More Photos

A photograph of Dorothy "Dar" Titus Webb (Vassar class of 1913) in her wedding dress and veil, worn for her wedding on June 30, 1913. She was the first of her class to marry, the first to have a baby, and is the namesake of Dorothy "Dar" Titus Webb (Vassar class of 1968).

Courtesy of Dorothy "Dar" Titus Webb (Vassar class of 1968)

A photograph of Dorothy "Dar" Titus Webb (Vassar class of 1968) who married her partner in life, Clint Page, on December 17, 1998, after 20 years together. She "broke out" her favorite khaki slacks for the occasion, rather than wear blue jeans.

A photograph of Elaine DeMaris Beguin (Vassar class of 1968) in her wedding dress for her first wedding on June 12, 1972.

Courtesy of Elaine DeMaris Beguin Panitz (Vassar class of 1968)

A photograph of Elaine De Maris Beguin Panitz (Vassar class of 1968) and her husband Fred Panitz on their wedding day, May 7, 1977.

Courtesy of Elaine DeMaris Beguin Panitz (Vassar class of 1968)

A photograph of Roberta Price (Vassar class of 1968) with husband David at their wedding in the Zoar Valley, in Western NY, in May 1970. Courtesy of Roberta Price (Vassar class of 1968)

"During the tumultuous late 60s/early 70s, I was at odds with my parents, good Rockefeller Republicans who supported Nixon and the Vietnam War.  My boyfriend from Yale and I started living together after our 1968 graduations when we both were PhD teaching fellows at SUNY Buffalo.  After that, my mother, who had fallen back into a chair crying, "My daughter's a slut!" when I told my parents David and I intended to live together, never mentioned David's name and refused to let him enter our family home for two years.

We were grad students, but like many were involved in the counterculture.  Buffalo was a hotbed of anti-war activity.  Benjamin Spock and William Kunsler and Abbie Hoffman and Richard Alpert (aka Baba Ram Dass) and Allen Ginsburg and Gary Snyder visited us in our apartment during those years.   When we decided to get married in May, 1970, we did so with only our contemporaries in attendance.  The ceremony was in Zoar Valley, a conservation area of old growth forest located at the confluence of the main and south branches of Cattaraugus Creek in western New York.  

Jefferson Davis (a direct descendant of the Confederacy president and a fellow American Studies grad student with David)  was a Universal Life Church minister, so he presided.  At the start of the ceremony, he had our friends make a circle according to their astrological signs, so Davide (Libra) and I (Aries) were opposite each other.   It had been a difficult year -- many of us were gassed at the March at the Pentagon in the fall, the war was still waging, friends were drafted, some had burned their draft cards and left for Canada, one had a nervous breakdown.  Jefferson conducted a ceremony focusing on the hope surrounding the decision to marry.  

I wore a cotton lawn underdress from the early 20th century found in a Buffalo antique store. It was in perfect condition, high necked and delicately embroidered with tiny flowers, and cost ten dollars.  It was fairly transparent and obviously meant to go under or over other layers, but I wore it alone over a nude bodysuit.  After the ceremony, David and I swam across the creek and stood under one of the small waterfalls that fell over the high, striated cliffs. Our celebration afterwards was vibrant and joyous, interrupted only slightly by a visit from members of a motorcycle gang.  They were searching for the body of their leader, who had ridden the wrong way and fallen into the river the night before.

That June we left for Colorado to build a house at nine thousand feet in an artists' commune called Libre. (See Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture (U. Mass. Press 2004)). My parents and David and I reconciled before we left for the West.  They weren't happy with our decision to give up our  academic careers, but my father gave me some tools that came in handy when we were building.  

Almost a decade later, when I was divorced and a law student in New Mexico, I donated the dress to the university theater costume department." - Roberta Price (Vassar class of 1968)