Local Bennington Alumni Reconnect at Fall Gathering
On the warm perfectly cloudless evening of September 12, about thirty local Bennington alumni gathered at the President’s residence, the Brick House, in Shaftsbury to catch up with College news and each other. They graduated between 1962 and 2024. What they have in common is a love of the creative and interdisciplinary environment Bennington provided and their willingness to stay in or return to the area.
Shay Totten ’91, who took the helm of alumni relations at Bennington just four days before the event, said, “What I love about Bennington alumni, when you meet them, no matter when they graduated, and ask them what they studied, they say one main thing and four or five other areas of focus. I think that’s indicative of who we are and how we still move in the world.”
Shawn MacKenzie ’76 studied “theater, mostly” while at Bennington and took just a short time away from the area before returning to live in North Bennington in 1979. She is originally from Minnesota. She crossed disciplines to become an author and has written three books about dragons. She is currently working on one for young people, “about cats and mice living in Paris.”
Leslie Parke ’74, MFA ’76, remembered MacKenzie from when the two overlapped at Bennington during her graduate studies. Parke is a painter originally from Scarsdale, New York. She lives in nearby Shushan, New York, and has a studio in Cambridge, New York. Parke has made a living as a painter since she left Bennington and is preparing for an upcoming show in Houston.
Parke is still in very good touch with many of the people she met at Bennington. The photographer who has been photographing her artwork for the last 30 years is a Bennington alum. The guy who taught her to weld at Bennington is now her printer.
“We all found each other and hang out,” she said. Noting the differences between Bennington College and the outside world, she remarked, “those of us who went to Bennington always live in that world.”
David Dubov-Flinn ’84, originally a music student studying the cello, became a theater student at Bennington. He has lived in Texas, England, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., and has worked as a director and actor throughout his career. “When it came time to retire,” he said, “I knew where we were going.” He and his husband bought a 1795 farm house in Pownal. He has been recently named the Co-Artistic Director of the Bennington Theater for the 2024–2025 Season.
Totten remembers John Getchell ’86’s post on social media just after he bought local landmark The Blue Benn. “Guys, I bought us a diner!” Totten quoted. Getchell is one of six alumni now being interviewed by a Bennington student for an oral history project about Bennington College.
In her remarks, President Laura Walker emphasized Bennington’s long history of faculty mentorship and practical experience in the world, two things, she noted, most closely related to student success both in college and beyond, according to a Gallup poll.
“One hundred percent of Bennington students, and of course, all of you, had those experiences,” she said. “Only four percent of students nationwide could claim both, and that really tells a story about the incredible power of a Bennington education.”
Walker is interested in continuing to expand on Bennington’s strengths in the fulfillment of the institutional mission while continuing to innovate and experiment, as has been Bennington’s mode since its founding in 1932.
“You are all products of that and, I hope, still experimenting,” she said. “We want to hear your ideas. We need a stronger connection with alums, so we can think together about what Bennington should be.”
Allison Gomes, the Vice President for Institutional Advancement, added, “We really value you and want to hear more from you. We want to be involved with the alumni community and have the alumni community be more involved with us."