50th Reunion Speech
Class of 1949

Wellesley College
Reunion Weekend
June 6, 1999

Diana Chapman Walsh
President
Wellesley College

I'm delighted to welcome so many members of the Class of 1949 back to campus -- and the many family members and companions who are here tonight as well.

We are so pleased to have you all here at Wellesley to celebrate your 50th Reunion and isn't it wonderful to have the whole campus to ourselves? I especially relish the chance to end the weekend by hosting this special dinner to rejoice in Wellesley with the 50th reunion class.

And what a rejoicing it is. Does it seem possible that 54 years ago, your class -- 407 young women strong, from across the continental U.S., the territory of Hawaii, and Argentina, Chile, China, Cuba, France, India, Iraq, Korea, and the Philippines -- came to Wellesley to begin four years of academic study?

As a member of the Class of 1966, I can't personally share your recollections of Wellesley in the late-1940s. But, we've done some research in our College Archives and talked with several of your classmates to try to get a closer look at the class of 1949, whose members have such nicknames as Aubury, Beachy, Beanie, Bish, Buckie, Bunnie, Dodie, Dreese, Fletch, Flodie, Fluffy, Mickey, Mudge, Pete, Shorty, Siggie, and Toofie, just to name a few. (Whew...)

While we can't claim to have unlocked all your secrets, we have learned about some of the experiences you may have had at Wellesley -- at an extraordinary time in the history of the country and in the changing roles of women.

Just as you arrived on campus in 1945, World War II came to an end. What an exciting time for you all, not only starting out your adult lives at College but also sharing in the country's euphoria at the good news. It must have been a year of fresh beginnings -- for you and for the young men who were beginning to return from war-torn Europe, Africa and the Pacific Rim. How many of the guests of 1949 in the room tonight served in the war?

That first September day in 1945, you arrived in Wellesley, dressed to the nines, found Noanett, Little, Eliot, or the freshman house in the Vil to which you were assigned, and unpacked your trunks. You registered for classes, biked to Hathaway House to purchase a mountain of books, and hunkered down to study and learn how to become a "Wellesley Girl."

According to many of you, President Horton was a source of great inspiration that year and throughout your time at Wellesley: the epitome of what an educated woman should be. She "graduated" with you -- finishing her term of office in 1949, and I know (because Margaret Clapp graduated with my class in 1966) that you have always felt a bit of proprietary ownership of "Milly Mac."

When you arrived as freshmen, she was just back from her war-time job as head of the WAVES and newly wed to The Reverend Dr. Douglas Horton. She once again turned her full attention to Wellesley, making you all the beneficiaries of her wisdom, humor, and vision.

A symbol of strength and service for women, both then and now, she well deserved the obvious pride that your class took in her. Your classmate Jean McCouch Bell, for one, recalls Mrs. Horton's "steady faithfulness to her own faith," and still treasures those "nuggets of wisdom" she dispensed to Wellesley students in Friday morning Chapel.

I can only imagine what it must have been like to have known "Miss Mac" -- as you did. I have read up on her life, though, and enjoyed many of her writings. A woman who lived, always, in the present and worked, always, for the future, her sense of humor, whimsy, and joy were legendary. The first time she visited Wellesley (as a member of Vassar's triumphant debating team), she found the campus (so she later recounted) "attractive but a little too hilly."

She enjoyed telling the story of a visit to the campus by "one funny little man ... a very affluent relative of a good alumna," who was thought to be a good prospect for a major gift to the College. After taking him on several campus tours and expounding at length on the College's pecuniary needs, she thought she had sent him away ready to make a substantial donation. Instead, she told the students at their commencement luncheon that year, he wrote her a follow-up letter which read "Dear Miss McAfee, Will you marry me, and if so when?"

On another occasion, she said something that has resonated with me:

"I ought not to be representing scholarly women. I might have once done it because once I was a college professor, but then I became a dean and at every dean's convention ... I heard the definition of a college dean, you know, as a person who doesn't know enough to be a professor but knows too much to be a president. And then I became a college president."

So it was your great good fortune to laugh with and learn from Mrs. Horton. And your Wellesley instruction came in other, less palatable, forms, as well. Amalie Moses Kass (today's Serene Stackpole Award winner -- congratulations Amalie) "laid bare" for us the trauma of posture pictures and speech classes and remembers taking an honor code test on the do's and don'ts outlined in the 'Gray Book.' Although Amalie was later to administer the test to other students her senior year as a House President, her hallmates "got her back" by making her sing the Alma Mater in front of everyone -- she claims she didn't then -- and still doesn't -- know all the words! But we now know she danced solo and is still up to that.

Then there was the physical education regimen... Several of you insist that you gained at least five pounds that first year here - maybe it was the trips to the Well for a Wellesley Special or to Seiler's in the Vil. Perhaps those required gym classes, including "Fundamentals of Movement and Conditioning," did have their value after all, although one of your classmates -- who will remain anonymous -- called gym "a crashing bore." "That's why I took up golf," she told us.

Another '49er recalls doing her calisthenics, lying on the floor, breathing deeply, and hardly having the energy to pick herself off the floor at the end of class! Then, of course, there were the long walks or bike rides back to the Vil after swimming class, hair almost frozen by the time you arrived at your freshmen house.

I'm already several minutes into this talk, and we've hardly mentioned classes! As Alice Warner Jones put it with a touch of irony, "I guess I did do some academics, too." Although I certainly don't doubt you did more than your fair share of thinking, writing, calculating etc., I do feel compelled to share another of your classmate's memory of knitting in class -- possibly to relax the mind?

But seriously, on the academic front, you labored through your required courses, including English Composition your first year and Biblical History, with Mr. Denbeaux and Miss Mowry, your sophomore year. Wellesley then, as now, was blessed with many truly inspiring professors. I'm sure each of you has stories to tell about challenges and inspiring moments in other classes -- philosophy with Mr. Proctor; political science with Ms. Ball; history with Mr. Schwartz, astronomy with Mr. Duncan.

The rigors and attractions of academic life might have been enough to keep most people busy for four years, but you and your Wellesley sisters, with your probing intellects and global concerns, clearly felt an obligation to help the world recover from the war and set it on a new and more peaceful course. This spirit was captured in an article in the Wellesley News soon after the armistice:

"the ... responsibilities ... we learned to recognize during the war have by no means ended... We must now go forth as teachers, social workers, doctors, lawyers, scientists, reconstruction workers, and/or as wives and mothers to help rebuild the ravaged areas of the world, to solve the complex problems of domestic reconversion, and to advance the ideals for which the war was fought."

Indeed, you did find ways to carry Wellesley's motto into peacetime, donating to fund drives and benefit charities all over the world; "adopting" children in post-war France; even purchasing a milk-goat for a village in Japan. You also served on social service committees and discussed such issues as world citizenry, the formation of the United Nations and the state of Israel, and the consequences of the atomic bomb.

Even with all of this -- with your efforts to balance study, physical well-being, and service to the world beyond Wellesley, I'm told that you found time as well for lots of fun. In the post-war years, the whole country came alive again -- there were bicycle and skiing trips; excursions into Boston for Harvard football games, MIT dances, and theater and symphony performances; comfortable chats over coffee in the Well; and rounds and rounds of that worthy form of procrastination -- bridge.

I'm sure today's students would be amazed to hear the variety of entertainment from which you could choose -- from on-campus dances, to Carousel weekend skiing competitions, to taking to the air with the Flying Club.

Several of you spent a week together in the summer between your sophomore and junior years to write your Junior Show at the home of Betty Ann Metz. Tell me if I've got this right - "Queendom Come" told the story of the Idealists of Bubbaloon (Wellesley, I assume) who were challenged by -- but eventually won out over -- the straight-laced realists, the Pinmakers.

The fall semester of your Junior year was a busy one. Your professors presented the Faculty Show, which was put on only once every four years. As part of the entertainment, Mrs. Horton joined Harriet Creighton in Botany, Margaret Torbert in Music, Alice Colburne in History, Charlotte Williams in Political Science, and Mary Chase in Admission, to perform a skit "taking off" on Wellesley girls.

At last, senior year -- a year that I'm sure you found as full of anticipation and nostalgia as did the seniors who graduated just last weekend. Your minds were probably full of questions about the future, questions not so different from those that were on today's seniors' minds.

But unlike today's seniors, you had one more hurdle to cross before you could go out into the world to begin finding answers to your questions. You had to put your four years of learning to the test -- literally. The dreaded General Examination in your major -- a hurdle that was still in place when I graduated in 1966 -- fell by the wayside a few years later. Current students are always horrified when I tell them what they have narrowly missed.

Your senior year was a time, as well, of more pleasant traditions. Your class reigned supreme at Stepsinging all year, and at the last one, processed to Severance Hill to echo the "tra-la-la's" back to the class of '50 as they took your place on the steps.

There was also Hoop Rolling in May (Doris "Dreese" Pinanski Scheff confirmed a report that one or more of you also wheeled baby carriages along with your hoop that year). Jean (Jorge) Levering Brown won the real race, though she was as yet, according to the Wellesley News, "unengaged and unpinned." I understand that an MIT man tried to claim her title and was dumped into Lake Waban for his troubles. We had an impostor this year, with a wig and a full disguise, and he, too, went for a dunking in the lake. I thank, you, by the way, for the two hoops you bestowed on me during the parade -- a full sized one and the cute ornamental one you wound on a ribbon around your necks. It looks like it was made of an embroidery hoop. Is that right? What a clever design.

Tree Day followed in mid-May, with a pageant and the annual mad dash in which the freshmen and sophomores raced for the freshman class tree. While the unpredictable New England skies cleared enough for Grace Gere Eddison and her Court to preside over Tree Day festivities, Float Night was rained out, as it had been the year before. I hope, though, that you all enjoyed this Reunion Weekend's tribute to Float Night - better late than never!

And then, in mid-June of 1949, the results of the Generals were finally in, and it was time for Commencement. Donning your caps and gowns, you formed a procession at Norumbega Hill to march between the rows of assembled reuning alumnae.

President Horton had returned to campus just in time to welcome your class four years before, and she timed her departure from Wellesley to leave with you, as well. In her last act for your class, Mrs. Horton delivered the 1949 Commencement Address and handed out the diplomas. I am told she gave Ruth Whitson Stokes not only her diploma, but also booties for your class's first baby.

You switched the tassels on your caps and became alumnae, bound together by that special experience that is Wellesley, and a part of this college's living memory. We salute you for having moved so gracefully and enthusiastically through the extraordinary changes of the past 50 years. You've put your minds to good use in this world.

Your class has taken on a multitude of roles -- wives, mothers, grandmothers, friends, community volunteers, doctors, lawyers, journalists and writers, artists, teachers, social activists, and many, many more.

You count two Alumnae Achievement Award recipients as classmates: Virginia Rogers Ferris for her studies in zoology and Krishna Roy Riboud, for her work in textile conservation. Neither was able to be here. Barbara Barnes Hauptfuhrer is here, a former president of the WCAA and a former trustee and Amalie Kass is a sitting trustee and former chair of NDOC.

So many of you have lived such interesting lives, and given so much. Reading through the entries in your 50th reunion record book, I was struck by how many of you started a first or second career after raising your families. Not to be left out, many of you have mastered computers and are way out there on the world wide web, though Signe Gundersen Schroedewr wrote something I have often thought in a PS to her entry: "I love my computer, though I know it is smarter than I."

Everywhere in this room are women who -- both individually and as a whole -- have risen to every occasion; who have given of themselves in so many ways, to each other and to Wellesley; and who understand that the key to happiness is the ability to be flexible (many of your entries in the record book referred to that -- and many of you commented on how blessed you feel, even as you "seesaw" [as Jane Frieder Ellis wrote poignantly] "between sadness at what you have lost and unending delight with what you have gained," -- "read that grandchildren," she added in parentheses.)

We applaud you for your wisdom, for your willingness, always, to learn new things, to take on new responsibilities, to find new passions. We thank you for sharing those experiences with us. We appreciate your gifts of dedicated service and goodwill. Truly you have served this College well.

I was touched by the bits of advice several of you offered Wellesley's newest graduates, in response to one of the questions your editors sent to you. This comment from one of you was echoed by several others: "Whatever your plans for the future, paint your pictures with broad, loose strokes. Life will fill in all the details as you go along. As an added pearl of wisdom, don't eat anything blue." Good advice from the blue class.

Your messages encapsulate so much of what the Wellesley experience is about: guiding but not molding; demonstrating but not dictating; showing students how to fly, but not presuming to tell them where to go.

It is not only for this advice, however, or for serving as role models that we have you to thank.

There are two especially meaningful and tangible gifts your exceptionally generous class has given the College: your 40th reunion gift of the Class of 1949 Professorship in Ethics, and your extremely generous 50th reunion gift (I hope you heard the gasp of appreciation throughout Alumnae Hall when your class's fund raising results were announced). Your endowed scholarship fund will make it possible for more young women to reap the benefits of a Wellesley education -- to learn to fly wherever they choose.

We thank you for returning to campus and sharing your 50th Reunion with us. It has been our privilege and our pleasure to share this beautiful weekend with you and to rejoice with you in the past, present, and future of this College and its alumnae.

I'd like to close with a poem by '49er Florence Adams Clark, borrowed from your Record Book. It's called "Reunion" and seems like a fitting end to this weekend:

This perfect time
stands still,
is present like a crystal,
burning - the years,
like birds,
flock together...
years with feathers flying,
so light
that joy leaps,
quick as love,
or rabbit's pulse
in the snow.

All good wishes for the years ahead -- may they be many and may they be filled with peace, joy and love.

Happy 50th Reunion, Wellesley '49 -- 50 in 99, hooping it up, and still going strong.

Betsy Lawson elawson@wellesley.edu
Office for Public Information
Date Created: June 23, 1999
Last Modified: June 23, 1999