Letters to the Editor

Studying Sustainability

I’d like to thank Steven Schott and Kalyn Kappelman for their contributions to the “Studying Sustainability” coverage in the summer 2007 issue. As an elected official in a small New England mill town, I sometimes find myself at odds with our local river advocacy group. This is particularly distressing, as I consider myself fairly conscientious when it comes to environmental issues. (My junior I.S. was titled “The Role of Christianity in the Environmental Crisis!”). Steven and Kalyn did a wonderful job articulating the complexities of class and economic viability as affected by environmental policies. Each has provided helpful language to better articulate my resistance to proposals in which all perspectives have not been considered. SALLY BUBIER ’78 MAYNARD, MASS.

The last issue was terrific, but that is not surprising, as each one seems better than the last! Of major interest to me, since returning to Wooster, were the topics chosen in the I.S. program, namely, Steven Schott’s on eco-roofs and solar panels (because of my own continuing interest in a “green environment”). Also, Emily Irvine’s on the re-emergence of small-scale farming. I have long regretted the loss to the large corporate takeover throughout the country. Any of us who have experienced life on a family farm have seen this change take place. Recently, on trips through the Wooster area, I was gratified to find that much of the surrounding countryside is still farmland and astounded at the changes at the Agricultural Center (OARDC) in the 65 years since I left campus! I hope Wayne County retains this character for many years. Lastly, your editorial on gardening and community struck home, as I left in Cleveland Heights a friendship garden that I had tended for years. One supplied by numerous friends, family members, neighbors, new- and old-passers-by, and migratory birds! Now I can only hope that a few plants will survive through the years without me.

MARY HUGHES ’41
WOOSTER, OHIO

Mothers, daughters, and I.S.

A few mornings ago, I awoke still troubled by a terrible, albeit, familiar, dream: It’s the day before spring break in my senior year, and I haven’t yet started my I.S. I haven’t even picked a topic. I’m totally panicked.

I got out of bed and went right to the closet where the old tormentor is kept. I sat down. I shuffled through the pages. I called in my six-year-old and showed it to her. We read some of it together. It was the warmest connection we’d had in days.

My I.S. topic? The interpersonal relationship between mothers and daughters.

The cost of suffering through I.S.? Nineteen (and counting) years of I.S.- induced post-traumatic-stress disorder. The cost of sitting down and sharing the paper with my daughter? Priceless.

Thank you, Wooster. (And thanks, too, to Dr. Amos Kiewe, wherever you are.)

MAURA SALINS GREENMAN ’88
POTOMAC FALLS, VA.

Preeminent Performance

As a Wooster theatre alumna, I was pleased to read the feature, “Preeminent Performance,” in the Summer 2007 issue of Wooster. I consider my theatre degree from Woo one of the best assets in my professional arsenal. Indeed, it was at Wooster that my slim talent for performance took shape, in bit parts in Three Sisters, directed by Alexander Brietzke, The Tempest, directed by the beloved Raymond McCall, larger roles in The Children’s Hour directed by fellow theatre major Greg Licht ’98, The Vagina Monologues with the Women’s Theatre Collective, an evening of women’s theatre with the same group, and finally my own Independent Study, a one-woman performance of poet Anne Sexton’s Transformations, mentored by Professor Shirley Huston-Findley. Our favorite and eccentric professor, Dale Shields, taught us acting and directing. He had two mantras: “Make it Real,” and “Throw the piano out the window!” By requiring us to memorize Hamlet’s speech to the players, “Speak the speech, I pray you…,” he taught us the essentials of performance.

It was Dale who taught me how to act, and Shirley who taught me that theatre is a team sport.

CHERYL R. FARNEY ’00
CHICAGO, ILL.

What a surprise! When I took the summer issue of Wooster from my mailbox, it fell open to its center pages, and there was my 20-year-old face right in the middle of the 1945 modern dance group photo. Other faces are familiar, but I can’t come up with names. Are any of you out there? I’m not sure the modern dance program did as much for the war effort as the ’45 Index claims, but it did a lot for me, and Miss Lowrie was its inspirational leader. She was one of an outstanding group of strong women on the Wooster faculty in those troubled days.

WILMA CONOVER REED ’46
BELLEVUE, WASH.

Firefighting memories (continued)

I read Carl Robson’s recounting of the Wooster firefighting crew (Wooster summer ’07) in the summer of 1962 with great delight. I can add two names to his list: my own and Jim Kew ’63.

Jim Bode, Jim Kew, Tom Reinsma, and I took a “drive away” car from Chicago, dropped off Jim K. and Tom in Pocatello, delivered the car to Boise, got another to Seattle (saw the World’s Fair), then worked our way back to Missoula, where most of us settled into the top floor of one of the University of Montana fraternity houses to await the first fire. But it had been a very wet spring.

We all looked for jobs, and I quickly learned that throwing bales of hay was not high on my list. I headed off to White Sulphur Springs with five or six others to load airplanes to spray the forests for spruce budworm with a mix of diesel fuel and DDT. We never did get paid, but we had free room and board and a close view of the WWII vintage aircraft and their pilots—a colorful lot. We got back to Missoula hours before we got the call for the Upper Alder Ridge fire.

As I recall, we did not climb straight up the mountain as Carl wrote—we dug a fire line straight up the mountain! I remember how quickly our communication skills improved. Our vocabulary consisted entirely of four-letter words, varying only in inflection and pitch, yet we were able to convey as complex a thought as we could muster given the heat, work, and falling snags and rocks.

The fire paid well. But the likelihood of another was slim, and many of us headed out to other adventures. Jim Kew and I decided to hitchhike to the Grand Canyon, but after two days of little progress, he headed back to Missoula. Both he and Tom Reinsma bought Honda scooters and drove them the 1,500 miles home (think August, South Dakota, a bicycle seat, and a top speed of 50 m.p.h.). I heard the scooters were sold well before Jim and Tom returned to Wooster.

I still have my firefighting boots, my helmet, and a few other souvenirs from that summer. It paid for a stereo and a subscription to the RCA Victor Record Club. But most of all, it was a wonderful adventure.

I don’t think my firefighting had anything to do with my son, Mark, moving to Missoula for grad school in geophysics more than 30 years later. But who knows....

BRIAN O’RIORDAN ’65
BRECKSVILLE, OHIO

The Forever Onward Class

When I began my term as president of the Class of 1947, some wit commented, “Congratulations! You’ve just become president of the Downhill, Check-out Class.” “Forget it,” I said, “you just don’t know the Class of ’47! We’re the Forever Onward Class.”

Thanks to Stan and Flo Kurtz Gault, ’48s, for helping make this come true. At our opening event, we were honored to have two Stans present—President Stan Hales and Stan Gault. Sally Patton introduced Stan Gault, who had begun college as a member of our class in 1943. World War II had other things in mind for him and most of the men in our class, and he ended up a member of another class. Stan assured us that he hadn’t forgotten us, however, and that he and Flo, in honor of our 60th reunion, were giving $60,000 to begin a Class of 1947 Scholarship Fund. Our reunion was off to an auspicious start.

Thanks also to the alumni staff. Sandy Nichols, Sharon Rice, and their assistants and student helpers were a joy to work with throughout the event. The debate on cloning is moot. How else to explain Sandy’s presence at almost all of our class gatherings? And how ever did Chef Ken pull off the Friday night class dinners so unflappably following an electrical outage an hour or two before serving?

It was a reunion to remember, and we missed those who couldn’t make it. To Don Swegan, the new class president: Forever Onward!

VIVIAN DOUGLAS SMITH, OUTGOING PRESIDENT, CLASS OF 1947
FALLS CHURCH, VA.