Class Notes

One of our classmates wrote, “It’s all mundane stuff, but it’s my mundane stuff. Patches of my life.” We all lead different lives, and what may seem mundane to the writer is news to the reader!

Bev Jackson Johnston’s first grandchild, Abigail, is 3 months old. Bev and her husband’s Jersey Shore cottage escaped damage during Hurricane Sandy last fall. Their rescue dog and two rescue cats travel with them from Fort Worth, Texas, to New Jersey.

Melinda Wilson Watterson Thiesing ended seven years of widowhood, marrying someone last May whose sister and mother she’d known for more than 50 years. At 69, it was a huge decision for both to remarry, move, and buy and remodel another house. Melinda hoped to take her husband to Virginia this spring and would love to touch base with alums in Oklahoma.

Norma Bass Mears lost her retired USMC lieutenant colonel husband last year after a long illness. Since Norma’s 2004 retirement, they’d had wonderful experiences traveling together around the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Their most special trip was a Christmas week in Paris, where they toasted in the New Year with friends at the Eiffel Tower. Norma still travels with family and friends. Her daughter and her family and children live nearby, and her son and his wife and children live in Richmond.

Pat Hess Jernigan is retired but travels and has volunteered at the Smithsonian for 15 years. She started a new job assisting with data input for the memorial project at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center.

Bonnie “Be” Davison Herrera, a sculptor, plans to be in Washington, D.C., Richmond, and Westmoreland County for Thanksgiving to set up exhibits and workshops for 2014 and 2015. She’s involved with three exhibits of her North American labyrinth photos. Be worked in Oregon and California in winter and spring and was editing Oregon’s Botanical Landscape, about native plants in their own habitat. She teaches a four-part poetry-writing series for an ARC program and worked on a new series, “Phenomenal Women,” coinciding with National Women’s History Month. Be said Pat Hurston Lin wrote the play Zelda at the Oasis, about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife. It opened before Christmas at St. Luke’s Theatre at Times Square and was getting rave reviews.

I planned to guide another group to France in July and was looking forward to it after a long, troubling winter that began in fall with Hurricane Sandy, then moved on to a huge Halloween snowstorm and the unspeakable pre-Christmas massacre of 26 children and adults in Newtown, Conn., 40 minutes from where I live. After almost 45 years, former freshman roommate Sally Crenshaw Witt and I found each other by reading Class Notes and have become like those 18th-century ladies who regularly exchanged voluminous letters, except we correspond through email. If you see someone you remember when reading Class Notes, head to your computer or take up your pen and write! You’ll be amazed by how much the renewed relationship adds to your life.

I’ll send reminders about the next Class Notes due date. I find reading your letters moving, bringing back floods of memories. I hope you enjoy reading the news too. People really do love to hear from you. Good wishes to you and your families and friends.