By We don’t normally share Class Notes online, but with permission, we’re posting this retelling of the trip Amanda Page Harper ’09 and her husband took to clean and polish the Mills Seminary plaques in Benicia. Thanks to her for the info and the photos!
After Reunion last year, Amanda Page Harper and her husband Loren, below, stopped by Benicia on their way home to visit the site of the Mills Seminary plaques (featured on the cover of the winter 2022 Quarterly) for the first time. “Loren was the one who suggested that we come back at some point to clean the plaques,” she says. Months later, on March 12, the couple returned to the park to restore the plaques, taking more than eight hours to do so. After rounds of cleaning—first with dish soap solution, and then a paste made of equal parts flour and salt—they lightly sanded the letters on the plaque to recover their original bronze color, finishing off with an outdoor clear coat to seal the plaques and a wax polish. “It was a long process, but we had a great time!” Harper explains. “We were there during a large craft fair in the park, so that made it even more fun! It was nice to do something for the College, the alumnae, and our Mills ancestors. We laughed and joked about going back one day for the next cleaning—but that won’t be for a few years, hopefully!”
