The ‘Fly Girls’

The lolls of lockdown brought two tokens of technology to the world: Zoom and Wordle. For the “Fly Girls,” those two tech innovations helped them reconnect. 

The seven women from the Class of 1983 — Deb Baumann Zwez, Sharon Hoke Sheremet, Kristin Farrell-Logsdon, Molly Barker Stephenson, Kris Doyle Pierce, Patty Kotyuk Michalski and Beth Neundorfer Herbers — hopped on a Zoom call together during the pandemic, and it quickly became a weekly routine for the ladies. 

They had all pretty much gone their own ways after graduation and hadn’t caught up with each other since leaving UD and moving around the country. Distance and time gone by, however, didn’t matter when they reconnected, the group said. 

“After being apart for so many years, you just kind of pick up where you left off, and there was really no gap there,” Zwez said. 

Tuesday night — the group’s usual meetup time — is one of the brightest parts of Zwez’s week, and she said she believes the reunion of the self-named “Fly Girls” is one good thing that came out of the pandemic. 

Six of the seven Fly Girls got to come together in person for Reunion Weekend in June to celebrate their 40th reunion. Sitting around a picnic table in the courtyard of the new Jesse S. Hathcock Hall, the women joked about how different campus looked when they were students. 

Since reconnecting online, the gang has also vacationed together at a lakehouse in Wisconsin. 

Another way they keep in touch? By doing the daily Wordle puzzle. 

They talk strategy after particularly challenging words (Reunion Week saw “stumpers,” “ennui” and “nanny”) and use the daily Wordle as another way to check in and reach out. Sheremet called it a “Wordle wellness check.” 

Turns out technology has helped deepen their friendship.

“We all just were able to reconnect at a level that didn’t even really connect on as students,” Farrell-Logsdon said.

Photography by Shravanth Reddy Reddy.