Class Notes

In April my 93 year old grandmother passed away, and my husband Tom and I attended her memorial service and visited family in Lexington, Virginia. In May we vacationed in Aruba. Over the summer we attended engineering conferences in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and St. Simons Island, Georgia. In October we plan to celebrate our 20th anniversary with a Caribbean scuba trip.
I enjoy serving on the SouthSounds Music Festival board (our eighth annual festival was great) and Mobile Arts Council (our spring fundraiser, The Taco Takedown, was a huge success). We moved our gallery downtown, and currently I’m planning our fall fundraiser, The Throwdown, an art competition like Project Runway. I hope to get more involved with Mobile Baykeeper and Alabama Coastal Foundation this fall.
Melissa E. Brugh recently celebrated 17 years with Sentara Healthcare. She broke her ankle in a 2016 car accident and had to sell the 2 story home she owned for almost 15 years. She found her forever one story home (with a pool) – also in VA Beach – and moved in March. It was bittersweet since she had to put down her 14.5 year old boxer. She adopted two rescue puppies in March and April from Puerto Rico and St. Croix (shout out to Island Dog Rescue!). They’re settled in their new house and looking forward to welcoming an AFS exchange student from Austria in the fall. She’ll make trips to Northern Virginia with her exchange student at least twice so she hopes to see some MWC alums while they’re there.
Jennifer Carter Greer’s son Ryan Greer (bachelor’s from UMW in Business in 2017) graduated with his MBA from UMW in May. After completing his Graduate Assistant contract at UMW, he is staying on at the University as the Events Supervisor and Assistant Sports Information Director. He got engaged to Caroline Porco (also a 2017 UMW grad) in January at the Anderson Center. They will be married on June 20, 2020 in Charlottesville. Caroline is currently pursuing her Master’s in Nursing from UVA.

Clinton Piper has never submitted anything to Class Notes before but thought he would finally take time to do it. He marked his 29th year this past May working at Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house in western Pennsylvania and lives in the nearby hometown of Latrobe. He started as a tour guide during the summer of his sophomore year at Mary Washington (Historic Preservation major). He has been in his present position as Senior Administrator of Special Projects for the past year. He serves as a board member of the Westmoreland County Historical Society and the Laurel Highlands Visitors Bureau. In addition to meeting an interesting array of people during his time at Fallingwater, he recently saw fellow MW graduates Dave Derkowski ’92, Stephanie Martin ’92, and Jessica Perkins Storrs ’91. The next big thing at Fallingwater is designation as a World Heritage Site along with seven other key Frank Lloyd Wright properties across the country.