Hobart and William Smith Colleges

2 July 2003 Yolen Published on Katharine Hepburn

Susan Yolen, a member of the William Smith Class of 1972 and a former Colleges trustee, had an editorial titled The Hepburns' Gift To Women's Rights published in the July 1 Hartford Courant. In it she wrote, Katharine Hepburn changed my life. Like so many women and men I admired the immense personal style she brought to motion pictures and to her life. But it was her unswerving belief in reproductive freedom, inherited from her parents, that struck me back in 1979, when I received a pro-choice fund-raising letter graced with her signature.

Yolen is the vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Connecticut, in New Haven. Katharine Hepburn is the niece of Mrs. Houghton Vail, who dononated Houghton House to the Colleges.