If you prefer to submit Class Notes by mail, send to:

UMW Magazine – Class Notes
1301 College Ave.
Fredericksburg, VA 22401

1973

Joyce Hines Molina
Joyce.molina@verizon.net

You never know when your path will cross with a fellow MWC/UMW graduate; it is a small world. I want to share with you a path I crossed this year. In September I had the honor to play for the funeral service of Caroline Melissa Mason Hoffman ’76. I didn’t know Melissa. I wish I had. This is her story. Melissa died suddenly on August 31, at the young age of 61 leaving a husband, children, grandchildren, and much more. Her degrees from MWC and W&M were in art history, and museum education. Her careers included art, writing, design, and real estate. It’s what she did in addition to all this that she will be remembered – it’s the ‘much more’. Throughout her adult life Melissa helped to found and operate programs for the homeless and under-privileged children in the Newport News, VA area. Included is a shelter program for the homeless and a free respite child day care program. Her final program implemented was ShoeLady.org, a Newport News based charitable origination dedicated to provide shoes to school children in need. She was a generous individual who believed in helping others.

Ann C. Salter – a history major continues to work as a consultant to museums and other not-for-profit organizations in the greater Rochester area.  Her principal project is the restoration of America’s oldest lighthouse structure (1822) on Lake Ontario: the Charlotte-Genesee Lighthouse, for which she’s helped raise $300,000 to date (http://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=304). This on-going project recently was recognized by an “Award of Merit” from the Landmark Society of Western New York.  Information for the restoration comes from the National Archives and is coordinated with the National Park Service – so, it’s been an exciting project, which includes the fabrication of an historic reproduction of the Fresnel lens that was missing from the tower, as well as re-painting the entire stone tower with whitewash, the historic coating that’s been missing for over 100 years. With the new Fresnel, this lighthouse tower, out of commission since the 1880s, has been returned to “active duty” and is once again an official navigation light on US Coast Guard charts.  In fact, Ann moved to a condominium, right on the lakeshore, to be closer to the lighthouse and her work there.

Cynthia Howk writes: I continued on staff at the Landmark Society of Western New York, at which I reached my 40th anniversary this past spring. This is always amusing, as I was a music major at MWC (but took lots of history classes), returned to New York State & completed my teaching certification, planning only to complete a 3-month project at the Landmark Society, before launching into a music education career.  I tell our interns that career paths can often turn out to be quite different from what you might have originally planned! Our regional historic preservation projects cover a 9-county area and with a new executive director, it’s really exciting to do new outreach and creative programming at an organization that’s nearly 80 years old (http://landmarksociety.org/). I had a nice surprise this past year, when colleagues told me I’d been elected as an honorary member of the New York State chapter of the American Institute of Architects, for the preservation and architecture work I’ve been involved with since joining the Landmark Society staff.  Music hasn’t vanished from my activities, however: I play violin in a  community orchestra & string quartet, am active in the local alumnae chapter of Mu Phi Epsilon music fraternity (I became a member at MWC), and, most recently, have become really busy with historic pipe organs & their restoration (which combines both my music and historic preservation interests).  In fact, the new pipe organ that was installed in the Episcopal Church in downtown Fredericksburg was designed/built by a Rochester organ builder & some of the pipes are re-cycled from an organ that was previously in a 19th-century Rochester church (the church was demolished in the 1960s, but the organ pipes survived).  I visited that Fredericksburg organ & heard it played during our 40th reunion weekend in 2013. I always enjoy reading the class notes & other info in the UMW magazine: am especially excited about the restoration of the Amphitheater!