Classmate News

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Congratulations to Susan Rieger on the upcoming publication of her third novel, Like Mother, Like Mother. Coming October 29, 2024, this novel is published by Penguin Random House. Allegra Goodman, best-selling author of Sam, writes: “A novel in the spirit of Meg Wolitzer, Jean Hanff Korelitz, and the great Nora Ephron.  Who says comedy is dead? It’s all here – the joyful craziness, the wisecracking newswoman, the family secrets with a twist of lime.” 

A member of the Class of 1968, Susan received her undergraduate degree from Mount Holyoke College where she majored in English Literature. Susan is a graduate of Columbia Law School, and has worked as a residential college dean at Yale and as an associate provost at Columbia. She has taught law to undergraduates at both schools and written frequently about the law for newspapers and magazines. Susan is the author of The Heirs and The Divorce Papers. She lives in New York City with her husband, the writer David Denby.

To read a summary and more reviews of Like Mother, Like Mother, visit https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/589146/like-mother-like-mother-by-susan-rieger/

The College and Alumnae Association are offering many different opportunities to get to know President Danielle R. Holley. On April 8, 2024, several members of the Class of 1968 Zoomed into “Professor” Holley’s Politics 351 course on The Supreme Court and Civil Rights, a session she shared with alums as part of the College's annual Building On Our Momentum (BOOM!) Community Day. Over the past months, President Holley has visited with alums across the country, from Montclair, NJ to Chicago and Seattle. As noted in the article below, four D.C. area classmates participated in the March 14, 2024 Careers in Public Services event in Washinton, D.C. where they met up with President Holley before her talk to current MHC students and alums.

Keep an eye on this link to upcoming regional events to hear more about the path President Holley is charting for our College’s future and why she believes “the future is now.” The Laurel Chain, the Alumnae Association’s monthly e-newsletter also provides updates about President Holley, as well as MHC faculty, students, alums, and interesting College news. Virtual Webinars with MHC professors and other experts are publicized through the Laurel Chain with links to the registration process. 

To stay connected with the College and classmates, be sure the Alumnae Association has your current email address and other contact information. Once you’ve logged into the Mount Holyoke Alum Directory, you can do an Alum Search to find contact information including an email address for any classmate or alum who’s indicated they “wish to receive email from other members”.  Be sure you’ve checked the boxes under Email Preferences so you receive Alumnae Association News & Events (that includes the Laurel Chain), Class News & Events (specific to the Class of 1968), and any other types of email communications from the College of interest to you. The menu also has a link to Change Your Password.

If you have difficulty logging into the Alum Directory, click here for Contact support or call 413-538-2735 weekdays.

To find convenient links to College Resources, just click on our Class of 1968 website tab “Class Info”. And let Nancy Huttemeyer Davis know yourClassmate News so we can share it with our classmates on our website, and stay connected! 

PHOTO: Judy O’Connor Hayes, Nancy Huttemeyer Davis, President Danielle Holley, Susan Clark Iverson, Margaret Neuse

The Mount Holyoke Club of D.C. invited alums in the Washington, D.C. area to a special gathering on March 14, 2024, to meet President Danielle R. Holley and participate in the annual Careers in Public Services event, an initiative of the College’s Weissman Center for Leadership. Four classmates, Margaret Neuse, Susan Clark Iverson, Judy O’Connor Hayes, and Nancy Huttemeyer Davis attended this special event that filled the National Press Club Ballroom. 

The four classmates were warmly welcomed by Weisman Center Director, Amy Martin, Professor of English and one of our Class of 1968 Honoraries. They were seated at a table with three of the twenty-four current MHC students who traveled from South Hadley to Washington, D.C. to connect and network with alums about their varied interests in public service.  Meeting and conversing with even a few of the students imparted a strong sense of optimism not only for the future of the College itself but for our society as a whole.  

All attendees listened intently as President Holley shared her personal experiences as the twentieth president of Mount Holyoke, her pride in the students, faculty, and alums, and her joy in teaching a class this spring semester on the Supreme Court. President Holley noted the students at the evening event would be visiting with Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson the next morning before heading back to campus. 

This Alum and Student Event was hosted by the Alumnae Association, Office of Development, and the Weissman Center for Leadership. President Holley will be visiting more alumnae groups across the country. Be on the lookout for a visit sponsored by an Alumnae group in your vicinity.  

PHOTO: Susan, Nancy, Professor Martin, Judy, Margaret  

Holly Hannah Lewis  shares her Christmas 2023 Letter, adding this February ’24 update: I forgot to mention that the college friend we visited in Florida at Christmas is Francie Fernald.  In March we’re going out to LA to spend a week with Sally Davis Yeatman.   Ties that bind!

Happy Holidays to All! December 2023

This year certainly opened up more possibilities than 2022. We were blessed by the gathering of both Hannah’s and Sage’s families on four occasions. Starting last Christmas, when there was both snow and Covid, we hopscotched around the events with various ones of the ten of us sick in bed until we were all well enough to go bowling together right before New Years. 

Then in June we all arrived in Washington State for a Lewis family reunion and niece’s wedding on Bainbridge Island. We went on with just the twins for a few days on Henry Island in Puget Sound at a friend’s lovely wood house in a grove of Douglas firs. In July, Sage and his girls came back for some summer-in-Minneapolis time, and we went up to Gull Lake for the second year in a row. Sage, Aleigh, Maisie, and Beatrix were back for Thanksgiving for six days with more expeditions and craft time. 

In May of this busy year, Barrs and I went to Scotland for three weeks. We visited Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast, and the Highlands, including the Isle of Skye (we are big Outlander fans), which were wonderful. But the centerpiece was a Gathering of the Clan in southwest Scotland, where 15th century Sorbie Tower attracts Hannahs (and Hannas and Hannays) from around the world. At our ancient stronghold, we met kinfolk and later toured Northern Ireland with a subgroup to see where one branch of the Hannahs settled after life in Scotland didn’t go so well anymore. It was the people in this bunch who continued on to the US one hundred years later and from whom I descended. I kept looking for someone who looked like my dad, and on the tour I found one who came pretty close...Desmond Hanna, a minister from Northern Ireland, all decked out in the Hannah tartan. 

The rest of the year was happily filled with good health, good friends, Minneapolis/St. Paul concerts and plays, taking care of and enjoying the twins, and walking and biking along the Mississippi, which runs in front of our condo. 

For Christmas, Hannah’s crew and we are going to Fernandina Beach to see another dear college friend [Francie Fernald] at her new house. 

Dear God, we hope that 2024 brings some lasting solutions to the world’s many horrendous problems. But from whence cometh our help? Our best wishes to you...

Barrs and Holly

To read Holly’s complete letter, click here:  Holly Hannah Lewis Christmas 2023 Letter

Freelance Writer, international peace worker, and classmate Tatiana Androsov writes, “I was stunned to receive a small manila envelope with inside it completely unexpected news. I was the 2023 5k age group winner of the North Texas Turkey Trot! It was the women’s seventy-five (75) to seventy (79) group. Guess there were not many of us. Perhaps, I was even the only one? It didn’t matter, it made me smile and laugh. You see, I have never participated in a race.” 

Tatiana started running at age 19 when her friend invited her to go around Upper Lake. That was just the beginning, as Tatiana adds, “I’ve literally run all over the globe north to south from Greenland to Cape Town and the south of Australia, from east to west from New York, France, to India, the Philippines, San Francisco and, of course, now Dallas, without mentioning all the places in-between, that is the places that work and life have taken me to.”

To read the full account of Tatiana’s 2023 Turkey Trot experience, visit https://louiseleiften.medium.com/running-at-seventy-six-8a9e726f7d0e

Congratulations to Tatiana Mazenko Androsov, recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Lifetime Achievement Award, one of the 2023 UN Day Global Leadership Awards presented October 17, 2023, at the awards ceremony held at the Fort Worth [TX] Botanic Gardens. “The UN Day Global Leadership Awards highlight exceptional leaders and organizations moving North Texas forward toward positive change”.  https://unausa.org/event/dallas-un-day-2023/

“We recognize these remarkable individuals for their accomplishments and contributions, not only to North Texas, but the global community,” said Avalyn Pace, president, UNA-USA Dallas. “To our 2023 Global Leadership Award recipients, whose work helps thousands of people to live better lives, thank you for contributing to the UN’s mission to ensure a brighter future for all people.” 2023 UN Day Global Leadership Awards

Tatiana writes, “Sometimes I wonder how in the world I could have lived what I have lived and done what I have done, thriving in a man’s world, when I came into it as the girl child of World War II refugees who had little before that war and lost everything by the time the war was over.  We moved from a mining town in Belgium to a factory town in New Jersey, but somehow I made it to the women’s Ivy League, Mount Holyoke, and a dozen years later to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.  Even more incredible, I was greeting ambassadors when I was twenty-one and, as a United Nations consultant, sitting and discussing with a president when I was just over forty.”

As the author of several published works, Tatiana suggests, “I would love for our classmates to read Before They Cut the Ivy.  It is a picture of Mount Holyoke just as the world was changing with the Ivy League opening its doors to us. Further, I would love it if our women read Choices, a rather true picture of UN work in the field in the 1980’s and even the 1990’s, again when conditions for women were just really beginning to change in a positive direction. Mangoes and Blood has been made into a ten-minute short film.” Depicting an international hostage situation in the 1970’s, this novel “mirrors, in some ways and not in others, what is happening right now.” 

To learn more about Tatiana’s accomplishments and many writings, visit https://www.tatianaandrosov.com/

After serving as our Class President from 2018-2023, Nancie Fimbel has continued her service to the Mount Holyoke College Community as a newly elected member of the Board of Trustees. 

Nancie received a bachelor's degree in English Literature from Mount Holyoke and Ph.D. in Religion and Literature from the University of Chicago. She spent most of her career as a professor and administrator at the College of Business at San Jose State University, teaching courses such as Business Ethics and Business Communications. She spent nine years as an administrator in the dean’s office, primarily as associate dean but also as interim dean, managing 8000+ majors and 100+ faculty. Her last position at SJSU was as a development officer for the college. After leaving SJSU, she served as Assistant Provost in the United Arab Emirates. Since retiring, Nancie has served on the board of the Center for Employment Training, a school that trains electricians, truck drivers and medical coders, and as newsletter editor of the Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association of SJSU. She enjoys art quilting and hiking. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/directory/faculty-staff/nancie-fimbel-68

Shelley Weiner Sheinkopf ‘68, retired radiologist and medical executive was featured in a recent “Donor Story” from Mount Holyoke College’s Office of Gift Planning.

Shelley worked with the College to endow a fund to support the Art Museum’s future acquisitions of Judaica. Her planned gift will eventually fund a professorship for the teaching, development and enhancement of course offerings through a Jewish lens.  Shelley is a member of the Mount Holyoke Board of Trustees.

To read the full story, visit https://giftplanning.mtholyoke.edu/donor-stories/shelley-weiner-sheinkopf-68