Wren Chapel Marriage and now the missing Wren Cross

Classes of 1949 and 1951, from same family, plead for the return of the Wren Cross:

As always when we are on campus, as my husband and I were for Homecoming this October, we visit the Wren Chapel, the site of our wedding 55 years before.

It is, of course, a place of great emotional and religious significance to us and we always stop to thank God for the good fortune that brought us together when I was a senior at William and Mary and he a young lieutenant at Fort Eustis. It was my husband who immediately noticed the missing cross. We were frankly puzzled. but since we were packed to leave for home, there was no time to inquire.

However, on 14 November we joined approximately 25 others associated with the college (as undergraduates and Law School students) on a trip to Rome and found out the reason for the missing cross. Not meaning to be flip, but "if it ain't broke, why fix it?"

What could President Nichol possibly have hoped to accomplish except that which he surely has--a perfect storm? So our lovely ever-growing, ever-improving school is now embroiled in a potential constitutional case (President Nichol's
"specialty"} and "the College of our Fathers" has fallen victim to political correctness.

I am heartsick at both the act of removal and the resultant publicity.

I trust the Board of Visitors will see fit to reverse this ill-thoughtout, and apparently unilateral, decision.

Mary-Jo Finn Aarestad, '51

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I am sending this on behalf of my mother, Suzanne Blankin Finn, class of 1949. She is responding to a blog posted by my Aunt, Mary-Jo Finn Aarestad, Class of 1951:

"We are indeed proud to second the statement of Mary-Jo Finn Aarestad (1951) on the matter of the missing cross in the College chapel. It must be restored immediately.

Suzanne Blankin Finn (1949)
Barbara L. Finn (1974)
Also on behalf of C. Robert Finn (1951), now deceased, who most assuredly would agree."