Vassar Quarterly - Spring/Summer 2017 - 3

Letters
Publisher
Alumnae and Alumni of Vassar College
Milbrey Rennie Taylor '68, President

In Memoriam: Nancy Willard

Vice President,
Communications
Susan DeKrey
Director of Alumnae/i
Communications; Editor, VQ
Elizabeth Randolph
elrandolph@vassar.edu
Assistant Editor,
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Debbie Swartz
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Gary Tooth / Empire Design Studio

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Jenna Docher '19
Josephine Lovejoy '19
Elena Schultz '19
Communications Advisory Committee
Lisa Denby '87, Chair
Tanya Odom '92
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Eric Lindbloom

Class Notes
Joan Giurdanella
Rebecca Hyde '92, Coordinator

With a couple of poems by [Lecturer Emerita in
English] Nancy Willard shared by her longtime
publisher Knopf, in honor of National Poetry
Month, I received the very sad news that she had
died in February. The Vassar universe-and the
much wider orbits of those touched by her
children's books, novels, and poetry-has lost
a bright star.
When I was at Vassar, I didn't personally
know the wild-haired bicycle lady who wheeled
around campus in the warm months. But I had
the good fortune to meet her 12 years ago, when
she visited Bemidji State University [Minnesota]
to teach a week-long poetry workshop. She was
a funny, spirited, graciously generous teacher
and human being.
Today, I am thinking of her, quietly, in her new
life, no doubt gazing around with unbounded
curiosity and a magical glint in her eyes.
-Louisa Castner '84
Minneapolis, MN

Nancy was an extraordinary and continuous
presence in the Vassar community: as teacher
and guide for generations of students through
her courses in writing, in the literatures she
loved, and in the poetry that seemed in her case
so evident a nourishing, inspiring presence in
her own life. The sight of her on her blue bike,
its basket brimming with-what?-books,
manuscripts, flowers, ornaments, models of
fantasy buildings, magic potions, God only
knows what-was for me a continuous, lastingly
decorative feature of the campus. A cyclist for
all seasons, she seemed to live both in and out of
the world we, most of us, normally inhabited: the
campus, the trees, the buildings (Avery, Sanders,
Main). What I remember is how, in retailing

some brief anecdote or other, she'd erupt into
odd little explosions of a laugh, punctuating the
weirdness of the world as she found it. As once
when she told me of cycling past the library and
next thing a little flock of not birds but BOOKS
came flying out an open window and landed in
front of her. Flying books! No wonder she wrote
a novel called Things Invisible to See! For imaginatively Nancy lived in a world of invisibles,
coaxing from them such all those imaginative
visionary harvests. Her life as an artist in
language was and gave great nourishment to
her Vassar students whom she loved and to her
legions of readers. The sort of nourishment given
by the title of that late book of hers: The High Rise
Glorious Skittle Skat Roarious Sky Pie..... Angel Food
Cake. Angel Food! Of course! Pure Nancy.
And delicious.
-Eamon Grennan
Professor Emeritus of English
Poughkeepsie, NY

In the Navy
Please note that there is a big mistake in the
"What's in a Name?" report on Vassar alumna
Grace Murray Hopper '28 [Winter 2017]. She
served in the U.S. Navy, not the U.S. Army.
I hope the next issue of VQ spends some time
in dry dock before its launch or the ghost of
RADM Hopper will have you walking the plank!!
By the way, our goddaughter, a graduate of
the U.S. Naval Academy, served aboard the USS
Hopper (DDG 70), an Arleigh Burke-class guided
missile destroyer, some years ago. She said the
ship's nickname is "Amazin' Grace."
-Andrea Kelsey Calfee '67
Murfreesboro, TN

Editor's note: The first note we received about this
error warned that we'd "probably be hearing
from a lot of others about this." The reader was
correct. But not many correspondents had as fine
a sense of humor about the mistake as Andrea.
Thanks to her and everyone else who wrote in to
set the record straight.

Correction
In "At Home with Edna St. Vincent Millay"
[Winter 2017] we mistakenly attributed an interview with President Henry Noble MacCracken
about Millay to the 1966 yearbook. It actually
appeared in the 1967 Vassarion. Thanks to
Elizabeth Gould Hemmerdinger '67, its editor,
for alerting us.
VA S S A R Q u A R T E R LY

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Vassar Quarterly - Spring/Summer 2017