​WHAT WERE YOUR FRIENDS LIKE IN COLLEGE?
PROMPT #5
​Diana Alexanian suggested the following to help stir your memories:
 Special incident with a friend? Friend who was special because of similarities? Differences? Travel with? Continued relationship with?  
I wanted to say a tribute to my bestie in college, Lois Gaeta. As an Oklahoman , traveling by train home to the midwest was not in the cards on holidays. But Lois always invited me to her home many times! 

Her parents were wonderful sweet people. Her Dad saw to it that I saw Marlon Brando on Broadway and had green lasagna...a first at Mama Leone's restaurant.--and much more! They gave me a great introduction to the delights of New York City. 

Her mom's spaghetti sauce (Katerina Gaeta's fabulous cooking!) was my first kept recipe! I have enjoyed that recipe for 70 years.  
Without Lois and her family's generosity, I would have been lost  on many a holiday during college.


​Wendy Loyd Hall
Mary Owl(March, 1936 to October, 2016), in her quiet way, persists in my memory. An American Indian, member of the Cherokee Nation, she grew up on reservations.

I wonder what she was thinking as she traveled from Montana to the east coast through land that had once belonged to the American Indian. They lost their lands, were brutally treated, decimated by our diseases, put into “prisons” with the poorest land, doomed to become powerless, dependent on the whims of politicians, and reviled by most of the country. The Cherokee “Trail of Tears” (1839) in which 25% died being moved from the east westward was only a taste of their bleak future.

When Mary came to Mt. Holyoke, she was soon to come to realize that Native American rights and concerns were not on anyone’s agenda. A total absence.

I remember her incredibly straight posture. She was a super smeller: she could smell food, flowers and specific people much sooner than the rest of us.

Her dad became the first Indian U.S. Superintendent of Indian Affairs. She asked me to summer with her at the rez, where a job would be waiting for me. My parents, who needed a babysitter for my toddler sister, thought otherwise. I couldn’t go.

She transferred to the University of Idaho where she met her husband, had a loving, successful marriage, had children, became a teacher, nurse and musician.

Her obituary reads “Mary learned to live in two worlds gracefully, fusing her Native American upbringing and heritage with life off the reservation.”






Alice Czyz
My friends at Mount Holyoke were very similar to my friends at Scarsdale High School. In some instances they were the very same people since 12 of us from high school went on to MHC.
Diversity? What was that? We all looked the same and were as homogenous a group as possible. Not to say that was bad; it was just the “way it was”.

Here I am 70 years later and most of my good friends are still my good friends from high school and college. As one of our signs from reunion said, Freshman Dorms—Enduring Bonds, and I feel that is so true. Our class is a very close class and I think it was fostered by our wonderful freshman dorms which promoted class affinity and made finding new friends so easy. I still have trouble understanding why Mount Holyoke resists this platform.
All these many years later our class still refers to the fact that she was in Porter or she was in Brigham when referring to classmates. It was part of our identity.

I feel very lucky to be able to still be close to these wonderful friends who were such an important part of my young life. In all of the countless new people that have come into my life during these many years in both work and play, my early classmates are still tops in my book.

Wink




I arrived on campus, sight unseen, knowing nobody, finding myself living in a strange environment for a city girl, yet having no doubt in my mind that I had made the right choice. I had attended a girls’ high school in The Bronx, Walton High School, which was totally integrated by multiple races and ethnicities. It had a student body of close to 3000 students. Arriving in South Hadley I was thrust into a uniquely different environment, socially, personally, and academically.  

I made friends easily in Porter and was happy to meet people whose backgrounds were different from my own, yet in some ways similar. The differences among us did not seem to matter as we developed our friendships. In time, classes soon diverted us from social interactions as we prepared for academic learning.  

I was enrolled in Miss Haywood’s physiology class which started up soon after orientation. Miss Haywood was in the habit of calling the roll at the beginning of each class before she started instruction. At the end of the first week, a student (class of ’54) approached me to say that she had heard in the roll call that my name sounded as if it ended in yan (ian) and asked if I were of Armenian descent. I was; she then explained that she was as well. We shared our common stories of families surviving the genocide, being first generation Americans, and feeling lucky to be part of a renowned college that included an intellectual community of women. Our heritage drew us together, and she became one of my best friends while in college and after. We remained close friends until her passing in 2016. 

 Aram Saroyan wrote in one of his short stories: “You have no idea how good it is for an Armenian to run into an Armenian in some far place of the world.” We were not exactly in a far place, South Hadley, but our feelings of solidarity and camaraderie, resulting from our ethnicity, created a bond of incomparable friendship.

Diana Alexanian Jalelian


 PROMPT...#6
​I enjoyed meeting so many friends at Holyoke.Still in touch with my roommate Mary Hall Turner. I was her bridesmaid and remember my dress -- pale lilac silk with a deep purple velvet collar that tied in the back. I was Anne Garcin Wasson's bridesmaid also -- she and I stayed friends until her unexpected death earlier this year. Another friend whom I had the pleasure of meeting up with later in life was Anne Orvis Lucas. one of the funniest people I ever knew. She and I met up again when my husband and I were posted to Montreal,where Ann and Ian lived. The four of us had so much fun together. Later on, we enjoyed meeting up with Ian and new wife Sylvia. I had not known Sylvia very well in college, but thanks to our continuing friendship with Ian we've had the bonus of enjoying our friendship with both of them. Also Carol Comly Orvis -- great fun at reunions with her and Ken.

Still in touch with Barbara Wells Folsom. I visited her in England when she was living in Leeds.

The friend I've stayed closest to is Wilma Gladstone Wieche. We were inseparable when we both lived in New York in the late 1950's. Met every Saturday for lunch and shopping at Lord and Taylor. Scoured the Sunday NY Times for info about plays we wanted to see and then wrote in for cheap tickets -- yes, they existed in those days. Took a trip to Cape Cod one summer -- I was driving and she was supposed to be navigating. She said to turn left. I said "Left? We'll end up in Canada. Let me see that map." She had it upside down. She was relieved of navigation duties and allowed only to tune the radio. Her parents were wonderful to me when I lived in NY -- had us both over frequently for Sunday dinner. I was a guest at her brother Gary's bar mitzvah -- seated in the front row with the family.

In later years we got together with her and her husband Bob when they visited London, Sadly Bob, a great guy, died in 1998. Still continued to meet up with Wil -- once when visiting Arizona, where she and Bob had a condo, and on two recent trips to New York, when we've met for dinner --once with Peter's and my brand-new daughter-in-law -- they immediately hit it off -- both dog lovers. By the way, she's read my mystery novel and enjoyed it.

While I was writing this, all I could think of was -- how lucky I've been to know such terrific people.







Sallie Barr Palmer
WHAT WERE YOUR FAVORITE MOVIES WHEN YOU WERE
 IN HIGH SCHOOL OR COLLEGE
AND WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER MOST ABOUT THEM?

While in college, several of us used to enjoy going to the movies. Somehow the theater in Holyoke seemed to get more than its share of Hammer House of Horror films. Why we submitted ourselves to these awful films is beyond me, but at the time, we got a great kick out of them, By the way, my all-time favorite film is Casablanca, especially Claude Raines's performance "Shocked! Shocked!"
Sallie Barr Palmer
Thinking back at the millions of movies I saw in my younger days three stand out but all for different reasons. The first was Good News with June Allyson and Peter Lawford…I thought he was a dreamboat! And it was all about college and it seemed so exciting!

The next was State Fair. I think I saw it in eight grade but, believe it or not, it was brought back to Skinner while we were at college. A group of us went to it all having had such fond memories of this film. OMG it was hysterical! The dresses were unbelievable, the dialog was so corny it made us laugh out loud in the serious parts and it was a real wake-up call. I think we had all matured a bit.

The third one that stands out was Singing in the Rain which was such fun. It was very memorable because Pat O’Keeffe, Denny Edgar and I saw it together in New Rochelle while home for a break. When we left the movie it was dark and it was raining and the three of us
went twirling down the street holding onto the street lamps singing our hearts out. Ah, those were the days!

Wink

The few close friends I made at Holyoke remain very special to me. But while thinking about college friends it struck me that over the years whenever I came in contact with a classmate, whether I remembered her well or not, there was always a certain bond. I think that that affinity is what makes Mount Holyoke in general, and our class in particular, so unique. 
Sue Nutter Keller
I remember Rear Window and The African Queen well. My husband and I watched them both, among many others, during the pandemic lockdown. But the one movie that really stands out is Kind Hearts and Coronets. I was so entranced with my date that evening that it was years later when I finally realized that Alec Guiness played all of the parts. P.S. I married my date of that evening and yes, we did watch Kind Hearts together again last winter.


Sue Nutter Keller
Why did you pick your major, and if you could do it over again, 
would you pick it again? Why or why not?
Prompt # 7


My major at MHC: Political Science

Why did I choose this major? I did not have a career in mind for which any major might have prepared me. Like a majority of my classmates in that generation, I took for granted I would be a married woman, have children, and a husband who would support our family. 

As a Sophomore, I really enjoyed courses on European History, and the US Constitution, so I decided to concentrate in that curriculum, thus chose Political Science. It also helped that I was fascinated by two teachers: Peter Viereck, and Ruth Lawson. I loved their classes. In Junior year I absolutely reveled in courses on Philosophy, wherein I was reading works from Plato through Kierkegaard, and also a fascinating course on the religious/political aspects of Muslim history. 

I did indeed marry within a year after graduation. My education at MHC significantly made possible my literacy in the field of political and philosophical thought, from the Greeks through the European canon.

But it was an intellectual cultivation, not a gateway to employment.
So NO, I would not choose Political Science as a major today, because it never figured in my life. 

Even before college, and all through the years since, creative writing, particularly poetry, has been constant in my life. I was awarded the Louise Sproule Prize for my poetry in Freshman year, and have authored six published books over the years.

And as I reached mid-life, after children were fledged, and marriage ended, I went back to school to get a Masters Degree in Vertebrate Biology, putting an academic foundation under a passion I had nurtured during the decades after MHC: birding. I had become an accomplished field ornithologist.

As a consequence of finding my true compass I fashioned a “career” as a free-lance teacher and creator of seminars on animal behavior, ecology and ornithology. Have presented programs at nature centers, garden clubs, and conducted seminars in middle and high schools, and for adult education.
Wearing the other hat, I also have given a number of workshops in creative writing.

None of the above had anything to do with Political Science! I wonder how many of my classmates found their maturing focus in fields quite apart from their college major.

However, a final thought: perhaps my political science grounding at MHC has been the impetus for the torrent of letters-to-the-editor that has flowed from my laptop since 2016. Perhaps my anxieties, occasioned by the disintegration of governance in the interest of our nation’s people, and the politicizing of our judicial system, would not be as fervent as they are had I not been exposed to the critical understanding of political systems, both democratic and not, that my Poli-Sci. major conferred.

Polly Laszlo Brody



 
 


 Many of us would probably change our major if given the chance. Mine was English and that served me well in my interest in writing and going abroad jr. year to study in Scotland where Middle English and Olde English were subjects in the curriculum!' 

However, thanks to Lois Gaeta who urged me to take Art history soph year at MHC, I started an interest that has only grown in the many years since. I even won a second place in local gallery last year! Now I wish I had REALLY taken more art classes at MHC and majored in it too! 

Wendy Loyd Hall


While in college, several of us used to enjoy going to the movies. Somehow the theater in Holyoke seemed to get more than its share of Hammer House of Horror films. Why we submitted ourselves to these awful films is beyond me, but at the time, we got a great kick out of them,

  By the way, my all-time favorite film is Casablanca, especially Claude Raines's performance "Shocked! Shocked!"

Sallie Barr Palmer

I was always making things whether it was woodworking or knitting or any other craft…those were my sweet spots. In the back of my mind I thought I’d like to be an engineer, but in the front of my mind I really just wanted to get married and have a family. When it came time to pick a major I picked the closest thing which seemed to be chemistry. I loved being in the lab and once again making things.

Obviously I could have chosen more wisely. Little did I know that if you really wanted a career in Chemistry it involved getting a Phd. Well that wasn’t in my plans immediately after graduation. 

I did get a job straight away at Fleishman Labs and was very happy there, but my big plan had also come to fruition and six months later I was married and Mills and I were on our way to the Army in Georgia. Back then there were literally no chemistry jobs in Columbus, GA so I became a statistician having never taken statistics. Apparently my chemistry major was enough to qualify me for working with numbers.

Looking back now it is easy to know that being a Chem major was extremely hard and very time consuming. Many of my friends were having fun times and I was studying. I’ve never regretted choosing Chemistry, but I know now I would have made a different choice if I had it to do over again.

Wink

I chose colleges for their science departments because I was going to be pre-med. I majored in biology, but as we neared the end of junior year, I had completed all my medical school prerequisites and I knew I was going to be asked to do honors work. I also knew that I had no idea what I could contribute to scientific research. So I switched my major to English. 

I ended up working with Miss Horner. This waffling went on for more years: I received a masters in English from Columbia's Faculty of Philosophy, married and had a child, then applied to medical school.

 At that point, I decided to stick with literature/teaching and a number of years later cemented that with a PhD. So as it turned out, though I chose MHC for its sciences, I made much better use of its liberal arts.

Betty Krasne


MOVIES: All I remember about movies was the trouble we went to to see what were uniformly B pictures. Wil (Wilma Gladstone Wieche) said the reason she liked to go to the flicks with me was the amusement she got from my nasty comments. I agree with you about Casablanca, one of the all-time classics.

Barbara Wells Folsum