Amanda “Mandy” Saxon

Very grateful for loyal former classmates who've gone to so much trouble to get our class together and arrange reunions, web-pages, and more!

Interestingly (oddly?) my boarding school classmates (I actually graduated HS from there) have almost no contact to speak of with one another. In fact, our regular alumni magazine has had absolutely no notes for the class of 1964 for as long as I can remember.

Don't know if it has something to do with the 60s, retrospective resentment of an elitist atmosphere or what. (For me, it's much a product of the loss of my closest friend and room-mate's at the tender age of only 54.)

I attended the New Canaan schools from "The Little School"*. to South School, Saxe Junior High and on to the NCHS for two years until sent to the Dana Hall School. from which I graduated. (Note, I began my study of Russian as a freshman in the NCHS - thank you, Ira Goetz!).

That was followed by a pot pourri of schooling including years vagabonding in Europe to which I fled after Sophomore Slump (I was completely unready for college - Sarah Lawrence - which I attended only by force).

Then I studied (chronological) at the Beaux Arts in Paris, the Art Students'. League in NY, Stanford U (now I WAS ready to be a serious academic student) and the Hebrew U of Jerusalem for graduate school in clinical psych. (No, regretfully, I didn't finish my thesis, returning again to Art in Israel).

I'm forever grateful to Columbia University and the nearby branch campus of the U of. CT. where I studied summer after summer in their language programs. One of my greatest passions from early childhood was learning languages which in due course, permitted me to support myself as a translator with and without agencies, in four, eventually five languages.

Alas, I'm steadily forgetting my languages these days comforted only by the reassurance I get from reading that being a polyglot helps stave off Alzheimer's by providing more potential synapses. (I CERTAINLY need all the help I can get in that direction now!)

Oops, just noticed the note below this box solicited stories - now I've used up my space, summarizing schooling instead. Unfortunately, my real profession turned into (single) motherhood instead of the rest, since my children turned out to have special needs.

That saying about. "Man plans, God laughs " applies (it rhymes in German/Yiddish! ;) )

*believe it or not, I actually still have two years of my report card from there - every once in a while I reread them, astonished at the prescient descriptions.