her very touching poems: The summer of 1945/I was eighteen that summer after VE day/When they came home/old friends and new/our energy spilling out onto the hot sand/no one knew when/ they would leave again/for another war. An August day the sea like glass/a land wind from the marsh/wrestling newspapers on the stand/ the large black headline/a picture of a mushroom cloud /the edge of darkness uttered the words /the war is over. The relationships/form on the edge of a precipice/mellowed in the endless summer days. We saw out future in the/sunsets lighting up the skies/the cloud of death/that changed our lives/a world away.
1949
✒ Betty Ann Hynes Elliott, 38 Oxford
Road, Wellesley, MA 02481, 781-2354697, baelliott2@verizon.net ¶ Ann McGrath Cullinan’s son Brian was one
1950
65th Reunion ✒ Mary Daily Neylon, 69 Viola Street,
Lowell, MA 01851, 978-453-4237, mdneylon@verizon.net ✒ Anne Swiston O’Hara, 55 Lexington Avenue, Magnolia, MA 01930, 978-525-3227, alfreda1928@ gmail.com ✒ Jacqueline Choquette Picard, 2970 Mendon Road, Unit 189, Cumberland, RI 02864, 401-658-0625, littlecho7@gmail.com ¶ As I, Mary Daily Neylon, am putting these notes
together, we are awaiting a blizzard to bring us two feet of snow. Right now I am envying all who live in the South. Anne Alfreda Swiston O’Hara has been on the phone recently and has gathered much information for this column. She talked with Mary Kilcoyne Choquette recently from her home in New Orleans. Mary’s health problems have improved and she is enjoying life.
She loves to read and recommends the latest book she finished, The Life of Fred Astaire. ¶ Terry LeBlanc Gray is taking courses with the Salem citizen group called Explorers; they listen to lectures on various subjects. Terry and Alfreda also belong to the Hamilton Hall Lecture Series in Salem, a series of six lectures by visiting professors from colleges in the area. After filling their brains with new information, Terry and Alfreda go out to lunch and replenish their appetites with good food and catch up on the latest news. Alfreda continues to enjoy her volunteer work as a visitors guide to the city of Gloucester. ¶ Cay Nolan Sokol’s daughter gave her a Kindle for Christmas and she is enjoying it and new technology. Cay, our class president, is working hard preparing for our 65th class Reunion. I hope everyone will make her hard work successful with a good turnout. ¶ Helen Harty Keough has begun to use a wheelchair now but is able to live at home. Helen has always had a positive outlook on life. ¶ Ginny Looney Weamer is looking forward to our class Reunion in May. She is in touch with Dreda Kallaher George and Jane Kraemer Dubuc who are also looking forward to the Reunion. ¶ Barbara Tyrrell Nugent has always been into exercise but even more so now for health reasons. I’ll bet all our physicians wish we were as faithful as she in that regard. ¶ Anne Stingel Bolton is living in a senior residence in Pocasset where she is doing very well. ¶ Last May I saw an obituary about a former classmate, Rilla Savage Young. Rilla, who was from Fort Kent, ME, left at the end of freshman year for UMaine at Orono. After graduation she became an airline stewardess and later worked for the Armed Forces Security Forces where she taught Russian and translated intercepted messages. Her next job was with the Pentagon where she met her future husband, Lt. Col. William Young. They settled in Redlands, CA, where they raised their family. She loved being a wife and mother. ¶ During the last ten months, Mary Daily Neylon became a great-grandmother twice adding Hazel Koch and Jack Martin to the family. Ever since I retired from teaching at Waltham High, I have been a volunteer at the information desk at Lowell General Hospital/Saints Campus and for a number of years have been a member of our parish council. Right now we are studying a document concerning the Family Synod to be held later in Rome. Good activities for keeping the mind busy! ¶ Jackie Choquette Picard is in the midst of clearing out her house in preparation for putting it on the market and moving into a new condo she has recently purchased. Meanwhile, she is spending a few weeks visiting her daughter in Texas. ¶ Our addresses are
31 SPRING 2015
of only two people in the world to know the results of the voting before the 2014 Academy Awards. Brian, a partner at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, had overseen the tabulation process along with a colleague, Rick Rosas. Brian handles complex multinational clients such as the Walt Disney Company and Paramount Pictures Corporation. During the ceremony he and his colleague stood behind the curtain at opposite sides of the stage ready to hand the envelope to each celebrity presenter before he or she announced the Oscar. The names of the winners are not written down anywhere and Cullinan and his colleague memorized the 24 winners, then traveled separately by police escort to the ceremony. They walked the red carpet before the show and attended the Governors Ball afterwards. Brian looked forward to repeating this fun duty again in 2015. His mother Ann, who passed away in 2012, is not Brian’s only Regis connection. His wife, Andrea Curran Cullinan, is also an alumna, having graduated in 1986, and they were married in the Regis chapel with Jims Murphy, Pat Foley Granahan and Leon, Nancy Natoli Fay and Charlie, and Joe and me in attendance. ¶ Our class was well-represented at the Golden Tower Luncheon which was held in the fall for the first time: Mary Breslin, Nancy Fay, Eileen Locke, Rosemary McAuliffe, Elizabeth Shatos Thompson and her granddaughter on from Spokane, WA again, and yours truly. ¶ We remembered Dot Costello Merrill and Marie Fitzgerald Eberle at the Memorial Liturgy last November. Dot’s daughter Linda, her son, his wife, and their two daughters came to the Mass and stayed for the brunch in the foyer. They greatly enjoyed meeting and hearing stories from their mother’s classmates: Cay Foley Hines, Rosemary McAuliffe,
Eileen Locke, Mary Breslin, and me. ¶ Sadly, we lost two more classmates last fall: Pat Cauley Ross and Lou Moll Dallas. Pat passed away in October after a long and courageous battle with cancer. She never gave up, attending Reunion last May and any lunch or event she could. She and Jack had just moved from the Cape to Suffield, CT to be near their daughter Cauleen, and Pat was buried in Springfield. In addition to her daughter Pat leaves a son and five grandchildren. ¶ Louise Kelley Collins attended the wake and Joe and I went up to the wake and funeral. Pat and I met when we were teenagers on the Filene’s Fashion Board and reconnected at Regis when she transferred from Trinity College in Washington, D.C. in junior year. That’s a very long time for a friendship to survive and, of course, I’ll miss her. Pat’s husband Jack passed away just seven weeks after her and was buried with her in December. May they rest in peace. Lou died in November, having lost her husband Bob several years ago. She leaves three daughters, one son, seven grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. Claire Eremian Scully, who was a bridesmaid for Lou and remained close to her all these years, told me that two of Lou’s very talented grandchildren sang at her funeral. Lou was another loyal alumna and classmate who served as our co-president with Claire. Sadly, Joanne Walsh Ochs passed away in January. She and her husband Joseph had lived in Wells, ME for several years. Please keep Pat, Lou, Joanne, and their families in your prayers. ¶ I recently came across some interesting facts from the ’40s, 1949 to be exact: the minimum wage was raised to 70 cents an hour, Harvard Law School began admitting women, and a firstclass stamp cost 3 cents! And on that note I’ll sign off. Enjoy the summer and let us hear from you, please.
Flag Indicates Reunion Year