Rosalie Slack Walton
Rosalie Slack Walton ’58 — known to her classmates as Terry Slack — credits the English curriculum at Kent Place for her long and enjoyable career in writing and publishing. After Kent Place, Terry went to Smith College, where she realized she already had solid skills as a writer and editor when she received an exemption from freshman English.
When considering making a bequest to Kent Place, Terry said, “We were fortunate to have such excellent beginnings.” She notes that her bequest is made “with love and gratefulness, for my English teacher Eleanor Moulding and in memory of my sister Elizabeth Slack Merrin ’55, a fellow Kent Place alum.”
Reflecting on her years at Kent Place, Terry said, “I have such fond memories of walking to that handsome old school, of the disciplines of chemistry class, and of playing field hockey and tennis. But I’m especially grateful and indebted to Miss Moulding for giving me the love of writing and a solid foundation in English, skills that have served me well for a lifetime. I’ve used those skills from my very first jobs writing for magazines — to being the ultimate grammar helpline for friends and my own kids (‘kids’ in their 50s) today.”
Terry’s career also included writing for museums, and 25 years ago she decided to establish her own publishing business, called Rosalie Ink Publications. Among her own books is Prickly Garden, an anthology of her poems and vignettes of life after achieving age 80, written for personal survival amid the years of COVID and family caregiving. Rosalie’s Familiar Quotations, a compilation of favorite quotes gathered over time, brightened Covid itself. Earlier books include Harbor Voices, stories about New York Harbor, and Kindnesses: A Journey Through the Seasons of Grief — poems, prayers, and joyous observations, which is about Terry’s experience of losing her sister to cancer. The book has been used in hospice bereavement groups, and over the years for 9/11 disaster victims and relief workers.
Terry’s memoir for her grandchildren, Hello, It’s Me, includes fond remarks about Kent Place: “The new school had wide creaky stairways, ancient and erudite teachers befitting the private schools of the day, and classmates whose age-fourteen hormones drove them to snubs and cliques. . . . Kent Place today is known nationally as an academically superb, up-to-date, diverse place. . . . At Class of ’58 reunions, we compare our wildly differing memories of our years there. We delight in reliving our outrageous, priceless times.” Our life-changing times, she adds today.
Terry welcomes visitors to her 100-year-old house, a few minutes from the water in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, where she and her late husband, Bob, lived for nearly 50 years. She is “retired” at last at age 83 yet is still at her desk writing articles for a local magazine, “doing crossword puzzle vaingloriously in ink,” and volunteering at St. John’s Church.