Letters

Thank You

For the classes of the ’40s to the ’80s, thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Your letters and cards in celebration of my 90th birthday are an enormous delight. I wish that I could write to each of you personally, to tell you what I remember about you.

I take this means instead, through the kindness of AAVC, to celebrate you, your achievements, and our extraordinary college that brought us together.

Winifred (TIM) Asprey ’38
professor emerita of mathematics and director emerita of the computer center
Poughkeepsie, New York

Re: Letters, Summer 2007

Emily Hargroves Fisher’s ’57 letter headed “Euthenics Institute” in the Summer 2007 issue of theQuarterly brought back memories—unhappy ones—of the two summers my younger sister and I spent at the Vassar Summer Institute of Euthenics. We were probably there when Emily and her sister were, in the late 1930s. I was 4 and 5, and my sister 2 and 3.

We lived in Cushing, in single rooms, and saw our mother for an hour a day, and our father on the weekend when he came up from his job in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We had absolutely no idea where on that enormous campus we were in relation to our parents, and we missed them dreadfully.

We had supposedly interesting and educational activities during the day, while our parents had classes on childrearing and development and household management, but all I remember is feeling lonely and abandoned. The joy of seeing our mother and father each day was out-balanced by the overwhelming sadness when they left. The worst experience of all for me was when I came down with German measles. I was housed in the maids’ wing in Cushing, in isolation, so I never even saw my sister, and can still remember the totally lost feeling of that time.

Ironically, our mother never believed us when, as adults, we told her how much we hated those summer weeks. Until the day she died, she insisted that we loved it! My sister and I both remember the tremendous effort we made not to cry when we left our parents each day. Probably it would have been better if we’d allowed those tears to flow, but that was not what children were taught in the ’30s.

It amuses me to realize how much I loved Vassar as a student in the ’50s, apparently unscarred by those early euthenics experiences!

Jacquelin Trask Duffek ’55
Shelburne, Vermont

President Hill Visits in 2007-08

President Hill Visits in 2007–08

Denver, Colorado
September 27, 2007

Greenwich, Connecticut
October 4, 2007

Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
October 17, 2007

Boston, Massachusetts
November 1, 2007

Miami, Florida
February 11, 2008

Dallas/Ft. Worth & Houston, Texas
Spring 2008

For more information, contact the Office of Regional Programs at programs@vassar.edu or 888.328.8528.