Welcome to the Mount Holyoke College Class of 1965

---

Still living in Poland, Susan Throckmorton has raised almost $10,000 for refugee relief from friends, MHC and high school classmates and former colleagues. Initially she and a Polish friend distributed food, hygienic provisions, toys, games, and school supplies in person to the refugees at railroad stations and distribution centers, but now she has enlisted others to do the legwork. The money has been used toward school lunches for Ukrainian refugee children at a local school near her apartment and a nursery school in Krakow, a center receiving evacuated orphans from the Ukraine and for three refugee families living with a friend in Krakow. An animal rehabilitation center on the Polish-Ukrainian border, the local Polish Red Cross and the World Central Kitchen set up in Warsaw and other parts of Poland also received money. As a former Peace Corps volunteer, she supported the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Alliance for Ukraine, sending individual first aid kits to Ukraine, and the Support Ukrainian Newborns Project. Sue says that to “keep sane” she has continued to make paper cuttings in preparation for two exhibitions in Poland this summer.

Further Notes: Many of us are familiar with Sue Throckmorton’s paper cuttings from the stunning cover of the Class of 1965 50th Reunion book, artwork within, and the bookmark.

Now check out the Bookshelf and Gallery pages in the “Talents” section of this website to learn more about her amazingly varied career, books and paper cuttings.

Leslie shared how her enthusiastic embrace of the out of doors devolved into a passionate pursuit of hiking to forest fire lookout locations. These destinations provided her not only great exercise but often breath-taking views, and beautiful flowers and fauna to observe along the way. 

In the early 2000’s she was hiking two or three times a week, leading small groups of women in this pursuit. They called themselves variously “Women in Motion” and “Tuesday Trotters,” and shared many adventures, laughs and gaffs. 

By 2008, Leslie had visited 300 (!) of these, and ultimately she hiked to an astonishing total of over 500, across the U.S. She realized she needed to learn GPS so that her screen would match her (don’t leave home without it) map. Armed with this skill she continued to hike and to research and record the history of each lookout’s location. 

When she realized she had become an expert on fire lookouts, she decided to write a hiking guide focused on the Olympic Peninsula and Willapa Hills, which she knew best. 

Nonetheless, Leslie spent four years drafting her book, determining its organization, incorporating pictures and maps, indexing and footnoting, until she finally found an editor and cartographer that would publish and distribute it: Sidekick Press. 

Lost Fire Lookout Hikes and Histories is so well written it was a 2022 finalist for an Eric Hoffer Award. If you missed this mini, and even if you never get to Northwest Washington, we recommend purchasing Leslie’s book. It’s guaranteed to inspire you to don your hiking boots and set off on many more “Mountain Days” of your own! 

Submitted by Elizabeth “Sunny” Eaton Steadman