CLASS NOTES August 2001

Hello, after a very long time! Alice Beadle Bauer has kindly relinquished the job of class Editor to me. Many thanks to Alice for her help with the transition. I hope to do as good a job as she in bringing us together twice a year.

In early June, 21 of us returned to Bryn Mawr for a cluster reunion that included the 1965 and 1966 classes. The highlight of Reunion weekend was surely our class meeting in the Rockefeller smoker, at which we discussed some of our current challenges: watching our children approach or negotiate adulthood in a world very different from our own 30 years ago; entering new careers or new marriages later in life; seeking spirituality, withdrawing and refocusing; caring for aging parents and spouses; dealing with our own aging bodies, finding ways to achieve balance in our busy lives.

This reunion brought some changes in our class officers. After many years, Terry Newirth Hirshorn retired as class President, and led the way for the election of Penny Milbouer as her successor by acclamation. Terry was an effective and caring president, who wrote wonderful class letters. Her life as an associate professor of chemistry at Haverford and a mother of two daughters connect her to campus life, and she reported the events and her thoughts in an “up close and personal” style that kept the College alive for us, too. In her 25th reunion speech, Terry recalled a College request to us as incoming freshmen to bring white gloves. Along with the gloves, Terry brought a combination of passion and practicality to BMC and to her presidency.

Terry joins Lynette Palmer Perkins as Annual Fund class co-chair. Alma Lee Carpenter continues as songmistress, and Renée Allard Betts and Elana Klausner Vikan carry on as Reunion managers into 2007. For news and snapshots of the people who attended Reunion, see the Web site
http://www.education-web.com/Bryn%20Mawr/ClassHome.html, constructed by Renée and her husband, Frank, assisted by Alice. Many thanks to all concerned for a memorable Reunion!

In other news, Terry reports the graduation, with honors, of her daughter Emily from Colgate, after which they embarked on a mother-daughter drive to Baton Rouge LA so that Emily could begin training for her job with Teach America. In another road trip, Kate Barald and son Ethan Jewett drove home to Ann Arbor MI from Portland OR, he from his freshman year at Reed and she from a sabbatical at the University of Oregon, where she used zebrafish as a model to study the early development of the inner ear.

Lynn Moody, who missed Reunion regretfully, will be teaching four honors biology classes at her children’s school in Atlanta. Lynn recently installed her full-gallery work “Sampler for a New World” at the Freedman Gallery in the Albright College Center for the Arts in Reading PA, for a show in June and September 2001.

Nancy Owens also regretted missing Reunion and the chance to hear others’ stories and reflect, but needed to stay home for the Annual Jazz Brunch to benefit the Montana Artists’ Refuge and for a visit from her year-old grandson.

Diana Gonzalez Scatton also sends Reunion regrets, because of a major reorganization in the Chicago Public School System, in which she is an administrator. She reports that her daughter, Daria, is a member of the Broadway cast of “Beauty and the Beast,” and that her son, Ernie, is expecting grandchild number four.

Renée writes that she and her husband, Frank, moved to Colorado in early 2000 and have themselves converted part of their house into a pet-friendly guest rental unit. This hard work, says Renee, “Does keep one’s focus on the myriad details to be put in place – never mind the big, honking stuff.”

Julia Badal Graf reports her retirement from the U.S. Geological Survey last year after over 20 years, and her enjoyment of a new life as a mediator and watercolor painter.

Mary Farrrell, who attended Reunion, says her life is hectic because of an impending promotion at the school where she teaches, a spring trip to France with her students, and a 17-year-old son who drives her car all the time.

Hilary Hosmer‘s father, Humphrey B. Hosmer, died at age 84 in December 2000, of congestive heart failure. Her mother, Janet P. Hosmer, “competes in slalom and downhill skiing at Vail.”

Deborah Rice reports the marriage of her older son, Peter Butler, in August 2000, in a ceremony in which the bride arrived by canoe.

Ann Livingston Holland (Faulkner), who enjoyed Reunion, is living in Bangor ME and will be starting a new part-time job in hyperbaric medicine in the fall.

Wendy Wassyng Roworth, still chair of the URI Department of Art, and Professor of Art History and Women’s Studies, is also serving as vice president of the national American Association of University Professors (AAUP) for two terms and chairing its Committee on Professional Ethics. Wendy received an NEH Fellowship in 1998. Daughter Alexis is an architect in Los Angeles, and daughter Vanessa graduated from Oberlin last year and is working in New York.

On July 8, 2001 in her mother’s living room in Oldwick NJ, Jeanne Lance married David Fleming, her partner of eight years. In attendance at the reception were Kathy Sborovy Janowitz and her husband, Jim Janowitz, (H’ford, ’67) and Diana Willis Rothman. Jeanne also saw Penny Small, Sangit and Lucy Lynch Chatterjee, and Joe and Anna Hartmann Wexler – as well as Joel and Helena Lipschutz (sp?) LeBow (’55?), who originally steered Jeanne to BMC. In early August, Andrea Saltzman held a West Coast celebration for Jeanne and Dave, in Berkeley CA.

Some post-Reunion thoughts from Penny that capture the range of our concerns: “This year has been one of stresses and delights. Reunion was one of the delights. My mother’s rapidly deteriorating condition is stressful. Gardening is a delight; I never thought I would derive so much soothing pleasure from plants. A week after reunion, Tropical Storm Allison dumped up to 36 inches of rain on Houston. We escaped with trivial damage. Other people weren’t so lucky. I’m not sure if the experience provided me with any profound insights into the meaning of life, except that escape from harm is truly random.”

This 34th reunion was my first. I was gratified that this group of intelligent women haven’t lost our passion for communicating honestly and kindly. Only now we also have a half-century of experience to help us toward wisdom. Susan Orbeton Gilpin sends her own snapshot, a post-Reunion poem,

“Mosaic:”

Seasoned and settling,
we came to reunion like archaeologists
searching for the pieces of who we used to be,
separately and together,
putting our hands in the box of shards
stirring and sifting,
bringing the pieces to light and
hoping for a clearer picture of
what was and is and is to come.

Taffy Brecht Everts
’67 Class Editor

803 Rebecca Drive
Boulder Creek, CA 95006
831-338-4899
everts@lucent.com