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1960s

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1963

Deborah Frankel Reese
bybynj@aol.com

Mary Harris Wieneke is a clinical psychologist whose funded research and publications have focused on the long-term effects of adjuvant chemotherapy on neurocognitive functioning in women with breast cancer. Mary, who finished her PhD in 1992, lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Jane Finneman Hochman has co-authored a book with Dr. Gilbert M. Foley, titled Mental Health Principles and Practices for Non-Mental Health Practitioners in Early Intervention, to be published later this year. Jane, who holds a doctorate in education, has submitted a proposal for another professional book, co-written with two other colleagues, and hopes that after the contract is complete, she “will be ready to really retire.” In February she had lunch with Carolyn Caesar Ingraham and Evelyn Nutman Siegel. She also saw former roommate Wendy Sussman Rubin, who was in NYC visiting her daughter.

After graduating from Skidmore with a degree in music, Carol Smith Witherell changed career paths and became an educator. Music, however, remains a “life-long avocation,” she says. Carol taught elementary school for five years; then, after earning a master’s and doctorate, became a professor of teacher education, child development and learning, and moral development and ethics. Carol recently completed a manuscript on the role of imagination in the development of ethics, and is shopping for a publisher.

In Oakland, CA, former deputy city attorney Wendy Rouder has established a practice as a labor arbitrator, mediator, and fact finder, specializing in workplace issues. She adds, “If that sounds high falutin’ enough, please know that I am spending a lot of my time studying Russian, doing figurative painting, and worrying about my aging mother.”

Some of you know that Jackie Fernald Montgomery is a big-time realtor out in Jackson Hole, WY, but did you know that she has also been Teton County GOP chair? Any of you dreaming of a place for retirement or skiing in beautiful Wyoming should give Jackie a call.

An article on family entrepreneurs in Memphis magazine last November featured Ronna Karchmer Newburger and husband Hal, who run a scrap-metal business that has been in Ronna’s family since the turn of the century. For 40 years Ronna has handled bookkeeping while Harold, an industrial engineer, is constantly on the phone buying, selling, and trading. The Newburgers are also developers of Founder’s Pointe, an upscale neighborhood off Riverside Drive.

Life is good for Roberta Curtis Golub, who has been an executive financial planner with Ayco, a Goldman Sachs company in Parsippany, NJ, for 23 years. She enjoys daily workouts, hiking with her husband, and skiing with friends. Her greatest pleasure, however, is her grandson. One of her three children lives nearby in Chester. Roberta welcomes hearing from classmates at
golub@ayco.com.

Although husband Steve has retired, Karen Levin Coburn has definitely not, and still serves as assistant vice chancellor for students at Washington University. “Life is good within my little orbit of family, friends, and colleagues,” she writes, “but the morning papers remind me each day of the disturbing events of our times. I highly recommend Susan Sontag’s book Regarding the Pain of Others. I think about the book and wrestle with my own reactions each time I look at another photograph of the ongoing morass in Iraq.” Karen and husband Steve observed some “mind-boggling” milestones in June—including his 50th high-school reunion and their 40th wedding anniversary, which they celebrated with a trip to Naxos and Santorini in Greece.

For the past five years Sally Terwilliger has lived in Boulder, CO, where she loves the community and her job in real estate. She adds, “I’m in OK health for an old broad.”

Charlotte Cram Elsberry received the Golden Commendation Award from the American Society of Nurse Midwives on behalf of the North Central Bronx Hospital of Midwifery Service, where she is the director and an associate clinical professor of nursing. After Skidmore, Pixie got her degree in midwifery from Yale and has been in the forefront of this movement ever since.

Another nursing major, Janie Goodnow Doyle continues teaching surgical geriatric and oncology nursing at the community college in Gardner, MA. She teaches a course focusing on issues and legal aspects of the field.

Joan Layng Dayton sends a big Aloha from Hawaii. She spent a few days in January with Susan Wagner Gillespie, who was visiting friends on the Big Island of Hawaii. Sue and Jake are having fun in their retirement, traveling and spending time in Boston with their two children and several grandchildren. Joan and Bob were presented with their seventh grandchild, daughter of youngest son Scott ’93 and his wife, Ann. Joan says grandson Teddy, 2, “seems to be enchanted with the new pet in the household!”

Judy Baldwin Martin has begun the odyssey of living her dreams: she and her husband moved to Stonington CT, where they seek a “a simpler life, with city access.” The Martins winter in the Florida Keys.

In April Ruth Adler Ruder was on the front page of the Reno Gazette Journal, which spotlighted her incredible, drought-tolerant garden. She hopes the exposure will encourage other residents of desert climates to curb water usage. Ruth is endowment chairperson for the Assistance League and has a quilt group that meets at her house each month. She also stays active with a book club, garden club, and other organizations. Daughter Arianna was married last October.

Retired since 1997, Jane Uetz Johnson is working with Ronnie Zolondek Bramesco on the Skidmore mentoring program in NYC.

For 11 years Diane Harroff Bristol has escaped New England winters for a few weeks, by visiting daughter Hannah in Los Angeles. While out on the West Coast, Dianne travels to Santa Barbara where an old friend teaches art. The school’s art department demanded an advanced program for serious young artists, which Diane often instructs as a guest artist.

Christine Mackey Giddings has retired from being a librarian and lives in Chestertown, MD.

Shirley Fleming Woodward and husband Jack love having time for travel, reading, hiking, community involvement, and visiting their daughters in Maine and California. Their grandson is a special attraction. This spring the couple flew from New Hampshire to Arizona and then on to Los Angeles, where they visited with Carolyn Chun Wong and Brenda Norman.

Semi-retired, Joyce Di Bona and husband Robert Weiss celebrated New Year’s Eve on Whidbey Island (near Seattle) with Joyce’s niece, who owns a great wine and cheese and gourmet food shop in Coupeville. They continued on to Eugene, OR, to attend a granddaughter’s fifth birthday, and shortly afterwards Joyce left on an annual sojourn to Jupiter, FL. In April she went to Australia and New Zealand for a three-week “quasi-business and mostly pleasure trip!”

Sabina Hartley Duke and husband Allen took a 15-day journey to Chile, the Antarctic, and Argentina. In Terra del Fuego they boarded the Explorer II for a 10-day tour of the Antarctic. Drake Passage “lived up to its reputation of rough waters,” Sabina says. “We learned to walk like penguins.” After four landings that included a “wallow” in the waters of Deception Island’s caldera, they arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, then headed home—“another trip of a lifetime.”

Ronnie Zolondek Bramesco, Alex Wilbert Fleischman, and Kathryn Terwilliger took a mini-reunion road trip this year. They met in Florida and drove through Georgia, stopping at St. Simon’s Island, Savannah, and then Charleston, SC, where they had dinner with Susan Rose Clark. From there Alex took a train back to Ocala, FL, while Ronnie and Twig drove on to New York. “We had a great time!” says Twig, who is looking for any ideas or takers for the next trip.

Dorothy Skripak Penner traveled from her home in Annapolis, MD, to London in November to be there for the birth of her daughter’s third child.

Penny Dammann Johnston welcomed a second grandchild and does a lot of traveling.

Louise Siegel Musser’s son Alec is a model, among other things, and appears in several magazine ads. His photo is viewable at www.lamodels.com/LAManagement/Men/Alec/alec_a.htm. If I remember right, Sandy Skinker Bennett’s daughter is also a model.

May through October are our glory months here in Vermont, and John and I have no plans to go anywhere—except to Connecticut to babysit for grandchildren a few times. I will be gardening and painting. My work is currently being exhibited in a four-person show, and I have two more local group shows coming up. To receive my quarterly e-mail newsletter, for some real discussions and walks down Memory Lane, please send me your e-mail address. If you’d like back issues (the winter one focused on our professors, and the spring one on visitors to campus in our day), let me know and I will send them along.