By Betsy Rhame, ’01

Meredith’s annual Founders’ Day celebration was held on February 26. Members of the Meredith community gathered for a convocation to reflect on Meredith over the years through the lens of Pivotal Moments, Powerful Lives. Each decade since the 1940s was represented with photographs and memories by each of the six alumnae speakers. Each speaker chose pivotal moments that took place during her time as a Meredith student and affected her in her life after Meredith.

Lois Edinger, ’45, said her first pivotal moment took place during her freshman year on December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Life everywhere, including at Meredith, changed dramatically.

“My four years at Meredith were colored by the war and my life after Meredith was colored by the war,” Edinger explained. “We learned to put out fires, find the injured…all in the dark [because of mandatory blackouts]. We became resourceful and independent women.”

One of Anne Clark Dahle’s, ’54, pivotal moments also came during her freshman year in Professor of Religion Ralph McLain’s Old Testament class. McLain asked another student, “Do you believe the Red Sea parted so the Israelites could escape?” When the student answered affirmatively, the professor asked, “Do you believe everything you read?”

This conversation helped Dahle realize that thinking and questioning is part of education.

Gigi Jackson Giersch, ’62, also had one of her pivotal moments in one of McLain’s freshman religion classes. She was trying to find a profession where she could share her faith and she assumed that it meant she would have to go into church work.

“I wanted to live my life committed to my faith,” Giersch said. “Dr. McLain said there were many different ways [to do that] in the secular world.”

For the other three speakers, Nancy Pentecost Siska, ’76, Ann Hiott, ’92, and Brittney Nance, ’07, their pivotal moments came in the form of advice and life lessons that they have used and will use in life and away from Meredith.

“First I learned to trust myself more deeply,” Siska said. “Find the courage to try new things, embrace change and be confident in your ability to make change happen.”

After a weekend trip alone to the southern Alps during Meredith study abroad in Europe, Hiott said she realized, “The world was not so big that I didn’t have a place in it.”

For Nance, her Meredith experience taught her much about perseverance and trying new things.

“I’d rather die trying than die wondering,” she said.

The Founders’ Day convocation served both to honor the class of 2007 and celebrate Meredith’s past, and centered on this year’s College-wide theme, “The Status of Women: Our Future, Our Responsibility.”