From left, CLSC Class of 2026 graduates Kriss Young Miller, Corinne “Cori” Hatcher, and Elizabeth Bender celebrate as they enter the Amphitheater during the Recognition Day parade Wednesday.
NORA SMITH
Staff Writer
As a child, Corinne “Cori” Hatcher remembers her grandmother constantly recounting having to swim the width of a lake to become a lifeguard; little did Hatcher know, the lake her grandmother swam borders her now home-away-from-home at Chautauqua Institution.
“That’s the only story as a child I ever heard about Chautauqua,” Hatcher said. “My mother didn’t grow up going to Chautauqua. It was just this story my grandmother always told about being a lifeguard in a lake.”
It wasn’t until 2009, when Hatcher first came to Chautauqua, that she looked out on the water, knowing her grandmother had been talking about that lake all along. Now, Hatcher is on a mission, trekking through the Institution’s archives to uncover how deep her family’s roots in Chautauqua really go.
Hatcher discovered that her grandmother wasn’t the only one with ties at Chautauqua, but that her great aunt worked at the Athenaeum Hotel as a maid, her great-grandfather was a night watchman and her great-grandparents had a house in Mayville where they had retired.
“Before the summer, [I was] just thinking they weren’t people who vacationed here,” Hatcher said. “They were a white family who needed to work here to be here. So, I felt like I was entering into a legacy of getting a job as an usher, and I was going to live more of what my family legacy was by working here.”
That, however, was all Hatcher knew before returning to Chautauqua during the 2026 Summer Season, when she began to discover more. Hatcher visited the Oliver Archives Center earlier this season to see what she could find out about her great-grandparents’ relationship with Chautauqua and where the Chautauquan roots really began.
Hatcher started by looking for proof that her great-grandmother had been to Chautauqua as a child or had been employed by Chautauqua, but nothing came up. Eventually, Hatcher was able to find an article from The Chautauquan Daily with information about a radio forum, “Your Community and Intergroup Relations” to be broadcasted over WJTN as the last feature of an all-day conference from 8 to 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 13, 1946.
The article read that one of the speakers on the panel would be Hatcher’s grandmother, “teacher of East Chicago Ind.,” and so Hatcher said she is now trying to obtain the radio recording.
“I’m discovering things,” Hatcher said. “It feels like I belong here in a way that I’ve never felt that I’ve belonged here before. Before, I just felt like, ‘Oh well, Grandma spent time here, and they had to work and look at me, I’m vacationing.’ I can sit in the house and enjoy, but now it feels like, ‘Oh no, they were a part of this community, she was asked back to speak…’”
Hatcher is a 2026 graduate of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle; in her archival research, she learned that her family has a legacy in the CLSC, too.
A 1936 article about a CLSC garden party references Hatcher’s grandmother serving punch toward the end, suggesting she was involved to some degree with the CLSC.
“Don’t think I didn’t cry when I found it,” Hatcher said. “Not because I didn’t know she was here, but it’s evidence that she’s here outside of what I knew in my family.”
Although Hatcher had never heard any stories about the CLSC from her grandmother or mother, this likely means her grandmother was a CLSC graduate. Now, Hatcher is in the process of finding her grandmother’s graduation class.
“… When I come here, I think about that relationship with my grandmother and how close we were and how she would be so happy that we found a place at Chautauqua…” Hatcher said.
Having met some of the previous classes of the CLSC, Hatcher said she feels incredibly welcomed by the alumni.
“It’s hard to feel like it’s a big deal when you’re reading by yourself, but when you’re with people and you’re celebrating it, it feels like you found your people,” Hatcher said.
