2011
Hope Hamilton Pettegrew, Honorary Degree Recipient
Hope Hamilton
Read the citation for her degree below:
An ancient sage once said: Where there’s life, there’s hope. We say: Where there’s Hope, there’s life—abundantly. Hope Pettegrew, you enrich the lives of others in everything you do.
After teaching elementary school for several years, you co-founded Cobblestone, an American history magazine for young people. That magazine is still enlightening and entertaining children some 30 years later.
For the past four decades, your story has been one of service. You have given your time and talents to a host of community organizations, notably the Monadnock Area Transitional Shelter for the homeless, on whose board you serve. A music major at Wheaton, you have continued to pursue your love of the arts, volunteering for the Peterborough Players theater company for more than 30 years.
You don’t just participate: you lead. Time and again you have taken on top governing roles, including board president of the transitional shelter. At Wheaton, you served as president of the Alumnae Association and a member of the Board of Trustees, playing a key role in the college’s transition to co-education and later being named Trustee Emerita. But your engagement didn’t begin—or end—there. You have served your fellow alumni and your college in more key positions than we can name.
Always a devoted mother and now a proud grandmother, you delighted in seeing your daughters, Caroline and Ann, graduate from Wheaton in the 1980s. As one admirer has said, your “love of family, friends and community are a lesson to all, young and old.”
The Peterborough Chamber of Commerce has honored you as both Citizen of the Year and a Legend in Business. Today we join them in recognizing your contributions with this Doctor of Humane Letters degree.