Spring 2002 volume 98 issue 2 : letters
Re: Wanderlust and the Watson Fellowship (Winter 2001)
I read with interest your article in the latest Vassar Quarterly, "Wanderlust and the Watson Fellowship," about the many fine Vassar students who have taken advantage of this splendid program. VQ’s readers might also be interested to know a little of the history of how Vassar and the Watson came together a decade ago, for in arranging that marriage two Vassar alumni played an important role.
Those two alumni are the late Nora Burton Licata ’43, and her son Tim Licata ’86. When one of Nora’s other sons, my friend Steve Licata, became executive director of the Watson Foundation in 1989, he was surprised to learn that a school of Vassar’s quality, character, and reputation was not already part of the Watson Fellowship Program, then more than two decades old. Steve, himself a former Watson Fellow, knew about Vassar not only from visits to campus during my time on the faculty but, more, by growing up in a household that held Vassar in high esteem.
Discovering this oversight, he visited campus to speak with Colton Johnson, Susan Davis, and others, then had no trouble convincing his colleagues at the Watson Foundation that Vassar should be added to the list of elite schools in the program. The rest, as they say, is history — or at least a "marriage" made in heaven!
Steve Licata, now an attorney in Milwaukee, has enjoyed following the fortunes of Vassar’s Watson Fellows, students who, year after year, prove him right about Vassar’s suitability for this program. He will be delighted to read your fine article.
James H. Merrell
Chair, Department of History
Vassar College