Class Notes

As always, you’ll receive our class news many months after sending it! You’ll read this in the spring, with the winter long gone. Our classmates wear many hats, have had many life changes, and have worked – and are still working – at nurturing families, holding down jobs, doing volunteer work, and maintaining busy minds. As your class agent, I find your letters and news interesting and inspiring. What a group we are!

Our deep sympathy goes to Betty Jennings Peterson, whose husband, Melbert, died this summer in Berlin, Germany, with Betty and his Swedish cousins at his side. He and Betty had attended a Kiwanis convention in Geneva, Switzerland, before traveling to Germany.

Janet Bagg Glancy, widowed since 2009, has devoted much time to teaching Advanced Placement English and coordinating the Advanced Placement Laureate Program at her school. In 2010, Janet spent time in Egypt, where two of her former students were working with Dr. Zahi Hawass of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. She and her friends traveled the Nile, from the Sudan to the Mediterranean, just before the spring 2011 political eruptions in Egypt. She also traveled to Spain, Portugal, the Loire Valley in France, and Cornwall, England. This year, her work at school includes implementing the University of Cambridge Advanced International Certificate of Education program in Naples, Fla. Janet said staying busy makes life a bit easier for those of us who are alone.

Ilona Dulaski Williams, who has worked in acting since graduation, also does narration and commercials. Last summer she played Clelia in The Nerd and Ouiser in Steel Magnolias at Wayside Theatre in Middleburg, Va., and she was to play Violet in August: Osage County at Barksdale Theatre in Richmond from January to March. She also has a group called The Cantati Ensemble, which specializes in opera, and sings at retirement homes in the Washington-Baltimore-Virginia area.

In October in Maryland, Ruth Pharr Sayer visited Margaret Goode Watkins, who was considering moving closer to her son and his family in Fairfax, Va. Jane Showker Capeheart and her husband visited Margaret, who also had a mini-reunion in Charlottesville with Betsy Johnson and Gloria Custer Meyers, a member of our class until the end of sophomore year. Margaret wrote that Ruth’s darling new grandson, Richard Grant Watkins, was born in June.