Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

What a whirl! Last Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday found me in my old stomping ground, my first metropolitan love—New York City—where I lived and worked for the first two years out of college, from the fall of 1978 to the summer of 1980, before moving to Los Angeles. I fell for this grand, grinding, majestic city the first time I visited as a teenager, and relish it every time I return.

So when I received an invitation from Glamour magazine to celebrate 50 years of its “Top 10 College Women” competition, I couldn’t resist. The contest was initiated in 1957 as “The 10 Best-Dressed College Girls” in America. Then, in 1969, it became the “Top 10 College Girls,” and, in 1978, morphed into the “Top 10 College Women.”

I was so honored in 1977, as a junior at Harvard University, and came to New York for a rich and busy week with nine fellow winners in June of 1977. My roommate at the Barclay Hotel in midtown that week (and for an earlier photo shoot) was Tufts senior Nancy Glass, who went on to become a bonafide television personality. Between parties, shows and meetings with professionals in our respective fields, it was a rich, exhausting and utterly unforgettable week. (Who could forget Ruth Whitney, the tall, commanding and visionary long-time editor of Glamour and women’s rights advocate, or college editor Peggy Schmidt, who was passionately devoted to the competition and its winners?) At the end of our week in the spotlight, we winners had all bonded but because those were before the days of email and cell phones, most of us had fallen out of touch.

So at the reunion last Wednesday at the Four Seasons Restaurant in Midtown, I bumped into a host of memorable personalities and delightful women with whom I developed fast friendships three decades ago. There was the soulful Anne Schneiderman, who is now an attorney, Ph.D. and yoga teacher in Ithaca, New York. And Beryl Cowan, a bright Bostonian whom I recognized immediately whose daughter is devotee of simplicity. And who wouldn’t love reconnecting with Diane Johnson, a big-hearted broadcast journalism major at American University back then, who went onto to work for Voice of America covering Africa and is now a media consultant in Washington DC? And then there was Rhonda—the life of any party, who remained my closest friend through the years—a stylish Cornell graduate and world traveler who eventually moved to Miami. She changed her name, along with her life, dropping the Rhonda and opting for her middle name “Hope.”

Anne brought a copy of the magazine in which we were featured. Over lunch, we browsed through the pages, now yellowing with age, to see younger versions of ourselves.

“Those were the days,” Diane commented over gazpacho and poached filet of salmon.

“These are the days!” I retorted. We went around the table and all agreed that while we may not be as youthful as before, we know ourselves better and know better where we are going, as if the shorter time left in our lives imbued in us a greater purpose and urgency.

We were inspired by Cindi Leive, the lovely, uptempo editor-in-chief of Glamour who introduced the event and featured speaker, Martha Stewart, who was a college winner in 1961. Martha, said Cindi, “is a hero to all women who dream big.”

Martha talked about her early days at Barnard and posing for the college issue of Glamour on the top of a flagpole. She told us that the road in life is never “straight and upward.” You fall into a crevasse and come out better than before. “Coming out on top is the nicest feeling,” Martha said. She added that you can’t do it without the help of “many people.”

When I had the chance to introduce myself to Martha, I could see that a large part of her success is due to her enormous curiosity. When we met, she didn’t talk about Martha, but wanted to know about Levering Orchard especially our sour cherries. She was gracious, kind and magnanimous.

How great to reconnect with these enterprising, entrepreneurial women—and to meet new friends, like Adina Storch—a winner in the early ‘90s who is now an attorney in Manhattan, and Laura Ellis, a talented portraiturist of animals who has recently relocated to New York City after decades of rural life in Vermont. I believe every woman who attended came away feeling as I did: feeling privileged to have been selected by Glamour and thankful to acknowledge the role that that recognition has played in our lives. The reunion reminded us of one other thing: to continue to dream big.