Lunch with Great Friends

BACK: Kay Conklin, Kate Cole, Mary Ellen Shea Clifford
Middle: Suzy Schwark, Jackie Medema, Meg Kennedy Shaw, Bethany Cronk
Seated: Dorothy Komarmy, Marj Kunz

In the early 80's I was on the Michigan Council of Cooperative Nursery Board. For three of the years I was Chairperson of the Spring Conference held at Michigan State University for over 1,000 parents and teachers of preschoolers.  I learned so much from these women.

Even though I was brand new and didn't know much about running a conference, they gave me the opportunity to get speakers to fill 40 workshops, find a keynote speaker (The three while I was chair were:

Fredelle Maynard

Author of Raising Creative Children; Raisins and Almonds; and The Child Care Crisis Also a Canadian television show, Parenting 

Louise Bates Ames

Psychologist and co-founder of the Geselle Institute of Human Development at Yale. Author of many books about developmental books by age (and hosted one of the first television shows on child development. 

David Elkind

Child Psychiatrist and professor at Tufts University and author of The Hurried Child and The Power of Play and Miseducation. His research and books were about the importance of play in development). 

With this group I learned how to run a meeting each month overseeing volunteers from all over Michigan who put on a bazaar, brought in vendors, ran a raffle, put on an annual meeting, found hostesses for each workshop, registration, welcoming, and made everything run smoothly.

No one hovered over me, the Board and our mentors were there to help if we asked. It was the most amazing group of people.

I always told the volunteers that the work we did should be on their resumes. After I left the Board to go to my paying job I became one of the speakers at Spring Conference presenting a workshop called, "It Will Look Good on Your Resume."

For the first time since I left the Board to go to work for the City of Saginaw in 1986, nine of us got together for lunch at the Kellogg State Room at MSU. It was a wonderful afternoon filled with memories and friendship.