Sharelle Mayer ’64: Supporting the Art of Reinvention

"Education allows you to reinvent yourself many times. Without a basic field of knowledge, it's hard sometimes to see a light at the end of the tunnel as we go through life."

This has been the foundational belief that has guided Sharelle Mayer through a life that has seen both joy and adversity. Despite health challenges faced later in life, Sharelle finds a way to maintain an optimism about life's potential that is infectious. Whether it is in athletic competition, pursuing her longtime hobbies of photography and writing, or providing weekly entertainment from her large collection of movies for the residents of the assisted living facility that she calls home, she finds ways to express her outlook on life.

As a student and into later life, Sharelle was an avid golfer and tennis player. As the Firebrand of 1964 notes, she had a "cool approach to the golf tee. Golfing, Sharelle counts as her favorite sport, and tennis follows a close second."

After graduating from Crystal Springs Uplands High School in Hillsborough, Sharelle went to the University of New Mexico for two years before coming back to California and Dominican—where she graduated with a major in history and a minor in art history. She fondly remembers the attention that the Sisters gave to students during her years here, especially Sr. Adell who supported and helped her with her photography. In 1980 Sharelle wrote a novella about her experiences as a student at Crystal Springs Uplands, a private girl's school, which was privately published by Prologue Publications. At the age of 40 she enrolled for a summer extension course at Worcester College, Oxford University, to study Dickens and further strengthen her writing skills.

She says that Dominican made a huge difference in her life, and her experiences at Dominican have led her to remember Dominican with a bequest for Dominican's Athletics Department through her will. By including Dominican in her estate plan, she is taking a step that ties together her love of the challenge that athletics can provide, the focus and analysis that photography requires, and the open-ended optimism that student life embodies.

The 1964 Firebrand class yearbook also described her in the following way: "Sharelle is a connoisseur of essences. Her perceptive eye is as difficult to deceive as her camera's lens, and with both Sharelle focuses the searching gaze that marks her as a questor after the realities of life." Thanks to Sharelle's gift, Dominican students will also have the opportunity to be "questors" in coming years.