Joyce Kittel Wilson (class of 1955) had a lot to learn from men like Jacob Klein, J. Winfree Smith, and Curtis Wilson. She also remembers some of the things she learned from women—the first to attend St. John’s—particularly her classmate, Anita (Jane) Gerber Denison.

“Jane taught me how to smoke,” Wilson recalls.

“I just don’t remember that,” Denison says.

Cigarettes were an ever-present prop for students and tutors alike. “We could smoke in class, and most of the students and tutors did,” Wilson recalls.

Members of the Class of 1955 and friends at the Kutler home.

Denison and Wilson were catching up in the home of Sam (class of 1954) and Emily (class of 1955) Kutler, who hosted a Saturday-afternoon luncheon at their home during Homecoming Weekend. As with most of the conversations around the room, the subjects alternated between “what are you doing now?” and “do you remember this?”

Homecoming is always festive, lively, and full of memories, but this year it was especially nostalgic, as members of the Class of 1955—the first to include women—returned for their 50th anniversary. The class had 48 members, nine of whom have passed away. Sixteen members of the class attended their reunion, traveling from far and wide. They smiled at imitations of Jacob Klein’s accent or memories of President Richard Weigle’s attempts to keep the female citizens of St. John’s safe from bad influences. They were pioneers, and they had pioneers’ stories, such as the “open door” rule required for men and women to be in the same dorm room at the same time. They also talked about getting their tutors and male classmates used to having women in class and on campus.

As Wilson puts it, the men of St. John’s did not accept the invasion of women quietly. “They went kicking and screaming into the fray,” she says.

Denison graduated from Towson High School, north of Baltimore, and she won a scholarship to attend St. John’s. She made it through three years at the college and found it rigorous, challenging, and sometimes overwhelming. “The college was so much smaller then. You had 15 in a seminar, and there was no way you could hide. If you weren’t prepared, everyone knew it,” she says. “The oral exams, and the don rags—I dreaded those like poison.”

She left close to the end of junior year and returned to Baltimore to find work. But she was summoned back to Annapolis by Jacob Klein, then dean of the college. “I went to his house. He was a very persuasive man. He wanted me to come back, and I did, but I was very confused, and I left again.”

Denison went on to a marriage, a rich family life that included five step-children, and a satisfying career as a professional editor. But she can still see Klein, who died in 1978, as if it were yesterday. “He always had this little twinkle in his eye.”

Yet Denison left St. John’s feeling well prepared for the future, and she treasures the memories she took with her.

“At that time, it was a very small community, and all of us women were new to it. We were close, and that was nice,” she says.

If Denison left because she was young and unsure of her path in life, Wilson left for another reason many college-age women encountered: marriage. She married Gerald Wilson (class of 1956) and became pregnant with her first child in her third year. “There was a saying at St. John’s, ‘if you’re unable to enable, have a baby,’” she recalls.

Wilson enabled, but left when classwork became too much for her. “I remember I had trouble keeping up with my fruit fly experiment—I had let some get loose,” she recalls.

She went on to have four children, and was one of the first women on the East Coast trained in the computer language COBOL. “I liked the logic in programming, and I was good at it,” she says. Later, after moving to California for her husband’s career, she earned a paralegal certificate and worked for law firms.

The women who entered St. John’s in 1951 paved the way for those who would come later; several women from later classes—all the way up to 2004—joined the Kutler luncheon to hear the stories and help the pioneers celebrate. Steered to St. John’s by a teacher in her Cleveland High School who spotted her engrossed in Moby-Dick, Josephine Jaster Poe (class of 1957) thought St. John’s was still for men only when she first heard about it. “Then I learned they had opened it up to women, but my father said I couldn’t go,” she recalls. “I did anyway. And when I got here, I had no sense that women were ever a problem. I was just one of the boys.”

Her husband, Harvey Poe (class of 1952), later a tutor and dean of St. John’s, recalls that the college embraced the idea that “women could do anything the men could do.”

Henry Shyrock (A32) and Roland Baily (A35) represented the "old" program at the Saturday banquet.

The college’s history also was a focal point of the weekend. Tylden Streett (class of 1950) unveiled two plaster busts of New Program founders Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan. Class of 1955 member Priscilla Bender-Shore brought her series of oil paintings inspired by the Muses to share with the college community and alumni during the weekend.

Charles Nelson (class of 1945) set the tone for the weekend with the Friday-night Homecoming lecture, “In the Beginning. . . The Genesis of the St. John’s Program, 1937.” Nelson, who worked closely with both men while he was a student, talked about Barr and Buchanan separately—what type of childhoods and early education they had—and what brought them together to launch the New Program in 1937. He also talked about the decisions they made, such as requiring faculty to teach across the curriculum, and explained the rationale for such choices. He talked about their struggles, such as a draining battle to ward off annexation by the Naval Academy, and their triumphs.

At the afternoon picnic, class of 1965 members Gerald Zollars, Mike Woolsey, and Vivian Ronay trade stories.

Even as the college gained international attention for its “radical” methods, Barr and Buchanan did not want the St. John’s Program “universally copied,” Nelson said. “That would have left the entering freshman without a significant choice, and the freedom to choose the St. John’s path is essential to its success,” Nelson said. “The discipline and commitment required in order to gain the rewards of the Program presupposes that the path is freely chosen. In fact, I believe that most alumni would assert that it must be not only freely chosen, but also pleasurable; otherwise, it isn’t worth the pain.”

The Muses Come to Homecoming

Seminars, book-signings, and parties are standard fare for Homecoming in Annapolis. This year, thanks to artist Priscilla Bender-Shore, class of 1955, there were The Muses, gracing the Hodson Atrium (home to the Pendulum Pit) in Mellon Hall for the full weekend. It was an appropriate visual tribute to the women who in 1951 arrived in Annapolis to end the college's days as an all-male institution.

During a Saturday afternoon reception, Bender-Shore provided insight into The Muses: Dancing at the Edge of the World, which she graciously shared with the Annapolis campus community. The series comprises several large paintings depicting classically robed women engaged in graceful dances. In her presentation, Bender-Shore said she was pleased that this, her first visit back to St. John's since graduation, gave her a chance to share her work.

For Bender-Shore, the human figure, especially the female form, is a muse. She studied at the Yale School of Art and Cooper Union before attending St. John's and earned her M.F.A. from the University of California-Santa Barbara. She currently lives and teaches in Santa Barbara.

"Priscilla won the Reader's Digest award to study ni Giverny, France, and that was when she began to develop the ideas for the Muse drawings," notes Emily Kutler, class of 1955, also an artist. "At a time when everyone was going modern, she stayed with what she was doing: human figures. Everyone was glad to hear her speak; she is so articulate and thoughtful."

Bender-Shore showed through slides of her work how her time as an artist-in-residence at Monet's home in Giverny laid a foundation for the series.

By Rosemary Harty

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