In Memoriam

 

CLASSMATES WHO HAVE DIED SINCE OUR 65TH REUNION

or whose notice of death was received after reunion

Mary Backus Rankin Mar. 9, 2020

Barbara Speegle Clark May 3, 2021

Hyangju Paik Chon June 6, 2021

Lisbeth (Babs) Gamble Nichols July 2021

Patricia (Pat) Taylor Siskind  Aug. 27, 2021

Anne (Robin) McMahon Scanlon  Sept. 8, 2021               

Lois Ann Fraser McCartney. Sept. 15, 2021

Anne Rhoades Farquharson  Oct. 18, 2021

Barbara Roberts Leith Oct. 22, 2021

Kate Trynin Kestenbaum Oct. 26, 2021

Mary Rose McAlenney Weiland Nov. 10, 2021

Marlene Allyn Murphy Nov. 11, 2021

Florence Redding Jessup Nov. 18, 2021

Carol "Bunny" Canaday Brown Dec. 7, 2021 

Beth Montgomery Heath Jan. 8, 2022

Ellie Zurn Hutt  Jan. 23, 2022

Barbara Booth Moses  Feb. 12, 2022

Nora Macfarlane Nevin July 27, 2022

Ellen Birk Kallman  Aug. 2, 2022

Mary Russell Oleson  Oct. 18, 2022

Audrey Stearns Schoenwald  Oct 23, 2022

Judith Lees DeJong  Oct. 27, 2022

Cynthia Bryant McCue  Nov.14, 2022

Elaine Smith Amendola  Nov. 21, 2022

May Defandorf Dasch   Dec. 22, 2022

Carol Pyne Schreiber  Mar. 17, 2023

Sylvia Lucas Miller   Apr. 7, 2023

Jean Toman Andrews  Apr. 29, 2023

Sherry  Scott Putney   May 16, 2023

Merle Goldin Bogin  June 22, 2023

Barbara Hanna Flanigan (no date available)

Joan Mathis Scales  July 9, 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Remembrance...by Maud Hazeltine Chaplin

65th Reunion.....Sunday May 23, 2021

 

As always, when we gather in remembrance of those we have lost since the last time we were together, words seem inadequate to express our sadness.  Because words fail us, we meet here today to share the loss we feel.   We want them here.  Instead we converse with them, both as individuals and as a group, through our memories.

Each one of us  here has memories of those we  held especially close—roommates, dorm mates, those whom we know through our majors, those we became close to after we left Wellesley—and there are some whom we knew only slightly.  But with all of them, we shared a life—those years we had together at Wellesley, when we laughed, worked, talked and talked some more, got excited together, sometimes got sad together, rejoiced and lamented, sang, danced (remember "Who the Devil is the Devil?) and sometimes complained loudly and vigorously about what was going on in the world.  

These moments are now memories—but all the more important for that.  We should not let those memories go—because they are memories of our shared lives, and in honoring them, we honor those whom we miss.  We grieve because they can no longer do these things—and, more selfishly, we grieve because we want them back—we miss them, we long for them, we have so much more we would like to do with them.

            And that is precisely what we should do.  One of my favorite quotations is from Gilda Radner, who said:

“I wanted a perfect ending…Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end.  Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.  Delicious ambiguity.”

            We do not know what will happen next.  But we do know that we have to go ahead, do the things that they did not have the time to do, give the love that they had not run out of when they left us.  Our remembrance is to do it for them.  Their lives will be expressed through your memory.   Your memory of them will be expressed in your lives.