“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.” —Lewis Carroll
Picture, if you will, a lull in the 2025 Commencement Weekend ceremonies. The John Stewart Memorial Library is deserted except for four Wilson trustees—classmates, rather, bound by friendship more than graduation years—who are pouring over a blue scrapbook, maybe 12 x 18 inches, with the Wilson seal affixed to its cover.
Perhaps it’s a good thing that the gasps, the “Oh, look’s,” and the “Who knew’s?” are uttered softly, because, well, it’s the library and the four of us are still tradition-bound by “propriety and good taste.” (Look it up, dear new students.)
Before us, obtained by one of our number affectionately known as the “eBay troll,” is a four-year compendium of the college life of Lydia M. Noah, nee Morris, Wilson Class of 1926.
Suffice to say, what Lydia didn’t paste in the pages of her memory book is unknown in the annals of human history: Dance cards; “May Queen” programs (she arriving atop a white horse); hand-written bridge party invitations (“RSVP, 14 Main”); cryptic directions to secret society meetings; and hilarious, heart-rending scrap-paper notes, (“Dear Lydia, You have made me what I am today—after seven bottles. Continue your help of the human race but concentrate on the Evens tomorrow.”)
Lydia’s Wilson scrapbook—as well as her 1926 Con, also rescued from the bottomless maw of eBay—is now safely in the hands of Maxine Wagenhoffer, director of the Hankey Center. I would suggest you visit her—Lydia, Maxine, or both—on your next campus sojourn.
Scrapbooks hold memories, of course, but scrapbooks end.
Memory invoking only the past is retrogression; it empowers us only to dwell in the ‘what was,’ foregoing awareness of the present and the promise of the future. As one anonymous scholar noted, “What if memory did not rely on chronological order, but was instead an intricate web connecting past, present, and future?”
During Fall Weekend, past, present, and future converged. Returning grads met new students over BBQ and Brew; the harvest moon and drones looked down on scarecrows, old-fashioned barn activities, and games at a college—our Phoenix—replete with new and lively studies and a future bright with possibilities.
Even in these challenging times.
Be present to Wilson: in person, on Zoom, and through her publications. Alums are Wilson’s past. We are also her present and her future.
Autumn cheer to you,
Patricia W. Bennett ’68
President, AAWC
