My name is Suzette Lalime Davidson. I am the chairperson and a co-founder of the Fires of Wisdom Oral History Project. I graduated from Mills College in 1994 with a degree in American Studies.

As an undergraduate at Mills, I was an intern with alumna and Alumnae Association Board of Governors member, Penny Peak, class of 1982. Penny and I had both received training in oral history techniques. We researched and wrote an oral history curriculum for training volunteers so we could conduct interviews with elderly alumnae. We wanted to preserve some of their stories and the college's traditions. Our focus grew to include the difference that going to a women's college had made in their lives.

At first the goal of the project was to capture the history and traditions of Mills through stories of older alumnae, those graduating in 1943 and earlier. We chose 1943 as our cut-off date because, at Reunion that year, 1943 was the graduating year of the Golden Girls, (those alumnae who had celebrated their fiftieth anniversary of graduation) and we figured Reunion would be a good time to interview alumnae from out of town. The following year we extended the cut off date to 1944.

We had seen photos and heard stories about life at Mills long ago and, we were curious. There had been magnificent pageants at Lake Aliso, songs, games, various traditions and rites of passage. We wanted to learn more about them, about the students who went to Mills College, and what Mills meant to them.

Nearly two dozen alumnae and students have been involved as volunteers. As of 2003, ten years after we began the project, we have completed 24 interviews with women who graduated from Mills in 1944 and earlier -- the eldest alumna was from the class of 1913. We concluded our interviews with members of the class of 1944. These dates roughly parallel the tenure of one of the college's most distinguished presidents, Aurelia Henry Reinhardt. We began by asking our narrators (the alumnae who were interviewed) what they remembered about the traditions of the college and gradually expanded our interest to include women¹s education and the impact of Mills on their lives.

At first we ambitiously planned to publish a book. Through researching other oral history publishing projects, we learned that oral history books might typically take 10 years of work, so we decided to make the goal more realistic. Now we are editing and compiling the interviews into volumes organized by decade. We hope to give the finished material to the Mills archives in the Olin Library by 2004. However, we have created another way to present this historical material to the Mills Community.

Ours has been a labor of love, continuing despite full time jobs, and the various adventures of our lives over the last several years including weddings, babies, new jobs and even serious illness in some families. We are committed to this project because we value our Mills education and want to give something back to the college.