Class Notes

[Editors’ note: The Class of 1955 has a class agent once more. Roberta Linn Miller of New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania, has volunteered to serve, and here is her first contribution.]

I tried to contact members of our graduating class by email and phone. Many “no answers” and some changes in numbers and addresses. I would like to hear your news, so please contact me.

I did have a wonderful time talking to many and my first call was to Minnie Rainey Mayberry who lives in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. Her husband was in the Navy so they traveled a great deal with the service and on their own including a trip to Africa. Minnie keeps in touch with Sally Hanger Moravitz who lives in Falls Church. Her roommate was Rhoda Browning McWilliams who lives in Sebastian, Florida. They had lost touch with each other and I was able to give Minnie her address. I used to live in Charleston, so we had lots to talk about.

Next on my list was Eloise Gabrik who lives in Florida. She has two children. Her daughter lives in Manhattan, graduated from Princeton and is with an international corporation. Her son lives in Georgia but is being transferred to California. Eloise has her masters from Loyola and was a guidance counselor in New Jersey. Another place that I lived so we had a chat about that. She kept in touch with Joyce Stallard Bruce until Joyce passed. By the way, I also lived in West Virginia, Virginia and Oklahoma. Mobil kept us on the hop!

I was pleased to talk to Carol Cooper who has a Master’s Degree in Social Work from Penn and worked in Children’s Aid in Pennsylvania then at Yale University School of Medicine. She has traveled but now has two dogs and is at home in Chatham, Virginia. Carol is a nineteen year cancer survivor and I hated to “one up” on her with my twenty years. We decided that we must tell these facts so others will know that you can survive.

Coralyn White McGeehan was kind enough to talk to me. She is a widow, her husband was a pilot for United Airlines. She has two daughters, three grandchildren and a great grand child. One granddaughter is getting her masters in computers. Coralyn taught elementary school in Fairfax after college but now lives in a retirement community in Ashburn, Virginia.

Ruth Dollens Chiles was a secretary for an insurance company and lives on a large orchard farm in Batesville near Charlottesville. They raise apples and peaches. I know that this is a lot of hard work, but wouldn’t you love to have that fruit, especially the peaches? Ruth has three children, two girls and a boy, and three grandchildren.

Had a very nice phone visit with Ann “Miss” Hungerford McKinlay in Port Chester, New York which is thirty five minutes from Grand Central. Ann had a job at the Bank of New York in the trust department and met her husband there. Unfortunately, she has been a widow for seventeen years. I remember seeing Ann come down the staircase in Ball wearing a beautiful white gown with a hoop underneath. A true Southern beauty.

Dr. Inta Janners Ertel one of my roommates and a good friend through the years is a Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics at the University of Michigan. She officially retired in 2013 but is still keeping her MD license. She attends a meeting of the Department of Pediatrics every Tuesday morning when for one hour speakers give updates on new information in Pediatrics. Inta attends concerts and operas and is helping her daughter raise her twelve year old son. Several years ago she was able to return to Latvia and visit her home area. I tell everyone that she was so brilliant that when I roomed with her I made Dean’ List because I was ashamed not to!!

My roommate in Home Management House was Jean Brumback Bickman and she was also my maid of honor when Tom and I married. She lives in Reno, Nevada and is not doing too well health wise. Betty Lewis, Dot Mcilwain and Jean and I survived that semester, somehow.

In the summer of 1952 I was off to MWC just two weeks after my high school graduation. The first person that I met was Barbara Dean Smith Kronenberg from Minden, Louisiana. We were both nervous and a little scared and from small towns. We ended up as Sophmore roommates and then she transferred to LSU, got her masters and traveled the world with her work. We keep in touch and during one happy time, she and her family came up from Louisiana to visit with us at our Bed and Breakfast at our farm here in Pennsylvania.

Another member of that summer class of about eighteen people was Anastasia “Buttons” Petro from Morristown, Tennessee. She is a widow now, living in Mukilteo, Washington which is a suburb of Seattle. It has a Boeing factory which is the longest building in the world in one building. It makes the largest airplanes. Buttons has three sons, two are film the industry. She is a well known artist and has traveled to Rome to study watercolor and Venice to study frescos. After graduation she worked at the embassy in Saigon and traveled to many other countries. She has had an interesting life with very fulfilling moments. We keep in touch by email and recently by phone and with a long letter from her.

An appreciated note came from Ann Strickler Doumas in Fredericksburg saying that she had seen Chris Harper Hovis at graduation. Chris’ grandson, Harper, was a graduate. Ann and her family are traveling a lot. Her entire family including children and grandchildren, a total of thirteen, went to Greece for Christmas. A trip to the Great Lakes with a Virginia Tech. group was scheduled for July. I met Ann when we were in high school through her church which my sister attended. Ann took me on a tour of Spotsylvania and I have such good memories of that day.

I had tried to call Irene Hughes but no answer and was pleasantly surprised to have her call me. We talked for a long time about many things including our love of Great Danes. (She had five and I had three. My first one when I was two years old). A few days after we “visited,” my son, who was here from Texas, brought in the mail and there was a package from Irene. I ripped it open and inside was a copy of her book, Scent of Suspicion autographed to me. How wonderful! A letter from her gives us her life events. Irene retired from business ownership, real estate and a restaurant, in 2000 to do some writing. Two novels are available from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com. She lives alone and takes no meds and still drives and travels and stays active with gym classes and projects such as supervising a house renovation. She loves to read, watches the Tennis Channel, attends plays, dines out with friends and, in general, enjoys a very good life. She lives in Arrington [sic], Virginia and I think she did have horses. Now I consider that a great thing. Thanks Irene.

I am so happy to have visited by various means with such a great group and I hope to hear from more members of the class.

Please note that although I graduated with you, I started with the Class of 56 during that hot summer. We lived in Westmoreland and I remember that girls slept on the floor to try to escape the heat. The rest of my introduction to college life was with Dr. Shankle, Dr. Quenzel and a swimming instructor who didn’t seem to understand my fear of water. Well, I survived all that. Let’s hear your stories.

I want to express my appreciation to Chris and all the others who filled the pages of the MWC and University of Mary Washington magazine with the class news and notes for so long. I shall try to do my best.

With best wishes and thanks, Roberta Linn Miller