April 16, 2007
Dear Classmates,

We are all intimately familiar with the Fifth Dimension because they made “Up, Up and Away”, “Aquarius”, and “Wedding Bell Blues” favorite hits of the 1960s, but how much attention do we invest in thinking about the Fourth Dimension – Time? As a Liberal Arts major, I had pretty much relegated Time into that bin of concepts useful to scientists or critical to scuba divers, but over the years I've come to realize that Time is all around us, with a subtle but strangely meaningful role in our lives. Do you have children? Time, believe it or not, is as critical as vitamins to their normal development. Do you commute to work or the grocery store? Time, in a minor role - along with distance, traffic density, and tire inflation - is an element in the success of your journey. Have you lately noticed gray hair, wrinkles, or a peculiar sagginess in the mirror after showering? Nor have I, but I have noticed it occasionally in others. The cause is a complicated interrelationship between gravity, genetics, snack foods, and – you guessed it – Time. Fascinating.

Within the dimension of Time, other laws of nature become thoroughly confounded. As we all know in our middle-aged wisdom, across time individual moments that are heartbreakingly complex assemble into panoramas that are obvious, best, and inevitable. Does this truth happen in tax accounting? No. Never. And across time – as opposed to simple mathematics – parallel lines actually do intersect. Here's a case in point: When we headed up the steps at SPAC, in May 1977, diplomas warm in our hands, hope on our faces, and the wind full in our sails, we embarked upon adventures that could fill a library. At that seminal moment our complete intimacies of four Skidmore years suddenly untwined upon more than four-hundred parallel threads, snaking across the continuum like Charlotte 's babies on the breeze.

On our four-hundred respective journeys across the past thirty years, we touched lives, lost lives, and gave life. We experienced places and events that burnished us and built our hearts. Time won away our youth, but gave us in exchange character, kindness, experience, and insight. Time – despite pharmaceuticals, dyes, and denial – has left us warm beneath a patina of laugh lines, scars, stretch marks, a few gray hairs, and all the other coverings of middle age. We managed this transformation simultaneously, at points all over the globe, one second at a time. In May, our parallel threads will twine together again in Saratoga , for four terrific days. For four days, wiser, kinder, softer, and thirty years older, you get to be once again in the bosom of the people who knew your secrets and loved you anyway. These are the moments we live for – the sort that we carry in our hearts and smiles wherever time takes us. How can you beat that?

Our classmates are looking forward to seeing you and hearing about your journey across time. We've missed you. Warmest Regards,

P.S. Last week I drove up to Saratoga, where I spent two days rummaging through the Skidmore Archives in search of images suitable for a digital trip across the Skidmore century, with particular focus on the school's most meaningful span – the 1970s. You'd be surprised what I found – hardly a darned thing. Actually, it isn't just the 1970's that were swallowed by the void, but almost the entire period from about 1970 to the present. It appears that the first casualty of the Information Age is information. Like the Mighty Mississippi, information rolls past us in daunting volume, always the same, always different, gone forever. Please look through your old Skidmore snapshots and either send some to me (72 R Street NW, Washington, DC 20001) or scan a few and e-mail them ( rrrsar@earthlink.net ). I'll include them on the digital capture. Send some contemporary images, too. Thanks!

February 22, 2007
Dear Classmates,

Greetings from Skidmore! By now, you should have received information, in various forms, about making a gift to Skidmore, in this, our 30 th Reunion year. But we haven't heard back from you yet! I am writing today to ask you to make a gift to Skidmore. Preparing for Reunion reminds me of all that Skidmore has done for me. I truly believe that my Skidmore education shaped much of the person I am today, with a skill set that I value – the ability to analyze complex situations, to communicate the costs and benefits of decisions, and then take a position on an issue with confidence and conviction. At Skidmore I was taught to think, to figure things out.

I work in a challenging environment, which is wonderfully diverse. Before I entered college, the people I interacted with were, by and large, just like me. At Skidmore, I learned to appreciate different values and patterns of thought because I was surrounded by an incredibly interesting and challenging mix of people.

Now that my own children are starting to plan for college, I have come to a realization; I firmly believe that college educations are personal, not interchangeable. The quality education I received at Skidmore is unique to me, and is a gift that I am privileged to have received. But what is common to our college experience is the generosity of alumni who contributed to the school because they valued their own Skidmore experience. Do you have a favorite Skidmore memory? Have you gotten a job, or a better job, because of the Skidmore reference on your resume? Is there one thing you have, or are, or can do today, because of what Skidmore did for you 30 years ago? If so – reach out to Skidmore and give something back, a gift of any size will help. So please write a check now, and mail it today .

I do hope that you have already marked your calendar for May 31 - June 3, 2007 and that you plan to join us. If you haven't been to a Reunion in a while, you will be amazed at how beautiful the campus is, especially at the Reunion time of year. Remember when the new campus wasn't finished yet? Remember when there was bus service to the old campus? Remember how great it was to be part of the Skidmore community as well as the Saratoga community? Come back to re-new old friendships, create new ones and re-experience Skidmore.

Thank you in advance for your continued support of our alma mater. On behalf of our entire Reunion Committee we look forward to hearing from you soon, and to seeing you in Saratoga for our 30 th . Wishing you a wonderful Skidmore memory! Sincerely,

Lee Ann McElroy Summers

November 2006
Dear Classmates,

Slightly over thirty-four years ago, in early September, 1973, you and I, and 535 other newly-arrived Skidmore freshmen crowded into College Hall, on the Old Campus, for Convocation. At that moment, Richard Nixon was still President, South Vietnam remained a sovereign nation, no one anticipated long lines at the gas pumps, and, in Communist China, Mao still ruled and the Cultural Revolution raged. In our immediate world, disco dancing had, thankfully, not yet been invented. Over the following four years, in fits and starts, with joy and toil, and with countless instances of remarkable luck, we evolved from teenagers into young adults. Around us the world changed, and we with it. Then, in May, 1977 we met again to collect our degrees and say goodbye. Now, almost three decades from that sunny graduation day, I encourage you to plan a journey back to Saratoga. Our Thirtieth Reunion is nearly upon us. It is time to renew friendships, revive memories, compare gray hairs, raise a toast or two, and catch up on the lives of our peers across the decades.

In your life since graduation, wherever fortune took you, have there been many days you have not thought of Skidmore? Somehow, between the friends you met; your classmates, roommates, and professors; the loves and the tears; the crisp autumns, frigid winters, and welcome springs; the State Park, the track, and Yaddo; the “Happy Pappy” weekends, the late nights studying, the later nights downtown, the January Terms, and the weekend road trips, …and a billion other synapses still echoing out of Saratoga, I'm convinced Skidmore often swims across your thoughts. Our Skidmore experience, on so many levels, was significantly formative to our lives. Similarly, the four-year dedication of our young lives was critically formative to Skidmore's future. Rabble that we might have been, Skidmore's future rode on our shoulders. Go there today and look - the imprint of our passage remains indelible. Look at yourself as well - the imprint of those years remains strong upon each of us. Ours was a Skidmore era remarkably different from all that went before. From that prior chapter, we laid the tracks upon which Skidmore still rides. Really. I believe, with sincere confidence, that no other four-year span of Skidmore’s history has been as tumultuous, as evolutionary, or as lastingly meaningful.

We arrived in Saratoga precisely upon the cusp of transformation. We saw the old chapter out, and this one begin. On that 1973 Convocation day, the Seniors who passed the baton were the last who had entered an all-woman Skidmore. We, in turn, were the final freshman class to convene in College Hall. We were the last, as well, to check our mail, select our curriculum, or elbow our way to the lunch counter in Fathers’ Hall. We accumulated innumerable other “firsts” and “lasts”.

As Freshmen, more than half of us lived on the Old Campus. Odds are, as a freshman in 1973,
most – if not all – of your academics were on the Old Campus. Virtually every administrative
and faculty office dwelt still on the Old Campus.

During our tenure, that hallowed turf was sold from beneath our feet and Skidmore’s center of gravity shifted decisively to the New Campus. By the time we graduated, in 1977, we (save the most stalwart, self-sacrificing, traditional, or bohemian) ate, slept, and studied on the New Campus, almost exclusively. Administrators and faculty had, by then, also made a nearly complete leap to North Broadway, commandeering, as you will recall, our beloved Starbuck and Barrett Centers for office space, displacing Tower dorm rooms, and bivouacking themselves into partitioned hallways, basements, and stairwells. We were present as Case Center, Ladd Hall, the Sports & Recreation Center, and the Scribner Village apartments were built We saw the framework rise for Palamountain Hall. Bit-by-bit, as we pressed ahead, the new Skidmore – today’s Skidmore – formed in our wake.

Remember the New Campus in our first year, when the library was practically a dim light bobbing on the horizon, and the hike from the dining hall to Filene required mud boots, stout resolve, and a flashlight? By the time we graduated, new construction, the dawn of electricity, and advanced paving technology had enhanced comfort and closed vast distances. What change we saw! Skidmore continues to form, even still. Each time I journey up there (most recently in October, for “Celebration Weekend” – what we recall as “Happy Pappy”) I discover a new facility, such as the Sasselin Art Center, or the Northwood Apartments, or recognize some remembered edifice, newly and nicely overhauled. If you have not been to Skidmore recently, you will, at our reunion, be impressed by the significantly expanded library, the enlargement of Case, the square footage appended to Dana & Bolton, and the very recent, very comprehensive architectural massage of the dining hall. You will also, and above all, be genuinely impressed by the full familiarity of the entire place, even after your long absence. This last point is the most surprising and the most gratifying.

With the Thirtieth Reunion of the Class of 1977 galloping upon us (May 31 - June 3, 2007), Nancy Hamilton and I have been asked by the Alumni Office to co-chair the preparations. I’m quite proud of the honor and sincerely hope to excite your attendance. Mark it on your calendar. As plans mature, we are anxiously prowling for program ideas and assistance. Chime-in anytime. Chime or not, we’ll be contacting you again and again to ensure those thoughts of Skidmore remain refreshed. We need you there, we want you there, and you will be glad to have made the trip. Old sayings to the contrary, you actually can go home again

In anticipation of our reunion, Skidmore has prepared the enclosed Class Directory, so please take some time to reconnect with your fellow classmates and old friends over the coming weeks and months. We look forward to your participation in preparing for the reunion and your attendance when the big weekend arrives in May (May 31- June 3)! Warm Regards,

Art Richardson
Reunion Co-Chair