E-NEWSLETTER JUNE 2024

E-NEWSLETTER JUNE 2024

Dear Sisters,

Your class officers met on April 24 with some special guests on our agenda: Kathryn Mackintosh, Executive Director of the WCAA and Emily Carey Rigdon, Volunteer Coordinator. We had invited them to help us better understand the planned (now finalized) merger between the College and the WCAA. And we were kinda sorta hoping that the subject of our 65 th reunion might just happen to come up. (See report from Reunion Co-chair Margot below.)

Kathryn explained that the merger would benefit alumnae by eliminating duplicate expenses like audit services, making them available for other services to alumnae. And reporting directly to President Johnson would allow for better alignment and coordination across departments like Communications, Development, the Centers for Women, and various program projects.

--Patsy and Vicki

Reunion 2025, our 65th –think of it!—is foremost in our thoughts. We co-chairs, Nancy and I, have been preparing for the event as much as possible. After extensive querying of past and present chairs, members and officers of the Alumnae, and officers of other classes, we have concluded that the Wellesley reunion this year for 4 and 9 classes has been a difficult affair, largely due to
building renovations on campus creating the need to use many off campus venues for meetings, dinners, and lodging.

We hope for better in 2025 as we have told the College. Recently at a Zoom meeting with the Executive Director of the Alumnae Association and another professional from the Alumnae office, we made this abundantly clear. We emphasized that we would prefer on-campus lodging and meeting and stressed the fact that we are growing older, and not quite in the same physical shape as we were 65 years ago. We emphasized that we had no wish to deal with a lot of to-ing and fro-ing on and off busses with a myriad of strange places to gather when we would rather be on our beautiful, green-treed, lakeside campus, so dear to memory, among our friends of old.

What the College has in store for us as regards the above is yet to be revealed  but we want you, our classmates, to know we are working on it.
-- Margot

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⚡️BREAKING NEWS FROM ROZ WALTERS WESTMORELAND⚡️

My granddaughter Grace Westmoreland will be attending Wellesley and playing on their soccer team. She will be a STEM student and had a nice conversation with Amy Banzaert a few weeks ago.

--Roz

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SPECIAL GIFTS FROM DIANE SILVERS RAVITCH

“I’m very happy to announce that my sons have endowed a professorship in my name. It will be called the Diane Silvers Ravitch ‘60 Chair in Education and the Common Good. It is my hope that the chair will defend public responsibility for public education and support the importance of high-quality teacher preparation.

It was announced at Commencement this year that the chair has been awarded to Dr. Soo Hong, a professor in the Education Department.

https://www1.wellesley.edu/education/faculty/hong

Over the past decade, I sponsored an annual lecture series (the Ravitch Education Lecture) at which truly outstanding writers and activists have spoken about the crucial education issues of our day. I’m excited that the speaker in April 2025 will be Dr. Azar Nafisi, the Iranian woman who wrote “Reading Lolita in Teheran” and other books about how literature changes our lives.

Also, over the past two years. I have written a memoir, which includes a chapter about how Wellesley changed my life. I am looking for a publisher at this moment. “

--Diane

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(💰Your donation, of any size, helps Wellesley thrive. And remember when making your gift to Wellesley, you can always direct that some or all should go to The Class of 1960 Legacy Fund. Donations received by June 30 are credited this fiscal year.)

1960 Class Officers 2020-2025:

Presidents Patsy Fogarty and Vicki Fay; Vice Presidents Peggy Cohn and Liz Karet; Secretaries Margie Arons- Barron and Junia Hedberg; Reunion Treasurer Judy Lasca; Wellesley Fund Representatives Missy Moore and Mari Wright, Reunion Co-chairs Margot Tutun and Nancy Colodny