Class Notes

Thank you for all the Christmas notes and cards that were sent to me. Hope you all had a happy holiday season.

Had a lovely card from Dottie Booth Sanders who said they had a year with no losses for the first time in several years. 2016 was a very good year. Her sister Martha continues to be in a nursing facility with good and bad days and her family is amazing in their support of her. Dottie has enjoyed spending extended time in her home and in Nashville with her sister Boofie in addition to talking on the phone. Her husband Dewey was blessed to do 5 more marathons (82 total). Their family are in medicine and two more are very involved in playing soccer in schools and one wants to major in business and sports management. Dottie and Dewey traveled some this year to Florida, a cruise to the Eastern Caribbean with 16 family members, to northern Michigan, Tennessee and Chicago.

Sally Hangar Moravitz and I had a great visit on the phone about UMW, health (ugh), and wishes for good health. Thank you Sally. She and Fran took a cruise out of Baltimore at the end of last February to go snorkeling but the weather was so rough that the water tours were canceled. She also said she was doing Cardiac Rehab because her heart valves needed work. Now Fran gets to to do all the raking of leaves and snow shoveling this year.  They plan to go to Myrtle Beach this spring.

Thanks Joan Darden for the warm wishes for health. (see end of this for explanation for that statement). Joan continues to play duplicate bridge, competitive pool with her cute co-ed pool team (none of them is outstanding but sometimes they give opponents a scare) and competitive golf.  Don’t win as much as ‘once upon a time a long time ago’ but a few wins occasionally. Seems now she makes more ‘friends’ than she did before when she won more. So it’s a win, win situation. For what its worth this is her news.

Ann Strickler Doumas says that she and Bill are just back from a cruise from Bergen, Norway to Montreal, Canada following the settlements of the Vikings. She wore her MWC alumni shirt one day and Valerie Deacon ’58 came over to chat. Many others said a friend or relative went there as well. We have been up to the new, huge student center on campus and enjoyed dinner in the many international carousels The campus is lovely.  She keeps in touch with Sally Moravitz but haven’t gotten together.

Joan Kleinknecht sent several notes to me. Thank you for your wonderful thoughts and reminders of things we always seem to get as illnesses as we age It seems Joan had a heart attack from strokes two years ago which she recovered from. She also had some other little things which were helped by nurses, doctors.  It also seems that we believe that we absolutely get better because we ourselves have an attitude that is positive. I do remember being at MWC, the wonderful work and fun that we had and it helps my mind and strength.

Another year gone by too quickly and I am slowing down as it goes by quotes Ann Lou Rohrbach Culwell. She was blessed with four new babies in her family this year. She went to her 65th high school reunion and a mini reunion with her remaining cousins. She just got back from Bronson where she saw five great shows; Moses, Red, Hot & Blue, The Texas Tenors, The Lettermen and the Lennon Sisters/Osmond Brothers. She also said If you all are like me you do not travel that much anymore; however, if you should come this way stop and visit, or spend the night if you need a room. A happy, healthy, New Year to all.

O.K.now if you’ve gotten this far in the newsletter I now will make most of the words above. If you got a newsletter from me asking for lots of news because I was quite ill. Well, I did get the above letters with wonderful wishes of me to get better but that was it. I’m worried that many of us are ill and I hope not. That’s because I keep forgetting how old we all are. Thank all of you who did send prayers and gentle advice. What I’m writing now is basically what I said in my e-mails that I sent a week ago. I had a hip replacement a couple of years ago and have been working on walking. I did close The Dance Shop around August in 2014 (I think) Then I had a stroke which I wasn’t aware of and went to the hospital. I was then sent to Mission View Hospital for several weeks. I did pretty well there, cane and all. I remembered everything about my working at the Dance Shop, San Luis Obispo and family. I have some troubles at remembering some things. So I had wonderful help from the five ladies who helped from home and kept my sense of humor alive. Remember I told you that didn’t remember about my stroke? Didn’t remember that at all and it worried me no end. So I finally managed to ask someone–“Umm,well, uhh,when I had the stroke uhh-“The person said ” you recovered nicely” ” No,” i said ” What were my words?” ” No bad words,”said my laughing friend. So I retired knowing that I didn’t retire my sense of humor!  So I wish all of you in 2017 a wonderful HEALTHY year.