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It was June 1963, and the Millersville State Teachers College campus was abuzz with excitement from the graduating seniors. Smiling, proud parents were everywhere. We made it!
Looking over the faces of my dear friends, I thought about how much I would miss them. Today, we would all receive our teaching degrees and go our separate ways – most of them to teaching careers, while I anxiously awaited my location assignment as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Not knowing where in the world or how I would be living was a disconcerting thought! Would I ever see these friends again? I wanted us to stay connected and thought a Round Robin letter would be the perfect way to do just that.
While handwritten letters have declined, Round Robin letters were one way to stay connected before the days of cell phones and social media. In this arrangement, a letter is sent in a specific sequence to a group of people. Each member removes her last letter and replaces it with a newly written one before sending it to the next person in the sequence.
Before we all dispersed that graduation day, I had chosen our group of participants: Nina (Palmer) Wolff, Rosemary (Rosey) Bratton, Veda (Noel) Henry, Louise (Workinger) Julius, Lynn (Evelynn Miller) Wilmot and me: Suzanne (Holtzman) Lowe. We call ourselves the Robins.
Summarizing more than 60 years of friendship and correspondence is quite the task. In all that time, the letters were only lost once on their way to me in a remote rainforest in Costa Rica during a very muddy rainy season where the mail was delivered via horseback. Here are some of our comings and goings following graduation:
Nina went on to marry and become an airline stewardess for Trans World Airlines and eventually became the Director of In-Flight Services Operations. In that role, she was responsible for in-flight services, procedures, equipment, communication and duty-free sales. During her career, she even served the Harlem Globetrotters, who barely fit into the plane, and was responsible for arranging the flight details of a pope!
Rosey married before graduation and went on to earn not one, but two master’s degrees and eventually became Superintendent of Schools in Longboat Key, Florida.
Louise married Glen Julius, a fellow member of the Millersville Class of 1963. She now resides in Texas and was an innovative kindergarten teacher for more than two decades.
Lynn went on to marry Peter, a student at Franklin & Marshall College. Like Louise, she taught kindergarten for more than 20 years.
I, Suzanne, finished my service with the Peace Corps, where I’d worked in a remote village in the Costa Rican rainforest near the border of Nicaragua for two years, got married and spent five years teaching ESL in a multilingual classroom in Philadelphia. I then retired to a farm with my family and became a shepherd to a flock of Miniature Babydoll Southdown sheep and a potbellied pig breeder.
As for our dear friend Veda, she accomplished much in her life: After graduating from Millersville, she served as a volunteer for Volunteers in Service to America, and for many years of her life, she selflessly taught at a nonprofit that served adults earning their GEDs.
While we were all together sitting on a breezy porch in a bed and breakfast in Rehoboth, Delaware, at our last reunion in 2022, we received a text from Veda’s husband, Sam: Veda passed away from cancer. None of us could speak for at least 10 minutes. We had lost a Robin. We decided, right then and there, to make a donation to the Adult Learning Center in her honor.
The loss of one of our own has made us reflect on how grateful we have been to Millersville for our education, memories and the lifelong friendships we have held so dear. There isn’t much we’ve missed in each other’s lives for the past 60+ years, despite the fact that we all live in different states now.
As far as we can remember, we have held 15 reunions since we graduated from Millersville. When we get together for these reunions, it’s not like catching up with people at a high school reunion: We immediately know what to ask each Robin because we are always aware of the major happenings in each other’s lives. We know whose grandchildren have graduated and gotten jobs and all the rest, and so, we just settle in with comfortable, knowledgeable conversation.
Together, we had wonderful times, sad times and surprising twists and turns over and over again, but one thing is for certain: There’s still so much to write about.
P.S. We really do still write and mail letters to each other, but we type them on the computer now – and we’re looking forward to our next reunion in October 2025.
