How a Missing Classmate Changed My Perspective as a Reunions Memorial Chair

A display at Whitman Dining Hall honors members of the Class of 2001 who have died. It initially did not include Mona Mahboubi ’01, who was later added.

Robin Stennet ’01

By Martha Pitts ’01

Published June 10, 2026

4 min read

Martha Pitts ’01

Martha Pitts ’01 is an assistant professor of English at Washington College and a 2026 Delaware Division of the Arts Fellow.

I became a memorial chair of my class for a reason I’m almost embarrassed to admit. Katie Lyon ’01, our Reunions chair, had emailed seeking volunteers for committee roles. I wrote back asking about one of them, not the memorial, and whether it came with housing priority. It did not. But the memorial chair role, she replied, came with up to two guaranteed on-campus beds. “I know memorial chair does not sound super glamorous,” she wrote, “but it is super important.” I said I’d do it.

There was a handbook of sorts: notes from previous chairs and suggestions about slide shows, moments of silence, and P-rade signs. I already knew what I wanted, including a guestbook, photos in silver frames, candles, fresh white flowers, signage, and a bowl in front of each frame holding ribbons printed with the person’s name, birthdate, and date of death. Something people could take with them. My best friend Robin Stennet ’01 helped me see how it could look.

There were 11 of them: 10 classmates and one honorary member, Bruce Wright, whose complicated history with Princeton our class had chosen to claim as our own.

In a class of over a thousand people, I knew some of the names, such as Avery Waddell ’01, more than others. Most people who stopped at the table would never know who built it, and that was the point. Good memorialization effaces itself, steps back, makes room for the remembered.

Mona Mahboubi ’01, who died in 2023, was a late but meaningful addition to the Class of 2001 memorial.

Martha Pitts ’01

One name I didn’t know was Mona Mahboubi ’01. She didn’t appear on the spreadsheet Princeton had provided even though she had been gone for three years. No spreadsheet entry. No memorial in PAW. I found myself thinking about how institutions remember and how they forget. She had almost not made it to the table. Almost.

On Reunions Friday, I was sitting in a lecture hall listening to a panel on the AI revolution, Eric Schmidt ’76 talking about the future and data centers, when my phone buzzed. The text was from Nerissa Alleyne ’01. “Hey Marth – was chatting with Lori Mihalich-Levin ’01. There was another person that passed away a few years ago.” I typed back under the table. “Who? When? How?” The answers came in pieces. She had been a doctor. Breast cancer. 2023.

I opened a browser and started searching. Dr. Mona Mahboubi. Pediatrician. Georgetown Medical Center. Global health. The Himalayas. Gambia.

I found that Mona walked three or four miles between her home and the hospital because she loved the outdoors, and that a colleague reflected, “When I was with Mona, I would ask myself, could I ever hope to be that kind?”

In the Nassau Herald, Mona had chosen a quote from religious leader Bahá’u’lláh: “O son of Spirit! My first counsel is this: Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart.” She had written that down at 21 and spent the rest of her life living it.

When the panel ended, I walked back to my room, downloaded her photo, and bought a silver frame at New York Camera on Nassau Street. I walked back to Whitman Dining Hall. The battery-powered candles were still flickering, the other silver frames catching the light, the flowers open in the afternoon heat. I found Mona’s place at the table. I set her photo down. She had always belonged here. I had just been late to say so.

Throughout the weekend people stopped. A student worker paused at the table and slowly wiped tears. A friend, Jacklyn Bruce ’99, lingered and said, “This is amazing. I’m sharing it with my class.” That evening at Jadwin Gym, Lori grabbed my shoulders and said, “Thank you so much.”

I left before Reunions was over because my son’s commencement was the same weekend. I was sitting in the crowd watching my son, already tearing up, when my phone buzzed. A number I didn’t recognize, then a text. It was Rebecca Desman Frost ’01, a classmate whose name I barely knew. Her close friend Suzanne Munson ’01 was on the table, and she wanted the photo to send to Suzanne’s mother. As we texted, I found a photo of Rebecca with Suzanne on our class website’s In Memoriam page. Two friends, together. Then she sent another text. A photo.

“This is Suzanne’s baby brother who came to Reunions to commemorate his sister,” she said. “I wore the ribbon the whole Reunions and I gave him the ribbon after. He was very touched.”

A man I had never met, wearing a ribbon I had ordered, standing at a reunion I had already left. I was sitting in a gymnasium, watching my son graduate, crying for more reasons than I could name. The work was never really mine alone. It moved through Lori, who noticed the absence before I knew there was one. Through Rebecca, who wore the ribbon all weekend and passed it to the person who needed it most. Through a brother standing in for his sister at the reunion she never got to have.