Annette’s Harvard circle is a testament to her exceptional journey through education and achievement. Annette’s connection to Harvard was not merely academic but also a reflection of her unwavering commitment to excellence.
Harvard Circle Remembrance by Stephanie Doyle
I met Annette in 2005 at the Harvard School of Public Health. Our time at Harvard and the few years after in Boston was a period in your mid-20’s where you are asking big questions about your life professionally and personally. It’s a time of imagining and possibility. It’s both exciting and unsettling. I am so grateful to have spent it with Annette and that our friendship transcended beyond.
At grad school, we were grappling with huge systemic issues of health inequities and asking ourselves big questions of how we would contribute to addressing them, how could we help change the world. She approached school with a zeal to soak up as many skills as possible that would help her on her path towards a career of social impact – crisis leadership, budgeting, policy memos and even regression analysis. She was determined to make the most of this academic experience.
I went back to the emails from that time. They were not about school or changing the world, but mostly about what restaurant we would try for dinner. Because, yes, she was there to answer those big questions of what’s next, but it’s the community, the connections, the small joys, fun and adventure that make it all worth it.
From cooking potluck family dinners with her roommates who she met on Craigslist. They always made two of everything in order to donate to a women’s shelter to dancing at loud, dive bars in Cambridge and still managing to have a deep conversation in the corner.
To dressing up for a cozy dinner out to celebrate the holidays before we headed home – I can feel the warmth and still taste the butternut squash soup
To offroading in a rented Toyota corolla in Aruba and almost bottoming out (to be fair, I was worried, Annette and Tiffany were not, and the views were worth it).
Annette did answer one big life question during this time… In Killington, VT on a HSPH ski trip, Emre and Annette met in a hot tub and there was instant chemistry. But, they did not get together after the trip and I don’t remember why. We graduated and we all went our separate ways to travel for the summer before starting our jobs. That fall after returning to Boston, Annette wrote to me and Tiffany: “The exciting news is that I’ve gone on 2 dates with Emre (remember the Turkish guy from HSPH that I’ve always found to be super hot?). I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this way about someone actually. I’m so attracted to him and he is just so freaking charming.” I want to end by sharing the poem Tiffany and I read at their wedding. When Annette asked us to do the reading she prefaced it by saying that the poem would be “Just something on love (and not the gushy passionate kind, but the more practical and growing kind)” This reading is Sonnet 17 from 100 Love Sonnets – by Pablo Neruda. I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
