I HAVE THREE BEST FRIENDS!!!                        

Two of those friendships date back to my Wellesley days.  One friend is Joanne Couch Cogar and the other is  Carol Christie Medinger.  I still see them and I still love them.

 

Wellesley gave me more than just great friendships . It gave me a great education and it taught me how to play bridge.  

 

I was a psychology major. After college I  got a  job working  in a chronic mental hospital and very quickly realized  I  needed a medical degree to really help people and make a difference.  When I applied to medical school, my interviewer looked at my records and said that as I had graduated from Wellesley, he saw no reason not to offer me a place in the next medical school class.  The entire interview took less than fifteen minutes.  Even today, people are more impressed that I graduated from Wellesley than that I became a physician. 

 

I  married one of my medical school professors and I am still with him.  We raised two great children.  Our daughter is 39 years old and is a high school  teacher specializing in  English/Bible studies /women's studies and drama.  She married and gave us a grand-daughter, who is currently 2 1/2 years old and the apple of my eye.  My daughter is now pregnant with a grandson due in March, 2008.

 

Our son, now 37, is an academic veterinary surgeon on the  staff  of the University of Pennsylvania and almost married. He has found the right girl, another veterinarian, and both sets of  parents are wondering when they are going to "make it legal."

When I became a partner in a NJ radiology group, I was the first woman  physician in a group of 12 men.  My Wellesley background made me intellectually strong and independent and somewhat competitive.  I never felt discriminated against.  A few years ago, I became the chief of the radiology department in my hospital, but  resigned after two years having realized that administration was not my forte.  Although board certified  in Nuclear Medicine and General Radiology, I have taken a special interest in mammography

 The years have taken a bit of a professional toll.  At 66, I am now the oldest partner in my group and the nights and weekends on call are no longer well tolerated.  I will give up my full-time position in June 2008 and either go part-time or no time, i.e. retire completely.

 

I am looking forward to having a lot of time for long weekends with my granddaughter as well as traveling and going to the theater and lying on the couch eating bon-bons and reading great books.

 

I have had a great  life, and "I regret nothing."

 

 

            Patti "Cappie" Crystal Morgan       

What prompted me to get back in touch with our Wellesley class after 46 years?  Nice nagging.  The patience of my very good friend Joanne Cogar is astonishing.
 

Actually, I’m writing to report on a Wellesley mafia operating in the Washington, DC, area.  Sue Wheeler Mason, Joanne, and I are the core of the Family Council for Grand Oaks, an assisted living community where Sue has both parents, I have a mother age 95, and Joanne has a dear friend.  Until recently our Family Council included another classmate, Brent Nunnelly Goo, whose mother passed away last year.  Given our combined strengths as advocates for seniors, whose ranks we are joining, and our not-to-be daunted follow-up skills, Grand Oaks doesn’t stand a chance.


Over the “missing” 46 years, I worked in Latin America with the Peace Corps, married a lawyer smart enough to ditch law in order to do international development work, raised three great kids in the Washington, DC, area, built a small consulting business focused on youth with disabilities, and am now happily stretched between the generations with a mother and mother-in-law in their late 90's living nearby and two grandsons under age two also living nearby.  It’s a great place to be.

Somehow I missed the Wellesley bus in terms of returning for reunions or even staying in touch, but now as I watch dear friends, who happen to be classmates, operating sensitively and smartly with their parents, children, and grand children while balancing their lives amazingly well, I find that I am grateful for the classmate connection.  Joanne is not be surprised.

 

 

 Polly Aird

I'm in the last throes of finishing a book manuscript.  The book is a history about a Scot (Peter McAuslan) and his family who converted to Mormonism in Scotland in 1848, came to New Orleans on a sailing ship, went up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers on steamboats (crowded like cattle cars), outfitted in what is now Kansas City, and traveled by covered wagon to Utah. Once there he became disillusioned. It did not meet his expectations of a promised land, blessed by God for the "last days."

They suffered drought, locust plagues, severe winters that killed half the livestock in northern Utah. Then came famine, the handcart disasters (more than 200 dying in a Wyoming snow storm because they started too late in the faith that God would hold off the storms), a "reformation" in which wives were questioned about their husbands, and vice versa, and then all getting re-baptized. Part of the Reformation preaching was on "blood atonement"--that some sins are so egregious that the only way to atone is to have your own blood spilled by having your throat cut. A number of people were killed (by faithful members taking what Brigham Young said literally), especially one family trying to leave for California because they had lost their faith. Then came the Mountain Meadows Massacre, when Mormons slaughtered 120 unarmed men, women, and children. It was too much. McAuslan and his parents and brothers applied to the U.S. Army and was granted an escort out of Utah with about forty families.

It's a story of faith and disillusionment. My questions were: What was it about Mormonism that was so appealing to some British citizens? What led to their disillusionment? And, then what? After they got to California, was there a spiritual vacuum in their lives that they filled with something else?

I happened on this story because I am descended from the man's brother (my great grandfather), but it was Peter McAuslan, my great great uncle, who was the first to convert, the first to become disillusioned, and the only one to leave any records.

The book will be published by The Arthur H. Clark Company, an imprint of the University of Oklahoma Press, in spring of 2009, if all goes well!

I'm one of a handful of non-Mormons writing Mormon history. It's interesting from every perspective!

So there's the long and the short of it for now.

Polly

 

                                                                                                                               

                                                     

 

A Note of Apology from Your Web Master

The excessive mention of my name in two of the above bios is embarrassing and needs explanation.  As this is the first edition of our website, we needed to enlist contributors on short notice.  In addition, we intended to pull in some of our classmates who haven't communicated with our class since graduation.  This made the job of twisting arms very challenging.  In the end, I did what any good web master would do.  I coerced a few of my good friends.  Future updates will feature classmates who don't even know me or, if they do, don't like me one bit.

Joanne Couch Cogar, your quite new Web Master