Whether joining the service or entering a labor force suddenly in need of qualified female workers, Radcliffe women found themselves playing new roles. "The war gave us great opportunity to make career choices which probably weren't there in the '50s," says Class President Bette Dickson Finegan.
Still, the war did impair social activity on campus, as Harvard men joined the services, Finegan says. "'42 and the first half of '43 were a little sparse in social activity," which left only "classes, studying, and the occasional bridge game," Finegan says.
Hagenbuch too found the pace of life markedly different after Pearl Harbor. "We used to have dates where I'd meet someone outside the library and go for a Coke, then go back to study for a while and go out with someone else later on," she says. "You could go out with two or three people in one day. When the war started, it wasn't so leisurely."
For Dirks, Pearl Harbor's import didn't hit until the men started disappearing. "I was pretty stupid about the war," says Dirks. "Pearl Harbor didn't register for a while. I was going to a Law School dance that night. And then suddenly it registered, because the place was devoid of men, and some of them were dying."
Even then, Dirks says, the full import of the war didn't hit her. "It was still a bit of an ivory tower. You're there, and you're protected, and war is just one of those terrible things that happened thousands of miles away," she says. "We picked apples for the farmers and thought we were doing a lot for the war. Some of us knitted--not me, certainly."
Until a junior-year tutor "taught [her] to think," Dirks relegated studying to a second-priority activity. "We were probably less serious than [Radcliffe students] today," says Dirks, co-chair of entertainment for the reunion. "We danced a lot, and we got in trouble a lot with housemistresses, and we played bridge a lot and we smoked."
"A typical weekend you waited for the phone to ring," Dirks says. "If you were unlucky and unfortunate enough not to have a date--believe me, if you didn't get asked for a date, you were miserable--we stayed up and played bridge and smoked."
When not listening to the Big Bands at Norumbega Park or taking picnics to Walden Pond, football provided the primary activity, Dirks says.
"There was football, which I hated, because it was wet and cold, but it was what your boyfriend invited you to," she says. "I really loathed it, but I think I was at every football and baseball game. It was a silly time, but I think you have to mix the silly and the serious."
Helman also looks back on football games as prime social events. "Football games were much more exciting in those days. Harvard was a football power then," she says. "If you had a boyfriend, he bought you a big, yellow chrysanthemum and a banner and you marched down in high heels."
For the many commuters in the class of '43, Agassiz House in Radcliffe Yard provided the center of activity, with a cafeteria, mail boxes, and club meetings. "Radcliffe Yard was abuzz with activity," says Helman. "It wasn't like it is now."
But Rochelle Mirsky Cohen says commuters missed many of the privileges residents enjoyed. "If you didn't live in the dormitories, you really had very little association with most of the student body," says Cohen, who commuted every day from home to Radcliffe and to the Boston Hebrew College.
Cohen speaks also of prominent social class separations within the student population, beyond those of commuters and residents.
"There were all our classmates who were coming out and living in posh households, but they didn't associate with people who weren't society families. We were really edged out," Cohen says.
Though the class was extremely homogeneous in terms of race, Cohen recalls cases of anti-Semitism. "It wasn't an easy time to get into Ivy League schools in those years. There was some sort of a limit [on Jewish students admitted]," says Cohen.
Still, many alumnae insist that Radcliffe provided substantial opportunities--both during and after college.
"It opens doors," says Helman. "On the personal level, it gave me a sense of what excellence meant and the value of a broad, humanistic education."
Derderian agrees. "Those were the times," she muses.