When Molly Dorfman ’02 and her classmates attended reunion in June 2017, one of the highlights was getting to meet some of the College’s most experienced alumnae, from the class of ’42. Some months later, as Valentine’s Day approached, Dorfman remembered that the Washington State Wellesley Club sent out Valentine’s Day cards to its oldest members. Dorfman thought it might be fun if her class sent cards to all the members of ’42. “I thought it was going to be 10 people,” she says. Actually, try more than triple that.

Dorfman’s classmates jumped at the chance to participate. “There’s something that [the letter writers] get out of it that you just don’t get out of adulthood, in general,” Dorfman says. “I’m thinking of somebody else, and it doesn’t matter if I get something back or not.” She divided up classmates based on geographic location, in case the pen pals wanted to meet up. It was a big success—one of the members of ’42 even friended her ’02 Valentine on Facebook. This year, 18 Cupids from the class of ’02 decided to do it again, this time for the classes of 1933 through 1941, 88 alumnae in total. “I think it gives you an opportunity to interact with the older generations that you don’t usually have. You don’t necessarily see them or have them locally, and it gives you an opportunity to have more of a conversation with them,” Dorfman says.