Nancy Felson

I'm living in Dobbs Ferry, NY for the last 3 years, to be near two families, one of whom moved this July to Melbourne, Australia. Two of my four brothers live in Cincy, one in Austin, TX, and one in State College, PA.

I retired in June, 2010, after 32 years of teaching Classics at UGA. I then spent a year in Athens, Greece, teaching at the American School for Classical Studies and traveling through Greece and Turkey. After three autumns in Cincy, I decided to be a snow bird for awhile: 4-6 months in New Haven CT (where Alex was teaching before his move), with sojourns to NYC (where Sabrina and family live & work --at VA Hospital), or 4-6 months in Manhattan with sojourns in New Haven. I kept my place in Athens GA till last January, 2022. I've a daughter (Rachel) on the west coast and a son (Joe) in D.C.

A few summers ago I took a ten day "roots tour" of Lithuania, the country my maternal grandfather Jake Raphaelson left in 1892. I found the village, Yonava, where he was born, and the towns where he studied the Talmud before leaving, on his own, for America (at age 14). I used his unpublished autobiography as my guide-book.

My mother Virginia, whom some of you may remember, died in late June, 2016. We held a "nearly 102" birthday party in May, 2016, since she didn't think she'd last to October. She had a very good life, even in her old age. Some of you saw her at a WHHS reunion. My dad died in 1988 at age 75.

I've been enjoying my retirement. I write professional papers and work with two British colleagues on a Performing Pindar project. I'm interested in prison pedagogy and taught in Bard Prison Initiative at a men's prison (a course on Ancient Greek notions of masculinity). I wrote a new chapter for my 1994 book, Regarding Penelope, which examines the figure of Penelope in the Odyssey from multiple perspectives, including (to the extent retrievable) her own. The Center for Hellenic Studies in D.C. will reissue it electronically. I did a "Grammar with Grandma" Zoom with two of my grandkids: fun while it lasted. I ignited an interest in etymology in my Australian granddaughter. That's led me to think about how to teach sentence magic to kids. I may develop this.

Just recalled a confrontational moment with Harold Howe III, principal, when he told me it was not appropriate to hold a Fellowship House meeting in a classroom at WHHS. I tried to persuade him -- one of the earliest of my life-time attempts to get administrators to budge in the name of fairness & equality. He wouldn't. At least he was polite.
I wrote editorials with Carol Hines for the Chatterbox and poems, some of them attacking the sorority and fraternity system. I was a marcher in the early Civil Rights Movement. Fellowship House was a second home for me -- a center for organizing civil rights activities, like panels sent out to communities, and picketing Coney Island and sitting in at Woolworth's Counter. It felt like a parallel university to WHHS, where I found the cliques and divisions alienating. (Has it improved?)

I served on student court with Jack Rubinstein and three others, sentencing students for smoking infractions and the like. I was a goody-goody before the 60s came along.

We did sit ins at Woolworth's Counter and helped integrate Coney Island. Fellowship House was an important part of my high school years.