Who Is Coming to Our 40th Reunion?

Some of you wrote to our class secretaries and made it official: you are coming. That list was distributed along with the letter from Rhea and me. I remember counting ten names there I think. I was sorry to see that the number was so small, but glad to see interest building.

A few more of you have written me to say you’ll be with us. That includes Barbara Altimier Gressman, Peggy Devenish Handley, Nancy Rathkopf Fallon, and Meredith Pillon. This is heartening. But I think maybe there are some fence sitters.

To you I say, re-read the letter from Rhea and me, either in cyberspace or in the snail mail version that came with the class notes. Maybe you’ll find some inspiration there.

Our blog has been visited over 400 times so far. Who is reading it? There is some interesting reading and viewing, but only a few contributions so far.

Maybe some more of you are thinking about joining us as you read through the posts and see the photos. Maybe some of you are thinking about commenting on a post. You don’t have to register to do that at all. You just jump on line, get to the blog, and click on comment if you want to write something. You’ll see that several have tried this out. Try it if you are interested.

Our numbers hit 75+ for the 25th reunion and I think that was a college record. Can you help us set a record for the 40th?

Do You Have Photos You Want Upload?

Hi All. I have about five more photos from the college archives of our class to load before reunion. I can tell that some of you are having a look because “What a Group!” has been viewed 19 times so far.

But I am thinking that you are all keepers of many more. If you are and you want to share them here, can you convert them to jpegs or pdfs and send them to me? Better yet, become an official participant here and upload them yourself. Just let me know.

Fall, 1964.

What’s the Story Here?

Another Memorable Photo from the Wells Archives!

Time to Register for Reunion!

The college’s registration form for reunion arrived at my house on Wednesday of this week; the class letter from Rhea and me with news notes collected by Joanie and Kathie came yesterday. The end of May is right around the corner. Are you coming? We want to see you. It’s not too late to make plans.

Another 1968 Photo from the Wells Archive

Reasons to Attend Your 40th Reunion at Wells

25 March 2008

Greetings from your Class of ’68 reunion chairs. We’ve had a little trouble getting it together ourselves — using email to make phone dates that were confounded by the vagaries of our lives. But here we are, ready to go, and to do whatever we can to encourage you to join us in —

OUR 40^TH REUNION

(We know. You think we’re talking about some other class. But this really does mean all of US.)

Reunion weekend is May 29 – June 1

Those of you who have been with us for other reunions will remember the unique combination of revisiting the past while making and renewing connections firmly in the present. Those of you who wanted to be there and were not able to: here’s your chance. And for those of you who can’t quite wrap your minds around making the trip to Aurora, here are some points to consider:

• Feeling swamped? Time away could do you a world of good. And Aurora is exquisite in May.

• We laugh a lot when we get together, and laughter has aerobic benefits.

• You will be fed really good food all weekend and not have to wash a single dish.

• The networking possibilities are considerable.

• Almost everyone you see will smile at you.

• Don’t worry about remembering names; we wear name tags.

• No one cares if you’ve gained weight.

• Pajama parties are not just for ‘tweens.

• Everyone is as curious about you as you are about the rest of us.

• No one else is perfect, either.

• We need each other.

• A serious note: One of the most moving aspects of the reunion experience is finding deep support and acceptance among Wells friends and acquaintances. We can both vouch for how often this has happened. Besides being a lot of fun, reunion can be transformative.

• You should experience for yourselves the positive energy at the college — and the positive energy of our classmates.

We’re setting up a contact tree so that each of you will be contacted by someone you know, encouraging you to be there for all or part of the weekend. Also, we have leaped into the 21^st century and have a class blog. The address is: http://wellscollege1968.wordpress.com/. You can go to that address and read and comment on the posts; if you want to post messages yourself you need to contact Carroll (see below), who is the blog administrator. She will provide you with easy instructions for registering as a user. Photos are encouraged on the blog, so please contribute your favorite current or historical pictures.

Hope to see hordes of you! — we’d love to break our 25^th reunion record of 75 attendees. Please call or write with any questions or concerns. See you soon.

Rhea & Carroll

Rhea Hirshman • 132 Lenox Street • New Haven, CT 06513 • 203.466.6263 (h + o) • rheahirshman@mac.com

Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson • 131 Hoffman Avenue • Morgantown, WV 26505 • 304.598.0042 (h)
304.293.0308 (o) • cwilkins@wvu.edu

Wells College Alumnae Office • 315.364.3221 • alumnae@wells.edu • www.wells.edu (click on Alumnae Association link for updated Reunion info)

A request: Please send both of us your updated contact info, including email addresses. Also please send contact info for classmates who may have been out of touch. Thanks.

Friendraising AND Fundraising

Greetings to All! If you have not yet received a letter from Rhea and me encouraging you to come to our 40th reunion, you will shortly, through snail mail, no less! The College will send it out to everyone in our class in an effort to reach as many of our classmates as possible. In another post, I’ll copy and paste that letter, just so any readers of the blog can see it here as well.

Wendy Wilson Hilty is doing a fabulous job of reminding us to contribute to the 40th Reunion gift fund if we have not already. It is important to remember that the College needs our financial contributions.

It is also good to remember that renewal of Wells friendships and reaching out to encourage new connections with classmates is what Rhea and I have promoted throughout our work as your reunion chairs. We are counting on each of you to reach out to a class mate and bring her along to join us again.

Our Reunion Fund Chair’s Class Gift Update

Dear Classmates,

Just to give you an update on our Reunion fund - -
Thanks to the generosity of a small number of our
classmates, our Class Reunion gift is up to $60,623.00
as of the end of February with 47% participation. Not
bad, but I would hope that we could do a little better
as this represents the last three years of giving to
Wells as well as this final year before our Reunion.

If you have not already done so, please consider
making a gift to Wells within the next month or so.
Just write “Class of 1968″ on the memo portion of your
check and the Development Office will do the rest. It
would be gratifying to see the participation
percentage inch up towards 100%. Any amount is
welcome to add to our goal of funding the Martin
Luther King scholarships as well as contributing to
the unrestricted use by the college. To all those who
have contributed — a huge thank you.

I look forward to hearing from you with any questions
or concerns and hope to see many of you at Reunion
the end of May.

Wendy Wilson Hilty
40th Reunion Fund Chair

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