Kristin A. Lagerquist ’04
I may be the only alumna literally to bring a bit of Mount Holyoke College back home: I have a piece of my closet from 510 Ham Hall, my freshman-year room. I’m not sure why my roommate and I decided to redecorate one night in the middle of the year. After we moved around some furniture, we decided to put up pictures. Using a hammer borrowed from fellow firsties down the hall, we took out our school/money/boyfriend frustrations on our room, pounding nail after nail into the walls. We heard cracking and crumbling inside
Rachel Happe Gravengaard ’93
When I was growing up, my minister father encouraged me to build relationships with older members of the congregation. After school on Wednesdays I used to go to the women’s fellowship group. Many had gone to Radcliffe, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, etc. back in the 1930s and 1940s. One of them was the late Mary Nash Squier Gates ’36. She had a grad nursing degree from Yale, was married to a doctor, raised three children, and kept a needlepoint Mount Holyoke pillow on her couch. When I decided to go to Mount Holyoke, Mary gave me her old college notebook and her songbook, with favorites like “The Goodnight Song.” During my college years, on my birthday or Christmas, Mary gave me a Mount Holyoke Wedgwood plate. (Her mother had given them to Mary when she was in college.) After she moved into a senior community, Mary gave me the rest of her set, except for some cups and saucers, which she used to serve me tea when I visited. Through eBay, I have rounded out the set. I’m a horrible singer, so I don’t use the songbook all that much, but I do use the china, which reminds me of Mary and bonds me to the college and its history.
Dodie Hillger Merritt ’70
I may not be the only one from my class who still has her white moratorium armband (a symbol of the idealism and passions that ran so strongly in 1970 when American youths were dying in Southeast Asia), but I am probably the only one with a slightly rusted graduation tassel made of welding rods from the old sculpture studio. Someone had announced that there wouldn’t be enough tassels to go around. I think ultimately there were, but by then I’d already created my own. As a studio art major, my MHC life revolved around the sculpture studio and my sculpture professor, Leonard DeLonga. How appropriate that my graduation tassel reflects this.
the wall, but such sounds and the threat of a B&G fine were no deterrent. I hammered a nail so hard that a huge chunk of concrete in my closet fell to the floor. Neither Elmer’s nor Crazy Glue would reattach it. When I moved out of the room, I put masking tape over the hole, hoping no one would notice. I have yet to receive a damage bill, so I don’t think anyone did. The chunk makes me happy. It reminds me of my old room, the fun I had in there, and the wonderful view it had of Upper Lake and the mountains. Though I have been away from MHC for [a year], I am transported back whenever I look at the piece of my old room that now has a place of honor on my bookshelf.
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Susan B. Wait ’73
My artifact is a plaster cast of an [ancient Greek goddess] from the old College collection, which was auctioned off after the new art building was built. Sue A. Duppstadt ’71, who bought it, left it to me when she graduated. At that time, it was decorated with a stick-on mustache, an earring, and an eye patch with “Mother” embroidered on it. The bust spent some time in my parents’ basement, but I reclaimed it in the 1980s, when I went to med school. By then only the mustache remained. When I came to Baltimore for my psychiatry residency, the bust came with me, and it remained in my home until my son started having nightmares about “Big Mustache.” The bust has been in my office ever since; my patients often ask about it.
Abigail Wolff Mariani ’82
I have a metal key ring with the school seal engraved on it. I lost it, along with my room key, in the snow one winter while sledding on campus. A physics professor let me borrow a metal detector, and I found it! The number of keys on the ring has greatly increased, but I’ve carried it every day since then, a constant reminder of a magical place and four wonderful years.
Ellen Manfredonia Nutter ’64
My favorite artifact is an MHC beer stein that sits on my stovetop holding kitchen implements. The name on the back is “Pop.” My father, now deceased, was what might be called an old-world gentleman. He loved coming to campus and being surrounded by the “lovely young ladies.” His idea of a really good time was to have everyone get dressed up for him to take us out to dinner.
Catherine A. Mein ’92
I still have the basketball music warm-up tapes I used my sophomore and junior years. Every now and again, when I need a pick-me-up, I pop those tapes in. They are still great to work out to.
Kristen M. Scheyder ’92
I treasure a heart-shaped crystal box given me by the MHC Club of Monmouth/Ocean County in New Jersey. I received it at a picnic they gave in the spring of 1988 for high-school students who had been accepted to Mount Holyoke and were deciding whether to attend. That small box on my dresser reminds me of the gracious welcome the women of Mount Holyoke gave me that day, as well as of the moment when I first knew I truly wanted to be and actually was part of the MHC community.
Janet Hall Schwind ’60
In the bottom drawer of my desk I kept various kinds of paper that are mostly obsolete now—tracing paper, carbon paper, graph paper, and hotel stationery. At the very bottom of the pile is one purloined piece that has printed on the top, “General Examination, Psychology.” Each time I cleaned out the desk, I couldn’t bear to throw it out, so it has stayed there all these years. This piece of paper represents to me, even more than my degree, the effort, emotions, and culmination of my years in South Hadley.
Diane Kiffin Nardin ’80
On a shelf in my home office, I keep the black-bound copy of my senior honors thesis on the novels of William Faulkner. The thesis was the product of a great deal of struggle; completing it was a real triumph for me. It was the most significant piece of writing I had done to date. Now that I work as a business writer—ghosting pieces for others or drafting by committee—I appreciate knowing that at the tender age of twenty-one, I developed a strong argument by myself and earned the accolades of a group of professors for whom I continue to have tremendous respect. I reread the thesis every so often, and I’m pleased to say it holds up. (Of course, I’d still like to tweak it a bit!) I hope one day to write something else of similar complexity that is truly my own; the thesis reminds me that I have a precedent.
Elizabeth A. Grzeszczyk FP’87 My most treasured Mount Holyoke artifact is a Frances Perkins postage stamp. It was given to me, and all new Frances Perkins Scholars, by the late Debbie Light, who was the program’s associate director. She said it wasn’t really much at all, but it meant the world to me. It signified not only that I was now a Frances Perkins Scholar—still a dream come true—but also that I had a reputation to live up to. Each time I look at the stamp it reminds me of the opportunities, encouragement, education, and confidence I received as a Frances Perkins Scholar. I graduated from Mount Holyoke with the belief that I could achieve anything I set my mind to. Author Faye Wolfe is based in Northampton. She has kept an angel-wing begonia alive since receiving it her first year in college. 21