What 40 Years Looks Like

This page is from the Providence College yearbook, 'Veritas,' in 1940, the year my father graduated from PC.Forty years! What is that to you? Blink of an eye? (As we get older, doesn't time speed up?)I'm 59, and 40 years ago, I was a college sophomore living in an all-girls dorm on the campus of a Catholic college that my father attended (no girls back then), my older sister attended (she was a senior at the time), my cousin attended (Class of 1973), and my younger sister would attend. Providence College is, for some, a family tradition.Forty years ago there were no cellphones, no email, no terrorism threats, no Netflix or Hulu, no personal computers, tablets, or iPods. There were no ATMs. No AIDS. The Berlin Wall stood. Jimmy Carter was president and if you ate a meal in Raymond Cafeteria, you might have heard Debby Boone singing 'You Light Up My Life" over the piped-in music system.When people die young, at the very beginning of their adult lives, one can't help but imagine what they would have become. The ten girls who died in the Aquinas fire that snowy night will always be young in our memories.Always remembered as the bright, youthful, beautiful girls they were:Kathryn Jean Andresakes ’80Jacqueline Luiza Botelho ’79Barbara Jean Feeney ’81Donna Bernadette Galligan ’81Sallyann Garvey ’81Gretchen Kay Ludwig ’81Catherine Anne Repucci ’81Laura Marie Ryan ’81Deborah Ann Smith ’78Dorothy Anne Widman ’81