class notes

1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s

UWW | In Memoriam | People & projects

1950s

1950 | 1951 | 1952 | 1953 | 1954 | 1955 | 1956 | 1957 | 1958 | 1959

1959

Carolyn Brown Straker
Momstraker@aol.com

Mary Heep van Riper of Roxbury, CT, spent a month in New Zealand with one of her daughters and her family of three girls. The youngest, who is 10, recently started boarding school on a scholarship. Mary reports that one of Joan Greenfield Axelrod’s three sons is the White House correspondent for CBS-TV. Mary’s husband has his 50th reunion at Dartmouth this year.

In Seattle, WA, Anne Henszey Pyle and her husband were honored at the dedication of the Kenneth B. and Anne H. H. Pyle Center for Northeast Asian Studies in the National Bureau of Asian Research. Journalist George Will was the guest speaker at the gala black-tie event.

Marilyn Ramshaw Adair and her recently retired husband went on another Elderhostel vacation—this time for five weeks to New Zealand, Australia, and Tasmania. A highlight of the trip was when their next-door neighbor from New Jersey met them in Sydney and took them 200 miles south to a cattle farm that he had purchased in 2001.

Reunion chair Evelyn Zoda Shippee spent another warm and relaxing winter in Florida, where she “did some jewelry design to keep the creative juices going and line dancing for recreation and exercise. All five children and their spouses, plus all 13 grandchildren, came down to celebrate the ‘big’ [70th] birthday coming this year for Bob and me.” In April Evie took granddaughters Emma, 12, and Eva, 10, to Paris for five days. The girls’ mom, Laura ’87, and aunt Maria ’92 went too. Evie is now a licensed real-estate agent in New Jersey.

Abby Lewis Warman and her husband sold their home in Pennsylvania and are now full-time residents of Naples, FL. In April they attended the reception for Abby’s one-person show at the Everhart Museum in Scranton, PA. She says, “It was a big honor to be invited to this show, and it was fun to return to my roots.” The Warmans visit their nine grandchildren in New York, Boston, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Abby says she’d love to see any classmates who come to Naples.

Class president Bev Sanders Payne went to the tennis open in Australia this past winter and experienced one of the highs of her life. Her idol, Roger Federer, not only won, but he threw his sweaty headband into the crowd—and guess who caught it! In February Bev and Sue Jorgensen attended the 19th annual celebration of Skidmore scholars and donors in Saratoga Springs. As a result of donations made at our 45th reunion, the Class of 1959 helps support four scholars. Excerpts from letters they have written us include one from Annie Gayner ’07, who wrote, “Thank you so much for your generous scholarship and for all the support you have provided over the last few years. I hope to do you proud!” Samantha Bentley ’09 writes, “I can’t thank you enough for the opportunity you’re giving me! This semester I’m taking everything from calculus to nutrition to Indian dance. It’s an experience I can only have here at Skidmore and only with your help!”

I will be teaching a comedy class at Marymount Manhattan College in NYC in the fall. The students will keep me feeling young. (Although when I took a class a few years ago, a young student came up to me and said, “You are really lucky because you are much older and probably have much more material than the rest of us.” I did not think that was very funny!)

Joan Cangelosi Kicska, Jane Haddad Evans, Gail Lichtenstein Edelman, and I are planning a girls-only get-together at a beachside hotel in Sarasota, FL.