husband, and a job is reported—belatedly—by Betty Belcher Yudkin. Betty completed work for her Ph.D. in chemistry at Northwestern in September, 1951, and received the degree last June. She was married in December, 1951, to Warren Yudkin, a Yale Ph.D., who is teaching biochemistry at Northwestern. Her job is research work for the Evanston Dental Caries Study. According to Betty: “This is one of the communities where sodium fluoride has been added to the water supply in the hope of improving the dental health of the populace.”
1952 Carol DeMar and Ellie Romig are teaching at the American College for Girls in Istanbul, Turkey. Carol writes that they are both keeping busy with classes, learning Turkish, and seeing much of the country. They spent the mid-semester vacation touring Greece and Crete. Ellie recently gained fame, when Mademoiselle featured her in their job notes column.
FALL 1957
1903 Ethel Green Lincoln writes that Marion Bittner, the younger daughter of Ethel’s daughter Betty (MHC ’30), is entering Mount Holyoke this fall and has quite a college pedigree, as she is the 18th member of the Green-Lincoln family to go to Mount Holyoke.
WINTER 1958
1933 Virginia Hamilton Adair is now full-time assistant prof. of English at California State Polytechnic Coll. The Adairs’ older son Robin has just graduated from boot camp in San Diego. Douglass III, 14, and Katherine, 13, are in high school. She writes that she had a day with Dora Jones Tanner last summer.
1957 Marriage announcements appear to have won the primary spot here; now that we have our B.A. an MRS. sounds awfully good! Under the heading of fall brides we find Diane Backus, who was wed Oct. 12 to Lt. Charles Wingard, USAF, and Betsey Hartshorn, who, the same day but many miles away, became Mrs. Robert Nebesar. Bob is an intern at a Denver, Colo., hospital. Ann Fleet’s marriage to Pfc. Clement Malin took place on Oct. 26, and the happy newlyweds are now in Texas, where Clem is stationed. Two weeks later, on Nov. 9, Sheila Langert and Franz Schneider took their vows. Franz likewise bears the title of Pfc.
1960s
In a decade of dramatic change, class notes reflect updates that have been prevalent since the beginning—those of home, work, life, and death.
SPRING 1965
1953 Jean MacMillan Howell sends “greetings from Saigon, where life goes on quite pleasantly despite what you may be reading in the papers. It is really an odd feeling to be so close to a war (we can hear the mortar fire every night) and yet be so completely untouched by it. Sometimes I feel there must be something wrong with busily planning children’s birthday parties, ordering new curtains and trying to balance the books of the Internat’l Women’s Club, but these and similar activities fill most days.
WINTER 1966
1957 Peggy Ayars Laidman writes that she’s in the rut of homemaking, child-raising (Melisa, now almost 3, not previously announced in this column), volunteer work, etc.—and admits enjoying it.
FALL 1968
1966 Every issue I seem to have to bring you some sad news. Sharon Willett Serrem’s husband Mark was killed in Vietnam. This kind of tragedy always brings the war closer to all of us, and we send Sharon our sympathy at her loss.
1970s
Alumnae news reads overwhelmingly of their places in the work force.
SPRING 1971
1941 Katie Roraback has been in the news almost daily for several weeks in connection with her duties as defense attorney for Black Panther Ericka Huggins. Recently she took part in a seminar sponsored by the Yale Co-education Office on the subject of “Women in the Law—Trial Lawyers.”
1946 Dr. Emily Fergus’s (Mrs. James Merritt) sister Nellie Smith ’41 wrote news of Fergie and her family. Last year Fergie was one of 30 women sent by the US State Department to Russia and various Iron Curtain countries on a cultural exchange program. . . . She felt that medical facilities were “somewhat less up to date than ours.” In Nov. Ferg attended a meeting of kidney specialists—her field—in Washington, D.C.
SUMMER 1972
1945 Marie Mercury Roth saw her youngest child Nancy off to first grade and “the perfect job just dropped in my lap.” She teaches quiz and lab for beginning chemistry in the U. of Wisc. Center system, a group of two-year university centers where the basic courses are taught and which feed into the four university campuses.
1959 Nita Melnikoff Lowey and Steve live in Holliswood, N.Y. where Nita is president of the Parents Association at the school her children (Dana, Jacqueline and Douglas) attend. The Loweys travel abroad often with the children.
1980s
Alumnae share stories of fighting back, winning awards, pivoting, and continuing to achieve. It could be any decade.
WINTER 1989
1953 After more than a decade with the New Haven Register, Joan Message Barbuto was forced out of her med. reporting job when a chain took over the paper last year. Joan sued for sex and age discrimination and won a settlement—a year’s salary and 15 years of paid med. benefits. She now is a consultant, doing a report on parental leave, for the Bush Center for Child Development at Yale.
1969 Now that daughters Emily and Carolyn are 12 and 10, Gerry Lessey Pas wants to trade in her part-time, flexible, low-pay career for a more challenging, responsible, and remunerative way of work.
1971 Wendy Wasserstein has a wonderful new play called The Heidi Chronicles which opened at the Playwrights Horizon, NYC, in the fall. . . . It has been predicted to be one of the major hits of the season. The first 6 weeks were sold out if that is any indication.
1973 Glenda Hatchett Johnson has been promoted to manager of public relations at the world headquarters of Delta Airlines in Atlanta. . . . Glenda, who spoke eloquently at Mount Holyoke’s Atlanta sesquicentennial regional conference on being a young black female professional in the South, is active in community affairs.
SUMMER 1989
1963 Ordway Clifford Sherman resumed single status 2 years ago after a 22-year marriage and has found that life after divorce has its plus side. Ordway lives in NYC and works part time in financial PR. Daniel, 17, is at Salisbury, and Charles, 13, is at Buckley.
1964 “I actually have a business card with my name on it,” writes Katherine Pfeifer Mack from Takoma Park, Md. “It says ‘Research Admin., Digene Diagnostics, Inc.’ which means I am in charge of the documentation that goes along with the research of the company in developing and promoting DNA pre-tests for viruses and other bad things. I even own several business suits—quite a change for this medievalist cum folkie.”
FALL 1989
1930 Speaking of workplace wonder-octogenarians, perhaps you remember Alice Hastings Gaylor, expert in reading. She has completed 33 hours and the practicum for a career in public health ed. Until licensed for that, she works 30–40 hours a week as home health aide for OMNI in New Haven.
1970 After working for over 11 years as a clinical psychologist, primarily with children, Cindy Farkas Levinson is working as a neuropsychologist with head-injured adults. She had 2 years of postdoct. training from ’83–’85 in neuropsych., focusing on understanding brain behavior relationships. For the past 4 years she has worked part-time to be with son Richard, born April 4, ’85.
1990s
The world is changing with perestroika and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and alumnae continue to connect and to achieve.
SUMMER 1990
1951 Edythe Cudlipp Lachlan gave a fascinating report of her ’89 trip to Europe/Asia. “Encouraged by perestroika in Russia and what looked like democracy in China,” she joined a tour which included both countries. The group was in Samarkand when the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square. “With fingers crossed, we flew on to Irkutsk, capital of East Siberia,” where the Amer. Embassy advised the tour group not to take the Trans-Siberian Express train on to Beijing. Getting back to Moscow was a lesson in Soviet bureaucracy.
1971 Susan Snow’s children Corey, 22, and Heidi, 18, use her name, by their own decision made at age 7. That gives son Arin, 4, and Ariana Susan, born April 3, time to make up their minds, but they are now using the surname of Susan’s husband, Richard Bratt. Heidi was born when Susan was working on her master’s in electron microscopy at MHC, and must have enjoyed those early memories of Clapp lab, as she returns to MHC this fall as a freshman. . . . [Susan] is dir. of Emergency Med. at Cutler Army Hosp., Ft. Devens, Mass.
SPRING 1994
1958 Sue Fresh Anderson, class v.p., sent me an article from the Newark (N.J.) Star Ledger, which pictures US District Court Judge Maryanne Trump Barry in chambers and announces her appointment by Chief Justice William Rehnquist to chair the Comm. on Criminal Law of the Judicial Conf. of the US.
1960 Amidst the predictable headlines of natural disaster and figure skating intrigue, “Women’s Colleges Find a New Popularity” proved a compelling front page piece in the New York Times (Jan. 15). Our very own Liz Topham Kennan, reflecting on a resurgence in applications unprecedented in the last 20 years, remarked, “After the Ivy Leagues and other colls. went coed in the ’70s, there was an expectation that the world of equality had come, that there would be a level playing field for men and women in educ. But in fact, the stereotypes have not been broken. The millennium has not come for women’s educ. in a coeducational setting.”
2000s
Alumnae share stories of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina, and the Internet takes its hold in life and on the class notes page.
WINTER 2001
1949 Maryanna Meyer Ware, still working as a copy editor, now works for a publisher of 2 magazines about the Internet. “I managed to be hired without an age-revealing resumé,” she writes.
1984 Kamila Nasir Ud Deen Mazari is co-runner and part-owner of an elem. school in Karachi, Pakistan, that she helped set up in ’97. She does the curriculum planning, conducts teacher workshops and loves interacting with the kids. She says MHC “gave me the confidence to do what I am doing today.” Kamila has a photo of Lower Lake as her computer screen-saver.
SPRING 2001
1977 Debra Martin Chase . . . “just wrapped up production on a movie for Walt Disney Pictures. It’s called The Princess Diaries. . . . I am generally very happy in life, having at long last learned that balance is key. Although I, like most people, could not wait to rush through coll., I nostalgically remember the simplicity of those days.
FALL 2001
1990 Erin Ellia writes in response to our plea, “My biggest news this year is that my student loans are paid off! We went to New Orleans in Sept. and Vegas in June, and we’re going to Istanbul for a few weeks sometime this fall. Traveling is what I do with any spare dollars.”
WINTER 2002
1951 Exciting news from Elly Ernst Thompson, who informs us that daughter Holly Thompson ’81 has recently published Ash, a novel set in Japan, where Holly now lives with her family. Elly has visited her twice, taking extended trips to Thailand and China.
2000 Natalie Wagner witnessed the first plane hit WTC tower one as she ascended the NYC subway. She thankfully connected with Molly Thomas, Amy Pete, and Anne Rockwood during the day. Natalie and Anne had walked over the Brooklyn Bridge to muse at NYC’s beautiful skyline a few days prior; ironically, Alix and I had done the same on Sept. 10.
SPRING 2006
1993 Big news was sent in by Susan Baker Manning. “I was recently thrilled to make partner at my law firm, Bingham McCutchen. Although my regular practice is intellectual property litigation, I’ve spent a huge amount of time in the last year working on a pro bono case on behalf of several men who are imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. . . . This is hands down the most challenging and compelling case I’ve ever had. Beyond that, my wife Kate Manning (Smith ’96) and I are expecting our first child in March. We’re thrilled.”
FP Christina Montalvo ’01 in Baton Rouge, La., working on Katrina/Rita recovery, was assigned to the Baton Rouge Long-Term Recovery Team working with community and city-parish leaders on long-term plans for East Baton Rouge Parish. With an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 residents who will call this area their permanent home, Nina’s expertise with “proposing some ways for them to increase housing units, while beautifying their city and neighborhoods, redeveloping their downtown, and so much more” is the focus of her work.
SUMMER 2006
1978 Carol Higgins Clark’s new book Hitched came out this spring just in time for your summer reading list.
FALL 2006
2006 Liz Mullin and Lauren Duffy ’03 were married on Aug. 5 at Abbey Memorial Chapel. It was quite the MHC affair, with over 11 different classes represented, and close to 40 MHC alums and students. . . . After their vacation/honeymoon in Provincetown, Mass., Liz started graduate work at Springfield College in sports psych.
WINTER 2007
1974 Cathy Trauernicht invented Ramp4Paws. . . . She writes: “After 10 years of dreaming and planning, my initial foray into entrepreneurship is going very well! I’m selling my patented dog ramp via the Internet (I even had a sale to England!), and through local DC-area retailers.” One of Cathy’s dog “testers” is Chessie, the golden retriever of Potomac, Md., neighbor Kathy Sheehan.
1989 Diana Nixon Fischer wrote in that, “after years of painful and failed infertility treatments, my husband James and I filed for adoption, only to find out 3 months later that we (well, I) were pregnant! Karl Cooper Fischer was born on May 26, ’05, 6 weeks early, but healthy and wonderful!”
2010s
In the current decade, the news alumnae share is resonant of the past ten decades and continues to feature world events.
FALL 2010
1949 Barbara Weiss Blumfield is on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, and has not been directly impacted by the oil spill, but worries about it, as do the rest of us.
WINTER 2012
1972 In June 2011 Marcella Croce (CG ’72) successfully organized in her hometown of Palermo, Italy, a mini-reunion of MHC alumnae—mostly foreign students—who lived in Dickinson Hall.
SUMMER 2016
2015 The 2015 class scribes would like to wish the class of 2016 some hearty congratulations on their graduation! While it may be hard to believe, class of 2015, we have now been college graduates for over a year. In that time our classmates have explored vast stretches of both the physical and the professional worlds.
This article appeared as “In Your Own Words” in the summer 2017 issue of the Alumnae Quarterly.
July 14, 2017
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