Give It Your Best Shot!

We know very little about this photo from the Mary Washington archives. It was produced from a negative on which someone had written in pencil, “Cavalry Club.” The image holds no other information − not even the year it was taken.

If you know who the rider is or have any other information about the photo, please comment below.

In the last issue!

Last issue’s image of Gloria Steinem on a 1972 McGovern-for-president campaign stop in Fredericksburg prompted memories from several readers. Tom Elliott of Charlottesville, Va., recognized Barbara Hanger ’76 (center) from their days as students together at Waynesboro High School. As the father of UMW art major Cheryl Elliott ’13, Tom Elliott receives UMW Magazine.

Hanger, an associate professor of art education at the University of Louisville, emailed Elliott that she remembered the rally. “I also remember that I was wearing a new poncho that my mother knitted and had just mailed to me.”

Ann Chryssikos McBroom ’76 identified classmate Linda Spagnolo Mitchell ’76 (in glasses and red-and-black jacket). In return, Mitchell commented, “I will always remember that fall as exciting and a wonderful way to kick off a college career.”

She worked for Gov. George McGovern’s presidential campaign in Fredericksburg, still has a campaign button from the rally, and has a page of McGovern memorabilia in her freshman scrapbook. Just “barely” 18 and looking forward to voting for the first time in the 1972 election, Mitchell was taken by Steinem’s grace and message of the importance of grass-roots involvement. “That day was one of many exciting ones in the fall of 1972 at MWC,” she wrote.

Carolyn Roberts ’76 also identified Mitchell. Roberts attended the rally her freshman year at Mary Washington with her “friends on Virginia third back,” she wrote. The college provided a bus to the rally in the parking lot of the Sheraton Hotel, now part of Central Park. “It was 1972 and our first semester of college,” Roberts wrote. “ ‘Ms. Steinem’ contributed to our sense of empowerment as women and being on our own.”

Katherine R. “Jill” Hadden ’74 remembers the year Mary Washington College dropped “of the University of Virginia” from its name and Gloria Steinem came to town. Hadden was a campus coordinator for the McGovern campaign and was most impressed with Terry McGovern, the candidate’s daughter. “She smiled and seemed to fit right in with the women [at the rally] from Mary Washington, talking about her father’s campaign issues,” Hadden said. When Terry McGovern died unexpectedly in 1994, “I wrote her father a note expressing my condolences and giving him my impressions of her brief stop in Fredericksburg.” George McGovern passed away last October.

Hadden stayed active in politics, “but the McGovern campaign still holds a special place in my Mary Washington memories,” she wrote. “I still have a couple of campaign buttons squirreled away somewhere. It was fun.”

Thanks to all who wrote about the photo, and special thanks to Professor Emeritus of English Daniel Dervin, who shot the image, added it to the University archive, and allowed UMW Magazine to publish it.