class notes

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

UWW | In Memoriam | People & projects

1970s

1970 | 1971 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974 | 1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979

1971

Julia Grosse Brodhag
skiddie71@gmail.com

Serena Roth Bateman
sbateman71@skidmore.edu

Skidmore will have its own representative to the Olympics when Marty Seem Banghart takes an 85-member choir representing Maryland in the Mid-Atlantic Tribute to the Beijing Olympics. While Marty continues to teach, husband Ray has retired and enjoys canoeing with their son Andrew. Daughter Tracy began a publishing company for her master’s thesis and is on the second printing of her first novel What the Sea Wants. Last year Marty spent a weekend with Sibyl
Waterman Haley in Maine and visited Clare Lenehan Swain in Naples, FL.

Sherry Sugg MacNicoll will celebrate her 25th wedding anniversary and first year as an empty-nester with a trip to Scotland. Son Alex completed his freshman year at DeSales University.

Dot Winchell Sherlock reports that passing through Saratoga Springs on the way to Keene Valley often “provokes Skidmore memories and sometimes a visit to Borders and campus.”

When Sibyl Haley isn’t traveling back and forth from Maine to Saratoga Springs on college business, she works in Senator Olympia Snowe’s office and volunteers at a local hospital and at a low-income-heating office. Daughter Allie and husband are traveling home after two years in Australia; daughter Dewey has moved to Cape Cod and was to be married this summer; and son Colin is job-hunting in Boston, following his graduation from Hamilton. Sibyl’s husband, Mark, juggles a busy law practice with weekends on the ski slopes.

Dana Warner Fisher and husband Jim moved back to Greensboro, NC, where Jim is the new head of the theater department at UNC-Greensboro. On Mother’s Day 2007 Dana received her master’s in library science from the University of Indiana. While organizing her new home, she found time to act in a play called See Rock City. Daughter Anna is working at the Huntington Theater in Boston, and son Dan is writing his dissertation in Buddhist studies.

Jane Glennie Babbitt has lived in Camden, ME, for 17 years, recently completing her fifth year as youth-services librarian at the Rockport Public Library. Both daughters are married. Jane treasures her grandson, though she’s not so happy that he lives in far-away Durango, CO. Jane and her husband look forward to retiring to a life of sailing.

Judy Pigott drew upon professional and personal insights to help her develop material for her book Personal Safety Nets: Getting Ready for Life’s Inevitable Changes and Challenges. She credits Skidmore with providing the environment to spark a now lifelong interest in psychology and counseling. She loves having her own space looking out over Seattle’s bright lights and the Cascade Mountains. She keeps busy teaching English as a second language, traveling, and keeping up with four children and three grandchildren.

This election year finds Joan Kohout running for her third 10-year term as a family-court judge in Monroe County, NY (near Rochester). This difficult job is made “all worthwhile” when community people thank her for helping them with their child, sometimes years later, she says. “That’s a great feeling.” A government major, Joan says she never thought Skidmore would take her to the bench.

Sandy Lipson reports that Susan Baxter has been selected the 2008 Woman of Distinction in Juneau, AK. Susan earned a master’s in education from the University of Alaska-Southeast, and has been a professional educator for 32 years. She is a strong believer in opportunities for all children. She says, “This has meant seeking funding for children who can’t afford to participate, designing programs with equal access for all children, and convincing others to support these needs as well.”

Jaye Scholl Bohlen lives in Glendale, CA, with husband Charlie. She is a freelance writer and editor. Daughter Avis is a senior at Harvard; son Charlie is a freshman at Washington University in St. Louis, having taken a “gap” year in Madagascar, New Orleans, Thailand, and Cambodia; son Peter is a high-school senior.

I lost my head for a moment last fall and told MB McDonald that I’d take a shot as class scribe! Charlotte, NC, became home when my husband accepted a job with First Union Bank, now Wachovia, in 1981. We raised our two children here; our son made his way to UNC-Chapel Hill and then ventured to the University of Michigan for his law degree. He practices in Charlotte and will be married this summer near Traverse City, MI. Our daughter graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in urban affairs and is a planner with a firm in Alexandria, VA. I am partnered with a federal judge with whom I’ve spent more than 25 years, the first five in private law practice and the last 20 as his judicial assistant. Many of those years he granted me part-time status so that I could go to cross-country meets in the afternoons or spend 10 days in France chaperoning the Charlotte Children’s Choir. It’s been a great ride.