Gravestone Girls Dig Up the Past for Annual Meeting

The WWHP Annual Meeting was held at the Worcester Public Library on September 16, 2009. It was a bittersweet evening. While the meeting involved welcoming many new Steering Commit-tee members and officers, it also involved bidding farewell to many outgoing Steering Commit-tee members as well, one of which was Linda Rosenlund. Karen Folkes, outgoing President, in-vited Linda Rosenlund to say a few words. Rosenlund has been involved in WWHP for many years in many roles, most recently as the founder of the Oral History Project. Folkes invited Maureen Ryan Doyle and Charlene Martin, co-chairs of the Oral History Project, to speak about the many exciting developments of the past year, including the Schlesinger Library’s agreement to house the oral histories the OHP has worked to collect over the past several years. Lynne McKenney Lydick gave a summary of where she performed “Yours for Humanity—Abby” over the past year and reflected on her experience of performing as Abby with a lovely poem that she wrote, the full text of which we have made available for all to read in this newsletter. Once the new Steering Committee members and officers were voted in, Folkes welcomed new President, Fran Langille, to conduct the remainder of the meeting.

The meeting ended with a wonderful presentation by Brenda Sullivan from Worcester’s own Gravestone Girls. Sullivan’s presentation included a PowerPoint presenta-tion that was specifically focused on highlighting important Worcester women, in-cluding those represented in the portraits WWHP arranged to have displayed in Me-chanics Hall. Sullivan showed images of the graves of these women and spoke about the cemeteries where their graves are located. Sullivan also spoke about the art of creating gravestones and how the designs have changed over time.