The college years were tumultuous ones for the class of 1968.\u201cWhat stands out?\u201d asks Virginia \u201cJinny\u201d Muse Fleischman \u201968. \u201cRiots in Baltimore, anti-war demonstra-tions, civil rights demonstrations, they were part and parcel of our education. Even if you didn\u2019t participate in them\u2014because of course not everyone did\u2014you were aware of them. And it informed, I think, what we did.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first class of the post-World War II baby boom generation was one of the largest Goucher classes at that time. Their senior year saw not only the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and subsequent riots, but the slow procession of Robert Kennedy\u2019s funeral train along the East Coast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it made us look at the world from the outside,\u201d Fleischman says. \u201cIt was a whole historic different time in American history.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fleischman and her classmates have been looking back as they gear up for their 50th reunion, organizing get-togethers to drum up enthusiasm. Fleischman hosted events with President Jos\u00e9 Bowen in Seattle, Portland, and New York.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were also at the beginning of the group that decided that women wanted more options with our lives. While some of us became wives and mothers, some of us wished to do other things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fleischman had a long career in marketing for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington before branching out into retail consulting. For 15 years, she and her husband ran a novel business, Company\u2019s Coming, teaching cooking classes\u2014entertaining classes, really\u2014to groups, often in their own kitchen.<\/p>\n
DC has long enjoyed a reputation for its dinner parties, and corporations and private groups attended the Fleischman\u2019s classes. They finally retired the business when they moved into an apartment that didn\u2019t allow businesses, but anyway, she says, \u201c15 years is long enough to carry groceries around, so that was fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since retiring, they\u2019ve devoted more time to travel. Asked about recent trips, she ticks off South Africa, Botswana, Japan, and Hawaii. That\u2019s so far this year.<\/p>\n
On the horizon, her eyes are set on next spring\u2019s class reunion, their 50th, and she\u2019s been reconnecting with her classmates, part of a group that wants to make April\u2019s gathering a momentous event.<\/p>\n
Lynn Satterfield \u201983, director of alumnae\/i affairs, says Fleischman and her classmates have been heavily involved with reunion planning.<\/p>\n
\u201cJinny has been the ringleader for the class and their upcoming 50th,\u201d Satterfield says. \u201cIt\u2019s a powerhouse group.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fleischman says she\u2019s excited for a tour of the various projects around campus, particularly seeing the relocated Froelicher Hall. The Class of \u201968 will be fundraising for the new first-year village, the addition to the Hoffberger Science building, and the Patricia Kinsey Olson \u201968 Memorial Scholarship Fund; Fleischman will be reaching out to her classmates soon with more details. The centerpiece of the weekend will be reading and discussing books related to the turbulent years of the late sixties, years they all spent here at Goucher. Most of all, though, she\u2019s looking forward to catching up with her classmates, and seeing what became of the young women she knew.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were independent, some of us a little quirky, perhaps,\u201d she says. \u201cI think we\u2019re an interesting group. No matter what we\u2019ve done, we\u2019ve all done interesting things in many aspects of life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fleischman and her classmates have been looking back as they gear up for their 50th reunion, organizing get-togethers to drum up enthusiasm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":312,"featured_media":1571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[54973],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[87492],"class_list":["post-1572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-spotlight"],"yoast_head":"\n