Class Notes

I heard from lots of you all this time! Awesome things going on with our classmates.

Ann R. Smith & Tom had a trip to Maine and en route planned a visit with 2 of her UMW roommates…Stephanie Boone in New Hampshire and stopped in Vermont to stay with Nancy Andrews & husband Jay.

They stayed at their home in Waitsfield, Vermont & then went to their Lake Champlain “camp” on North Hero Island….beautiful, but cold!

Ann and Tom are planning a land and sea cruise in 2017 with Cathy Ann Hughes & husband Michael and Nancy Gleason & husband Gary.

Ann is looking forward to our 50th reunion in 2019.

Barbara Poppleton was in Pasadena, California for Thanksgiving visiting her youngest son, wife & two girls. They went to the USC/Notre Dame game together. They joined their other son’s family on Cancun for New Years. They then went St. Augustine in January to be with her daughter’s family (her kids are really spread out!). Barbara moved to a smaller home in the World Golf Village, and bought a second home on the Jersey Shore.

Jean Polk Hanky proudly reports her 19 year old grandson, Townley Haas, sophomore at University of Texas was the youngest member of the US Olympic swim team. He won a gold medal in the men’s 4×200 freestyle relay posting the fastest time of all 32 swimmers (8 countries, 4 swimmers each). His teammates included the famous Michael Phelps.

Jean takes none of the credit for his achievement, as despite Miss Arnold’s best efforts at UMW, she still can’t swim! She had two turkey dinners on Thanksgiving, reporting one can never have too much turkey! Jean is downsizing like many of us and are selling their home on Carter Creek in Northern Neck, Va.

Betsy Crewes Neilson reports that her only child, Anne ( who is 45) recently gave birth to a little girl. So she has her first and only grandchild. Betsy lives in Harrisburg, PA and her daughter lives in our old haunt, Charlottesville and sees them once a month. Betsy is very active in her church choir and still plays bridge. (Did she learn to play bridge at UMW when she should have been studying? Hmmm)

Anne Kilpatrick and roomies Jeanine Zavrel, Suzi Bender Winterble and Toni Turner Bruseth spent a week together at Jeanine’s son’s cabin in West Virginia. Food was provided by Jeanine’s daughter. (First class camping!) These girls get together every year.

Barbara Black reports she has been traveling a lot. She attended a Queer as Folk convention in Toronto and got to meet tv star, Sharon Gless from the Cagney & Lacey show. She flew to San Francisco on our left coast to see a friend be emcee in the show, Cabaret. After a brief rest at home in Luray, Va. She also went to Waldorf, Md. for a Sparta Con III event, dedicated to the series about Spartacus, the slave who led a huge rebellion against Rome…many movie stars reported on site. She went to Spain twice to visit Bilbao and for another Queer as Folk convention. She has also been to Barcelona, Morocco & the Canary Islands recently.

(Her passport looks very used!)

Carole Phipps, who lives in Los Gatos, California enjoyed a trip to China last March. She is planning a riverboat cruise from Basil, Switzerland to Amsterdam in Spring, 2017. In May she will be gathering in Colorado to meet 7 UMW friends who were freshmen when she was a junior counselor in Virginia in 1967. She has not seen most of them for 50 years!

Jane Jackson Woerner reports she is planning to make a donation to our UMW class of ’69 scholarship next quarter. She is grateful for the education and opportunities her UMW degree has afforded her. She is currently juggling 3 houses…her mom’s townhouse in Bristol, Va.( her mom passed Dec. 5, 2014), a new home in Urbanna, Va. where they are moving to downsize & be close to 6 younger cousins, and selling their 5 acre property in Florida. To put it mildly, Jane is in transition! (Jane has always been fond of eastern Tidewater Virginia since having Connie Hinson as UMW roommate all through college who is from there.) She feels like they need to be closer to kin, as she saw how hard it was for her to be caring for her mom in Virginia while she lived in Florida. She does not want that distance to be an issue when she needs family help in later years. While it is difficult for her to leave her Florida friends and home of 37 years, she thinks she & her husband will purchase a trawler of some sort to use on the coast of Florida as a winter landing spot.

She loves her new location in Urbana and attended the Urbanna Oyster Festival the first weekend of November…50k people show up for that! She visited Jean Polk Hanky in August and she often visits roomie, Connie Hinson in Heathsville, Va.

My UMW roomies and suitemates are really spread out…Carol Hewitt Guida lives in Australia, Lyn Gray Howell lives in Africa, and Bev Holt lives in Cary, NC….and I am in Santa Rosa, California. I am hoping all four of us will be together again at the 50th reunion in 2019.

Linda Eadie Hood flew to New Zealand from Vancouver right after the major earthquake that happened there in Christ Church, NZ. She did not see much damage, but she did not go to the epicenter, which was Christ Church, which is huge. They enjoyed beautiful mountain roads on the south island and actually have considered moving there since the results of the American Presidential election.

Suzanne McCarthy Van Ness gets the award for seeing the most UMW alums in the last six months! She writes how easy & fun it has been to spend time with Phyllis Newby Thompson (when she can drag her out of her magnificent treasured garden) and myself. All three of us lived within 5 miles of each other until I had the nerve to move 2 hours north in Santa Rosa. The three of us still managed to get together to take Phyllis out to lunch for her December birthday.

Suzanne also saw Phyllis Baresford Williamson who lives in Glenside, PA., enjoys time at their Jersey Shore vacation home with their grandchildren. Phyllis & husband Terry are very involved in Philadelphia Veterans associations. Phyllis’ roommate, Diane Pugh Gay & husband Bill retired to Bethany Beach, Delaware. Bill works tirelessly for the Wounded Warrior program.

Suzanne visits with her son Jeff & family on Bethesda, Md. but tries to see UMW friends in the DC area when she goes east. She has visited Murry Holland Franklin ’68 who lives in Centreville, Va. with her husband Steve. She saw Maureen Murphy McCart ’68 and then Donna Sheehan Gladis ’68 over lunch at Tyson’s. Donna does a lot of alumni work for UMW. Suzanne managed to get to Blacksburg in April to see Mary Margaret Marston Monroe and husband Richard, who is an active VA. tech alum. Suzanne stayed overnight in Richmond, Va with Judy Jones Jackson ’68 and her husband, Kip who is a psychiatrist.

Suzanne also visited Sue Farnham Piatt ’68 when she flew out from Cleveland to see her California son. Barbara Macon Sachon flew to Ca. From Winter Park, Florida so the 3 of them had Wine country weekend to together including a “Motown the Musical” show.

Suzanne also went to Texas (without her pearls, alas) to surprise her junior year roommate, Georgia Wahl ’68 for her birthday. Suzanne stayed with Sandra Wolfe Rapuzzi ’68 in Dallas. Suzanne also visited Peggy Lou Murphy Paradise ’70 while in Dallas. They had not seen each other for 30 years. Peggy’s husband Bob and Suzanne’s husband Sam (deceased) were best friends in Basic military training.

With all her traveling this year, Suzanne visited her two daughters & families often who live only 20 minutes away from her home in Atherton, Ca. Suzanne is active in the local garden garden guild, is active in UMW local alumni events and volunteers in the San Francisco Marine’s Memorial Club. This woman gets around!

Betty Wade Miles Perry enjoyed a trip to Chicago with daughter Suzanne Perry Wallis ’03 in October for a wedding. She fell in love with the city and enjoyed many attractions, including the architectural boat tour, a ride on the big Ferris wheel, a play, the Art Institute – impressionist exhibit, and of course Lou Malnati’s Chicago style pizza. She says Chicago tops New York in her book!

My update is we will have moved into our remodeled home here in Santa Rosa by the time this news is posted. While our home a 2 story on a hillside, it will be fully accessible with an elevator, curbless showers and a guest suite space big enough to house future caretakers for us as we age. Hopefully our Tesla will be updated to be fully self driving by then (“Take us to the grocery store, Tess!”) Ann and I played in a local Bob Dylan tribute concert recently…Dylan might not have the best singing voice, but he definitely deserves the Nobel Prize for literature as a songwriter. And if you look at his lyrics from 50 years ago, you will think he just wrote them right after this presidential election we just endured.

You too could have news posted in this magazine! Just write me at morejoy43@gmail.com or irish@harrell-remodeling.com