If you’re new to our flamingos, read on for an article that was published in an edition of our class newsletter, the Flamingo Flyer.
Where Did All Those Pink Flamingos Come From, Anyway?
As the Class of 1966 gathered for the Class Conversation on the Saturday morning of our 20th reunion, Marion Meschter Kane rose to speak. She and her family had been living on Mount Desert Isle, ME. She mentioned that she had experienced a bad patch in her life and work not long before the 20th Reunion, and this had been noticed by her family and friends. On a blustery cold January morning she awoke, looked out the window, and was amazed to see a pair of splendid pink flamingos, apparently installed in her garden during the night by an unknown perpetrator. Initially Marion was appalled by this obvious breach of good taste. As the Maine winter wore on, snow piled up until the birds were up to their little pink necks.
As we flock together once again to celebrate our Wellesley 50th, it has been our delight to learn that the collective noun for a group of flamingos is “flamboyance”.
Marion died in 2012. We will always miss her, but her memory lives on...in a flamboyance of flamingos.
Marion began to look forward to seeing the flamingos for a daily dose of therapeutic silliness. Her children picked up on this, and began to embellish the flamingos with sartorial fillips such as sunglasses in the summer and mufflers in the winter.
The lesson she learned from this pink flamingo phase in her adult
life was not to take anything, including herself, too seriously. The class of 1966 found this idea to be irresistible, and immediately voted to adopt the pink flamingo as our mascot.Recollected by Suzanne Storey Speaker, with help from Barbara Elden Scavullo and Bo Thorne Niles (For the story of the pink flamingo in American culture, click here to see the obituary of its creator.)
Finishing the Future
Those of us who attended the class meeting at our reunion in 2011 heard Marion again, for the last time. Click here to read her text.
Flamingos at Our Fiftieth
Check out the story Reunion flamingos survive hacking, achieve immortality as museum display.