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UMW Magazine – Class Notes
1301 College Ave.
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1980

Susan Garter
skaygm@aol.com

From Sue Garter: It was wonderful to hear from so many of our classmates in 2018; keep those updates coming! I want to invite you all to join our class Facebook group: “MWC Alum 1980 and Friends”. After 34 years as a program and project manager for AT&T, I have spent the last 3 years with Verizon, working to bring IoT (Internet of Things) products to the marketplace.  A far cry from my Biology and Psychology department roots, but UMW graduates are certainly versatile! My son Alex is a 3rd year law student at Yale. My husband and I are looking forward to more opportunities for leisure travel, after a wonderful trip to Southern Italy in fall of 2019. We recently spent Thanksgiving in St Petersburg, FL with Jan Stankiewicz McCarthy and her husband Mike and daughter Maggie.  Jan and family travelled from Florida to hike Foster Falls and tour the George Dickel Distillery in Tennessee with Wendy Prothro Howard (‘82) and family this past November. Jan was also fortunate to see Janice Webb Schmidt (‘82) in February and says that having friends visit is one of the benefits of living in Florida! Also, within the last two years, I have enjoyed a mini-reunion in Asheville, NC with senior year Bushnell suitemates, Barbara Gant Kinner, Deb Caton and Sandy Slusher Smallwood; visited Becky Bradley Price in the Tidewater region of VA; and visited with Wendy Prothro Howard (‘82) and husband Jay in Bethany Beach, DE.  Barbara Gant Kinner and husband Greg have become full time RV’ers and enjoy traveling the country, visiting as many national parks and states as possible.  Deb Caton and Sandy Slusher Smallwood reside with their respective families in VA, and Sandy is a proud grandmother. Becky Bradley Price is semi-retired, now working part-time, after 36 years as a full-time pharmacist. Becky recently moved back to Tidewater area, is involved in community activities and loves to travel. She will be visiting Australia and France in 2019.  Becky has two wonderful daughters, Haley and Laura.  Haley was married in 2018 and Laura is recently engaged.

Lisa Langenbach went to grad school at Purdue, is in her 33rd year as a professor of American Politics and has been at Middle Tennessee State for the past 26 years. Lisa lives in Franklin TN, a suburb of Music City Nashville, an increasingly hip and fun city.  Lisa does a lot of traveling, spending the last two summers in Germany studying the language, and has been to every west, central, and northern European country except Norway, and most of the east European countries. She is a volunteer at the local animal shelter and loves to garden and to read history and historical novels.

Carmela Sperlazza Southers retired as Senior Consulting Partner from the Ken Blanchard Companies in the Fall of 2017.  She lives in Fredericksburg, VA with her husband Phil and is happy to report her two adult children are successfully launched and off the ‘family payroll’.  Since Phil and Carmela were fortunate enough to retire, they have enjoyed traveling the US and Canada in their camper van.  Traveling, reading and playing the ukulele make a great daily ‘to do’ list.

Mary Hudachek-Buswell has two children, David, a nurse, and Melissa, an actress. She obtained her MS in Applied Mathematics at Auburn University in 1993 and was an assistant professor of Mathematics for 20 years, then went back to get her MS and PhD in Computer Science in 2010 and 2013, respectively. Now, Mary is on the faculty of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech.

Barbara (Cookie) Pittman Ferrier has retired after working for 31 years with the Department of Juvenile Justice and living in Charlottesville. Barbara’s son is also an alum, Class of 2016, carrying on the proud Eagle tradition. Barbara is so pleased to be reunited with our class through the magic of social media and looks forward to visiting with lots of UMW friends in 2019.  She says she is also so thankful we went to college before Instagram and Facebook!

Kathy Shelton Sieg lives in Virginia, where she is a private reading tutor, teaching reading to struggling readers. She is currently writing an online curriculum (readingtricks.com) which trains others how to teach struggling readers. Kathy married Sam, her high school sweetheart, and they have 4 grown children and 5 grandchildren.

Laura Lee Lowe Collins and husband Jim make their home in Rapid City, South Dakota, where they enjoy their two granddaughters, ages 4 and 8, and doing as much singing at nursing homes and retirement communities as they can fit into their schedule. They enjoyed a lot of traveling in 2018. Late February took them to the sunny, balmy Mississippi Gulf coast for a week with family; then on to Jaco Costa Rica and a wonderful week in a mountain vacation home for the occasion of their son Michael’s wedding to his beautiful bride Cynthia. And it was a special honor to have their oldest daughter Stephanie (who is a professional photographer by trade) join them and serve as their wedding photographer. Six months later, they enjoyed a gorgeous, relaxing week in Montana’s paradise Valley, just north of Yellowstone National Park, to celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary. And in mid-October they took off for three and a half weeks to enjoy some awesome fall weather in southern Minnesota, Northern Virginia and the Myrtle Beach area, traveling by train and making several stops to see more family and friends.

Carol Aarseth Jackson was living in New York when she attended Mary Wash but has lived in the Washington DC area since 1984. She has been married to her husband Kevin since 1988, and they have 2 grown children. Daughter Kim is a proud Yale Law School grad, currently living in DC and working as a law clerk for a Supreme Court justice. Son Stephen is a proud Virginia Tech grad and also lives in DC. He is currently employed by a non-profit educational foundation doing operations and IT work. Carol has an 8-year-old Pembroke Welsh Corgi named Kara.  Carol is currently employed part time with an employee assistance company. Carol and Kevin enjoy traveling and have visited Barbados, London, Prague, Sydney Australia and Palm Springs California in March to watch tennis. They celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary with a wonderful trip out West – visiting Mt Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons.

Ford Hart retired from a 33-year Foreign Service career in 2016 at the end of his appointment as US Consul General to Hong Kong and Macau. Now living in Wellington, New Zealand, where his partner and former Kiwi counterpart in Hong Kong, Gabrielle, is assigned to the Foreign Ministry. Ford has gone into the private sector, dabbling in consulting, blockchain technology, and exports to China. Ford encourages all Mary Washingtonians visiting New Zealand to reach out to him.

Della Thacker Carrico worked for 28 years in Information Technology, retiring in 2017 as a Senior Systems Analyst with Sentara Healthcare.  She’s lived almost all her life on her family’s farm near Smithfield, Va.  Della has two sons. The oldest, Daniel, is a team leader at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. The youngest, Taylor, is a captain in the US Army, stationed at Fort Bragg, NC.  Her husband retired in 2018 and they have 4 grandchildren, ages 12, 11, 4, and 1. Della says that now that they have retired, being able to spend time with their grandchildren is the best. Della and her husband have also been busy with renovating their home, biking, playing tennis, doing church missions work, and traveling.

Pamela Troutman and her husband retired in 2014 and spent the next three years preparing to move. They relocated to New Mexico in the summer of 2017 and have no regrets. Rio Rancho is located between Albuquerque and Santa Fe and snuggles up next to the Santa Anna Indian Reservation. There are mountains and nature all around, and they have a fantastic view of the Sandia Mountain from their backyard, and are enjoying the history, balloons and regional art. Pam volunteers with several non-profit organizations and supports the Bead Society of New Mexico. Pam designs and creates unique jewelry, and after selling her jewelry in Occoquan Virginia for four years, she is again in a gallery, this one called Amapola, located in Old Town Albuquerque.

Amanda Bruch McNeil lives in Annapolis, MD and she and husband Kevin have 2 children, Matt age 30, who graduated from College of Charleston with a degree in business & Loyola Univ with an MBA and works in Baltimore, and Caroline, age 18, a freshman at Salve Regina Univ in Newport RI, studying varsity sailing and pre-med.  Amanda, an Environment Engineer, is retired from Gulf Oil & Chevron, and is now enjoying retirement, sailing and serving as Board Member & Treasurer of the local figure skating club representing US Figure Skating in the Annapolis area. Amanda’s sister, Lindsley Bruch (’83) lives in Northern Virginia with her husband & 2 daughters.

Kathy McMullen Lueckert lives in the Kansas City area with husband Don and two dogs.  Kathy is the Director of Operations at Village Presbyterian Church, a 5,000-member congregation with three campuses and an operating budget of $6.5 million.  The Lueckerts have lived all over the country:  Washington DC, Minneapolis, Louisville, Seattle and now Kansas City.  A big accomplishment was completing her first half marathon at age 59, a week before breast cancer surgery. Kathy is a two-time cancer survivor and would welcome connecting with other classmates who share that experience.

Leslie Wheeler Hortum is married to a recently retired Episcopal Priest, John Hortum. Leslie and John live in Alexandria, VA. Their older son, “Vanya”, is a US Marine currently stationed in Camp Lejeune, NC.   He is recently married – to a woman with 3 children, making them instant grandparents!

Their younger son, Dru, lives in Alexandria, building his career in the hospitality industry. The first part of Leslie’s career was in the association world.  She was then “recruited into the recruiting business” about 18 years ago and is currently the Managing Partner of the Washington office of Spencer Stuart, a large, privately held executive search and leadership advisory services firm.   It’s been a great career with opportunities to work with many fantastic and impactful organizations – leading searches for the CEO of organizations like the Alzheimer’s Association, Autism Speaks, the National Retail Federation, the National Restaurant Association and many more.

Kathy Matt Reilly has lived in Chicago for the past 15 with her husband and two sons. Her oldest son is in a PhD program for Physical Therapy. Kathy has followed two careers since graduating- she owns a medical/scientific graphics and design firm and works for the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program out of HQ in the Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington, DC as the Strategic Partnerships Manager

Lewis Wendell is living in NYC and working as an urban planning consultant with wife Abbie and two kids still in high school. Both kids are on their respective Ultimate Frisbee teams which can be traced back directly to Lewis’ time playing at Mary Washington. Lewis still gets to play the occasional pick-up game in New York and sometimes his son joins in too. He has been in touch with many MWC friends and gets to Fredericksburg regularly. Recently, Lewis and his son stayed in Fredericksburg for an Ultimate tournament in Richmond and met up with Bob Smith. His good friend from high school Ellie Regan (‘77) visited Lewis last winter in New York with Linda Thornton (‘79) and Dawn Machonis (’77).  Shannon Elder and his friend Leslie Bird (both MWC alums) visited Lewis in Roxbury NY this past summer. Both accomplished landscape designers and gardeners, they helped Lewis with ideas and plantings for their garden and helped to beautify the historic RR Depot near Lewis’ home. This past Memorial Day Lewis and his wife attended the wedding of Scott and Sonia Chilton’s (both MWC Alums) lovely daughter Emily at Woodlawn in Alexandria. Carol Altstatt (MWC grad) came up from DC and spent the weekend before Christmas with Lewis and family. Carol is about to be deployed to Afghanistan to advise the Afghan Military on health care issues for at least a year. In terms of recent adventures, Lewis took his family to Pakistan for 10 days and showed them where he attended school in Lahore from 1st to 4th grade. It was a magical experience for Lewis and his wife (an intrepid traveler); not so much for the kids. In 2018, they visited Cuba for 7 days which was also wonderful but as his kids reminded him, there is vacation and travel, and this was travel. Lewis and family spent the recent Holidays in the Catskills.

Martha Williams attended a USNA Class of 1978 reunion and spent the weekend with Jennifer Boyd Ross (‘78).  Jennifer is busy running and doing triathlons.  Her husband, Paul, retired in the last year.

Martha recently had lunch with Carin Carr. Carin is retired and enjoys traveling, and her third grandchild is due in the next few months. She and her fiancé Jay live in Castle Rock Colorado. While in San Francisco over Thanksgiving, Martha had lunch with a swimming friend Phyllis Quinn (‘77.)  She also met up recently with Lori Turley (‘81) and her husband Craig in Annapolis. Alison Roedy Mack, Beth Murray Patterson, Vicki Prescott and Martha travel regularly to celebrate big birthdays. They recently visited the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Phoenix and Tucson.  Alison Mack lived across the street from Martha and their sons are very close.  Alison relocated to Florida, but she does a good job of keeping in touch.  Everyone was in the DC area over Christmas.  Vicki retired in April as an SES for DNI.  Sadly, Vicki’s mother died this fall and Beth and Martha attended the funeral. Martha is still working, and enjoys her job, but wishes she had more time to travel.  She is still swimming, sailing, biking and hiking. Martha went on a Danube River Cruise this year, skied in Tahoe and spent a few weeks at her Lake house in Ohio.  Her oldest son is in the Coast Guard stationed in Alameda CA (San Francisco) and is getting married in August.  Her daughter is married to an Army officer and they live neat Ft Campbell KY.  Her daughter completed her master’s degree and is teaching high school World History.  Martha’s youngest is at James Madison U studying Computer Science.