Class Notes

I am hoping that everyone who reads this alumni magazine will send me their updated contact information so that I will be able to keep everyone up to date through emails on all of our 50th reunion planning! This is the last reunion where we will be separately honored, so it would be great if we have a wonderful turnout! If you don’t plan on coming, you really need to send me your news so I can share it with the rest of our classmates on my mailing list. Although we cannot share pictures in the alumni magazine, if you have some of you (and any classmates), don’t hesitate to send them and I will send them to all my current MWC contacts.

As for me, I spent a week with Susan Spatig Schmidt ’64 at her beach house near Wilmington, North Carolina, in August. We hadn’t seen each other in 33 years, but picked up right where we left off. She was recently widowed and now spends time between her homes in Richmond and North Carolina. We played cards every day, which brought back fond memories of lots of bridge playing while we should have been studying! Sue Wooldridge Rosser and I got together in November to enjoy some wine and stories of children and grandchildren. She gets together annually with Carolyn Shockey Moore and Linda Cline Holden in Kentucky at the horse races, and has promised to try to talk them into coming to our 50th reunion in May. Linda wrote that she and husband Doug were able to go to the football game of his alma mater (MS) when they were playing UK the same weekend as her mini-reunion with Carolyn and Sue. I ran into Cathy May Tyler Findley at the Dunwoody Tour of Homes in October. She and husband Harry are doing well. I’m still spending too much time in the air…flew to California in October to visit my daughter and her family, to Germany in November for Thanksgiving with my son and his family, and back to California for Christmas. In between trips, I play on two tennis teams, am in three book clubs, and don’t plan to slow down for another 10 years!

Bobby Barrett Crisp wrote that she is President of the Woman’s Club of Fredericksburg and says that they serve the community in many ways. Her sister Grace Dahmke ’68 from Florida was there for her 50th reunion, Stafford H.S., and other sister Margaret Hein ’64 celebrated her 50th at UMW. Marianee deBlois Zentz ’69 wrote that sister Lynn (Madeleine) deBlois ’65 is well, has a business called “Pretzelphoria” (seasoned pretzels and chocolate pretzels), working at all of the big craft events from Virginia to New York, Connecticut, Maryland. Lee Smith Musgrave loves living in Blacksburg in the mountains, but has been laying low since she broke her leg in August. She was on a knee scooter for nine weeks and hopes to be walking by Thanksgiving.

Penny Partridge Booth took a Viking River Cruise with her sister and said it was wonderful, beginning with two days in picturesque Prague and ending with two days in beautiful Paris. In between visits to the cities, there were eight days of smooth sailing on the Moselle, Main, and Rhine rivers with guided walking or bus tours for ten cities including her favorites Wurzburg (where her daughter lived for three years while working abroad for Procter and Gamble), Heidelberg, and Luxembourg. The castles and half-timbered houses along the river banks were gorgeous, and the combination of Baroque, Gothic, and Romanesque architecture made for interesting photos. Viking features local fare so the elegant meals featured German food. Although she skipped the brats and potatoes, there were many other choices that complemented the Reisling, whose grapes covered the German hillsides. Viking lived up to its reputation…expensive, but elegant. She and her sister loved the other passengers; all but four of the 180 vacationers were in their sixties, seventies, or eighties. They are now looking to find another adventure to add to her bucket list!

Louise Stevens Robbins and Diane Copty Fadely got together in April in Fredericksburg with Miriam Houston Jones Parsons. They enjoyed a lovely lunch and catching up on life. Sandy Byrum Smith and her husband didn’t leave the country on vacations this year, but enjoyed western USA three times. Mount St. Helens was beautiful with wildflowers in July, though Mt. Rainier still had too much snow to walk over much of it. Olympic National Park was rugged and beautiful. Lake Tahoe in August and Colorado in September were the best trips, since they saw children and grandchildren there. Next May they’ll be in Charlottesville celebrating her 50th reunion from UVA, as well as celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. They stay busy with church activities when they are not traveling, and loving their healthy retirement days in Mayberry!

Janice Helvey Robinson and her husband were in Annapolis for Rob’s 50th reunion at the Naval Academy and they had a lovely weekend except for the football game results! From Annapolis, they headed to Atlantic City for a few days and then on to Philadelphia for another few days where they did lots of touring. They visited with her sister in New Market on both ends of the trip. Last fall, they spent a week in Jackson Hole and another week in Vail. It was their first taste of the west and they really enjoyed it but about got “toured out.” She and Rob will be having their 50th anniversary in January and, to celebrate, they are going on a Viking cruise from Berlin to Prague. They have made several trips to Europe but this will be their first peek behind what they knew of as the Iron Curtain. Felicity Hallanan writes that a Royal Caribbean cruise of the Baltic Sea last spring was an adventure, with stops in Copenhagen, Tallinn, St. Petersburg and Stockholm. With current unrest, she and Evelyn were somewhat relieved to get out of Russia though it was grand, and because of weather had to miss Helsinki, but all in all a great trip. This is the seventh year of producing a 20-page tabloid newsletter, The Blizzard, for the National Assn. of the 10th Mountain Division, and it’s still interesting and a challenge. Beyond that, they are preparing to attend the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Salt Lake City in 2015 and so are active in the local, Diocese of Central NY, as well as keeping up with homes to maintain, and their several families.

Susan Irons retired after 33 years of teaching and is having great fun, but in order to stay busy she still goes back to her former high school to sub for friends and get a “kid fix”…they keep her feeling young! She and her husband Jim enjoy their mountain condo in California as much as they can especially in the months when there are fewer tourists. They enjoy hiking to lakes and peaks in the fresh air under Mammoth’s bluebird skies. They also love traveling and have just returned from three weeks in France and Italy. One highlight was a river cruise from Paris to Normandy and back and another was truffle hunting in Umbria. Their son Tyler lives in California too – not married yet, but they’re hopeful! Missy (Agnes) Bush Shives sent a picture of herself and Ophelia Baker Crowley of Richmond, Virginia, and Sonja (Toni) Algren Schuyler when they all got together at Toni’s home in Jericho, Vermont, in July. They toured Burlington, the State House in Montpelier, and the Shelburne Museum, and they spent a day in Montreal, Canada, where they visited the Olympic Park Biodome, among other places. The three are looking forward to getting together again in May, 2015 for our 50th reunion.

Linda Patterson Hamilton and Austin are still wild about Colorado after three years there. Two of their four children and all of their grandchildren live close by, so they get to be part of everyone’s birthday and school events. In September 2014 she went with the Promise Keepers on a 10-day tour of Israel and found it a beautiful country full of friendly people. There was minimal military presence there, which is not at all like the reports we hear in America. In January 2015, she and Austin are planning their first visit to her birthplace, Key West, Florida, with her brother John and his wife.

Kathryn Burruss Stapleton (Kitty) and husband Dan celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on August 22. They had a busy summer. In May, they spent ten days in Hawaii with their older son, his wife, and their daughters. In June, they spent two weeks at Kiawah Island Resort in South Carolina with their younger son, his wife, and son and daughter. For their 50^th anniversary they went to Europe in August. They visited a former exchange student and his family in Zurich, Switzerland. Then they flew to Dresden, Germany, to see the reconstructed Frauen Kirche, which had been a pile of rubble when they previously visited it in 1990. She wrote that it was wonderful to see that Dresden has been returned to its former glory. After Dresden, they visited two families that they met through the sons, two former East German soldiers that a friend and she had met when they visited East Berlin five months after the Wall came down. Then they went on to Nuremberg to join a Viking River cruise from Nuremberg to Budapest. After extending their visit in Budapest, they flew to Rome for five days before returning to Virginia. Dan is finally retired but Kitty still teaches Adult ESOL part-time for Prince William County, Virginia. That job, church activities, and volunteer work keep them both busy.