Eve Odiorne Sullivan, '62 (BardCorps)
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Interviewee Role
Alumni/ae/x
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Class Year
1962
Academic Program
Literature
Other Program
English
Interviewer
Helene Tieger, '85
Description
One of Eve Odiorne Sullivan’s high school classmates was the daughter of Fred Crane, a professor of history at Bard from 1949-78 who encouraged Sullivan to apply to the college. At Bard, she found herself “utterly overwhelmed,” and says she didn’t speak much in class at first. She focused intently on her studies, learning French while planning to major in math. An off-hand encouragement on a math midterm changed her path, however–her professor Charles Tremblay wrote, ‘Today you are a man’ as congratulations on a strong grade. “I wanted to be a young woman,” Sullivan recalls. “That basically turned me away from mathematics.” Sullivan eventually majored in English; her senior project was an intense analysis of the works of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Outside of the classroom, Sullivan served on the Educational Policies Committee and worked at the library. Sullivan recalls demonstrating EPC concerns about theft from the library by stealing several books and delivering them directly to the Dean of the College. Because of her young age, Sullivan remembers feeling like an outsider–she was too young to go to the local bar, for instance. She nevertheless remembers Bard as “a special place” where she “learned how valuable it is to do something hard, to work at it and to complete it.”
Keywords
Antioch, Fred Crane, Pamela Crane, Charles Tremblay, Educational Policies Committee, Potter, Preston, Blithewood, Down the Road, Gerard Manley Hopkins
Location
BardCorps Trailer, Main Campus
Interview Date
5-27-2012
Interview Duration
17:29
Recommended Citation
Odiorne Sullivan, Eve, "Eve Odiorne Sullivan, '62 (BardCorps)" (2015). BardCorps -- All Oral Histories. 39.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/oral_hist/39
Significant Quote
"I was intending to major in math, and I guess I got either a very high mark or the very highest mark on the math midterm. And Professor Tremblay, god rest his soul, wrote on my math mid-term, I can see it now in my mind’s eye—he wrote, 'Today you are a man.'"