If you prefer to submit Class Notes by mail, send to:

UMW Magazine – Class Notes
1301 College Ave.
Fredericksburg, VA 22401

1955

Christine Harper Hovis
chrishovis@aol.com

Hit the jackpot with news! Thank you for sending many emails. I want to send a disclaimer to keep in mind while reading this. Anything confusing was caused by hydrocodone “happy” pills from my hip surgery. I’m slowly recovering and pretty mobile but still in much pain caused by bursitis … can’t drink wine yet, rats.

Dotty Booth Sanders had a Thanksgiving family gathering. Dotty’s sister visited last year, and they went to a cousin’s wedding in Georgia. Dotty still sends cards and letters to people during difficult times and bakes breads for family and friends. Her adopted dachshund and constant shadow, Dede, rides in the car with her. They had a cold, snowy winter in the Ohio Valley and northern Kentucky.

Carol Cooper feels unorganized. She likes to travel because, once she reaches her destination, someone else does all the work. She spent September in China and Mongolia, staying in nomads’ tents and a fancy hotel in Ulan Bator, riding a Bactrian camel in the Gobi Desert to look for artifacts in the Flaming Cliffs, and heading south in China near the Himalayas. Carol was thinking of visiting eastern Turkey and the Silk Road. She attended the Itzhak Perlman concert at UMW’s Dodd Auditorium in March.

Polly Stoddard Heim saw Christmas lights with grandson Garrett and his mother. In January, she and Ken visited 1-month-old grandson Zachary and his mother in Maple Valley, Wash., and went to the McCall Winter Carnival. Oldest grandson Ben was married in Chapel Hill, N.C., last year, and the Heims visited family in New York and Virginia. Polly celebrated her 80th birthday in January with family in Maple Valley.

Anne Lou Rohrbach Culwell had been downsizing, wondering what to do with their antiques and silver. She traveled to Little Rock, Bentonville, and Eureka Springs; took a Wisconsin Dells boat tour; and visited Circus World, Lincoln Library, and the home of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

Charlotte Fisher Klapproth said the weather had been so dismal that when the sun came out she needed sunglasses for inside. She talked to Coralyn White McGeehan, who lives in a Northern Virginia retirement community and was doing well. Sally Hanger Moravitz and Fran saw the relocated Barnes art museum last year in Philadelphia and the Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Mary Margaret Papstein Carter visited Williamsburg with her husband in September. On the way home, they stopped at MWC for lunch and found College Avenue detoured. Our old classroom building and first home of the C-Shoppe, Chandler Hall, was a pile of rubble, and a new building was going up in its place. They headed to the bookstore and learned that the swimming pool we knew is now a café. Mary Margaret said the campus was beautiful as ever. She’d been moving with care since she fell last year on black ice and shattered her wrist. Surgery, a cast, and physical therapy sidelined her until the end of June. She spent January in Scottsdale, Ariz., where her oldest grandson was married, and planned to attend a nephew’s wedding in Seattle in July.

Joan Kleinknecht reads to a second-grade class in Bridgeport, Conn. She taught kindergarten and second and third grades for 28 years to about 800 children, some of whom still write, email, or call. Joan is in a genealogy and a Gaelic-American club, still paints, and planned a garden. Patricia Seibert Siegel finally sold the Torrance, Calif., house and was renting in Oceanside.

Mary Elizabeth Davis Barnes (aka Betty Davis, a member of the Class of ’55 who graduated in ’54) retired and volunteers for a mentoring program at the school where she taught for 25 years. She still does fiber work, weaves, spins, and knits. During the bad winter weather, she made hats for needy children and was amazed how many people stopped to offer to help her shovel snow. She thinks her long white hair clued them in.

Patricia Seitz Hartel is in real estate, sings in church choirs, and was preparing for a big concert with an orchestra. Virginia Marco Hancock is involved with boards and committees for the arts, trees, historic preservation, and public schools. Mike plays clarinet in church and in a college community concert band. Ginny sings in a church choir and sometimes leads songs during services.

OK, I’m done. Cheers!