Catharine Smith

= Division III =

This article is part of a Climax    Div III Issue. By Kendell Richmond, Staff Writer.

Catharine Smith has already participated in Commencement, though it wasn’t her year quite yet. “One of our A3 group was graduating (in 2006), and somehow the rest of A3 ended up walking in with them. Nobody noticed as we posed for pictures, or waved to parents, but the jig was up when the graduates began to file into their seats. That’s when we, the interlopers, had to run away. Smooth,” Catherine remembers.

Catherine’s Div III, titled Gas, Grass, Ass, &amp; Brass: Waterbury, 1968, is the first 100 pages of a 250-page historical fiction novel set in a fiction- alized version of Waterbury, Ct in 1968. The city, formerly the brass capitol of the manufacturing world, is on the decline as the national economy moves away from heavy industry.

“The central character, Laurel, is the college-aged daughter of a watchmaker and the Board of Alderman’s first-elected female member. Through the first few chapters, Laurel guides us through a city on the precipice of economic collapse, and she offers us a view of 1968 through the lens of a conservative community. Sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, and homework!” Catharine expands.

With an artistic passion that extends beyond the written word Catherine also illustrated the novel with a map of the city. Explaining the work she said, “[It’s] a mish-mash of the real Waterbury and the one I fictionalize, a snapshot of the city green at the peak of autumn, and an imaginary portrait of the Waterbury Watch Company,”

While Catharine completed an ambitious Div III, some might still say she was lucky to graduate. “When I was a first year,” Catherine said “someone told me that the Div Free Bell was cursed. If you ring the bell before you’re Div Free, the story goes, you’ll never graduate. So what did I do? I got drunk and rang it before the end of my first year. I never touched it again, in the hopes that I’d live to see Commencement 2009. And here I am, having passed Div III, about to ring it for the sec-ond time. I don’t suggest that anybody tempt fate…but when you do, it’s really satisfying when you win.”