Chain of Creativity

Thank you for the charming sketch of Alan Gordon ’81 (winter 2016, “Jack-of-Some-Trades”). I didn’t know him at Swarthmore, but I did know Professor Susan Snyder and I am delighted that he credits her as an inspiration. She was just that: erudite, witty, imaginative—it is no surprise that Professor Snyder helped detonate his explosion of creative activity. I’m sure other alumni can supply similar testimonials. My own? A lifelong love of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, whose beauty and side-splitting comedy she brilliantly exhibited to the students in her Renaissance Epic seminar. Experiences like that are the enduring benefit of a Swarthmore education.

—Anthony Dangerfield ’78, Medford, Mass.