Bertha Holt sipped wine Saturday evening and laughed over dinner with five other Agnes Scott College classmates for their 70th anniversary reunion.

Yes, you read that right — 70th, as in, Class of 1938.

Marcus K. Garner/AJC (ENLARGE)

Agnes Scott College's Class of 1938 celebrates their 70th anniversary class reunion. Seven of the eight known surviving class members are shown here: (seated) Jane Guthrie Rhodes, (l-r) Myrl Chafin Hansard, Ellen Little Lesesne, B. Merrill Holt, Elsie West Duval, and Joyce Roper McKey.

Marcus K. Garner/AJC (ENLARGE)

Ellen Litle Lesesne (left) chats with Joyce Roper McKey at Agnes Scott College as the school's Class of 1938 celebrates their 70th anniversary class reunion.

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As they convened in Evans Halls on the campus of the Decatur college, everyone seemed anxious for something to happen.

Holt said, "The real thing that happened is that we're here."

It's no small thing the group was able to come together, said presiding class president Elsie Duval. It's definitely rare for college graduates to survive seven decades as friends and active alums, she said.

"Tonight's keynote speaker told me at our 65th reunion that he'd be happy to speak at our 70th," Duval said. "I wasn't so sure we would have one."

The last time the group got together, five years ago, there were 12 ladies. Since then, five have passed away. A sixth, in Florida, could not make Saturday's event due to health reasons.

Five of the six women are 90 years old — one, Ellen Lesesne, 89, will have a birthday in July — and they say they looked forward to opportunities to look back.

"Seventy years later, the most fun we have is recalling those days and talking to friends familiar with those days," said Joyce McKey.

Agnes Scott is a liberal arts college founded in 1889 near downtown Decatur as a seminary for women. It had a fall 2007 enrollment of 910 students, according to its Web site.

The six alumni who gathered Saturday enrolled at the school, then as now an all-women's institution, during the mid-1930s, when women were in the minority on other, co-ed campuses. They have lived long enough, and returned enough times through the years, to see their beloved campus change and grow.

"Life has changed a lot," Myrl Hansard said. "The campus is just as beautiful as it's ever been, but there are so many buildings now."

Through the years, their love of Agnes Scott and for one another has kept them together. Jane Rhodes said McKey, Lesesne and Duval were inseparable as roommates and remained so through adulthood.

"They were the ones who held us all together," Rhodes said.

Lesesne said that while she will always love the school for the education she received, she gained something even more valuable.

"The best thing I got from Agnes Scott was this group of friends," she said.