Class Notes

Pam Smith McGahagin wrote to Diane Harvey Smith from Atlanta, where Pam works in marketing for the local NBC affiliate. Between work, family, friends, dogs, and cats, she and husband Mike travel. Last year they stayed with friends in Haamstede, a resort town on the North Sea in the Netherlands. In September, they visited Kauai in Hawaii. Recently Pam had dinner with fellow Atlantan Martha Fisher Bucknell and treasures her yearly “old gal” weekends with Pat Denton Rounds and Diane Harvey Smith. The last one was at Pat’s Queen Anne home in Siler City, N.C. Pat completed renovation of the kitchen, baths, den, and living and dining rooms, and added a porch. Son Adam married Californian Lindsay in March 2013 in Palo Alto and moved to Northern Virginia.

Four years ago Patti Goodall Strawderman asked Linda Fotis, who attended MWC from 1970 to ’71, on Facebook, “Are you the Fotis that lived in Willard Hall freshman year?” Linda reconnected with her Mary Washington sisters and had two mini-reunions. After leaving Mary Washington, she earned degrees in religion from Tufts University and in music from American University, but her MWC connections are the most precious. This is a special kind of miracle that happens because of the place MWC truly is. Linda was anxious to get back to campus for our 40th reunion.

Linda Raflo Raford has practiced acupuncture and Chinese medicine for 14 years. After a 20-plus-year career as a certified nurse-midwife, she started an acupuncture department in Denver senior medical centers about eight years ago. She’s traveled to Nepal with Acupuncturists Without Borders to treat monks in mountain monasteries, to India to treat Tibetan refugees, to Myanmar to train Burmese acupuncturists, and to Bali to train Australian acupuncturists. She took her 22-year-old daughter along. She visited New Zealand for her 60th birthday and was taking a Master Herbalist course. Her son, his wife, and Linda’s grandchildren, ages 3 and 5, live in Dubai, so she planned to visit again in spring.

Bobbie Burton relinquished her role as executive director of Longwood University’s Hull Springs Farm, a working farm in transition to an environmental education center, last year. A Northern Neck Land Conservancy preservation specialist, she helps landowners place conservation easements on their properties. She sails, kayaks, crabs, gardens, and is senior warden for Cople Episcopal Parish and an active Virginia Master Naturalist.

Dianne Doering Junker met husband Tom Junker through Kate Crouch and Marnie Crouch just before graduation. They were to celebrate their 39th anniversary in July. The Junkers have been in touch with the Crouches through the years, visiting Moab, Utah, for a horseback riding and canoeing trip on the Green River in April 2013. Dianne has three children, including twins, and three granddaughters. They love to ski and moved to Conifer, Colo., in 1996. They’ve traveled to the Caribbean, Brazil, Europe, Ireland, Iceland, Mexico, Tanzania in East Africa, Alaska, and Hawaii. Tom works on a Mars spacecraft. Dianne retired as Denver’s University of Colorado Hospital Health System manager after 17 years there and 30 in nursing. She does daycare for her youngest granddaughter, 9 months, and has monthly dinners with Linda Raflo Raford, Betsy Clark Butler ’75, and occasionally Ann McCauley from the Boulder area. She keeps in touch with her children in Arvada, Colo.; Lander, Wyo.; and Santa Rosa, Calif., and her siblings in Minnesota and Nebraska. She couldn’t make the 40th reunion but said you never know when their ’73 VW Kombi bus might swing into another reunion.

Betsy Clark Butler has lived atop a mountain at 9,000 feet for 32 years and is a computer programmer in Denver. Her husband grew up a couple mountains over. They feed hundreds of birds every day and hike in the woods with their Lab/cattle dog mix. She thanks the 40th Reunion Committee – Bobbie Burton, Sid Baker Etherington, Peg Hubbard, Patti Goodall Strawderman, Diane Harvey Smith, Jeane Baughan Stone, Suzy Passarello Quenzer, and Leslie F. Tilghman.

Mary Beth Jones of the Pacific Northwest, a practicing physician for 35 years, specializes in emergency medicine. She earned a master’s degree in health care ethics last year and is program director for ethics for Legacy Health in the Portland, Oregon-Vancouver, Wash., area. She and her husband of 28 years, a U.S. Department of the Interior attorney, have two daughters. One is an attorney; the other was wrapping up her Peace Corps service in Albania. Mary Beth planned to come to the reunion with husband Bill Back.