Class Notes

It’s been awhile since I wrote, and so much has changed for many of us. My email is the same, but Ralph and I have moved back to the U.S. We bought a home in York, Pa., which will serve us for weekends while I work and for retirement later. It was time to come home after almost nine years in probably the most fascinating job of all – director of intelligence for the international military staff of NATO. We did not make it to our 40th Mary Washington reunion (I’ve only missed two), but Mary Anne Burns and her band of merry women did us proud, and I’d like to thank her again for making it great. A special thanks to everyone, as well, for the card with signatures sent to me in Belgium!

I spent most of August and September convalescing after surgery but am fine now. I wasn’t able to meet with Sally Reichner Mayor, who was in Belgium for a hot air balloon weekend, but we had a long phone conversation and caught up on each other’s lives. I tried to no avail to meet our Distinguished Alumna Award recipient, Mary Bradley MacPherson, at Brussels Airport when she was on her way to North Africa doing great things to promote the independence of women. Laurie McIntosh’s Port Tobacco, Md., company, Business Training Works Inc., does business at Fort Meade for the Asymmetric Warfare Group and takes her to Aberdeen Proving Ground; Fort Drum, New York; and even Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.

My long-lost roomie, Liz Keith of La Jolla, Calif., gets back to the East Coast occasionally and was preparing to retire from San Diego State University, where she taught for many years. She travels to Europe a lot, but we were never able to meet there. Barbara Exline Staller, who was in Betty Lewis freshman year but at Mary Washington only two years before transferring to Bucknell, was on the West Coast with husband Walt for her niece’s college graduation last spring and met with Liz in San Diego.

My husband, Ralph, and I had just arrived in town from Belgium, when Mary Anne Burns, Kathy “Ernie” Marilla Kent, Lisa Barker, Lynn Trundle, Susan Stumpf Hebert, Dory Teipel, Frances McDonald, and, as a surprise, Natalee Franzyshen Spiro, gathered in November at Chadwick’s in Old Town Alexandria for food, fun, and friendship. After lunch, we headed to Ernie’s townhouse to exchange photos and news.

Mary Anne is now an East Coaster, not long transplanted from her days of commodity trading in oil. She has been a great friend and done great work for our reunion and in re-establishing some folks into the Mary Washington fold. Ernie spends lots of time in Virginia but has a place on Fenwick Island, Del., and visits Key West. Dory had some health issues that seem to be behind her and was ready to launch more of her artwork in a nearby gallery. It was great to see Lynn because we never really knew each other at school. Lisa, a Hanover, Va., attorney, and I have renewed our friendship. Susan, who flew in from Boston, still works for IBM. Natalee, who lives in Richmond, recently left the FBI as its first and only financial manager, then went into banking. Her husband fought a tough bout with cancer and remains cancer-free. Family issues prevented Betty Hume from coming.

Mary Anne also heard from Eleanor “Sloan” Tyng Schoonover, who joined the Navy after graduation and retired as a captain. “Cookie” Elaine Brennan Wright was in Budapest that weekend but volunteered to find a place for another gathering. We hope Yuri McCarthy Gauss and Jan McNeil will make our next mini-reunion. Carol Scouten was busy running a 10K; I understand she also runs marathons. Julie McClellan Seder, a costume jewelry artist, had a holiday show. We reconnected after several years when we were both at the Pentagon. Joyce Garber Gamse was at the Museum of Natural History in New York for the opening of a film her daughter produced.

The last time I saw Doris Lee Hancock of Richmond might have been at my 2001 retirement from Harry Lee Hall in Quantico, Va. Renee Kuntz ’85 is a friend from work, but we met during the Susan Komen Walk for the Cure in Baltimore, after the Sept. 11 terrorist bombing. Kathy O’Neill Argiropoulos ’70 has been a St. Stephens lay minister in the Episcopal Church for several years. Kathy Lewis Newbold of North Carolina survived last winter, one of the worst on record there.