Wit, Wisdom, and Chronicles of Life:
Marian Heath Mundy ’51
“You don’t have to have news. You don’t have to be going on a trip to Tierra del Fuego with your nephews or something like that,” Mundy said. “If you just stay home, tell us about it. People feel if they are going to send something to their Class Notes, it has to be interesting, but that’s not true.”
In addition to her humorous Class Notes narration, Mundy is an active volunteer in her community. At 94, she serves as a trustee for her local library where she helps fund-raise and participates in a women’s study group. At a recent annual fund-raiser, Mundy noted they raised $20,000 for the library.
She credits her drive to volunteer to her time at Vassar. “We were taught as women getting educated that we had an obligation to volunteer in our community,” Mundy said. “I had a pretty good time at Vassar. I was not an A student but I got a good education anyway.”
Mundy studied art history but was deeply interested in writing and journalism and was a cartoonist for the Miscellany News. During her senior year, she was selected as one of 20 guest editors for Mademoiselle magazine’s August 1951 college issue, chosen out of 850 undergraduate applicants. For four weeks, she commuted to New York City, writing and editing for the issue. While at Mademoiselle, she met First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt—but it was not their first encounter.
Earlier that year while at Vassar, a friend, whose architect father was working on a project for the Roosevelts, invited Mundy to lunch with the first lady at Val-Kill Cottage in Hyde Park.
“She was charming and a wonderful talker, and she would ask our opinion on things,” Mundy said. “She would say ‘Now, I wonder what my Vassar friends think about that?’ We were just sitting there with our eyeballs falling out. We were naturally mesmerized.”
Mundy met the first lady at Mademoiselle again weeks later.
“She greeted me and said, ‘This is the second time we’re having lunch together this month,’” Mundy remembers. “I nearly fainted.”
After Mademoiselle and graduation, Mundy set off to England to stay with her father’s family. She spent a summer in Italy, before returning to the States due to her father’s ill health—but not alone. She brought her future husband, Lawrence Mundy, whom she had met in England. Lawrence, who went on to become a resident psychiatrist, took an internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital alongside his brother. Before their wedding, he worked at Norwich State Hospital in Connecticut.
“I’ll bet you that I’m the only bride you know who spent her honeymoon in a psychiatric hospital,” Mundy said.
Together, the Mundys had six children, so Marian needed a job that allowed her to balance work and her family. After moving to New Jersey in 1957, she turned to her passion for journalism and writing.
“I’ve written articles for magazines and newspapers,” Mundy said. “I had a steady gig in a magazine called New Jersey Countryside, and then I had a column in the local paper. I wrote my column, ‘Today’s Mundy,’ for 40 years for a chain of local weeklies.”
She finished writing that column in the late 2010s—and now has six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
After more than 50 years, Mundy’s last column of witty musings can be found in this issue of VQ. When she called to break the news to the magazine’s editor, Elizabeth Randolph, she said in her characteristically droll tone, “I’m 94, for goodness’ sake! I think it’s alright to lay down my pen, don’t you?
“But I’ll still be around, helping out where I can,” she added.
Know of an alum from an earlier class—pre-1960—still thriving and living an extraordinary life? Let us know!