class notes

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1952

Doris Harbach Patten
DPatten3@cfl.rr.com

Peggy McConnell Hinrichs had a nice chat with former roommate Ann Lawton Read during a brief stay at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL. Ann and her husband moved into a new home in St. Augustine, just a short distance from their former residence. Peggy and John enjoyed their first winter in their new home at the Moorings in Vero Beach.

Joanna VanOrden Turrell passed along the sad news that roommate Elizabeth Bishop Teulings died in February. Close friends since college, Tommie and Betsy were in each other’s weddings, and Tommie named her eldest daughter after Betsy.

Maryette Leibert Beers’s fourth grandchild was born in March in California. Two teenage and two infant grandchildren, with an equal number of girls and boys, make Bobo one “happy Grannyette.”

Our class’s Friends of the Presidents chair, Jean Adams Shaw, observes that Skidmore continues to amaze her with all its great new ideas and programs: “It is indeed a college on the move.”

Nancy Lawrence Clark and husband Hugh winter in Florida, where her kids and grandchildren live. Spring, summer, and fall are spent in Amherst, MA, where Nancy enjoys golf, garden clubs and gardening, serving as docent for the Amherst Historical Museum, volunteering for a hospice, and working on her scrapbook autobiography. Hugh is still a golfer.

Anita Helfenstein Bloch and husband sold their home in Atlantic Beach, Long Island, after 45 years there. They hope to live in their new Boynton Beach, FL, home for another 45! Anita reports that their children are all doing well, and three of their six grandchildren will be bar mitzvahed this year. The Blochs summer in Vermont, traveling to Connecticut to visit daughter Jennifer and to Portland, OR, to see son Eric. Their eldest, John, lives in Florida.

Last September Nancy Norling Coe took a wonderful trip to northern Spain, including stops in Bilbao and the awesome Ghery museum. A month later she set sail from a remote island in the Grenadines and experienced equal parts sun and rain. Daughter Abby had a baby girl in December; she has two older brothers.

Ann Ridge Adams and husband Mac celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a cruise down the coast of Mexico and Costa Rica, through the Panama Canal, and into the Caribbean, landing in Ft. Lauderdale. They had learned about the construction of the canal by reading David McCullough’s book Path Between the Seas, which enhanced the trip.

Meredith Foote Jones met Nan Lauder Eckfeld ’56 in Florida to reminisce about the old campus. When not doting on 10-month-old granddaughter Sophia, Nan volunteers helping low-income and uninsured people get low-cost medication—the most gratifying work she has done. Oldest son Josh is a wildlife ranger at a local drive-through safari, where he breeds cheetahs (eight cubs were born in 2004, with more expected this year). Meredith and husband Tom are still playing competitive tennis and were nationally ranked this year. Their most recent birding trip was to Trinidad during Carnival. Meredith would love to hear from other classmates who are birders.

Margaret Sharpe Whitehead had a joint 75th birthday with Mary Stirling Campbell ’51 and Nancy Howie ’51 last May in Savannah, GA. Margaret was planning to attend the Whitehead family reunion with daughter Donna Whitehead Shahin ’74, Doris Kleissler Whitehead ’56, and Pamela Whitehead Cornforth ’80. Since her husband’s death, Margaret has kept busy with 10 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, all of whom live nearby in Maryland. She feels very blessed.

After a knee replacement in January, Betsy Clark McIssac now walks without a cane. “There is some pain, she adds, “but nothing as bad as predicted.”

Ruth Friedman Hoberman and Bernard celebrated 52 years of marriage by taking their children to the Ritz Carlton in St. Thomas for Christmas week. In February they went to Greenbrae, CA, to celebrate a daughter’s and a grandson’s birthdays.

Lots of travel, weddings, and births keep Patty Walters Shaw occupied these days. She and husband Donald recently became great-grandparents. Unfortunately, while on a European river cruise Donald developed pneumonia, and X-rays uncovered a cancerous mass in his right lung. It was successfully removed, and after undergoing four months of chemo this spring, Patty’s “newly bald husband is handsomer than ever” and doing quite well.

Marilyn Burns Hughes’s beachfront condo was destroyed after two direct hits from Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne last year. It’s now nearly rebuilt, and she and her husband are grateful things weren’t worse. In February the Orient Express train they were traveling on in Mexico wrecked upon entering Copper Canyon when eight of its 16 cars (including theirs) derailed. Fortunately, the Hughes survived unscathed. They hope this year gets better!

Enjoying good health and a happy life on Cape Cod, Betty Johnson Boothe and husband Bill feel very fortunate. Unlike most of their friends, they go north rather than south for the winter, staying with a daughter and her family in Rutledge, VT, and taking ski vacations at Killington. The Boothes also enjoyed a four-day ski event at Lake Placid with friends. In January, Jonnie went on a medical mission trip to Honduras—“a great experience.”

Ann Brown Abdalla spent a week with over 300 family members and friends last July, celebrating the 100th birthday of the family cottage on Pennsylvania’s Allegheny River. Some guests came from as far away as Los Angeles and Tulsa. The celebration also marked the first time Ann and her siblings had been together in 14 years.

Nancy Colway Cammann continues sculpting, most recently working in stone. She has two grandsons attending college: one at Dartmouth and one at Berkeley. She especially enjoys cheering the Dartmouth crew, coxswained by her grandson. She received a call from Nancy Lukens Pegnam, informing her that Lukie’s husband, Martin, died in March after a long bout with cancer. Our sympathy to Lukie.