Wellesley College is represented as a warm and wonderful pattern of royal blue and purple threads woven throughout my family's tapestry. As a child in Evansville, Indiana, my mother, Ann Leich Reardon, was inspired by two Wellesley graduates, teacher Daisy Flower Veatch, and a cousin Helen Johnson White. With her first cousin, Martha Leich Parkhurst (for whom I was named), she entered Wellesley College as a member of the class of '34. Even though my mother had to leave Wellesley early because of the Depression, she married my father, who lived in the Boston area, and became active during her lifetime in reunion, class, and club events. She loved step-singing, her classmates, and the Wellesley campus. And so she brought her five children along to help out at reunion picnics and even a clambake organized by the fathers, when we were in elementary school. We were singing "W-E-L-L-E-S-L-E-Y - WELLESLEY" even then, with great gusto. When the time came for me to choose between Radcliffe and Wellesley, I chose Wellesley, my mother's college. My late sister, Jane Reardon Labys, '66, followed, as did my Evansville cousins Martha Leich Fox, '63, and Alexandra Leich, '66, whose mother Lois Baumann Leich had been in the Wellesley Class of 1930. In a harmonious coincidence, my mother, my sister, and I were all purple classes. Soon after their graduation, my sister's roommate Elizabeth Morse Reardon '66 married my first cousin, Dan.....As my mother's class approached their 65th, then 70th reunions, the daughters gathered round to help out. The 70th reunion would be my mother's last, which she shared with delight with her classmates, her friends, her family.... As our class of '62 has approached and passed its 50th reunion, my classmates have become like family. The Wellesley blue and purple threads link us together, and cross many tapestries. We have shared much with one another, value the times we get together, support one another when there are family losses, and cheer each other along life's wonderful parade: "W-E-L-L-E-S-L-E-Y - WELLESLEY!"
Wellesley means family to me...