Wells College Class of 1968 Reunion

Marilyn Desevo Remembered By A Friend in New York

Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:45:07 +0000

I first met Marilyn when she was introduced as my team supervisor one
month after I just started working for the Administration of Children’s
Services which was then in 1988 called Special Services for Children.
I was thrilled to have Marilyn as my supervisor. I was still a rookie
and my previous supervisor was indifferent.

Marilyn had a casual style of working and probably living. She never
made me or anyone feel uncomfortable. If we had a problem with a case, she
was very helpful and understanding, When I got promoted as a supervisor myself,
I think I copied some of her style.

I never socialized with her outside, but at work we talked a lot about
things ranging movies to politics. Marilyn did have a circle of friends from work with whom she stayed in touch socially to the end of her life.

Before and after her retirement in September of 2005, I would often talk
to Marilyn about the absurdities of our agency. She was glad she was gone
when I would tell her about the latest nonsense that was going on.

When Marilyn retired, she was already diagnosed with liver cancer but
she never told me. She told me she was ill but not how badly until the last few
months of 2007. However, when I spoke to her, she was always upbeat. Never
dwelling on her dire condition until she had to. I knew how sick she was when
a friend of hers, who also retired, mentioned it to me. I agreed that I
would keep that information to myself.

I spoke to this person because I faxed my resume to him since he had a
fax machine and Marilyn said she would forward it to someone she knew at New
York’s Human Resources Administration. At that time, everyone’s job at ACS was
at risk of being lost or replaced and she was trying to help me find a new
one if I had to.

In January, while she sadly was dying, but didn’t realize how soon, I
commiserated with Marilyn over the sudden death of a second brother of mine in
17 months. I didn’t expect it, because it wasn’t Marilyn’s style but she sent
me a sympathy card. A month earlier, she sent me a Christmas card.

Marilyn wasn’t particularly excited about Christmas, but she was
enthralled by Halloween. She loved having bats by her desk and wearing a witch’s
hat. I wish I had pictures of that.

Marilyn was someone who dressed down. A sneakers and jeans person. There
was a very brief period when I worked for her that she showed some flash
and wore dresses. I would even tease her about it. I guess she wore them
because she lost a little weight. I remember telling her that I didn’t realize she
had a waist. She wasn’t overweight at all. She just wanted to lose a few
pounds.

I know that at some time, I think it was in the middle of her ACS career,
Marilyn did a job change and worked for DEA but didn’t care for it. She
thought they were sexist, but she didn’t seem angry about it.

When something silly at work happens, I wish I could pick up the phone
and speak to her and I’m dismayed that I can’t. I guess I still need time to
get over her loss. I’m sure there are other things about Marilyn that I could mention, but
then this could go on forever.

Thank you for wanting my thoughts.

Vincent Adrien

Sad News

Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:41:33 +0000

Hello classmates. An effect of having a blog is that our audience includes millions of readers in the blogosphere and random connections can result. I was contacted recently by a friend and former co-worker of Marilyn DeSevo who chanced upon our blog entry on finding lost classmates. I had named Marilyn in that post. He broke the news to me over email that Marilyn had died this past February.

I have informed the College and we’ll remember her at the next service of remembrance when we are on campus.

This friend and I have had some electronic correspondence and I asked if he’d be willing to share a reminiscense in her honor. He said he’d be happy to do that and that I could use his name. So in the next post, I’ll share his words with you.

1514 Views Now

Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:19:00 +0000

Hello-in case anyone is interested, we have enjoyed visits from approximately 100 viewers in the last week according to the blog statistics. I live in hope that someone new will post a comment, or get in touch with me to register to become a contributor. The more the merrier.

Here’s a question for you…how long should I leave our reunion blog up on the web? I would really like to know what you think. Please comment.

Also, did you see the archival photo of some of our classmates in the latest Wells Express? Interesting, n’est-ce pas? You saw it here first!

1,427 Views Now

Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:15:57 +0000

Our numbers keep climbing as we begin July so people have not lost interest in this resource yet. Each time someone posts new photos, our viewer numbers really spike. Let’s see what happens with Joanie’s album. I predict another spike!

An Album from Joanie Norris Daurio

Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:05:52 +0000

Greetings All-This is a note I received today from Joanie and she gave me permission to share. with everyone. Enjoy!

Hi, My Dears -

Here are my photos – had difficulty organizing them.

Joanie

You’re invited to view these photos online at KODAK Gallery!
Just click on View Photos to get started.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=q70dn2x.46epqqx5&x=0&y=-k46lkt&localeid=en_US
If you’d like to save this album, just sign in, or
if you’re new to the Gallery, create a free account. Once you’ve
signed in, you’ll be able to view this album whenever you want
and order Kodak prints of your favorite photos.

Enjoy!
Instructions: Click view photos to begin. If you’re
an existing member you’ll be asked to sign in. If not, you can
join the Gallery for free.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Register.jsp

Questions? Visit http://help.kodakgallery.com.

————————————————————
The KODAK Gallery Customer Service Team
Phone: 800-360-9098 / 512-651-9770 Outside of the US and Canada——————————————————

If you cannot see the links above, copy and paste the
following URL directly into your browser:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=q70dn2x.46epqqx5&x=0&y=-k46lkt&localeid=en_US

1,351 Views So Far

Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:57:26 +0000

June 10th was the reunion blog’s busiest day ever, so people are still reading what we write here. I invite more of you to sign up as contributors if you have not done so yet. Deder and Audre have joined us now, so a warm welcome to both of them!

Based on your comments to me when we were on campus, (as well as some of you who wrote me email messages but could not come to campus) I think there are some more of you who are going to weigh in soon. I look forward to your voices and more photos, including my own. I am still learning digital photography and I haven’t made an album of the shots I took while I was at Wells. Barb’s work will be an inspiration when time allows.

I just wish we had an audio file of our singing session in the Leach living room on Saturday night. I’d post it here in a minute. Nancy’s guitar playing was beautiful. It really took me back to being about nineteen years old. Thanks again Nancy.

Just touching down

jandeder — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:44:27 +0000

Carroll – - I made it through the labyrinth of getting myself recognized by the blog-gods!!! Just back from the end of my journey, which started at Reunion two weeks ago.

So glad I could make it, even if only for the last day. Great re-connections and some relatively new connections!. Merry Pillon, I loved our dining room delve, didn’t realize we had some very important things in common! Carroll, our seed duet is germinating, I know it….. Willy, it was so great to have time. Kippy, we had a double header, which I treasured. I would say that we are aging gracefully and with style and a twinkle in our eyes.

It’s nice to have another place to spill over onto, and I shall be doing so – - once I’ve

gotten unpacked, out from under mail ugh and re-grounded here on the left – - and very DDDDRRRRYYYY at this point – - coast.

In the interim, here is a little haiku:

science building shines

Cayuga pretends to care

timeless Aurora

PS I didn’t have a big charge about co-ed-ness, being ultimately a pragmatist; however I found that it felt GOOD to have themale energy there. It was anything but dominant. Which is as it should be, eh?

hugs to all

Jan the deder – - Barb – - GREAT pictures! LOVE the one of the Bridge.

South American Greetings

Audre & Dimitri — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 01:15:59 +0000

Hi Guys,

I couldn’t come to our 40^th, it was just too geographically inconvenient to hop over for it. Dimitri and I are in the midst of our South American Explorations (at that time we were in Brazil, actually). As you may know, Dimitri and I met on a blind date in 1989 in Los Angeles. We moved to DC (for work) in 1990 and to Jakarta, Indonesia in 1993 (also for work). In 1995 we started to travel and we liked it so much we retired and have been traveling 365/24/7 ever since (having sold our houses and all our stuff).

Our traveling lifestyle doesn’t allow use to carry paper photos so Dimitri has created a photo website for all of our snaps. In 1993, the two of us went to our 25^th Wells Reunion and if you click here you can see all of our photos from that (really fun) event.

We also have all of the photos on the website from our pre-merger lives. If you click here you can see all of the snaps I have from our 4-year Wells experience.

And, of course, we’ve started a blog about our travels. Have a look, it’s at http://travelingloveaffair.blogspot.com/ or click here, if you’d prefer. And, of course, look at all of our photos at http://aledm.fototime.com

We are, of course, sorry that we missed the Reunion. We’ll hope to catch up with you sometime, somewhere in the world. By the way, we’re thinking that we’re going to spend the November ’08 to April ’09 ski season in Colorado skiing at Vail or somewhere else nearby where we we can find an apartment to rent. Does anyone have any ideas for us? (And, let us know if you have plans to be there too.)

Well Guess What?

Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:59:26 +0000

1226 is our new statistic. Yesterday was our busiest day EVER on the blog. 57 readers visited our site yesterday. Thanks again Barbara.

Barbara Altimier Gressman is Awesome!

Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:11:35 +0000

http://picasaweb.google.com/BAGressman45/20081968WellsReunion

Classmates: Please have a look at what Barbara has done for us already! She asked me to share her album with our blog readers. What fabulous pictures. Thank you so much Barb. Good job!