1974 Kirkland Class Annalist’s Letter
“A Tapestry of Kirkland College, 1970-74”
Walk on to “Tapestry” by Carole King.
Good morning President Wippman, trustees, Kirkland and Hamilton alumni, and friends. Thank you to my co-annalist, Carol Goodman Kaufman, our reunion committee, and the Hamilton staff who assisted us. Thank you to our classmates whose survey responses provided the memories that brought the Hill of 1970-74 back to life.
President Samuel Fisher Babbitt remarked in his book, Limited Engagement, that Kirkland grew out of the vision of Robert McEwen, who served as Hamilton’s president for over a decade. The founders of Kirkland, in planning the College in the early 1960s, intended to meet the needs of young women who, they assumed, would become housewives, pursue independent study, and remain home until their children were grown. Marjorie McEwen, Robert McEwen’s wife and an early supporter of Kirkland, explained that young women needed to be “more flexible, more able to meet varying kinds of conditions in their lives than men.”
How different from the 1960s model of Kirkland women is the reality of Kirkland alumnae today. Our class of proud, independent women followed their passions and shared their intellects and talents in many different fields. Cassandra Harris, a community organizer and musician, explains: “[W]e went to a women’s college with intention. We were travelers through an uncharted time of revolution and change, and we knew we were driving much of that change. … We did not live our mother’s futures, we sang our own, bold and brave and beautiful yet to come.”
Ours was the third full class to matriculate at Kirkland College. Many of us were swayed to look at Kirkland by an article in The New York Times about this new, small liberal arts college for women being constructed in an apple orchard across the road from Hamilton College. We trekked up to Clinton to interview with Director of Admissions Carole Walker or Admissions Officer Ginger Miller.
Connie Miner, who works now in finance, recalls that she had to step over a dog to enter Ginger’s office. Her father said he couldn’t believe the gales of laughter that came out of the office during the interview. The presence of a dog at Connie’s interview was not surprising. Dogs roamed freely about the campus and got into all kinds of mischief.
We were drawn to Kirkland by smaller classes, evaluations rather than grades, favorable faculty-student ratio, and self-governance in an environment that supported women. As Judith Crown, a journalist, observes: “Kirkland (and Hamilton) encouraged us to be curious, skeptical, dig deeper, persist, and not take no for an answer — values I’ve tried to carry personally and professionally.”
Kirkland’s unique architecture, so different from the classic halls and quadrangles of Hamilton, reflected the mission and modernity of Kirkland. The dorms, designed by the American architect Benjamin Thompson (think cement walls, waffle ceilings, bright-colored blinds, and Marimekko fabric), were not yet complete when we arrived on campus. We were assigned to triples in the original dorms, Major, Minor, and McIntosh, that housed classrooms, faculty apartments, conference rooms, kitchens, and lounges. A lone pay phone sat on the first floor. As the new suite buildings were finished, then known as A and B and now called Milbank and Babbitt, we lived with members of other classes. Students often would arrive at morning classes on the first floor of their dorm in pajamas, robes, and slippers.
Among the most beloved architectural features of the Kirkland campus were the iconic rock swing in McEwen and the Red Pit in Kirner-Johnson. The Red Pit was a magnet for College meetings, poetry readings, and events, including the Kirkland Assembly. Rebecca Eddy, now a daily money manager, took part in a project in a course taught by Doris Friedensohn that surveyed students and lobbied the Kirkland Assembly successfully for the establishment of a co-op dorm that existed until recently. Many of us remember The Sterile Cuckoo, a movie starring Liza Minnelli and filmed at Hamilton before we arrived. We watched it in K-J auditorium with student extras we recognized in the cast.
The digital age had not yet arrived. Intel introduced the first microprocessor in 1971, but there was only one computer terminal on campus connected to a mainframe at Griffiss Air Force Base. We still typed papers on our portable Smith Corona typewriters, with Wite-Out and extra ribbon an absolute necessity.
The early ’70s were marred by the Vietnam War, and anti-war activism flourished on many campuses, including ours. Maria Zammit, who pursued international relations, remembers counseling students on the draft. Megan Charlop, who became a community organizer, and Peggy Farber, an attorney, set up a table to encourage students to write to their congressmen to protest the bombing of North Vietnam.
Other national events influenced our lives. When the so-called “plumbers” broke into the Democratic National Committee’s offices at the Watergate and Congress investigated the abuses of the Nixon administration, Washington ethics became the campus cause célèbre. The editors of The Spectator urged all students to register to vote. Despite the prevailing anti-Nixon mood on campus, he won against McGovern in a landslide.
Crises in the Middle East affected campus life. The Yom Kippur War in 1973 triggered the OPEC oil embargo, and skyrocketing fuel costs caused the campus to shut down during Winter Study. Rep. Julian Bond addressed us about the civil rights movement in the Root-Jessup Lecture Series. After students lobbied for change to support racial and ethnic diversity, the Black and Latin Student Union was provided a dedicated house where minority students could congregate.
Music seemed to be everywhere. Although the Beatles had formally disbanded in 1970, cuts from their albums and hits by other musicians blared from loudspeakers hung from dorm windows. Kirkland students favored a new genre of music with the voices of women. Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Judy Collins, Diana Ross, Carly Simon, Bonnie Raitt, and Linda Ronstadt became musical icons for our generation. The Student Entertainment Committee invited live acts to perform on campus including Sha Na Na, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (to replace the Youngbloods who cancelled at the last minute), Livingston Taylor, the Byrds, Tom Rush, John Prine, the James Cotton Blues Band, the Robin Kenyatta African Music Ensemble, as well as the ever-popular Hamilton-based band, Steak Nite.
Many of our classmates reminisced about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Ashton Applewhite admits she spent a lot of her time on the Hill stoned, and her exposure to psychedelics and other recreational drugs remains important in her life. It may partly explain her later success under her pen name Blanche Knott, the author of the Truly Tasteless Jokes series of books. No doubt, Ashton’s Kirkland experiences fueled her activism expressed in her recent book This Chair Rocks, a Manifesto Against Ageism. Nancy Levine, a manager of environmental engineers whose favorite spot on campus was the pub, remembers getting stoned every night after leaving the library.
Fanguitos, a spring bacchanalia, took place in the Kirkland Glen. Liz Horwitt recalls that, after long snowy winters, Fanguitos was where students gathered in a field, got drunk and stoned, and danced to rock ‘n’ roll.
Much of the social life at Kirkland and Hamilton revolved around fraternities, which were alive and well during our years on the Hill. Sara Gordon, now an attorney in London, reminisces about the Emerson Literary Society’s “Eleven O’Clocks,” where she and others stopped by for snacks on the way back from the library. Sarah adds: “[T]he peanut butter and jelly was filling, but cold lasagna hit the spot!” Anne Levenson and Maria Zammit were among the first female members of ELS, which, not coincidentally, was the same fraternity of Anne’s future husband, Peter Brown.
Fraternity houseparties were fun and left many of us exhausted by Sunday afternoon. Missy Fast, a special ed teacher, proudly remembers attending every houseparty for all four years and claims she “had a great time at all of them.”
But then Missy also writes: “[A] few of us were mad that the Hamilton men took ‘rolls’ to women’s colleges like Cazenovia and Skidmore, since we thought Kirkland women were smarter and more interesting, so a few of us took a roll to Colgate. … I don’t think we met anyone, but we were making a statement.”
On non-party weekends, and too many week-days, we socialized at the pub or at off-campus bars known by their nicknames like the Rock or the Shoe. There was also the Kirkland coffeehouse for non-alcoholic breaks.
Root Glen and Kirkland Glen were favorite places to experience the outdoors. We walked, ran, cross-country skied, snowshoed, and, for one classmate, Jane Irwin, practiced the bagpipes. Anne Levenson, a biologist, prepared for her future life in Alaska by being a member of the Outing Club. Anne also recalls diving out of the second-floor window of her dorm into a huge snowdrift and then going back to do it all over again.
When warm days and nights came at last, some students swam in the College and town reservoirs. Melissa Drier, a journalist, describes an incident in which eight Kirkland students and one Hamilton student were arrested for skinny dipping in the town reservoir. The students were taken before a judge who rendered his verdict: he ordered all eight Kirkland students to pay a fine of $25. But the lone Hamilton student didn’t have to pay any fine. The judge reasoned the Hamilton student didn’t deserve a fine if he could convince eight women to take off their clothes.
With the support of Kirkland, we explored the issues that faced women in the ’70s. Gloria Steinem, one of the founders of the National Women’s Political Caucus, co-founded Ms. magazine in 1972, and in 1973 the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective published Our Bodies Ourselves, which we devoured. Florence Howe, a key architect of the women’s studies movement and the founder of the Feminist Press, spoke about “Feminism in Literature – Women’s Studies.” We sang along with Helen Reddy’s anthem “I Am Woman” and attended a concert of the all-female group Lavender Jane that Lise Rosenthal called a “revelation!”
In 1973, Kirkland sponsored the conference “Kirkland as a College for Women.” Carol Locke, an instructor of literature, served as the chairwoman of the committee tasked with filtering the materials from the conference and making proposals to enhance Kirkland based on the summaries of the workshops. Self-evaluation was an integral part of our lives at Kirkland, particularly as Kirkland sought accreditation from the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges beginning in 1971. The commission granted Kirkland College accreditation in early 1973.
After the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973, recognizing that contraception and abortion are, in fact, healthcare, the College brought in Planned Parenthood to run clinics at the infirmary. They also hired a clinical psychologist to serve both Kirkland and Hamilton students. Heather Saunders writes that she volunteered at Planned Parenthood and later earned both a master’s degree in social work and one in public administration and became the chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Northern California.
Fran Dunwell recounts that Choir Director James Fankhauser used to show the young male singers a Playboy centerfold before the opening note of each concert to get them to laugh and relax. When Kirkland women joined the Choir, the pin-ups disappeared. With the Choir now co-ed, friendships between genders flourished.
Karen Griffey, who works in health care administration, remembers that in one of her English classes at Hamilton during freshman year, the professor called her “Mister” Griffey during roll call. He was very apologetic once he realized her gender.
In 1973, Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in a tennis match popularly known as “the battle of the sexes.” Women’s athletics were becoming more widely accepted. Although Title IX had not been signed into law until 1972, Comfort Richardson was, as Sam Babbitt described her, a “one-person athletic department.” Richardson encouraged us to join various teams — soccer and field hockey, tennis and paddle tennis — and found equipment and space commandeered from Hamilton’s Athletics Department. Missy Fast played jungle hockey and helped launch the first women’s hockey team. Missy remembers playing goalie in figure skates and losing their first game to Cornell 6-0.
Kirkland students were fixtures in the old College library and wrote about memories of the large reading room and dusty stacks. Susan Krinsky, who pursued the law, recalls a group who spent the night in the old library. When the new library was opened, we completed our research and work in the modern facility, which featured an all-night reading room.
Cross-registration increased our access to the faculty of both colleges. Some faculty members stand out in our memories. Fran Dunwell, an environmentalist, praised her anthropology professor Douglas Raybeck and other faculty on both sides of the Hill who worked collaboratively. The first Earth Day was in 1970, and students became conscious of environmental harm from human activity. Fran met a classmate, Cara Lee, at Yale School of Forestry and both dedicated their careers to protecting the environment, in particular the Hudson River.
Jane Irwin recounts a class in which Raybeck spoke only the language of Malaysia. The students were trying to figure out matrial/patrial lineages using questions that required only yes or no answers. If the student messed up and asked an open-ended question, Raybeck would answer the student in Malay.
Peggy Farber explains that David Miller, who taught European intellectual history, and Ruth Rinard, who taught history of science, both challenged students to analyze events and texts “deeply.”
Kristen Howard, a financial analyst, shares a memorable quote from the botany professor George Putala, who declared, “[S]tart anywhere on the quilt of life, and once you discover the pattern, you will see the whole quilt.”
Many classmates mention Fred Wagner of the Hamilton English Department as an outstanding professor. As Paige Adams, a curator, recalls, Wagner was “an amazingly good teacher, guiding us by the Socratic method and dealing gently and with humor with students’ questions, disagreements, and occasional bewilderment.” Wagner often said, “What do you think it means?” to draw students into a discussion.
Kathleen Smith, an artist, recounts that Ed Barrett and Fred Wagner cornered her at a cast party and convinced her to go on the January London Theatre program where they saw 23 shows in 20 days. Kathleen quickly learned that if you got down to breakfast early, you could sit with Wagner (which was always special) to discuss the previous evening’s show. The first evening they saw the original production of Equus from front-row seats, which provided an up-close-and-personal experience of on-stage nudity. The biggest surprise was the original production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show starring Tim Curry in black fishnet stockings and high heels.
Nanelle Napp, an instructor in marketing communications, comments that Austin Briggs was “the master of making the complexities of English language accessible. During the little ‘spring’ that we enjoyed on the Hill, Professor Briggs would walk briskly across campus and always wear a yellow marigold in the lapel of his brown tweed blazer. I remember and admire his style to this day.”
Jane Irwin, our class bagpiper who became a live sound engineer, recalls her advisor Ursula Sybille Colby, a professor of literature, greeting her with “Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.” Peg Read, a landscape architect, also had Colby as an advisor and stated that she “learned life lessons from her … she taught me to hold my head high! And stand up for myself.”
Missy Fast studied Russian history and Nazi Germany with Michael Haltzel, whom she claims was the hardest professor she ever had. Haltzel, who had been stationed with the Foreign Service in Moscow, took a student group to Russia, along with Assistant Professor of Russian David Young. Missy comments that the trip opened their eyes to communism in action.
According to Sam Babbitt, Bill Rosenfeld was the ringleader of a faculty-student poetry reading group. As professor of creative writing, Rosenfeld fostered many students’ interests in creative writing and a number of our classmates are now authors and poets. Nancy Avery, a prolific published author, was inspired by poetic evenings with Sam Babbitt and Bill Rosenfeld. Nina Bogin, a poet, also cited Bill Rosenfeld and Denise Levertov, along with Hamilton Professor Ivan Marki, as memorable.
Aspiring artists enjoyed long hours in the List Art Center with the arts faculty, including Bob Muirhead, who taught printmaking, and Bob Palusky, who taught ceramics and glassblowing. Francine Lipani, an educator, remembers the darkroom in List where she could lose herself in the silence until the wee hours of the morning watching the magic of emerging photographs. Francine says she can still smell the aroma of the liquid developer in the darkroom.
Joanne Papanek served on the Chapel Board and was inspired by Joel Tibbetts, the Hamilton chaplain, to attend Harvard Divinity School and become a hospital chaplain. Sharon Honig earned a Master of Divinity degree in Jewish education and became an ordained cantor.
Liz Horwitt, a freelance journalist, was an actor with The Charlatans in the spring production of Dark of the Moon and remembers a vagrant bat fluttering around the foyer greatly adding to the show’s ambience. Liz and a number of Hill thespians, including Caryn Katz, joined a summer stock program at the Ring-a-Round Playhouse directed by Bob Harper in Sturbridge, Mass. Caryn, a library administrator, thinks it was a “great group of Kirkland and Hamilton students, doing all kinds of plays for truly appreciative local audiences.”
Long before there was a Hamilton streaking team, an anonymous Kirkland student donned a ski mask — and apparently nothing else — and streaked through the Chapel during an assembly of delighted Hamilton men. As a sequel, during a Class & Charter Day stunt, the now-clothed streaker smashed three whipped-cream pies in the face of Jim Kennedy, the assembly moderator, because she said he was the only person who had a full-frontal view of her when she streaked the Chapel.
Robin Leslie waxes poetic about her life at Kirkland: “[T]he salt-dash light crunch of the snow underfoot, the beauty of the rural landscape, bike riding on carless country roads, walking to the bakery late at night, drinking cider fresh from the Cider Mill, Root Glen, the ancient Chapel across the street, practicing compacting my body into a ball in case the waffle ceiling fell down on me, the tiered classroom where we lounged instead of sitting in chairs, the rock swing, the dogs that wandered through the dining hall, my double-credit senior project and spending 17 hours a day running rats through experiments and napping in the overstuffed chair in the Psych Lab, Gothic Lit, volunteering at the state mental hospital in the children’s ward, working harder because we got evaluations instead of grades, my independent study in children’s book illustration with Natalie Babbitt, my winter study course in which we framed walls and put in plumbing and wiring and drywall — Kirkland taught me how to properly wield a hammer!”
Hamilton had been publishing The Spectator since 1848. When the Publications Board elected me as the next — and first female — editor-in-chief in spring 1972, I did not know until years later that three Hamilton students, student body president Jerry Ryan, Publications Board chairman Terry MacAvery, and then editor-in-chief Fred Axelrod, were summoned to New York City to explain to Coleman Burke, the longstanding chairman of the Hamilton Board of Trustees, why I as a Kirkland student was the best person to become editor-in-chief of the Hamilton newspaper. Apparently, they were persuasive because I assumed the editorship of The Spectator that spring.
At The Spectator, we faced many of the same journalistic challenges professionals faced, including when to run a story. We had received a tip that Hamilton President John W. Chandler was on the shortlist to become president of Williams College where he had been the dean of faculty. When I interviewed him, President Chandler asked me to delay publication of the story and promised to give The Spectator the scoop if he were offered and accepted the job. I agreed and, true to his word, The Spectator broke the story that President Chandler was leaving Hamilton for Williams. Years later, out of the blue, John Chandler, then in his 90s, tracked me down and thanked me for that act of kindness.
We graduated on May 24, 1974, under the tent in the field behind the dorms during a driving rainstorm. Selma Burkom, an English and American literature professor at Kirkland, was selected by our class to give the commencement speech, and, of course, there was an open microphone.
Little did we realize at graduation what the future would hold or envision the paths our lives would take. Our class has traversed the world, and some of us have settled in distant states and foreign lands. Many of us would go on to careers unrelated to our majors or change careers mid-stream to follow our passions. Carol Goodman, a psychologist, then a criminologist, went on to become an author whose most recent book, a mystery novel, has just been published. The award for most post-graduate degrees, however, goes to Marilyn Hover, who earned a Juris Doctor and master’s degrees in international law, business and tax, became a certified massage therapist and Kindermusik teacher, and was awarded yet another master’s in counseling psychology.
Kirkland College matriculated students for only 10 years: our four years were right in the middle of its lifespan. Kirkland was a short, life-altering experience like the recent solar eclipse during which the moon briefly obscured the sun, creating an aura of fleeting beauty during its totality. Observers professed this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The totality of Kirkland College was also brief, but the College left its unique and beautiful aura on the Hill that is still visible today. Kirkland changed Hamilton forever for the good and still lives in our hearts.
Kirkland everlasting.
Walk off to “I am Woman” by Helen Reddy.
Elizabeth Kneisel Krumeich
Elizabeth Kneisel Krumeich graduated from Miss Porter’s School and spent a gap year studying in England as an Isabel Carden Griffin Scholar under an English-Speaking Union program. At Kirkland, Beth was the first female editor-in-chief of The Spectator. She was awarded a Juris Doctor at Columbus School of Law at Catholic University and served on the Kirkland Board of Trustees before becoming the first Kirkland alumna to serve on the Hamilton Board of Trustees. After serving as president of the Fairfield County, Conn., chapter of the Hamilton Alumni Association, she joined the Alumni Council and served on a number of Kirkland Class of 1974 reunion committees.
Professionally, Beth worked at a Wall Street law firm and as in-house counsel for several international companies. An active volunteer in Greenwich, Conn., she was an elected member of the town’s finance board and Representative Town Meeting. She served as president of the League of Women Voters of Greenwich and co-president of the North Street Elementary School PTA, among other community leadership positions. Beth was awarded the Brava Award by the Greenwich YWCA for outstanding volunteerism by professional women. Having served as vice chair of the Greenwich Democratic Town Committee, she also was a member of the Connecticut Democratic State Central Committee.
Currently, Beth is an officer of two not-for-profit boards of directors that support older adults in the community. She is married to the Hon. Edward T. Krumeich II ’72, and they have two grown children.
Carol Goodman Kaufman
After growing up in Pittsfield, Mass., and graduating from Miss Hall’s School, Carol Goodman Kaufman came to Kirkland where she majored in psychology with a minor in Hebrew and lent her talents to The Spectator as a writer, photographer, and layout artist. She also served on the Human Sexuality Committee.
Carol went on to earn her master’s degree and doctorate in industrial and organizational psychology and conducted a post-doctoral fellowship in criminology. After spending time working at Fortune 500 companies, she started her own consulting business and taught psychology and management at the College of the Holy Cross and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She also served as the founding director of the Worcester Hebrew Education Network, a program for adult learners.
Carol has served as an officer on the boards of a half dozen local, regional, and national nonprofit organizations. Among her most treasured experiences are her terms as the national chair of Youth Aliyah, Hadassah’s child rescue project, and as national chair of the Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem, Israel.
Throughout her career, she always found herself drawn to her true passion — writing. Carol currently pens two long-running columns on food history, one for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and one for the Jewish press. She has published five books, ranging from children’s picture books to nonfiction, and has contributed to five anthologies in multiple genres. But her guilty pleasure is the mystery, and, having been a fan of whodunnits since curling up with The Happy Hollisters and Nancy Drew as a child, Carol decided to dip her feet into crime in the hope that it does indeed pay. Her mystery shorts appear in anthologies and her debut novel, The First Murder, hit bookstores in April 2024.
