January 2010

Dear Classmates,

We send you warm greetings and best wishes for the new year. As the first communication from your new class officers, we express our appreciation and thanks to Audrey Smith-Whitaker, Sheila Berniard Burns, Jasmine Lim, Bailey Siletchnik, and Jane Desforges, who have served our class so well the past five years. We look forward to reconnecting with you and seek your suggestions for how we can enhance our connections and draw from one another as each of us faces challenges and opportunities in the years ahead.

I learned early on during our years at college the power of the Wellesley network and the warmth, sustenance, and joy shared friendships and experiences can bring. The lessons from Wellesley have stayed with and guided me since those days, and I believe can be even more valuable in the future.

It is hard to believe that we are now more than 35 years from our graduation from Wellesley. Each of us has charted different paths since then, and we continually face new issues and decisions; I am confident that we can offer much to one another from those rich and varied experiences – whether on family, career, transitions, and other life decisions.

As we enter 2010, I have been reflecting on the many unimaginable changes we have witnessed during the past decade: Our country has faced unprecedented threats and economic upheaval. At the same time, we have benefited from a most sweeping revolution in communications, which now enables us to reach out to one another and across the world as never before. We hope to take advantage of these new modes of communication to facilitate deeper connections among our class and bring us closer together.

To that end, we include below a link to a brief questionnaire to understand your interests and preferences for communications and reaching out to others in the class. In particular, we hope to find a way to communicate that affords deeper conversations and the opportunity to share experiences and learn from one another in ways that a fleeting conversation at college reunion will not permit. We urge you to take a few minutes to respond to the questionnaire, and would appreciate it if you could do so by the end of February. Click here to access our Class Survey.

We also seek to be a source of support to our classmates who are facing illness, sorrow or are in need, of course with appreciation for desires for privacy. We hope you will let me or one of the officers know of such situations, as well as good news and professional achievements.

You will hear from Laurie Shahon, our class vice president, about her plans for mini-reunions for our class. As I mentioned at the reunion, I plan to host one of the first such reunions and want all of you to save the date and plan to come! It will be at my home in Bethesda, Maryland on the evening of Saturday, April 10th (beginning at 7 pm). I encourage anyone who can attend to join us – whether or not you live in the Washington, D.C. area. For those from out of town, I or other Wellesley classmates in the area will be happy to host you overnight and then share a Sunday brunch at my home.

Please rsvp to sgesserman@gmail.com. Details can be found by clicking on the Events tab on the menu at the top of this web page.

We had a great turnout for reunion last June, with 122 attending. We thank the terrific reunion committee – led by Ronda Wrenn – for creating a warm and welcoming environment and activities that made the reunion a success. We urge you to share your photos of reunion with Nancy Brown who has so selflessly agreed to continue on as our class web mistress. You can find instructions on how to do so from the Home tab on the menu bar or in Nancy's web mistress message from the Site Info tab on the menu bar.

It was wonderful to reconnect at reunion with friends from college days. But what I have found most surprising about our college reunions is the new friends I have made. It is in that spirit that we hope that those who have attended reunion will reach out to your friends who have not and urge them to reconnect and join us at the next reunion. We will talk more about that as we approach our next reunion.

Please send Nancy Brown nbrown@alum.wellesley.edu your suggestions and ideas for new content that you believe would be of interest to classmates. Our website can better serve our class if it reflects your input.

I feel fortunate to work with a terrific group of officers whose messages to you can be read by clicking on the Officers tab on the menu along the top of the web page.

I wish you all a most happy and fulfilling year. I look forward to many connections and to seeing you on April 10th.