Yet again...I did not know Fredrica -- but surely there is someone who has a memory of her, of who she was. How can there be not a single person in our class who has something to say about one of our own???

Chris O'Hare

OK, Chris, I'll start.

I did not know Rica all that well. But I was a friend of her roommate, and I used to drop by their room in Stoughton freshman year (Rica's only year at Harvard, I believe, which might explain the lack of input from our class).

A few times I would sit and watch TV with her. Her favorite show was "The Rifleman." When Chuck Connors appeared on the screen, twirling his huge gun, Rica would laugh so hard she'd roll around on the floor at what she regarded as the blatant, ahem, symbolism. (As a recent escapee from an all-boy Catholic high school, such things were not immediately obvious to me.)

Rica was very quiet, but clearly she was not all that happy at Harvard that freshman year. She took the next year off, but visited that fall, just as we all were moving into Houses and reacquainting ourselves and adjusting to new surroundings and roommates.

She had had sort of a makeover over the summer, and she looked great. I recall she seemed a bit upset that all of us people seemed more occupied with reacquainting ourselves with each other than with noticing how good she looked. She was so different -- glasses ditched for contacts, made up, new hairstyle -- that I think some of us oafs (and some of her female friends) were left tongue-tied.

I never saw her after that visit. I don't know the details of how she died, and Googling only reveals that she got some sort of arts degree. I hope she found some happiness and fulfillment in the remainder of her life. She had a great sense of humor, and thanks to her, I'll never be able to watch "The Rifleman" again with a straight face.

Patrick Marren '82

Rica is one of the people I was hoping to see here this weekend. How surprised she would have been that we both, either, ended up working for newspapers. I remember sitting on the stairs talking with her about nothing and everything during our freshman year, or sitting in her room, singing along with her and her roommates records. She was fun and funky and bold as brass in when she wasn't being shy instead. And so proud of her mother and her family.

Susan Baird