Originally Published DECEMBER 31, 1998

There are years that change a generation. As we ring out the old and celebrate the new, I recall one of those years. 1998 was the 30th anniversary of the year. The year was 1968.

Let me take you back. In 1968, the world tilted on its axis. The Vietnam War was out of control. Brothers, fathers, guys from the neighborhood went off to war and never came back. Those who stayed behind were torn between a traditional sense of loyalty to family and country and the growing perception that their sons and daughters were in reality cannon fodder for an ill thought out and pointless slaughter. The nuns from my college marched down 5th Avenue in anti war protests and were pelted with garbage by Catholic construction workers. Things flew apart.

Just when it seemed impossible for there to be even darker days, a rifle shot ended the life of Dr. Martin Luther King and with it our dreams of a just society achieved by peaceful means. Robert Kennedy picked up the standard, only to be struck down himself by an assassin's bullet. Government tanks rumbled through the streets of burning American cities.

The class of 1968 at the College of New Rochelle was small even by the college's standards. We numbered about 160, and came of age together in a world literally crumbling at our feet. At odds with the older generation, being shoved into a larger society undergoing revolutionary changes in every conceivable direction, many followed a traditional path of marriage and family.

But many did not and were swept into the tidal wave of change surging around the world - the women's movement, the civil rights movement, the righteous struggles of the poor and forgotten. Yet somehow, our time with each other, living and growing within the closed environment of that small Catholic women's college, prepared us infinitely well for that brave new world. Naive as we were, we understood from the soul that we lived in a moral universe that demanded our commitment to create a better and more just world. And so we did.

Now it is later and we are CEO's and lieutenant governors and coaches. But we remember the promises we made when we left each other a long time ago, in 1968. And when we come together, every five and ten years or so, it amazes me still the blinding number of acts of kindness and selflessness practiced without thought by these women, my friends. Often in small pieces: Children adopted. Battered women's shelters founded. Schools established in rural Africa. And bigger pieces: Careers of service voluntarily chosen by women brilliant enough to do anything or be anything. Small acts, multiplied many times, that keep the world from spinning apart again.

So at the cusp of the millennium, with this new year upon us, we wish for our daughters such a circle of friends to carry in their hearts through the triumphs and sorrows that are the game of life. Because every team is greater than the sum of its parts, and the world needs such friends.
©Adrienne Larkin