When I learned that the Northfield Campus was to be sold and all students permanently bussed to Mt. Hermon I felt as if I had lost my Alma Mater. Indeed, this is the way I continue to feel–more so now that the deal has been closed. I understand that there were multiple variables that contributed to the decision to close Northfield. Maybe, in the end, it will be a good thing for a place called NorthfieldMountHermon. Maybe the sale was the only choice from an economic point of view. I do not know anything about the “poor stewardship” to which another alum has referred. As I have read the Almunae Magazine and other pulications about closing Northfield it seems to me that there has been a valiant effort to persuade us that the change is a good one and to deny the profund loss some of us feel. (I know I am not the only one.) Yes, we were encouraged to write about our feelings, to come to say goodbye to the campus, but none of these gestures has persuaded me that Northfield lives. For me, there has been a death. I have no interest in trying to shift my loyaly and passion to Mount Hermon. (Mount Hermon was a place where I went to see my Hermonite wrestle and where I stood in Recitation Parking lot, trying to fend off my heart’s desire and to be a “good girl”. Not a bad memory). The basement of Merrill-Keep was where my classmates called home during the Cuban Missle Crisis, and where girls with curly hair ironed their locks straight. Upstairs my love affair with the Beatles began. Dr. Meany said in the spring of ‘64 that we never would have made it through the winter without the Beatles. And my chapel seat is where I sat as all of us grieved and tried to absorb the meaning of JFK’s assisination. I had been in Miss Fixter’s Latin class when Barbara Steenburg came in to tell us the president had been shot. I do not want to embrace the new school as if it were my own. The change that I am coming to accept is that I no longer have an Alma Mater. Life goes on.
Molly Hinchman, ‘65