class notes

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In Memoriam | People & projects

1960s

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1969

Barbara Herbert von der Groeben
11vndrgroeben69@gmail.com

Our fabulous 40th reunion is just a memory, with lots of stories to be shared in future columns. Thanks to all who attended. We missed the rest of you!

Barbara Levi Lankalis, assistant corporate general counsel for Unilever, was sorry to have missed yet another reunion. She couldn’t make the one in 2004 because it was her son’s bar mitzvah. This year’s conflicted with his high school graduation. She says she won’t miss the next one for anything!

Marie-Christine Noel Schulte met her husband, Bernd, in Boston and moved from Greenwich, CT, to Ocean Ridge, FL, in 1991 when W. R. Grace moved its Manhattan headquarters to Boca Raton, FL. Their son, Peter, 28, was born in Newport Beach, CA (“he’s the only native Ameri­can in the family!”), graduated from Cornell, and lives in Houston, TX, where he works for Continental Airlines. He has had a passion for commercial aviation since the age of five. Marie-Christine has fond memories of her three Skidmore years and welcomes classmates to visit her.

Trowby Hunt Brockman and husband Dan live in Barrington, IL, and are essentially retired. She worked for Kemper Insurance for 26 years as an operations and distance-learning manager until contracting Lyme disease in 1999. Fortunately, she has recovered. The Brockmans’ adult daughter lives with them, along with a Birman cat and a miniature Labradoodle puppy. Trowby stays in touch with a few classmates, including freshman-year dormmate Maxine Isaacs.

A few years ago Maureen Patricia Kelly Cooley learned that her friend’s husband was very ill and soon to die. Her friend brought him home and, with her daughters marooned in a NYC snowstorm, asked Maureen to help care for him. Mau­reen had known him as “a dignified and dapper physician.” Making the best of a bad situation, she purchased a red carnation and put on her nursing whites and Skid­more nursing pin. At that mo­ment, she recalls, “I realized that Lucy Skidmore Scribner’s objective had been fulfilled: equipping young women to fend for themselves when the chips were down. I looked up and said, ‘Thank you, Lucy.’”

After Skidmore Mary Lee Duff enjoyed 30 wonderful years living and working in NYC. Retired since 1999, she lives on the Connecticut coast in Guilford. She stays in touch with best friends Laurie Greaves Landreth, who lives in Locust Valley, NY; Deena Glass of Berkeley, CA; and Nancy Hantman, who lives in White Plains, NY.

Edith Pieper Bidwell teaches in the international baccalaureate program at Pensacola High School. She travels in her little trailer with her dogs when she can.

Sadly, Tina Vogt Coggio Fisler died in March. Joyce Benedict Ricker writes, “She so wanted to see us all at Reunion this year. She has always exemplified all that was fun and fabulous about our class. We certainly will miss her and honor her memory.” Tina’s friend Mags Conzut recalls, “I know Tina loved Skidmore and her friends there. We used to talk about it when she was my colleague at Burlington High School. Tina was a very special teacher, always ready with a smile for students and colleagues alike.” Who could forget Tina’s smile and enthusiasm? Sheila Barry Lockwood and Liz McKinley Loomis had lunch recently and re­membered that Tina and Judy Kapp Winder held a contest freshman year to see who could greet the most classmates by name.