A remembrance by Kate Wulle
Like many frosh I first met Jean by letter the summer before our freshman year. Born in August 1942, she must have been one of the youngest in our class and had just returned from a summer at Interlochen Music Camp. In that letter I learned that she played the viola, was going into pre-med, and preferred the nickname Dean. Like many of us she changed her major radically during her college years. After freshman year she transferred to the Eastman School of Music to major in performance. But she had begun dating Bidge McKay that first year at Carleton; whether she decided musical performance was not for her or she missed Bidge, she returned to Carleton the second half of our sophomore year. She graduated as a Government major.
That first year she and I roomed together on Gridley South, where she was always in the middle of any mayhem that we cooked up in the smoker. Our junior year, she and I and Gail Eaton roomed together on First Evans ensuite with Gayle Maehara. She was still dating Bidge, and they became engaged at Christmas that year. (I have a picture of her as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for a Christmas skit showing off the new ring.) Senior year, First Evans moved almost en masse to Fourth Nourse, where Dean roomed with fellow Government major Mary Speer. Hijinks were still the order of the day. Bidge and his cronies got hold of Schiller, and since they figured Dean’s room would be one of the first places to be searched, Gail, Mickey Fleming, and I hid Schiller in our dormer storage area. Graduation day saw us attending Dean and Bidge’s wedding at All Saints Episcopal Church with the reception afterwards in Great Hall.
After graduation we unfortunately lost touch. Jean attended the University of Denver School of Law and received her JD degree with honors from the University of Baltimore in 1976 after her daughters, Julie and Rachel, were born. She and Bidge were divorced sometime before our 35th reunion. Besides working in a private law practice in Pennsylvania, Jean was active in politics and worked with those in need in a variety of groups such as the American Friends Service Committee, the New Hampshire State Prison for Women. and the NH Minority Health Coalition. She also worked on the Obama campaign. (Pretty good for someone who was a freshman member of Young Republicans!) Shortly before her death from ovarian cancer in November 2007, she received a thank you call from Obama and got an absentee ballot to vote in the primary.
Her last reunion was the one in 2003, where we caught up briefly. She was an important part of my time at Carleton and I will miss her greatly at our 50th.
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