1958 Class Notes for 2016
Rumor has it that most of us are turning 80 this year, but you wouldn’t believe it from the ambitious itineraries – Dubai, Barcelona, Alaska, Angola, the Dalmation Coast, Rome, Paris, Singapore and Connemara!
How many can say they have visited 100 countries? Gina Pleus MacKenzie and Bob reached that goal last November, when they met with other Secular Franciscans on the west coast of Africa. Gina was amazed to learn Angola is 60% Catholic. Back home she participates in KAIROS prison ministry, a life-changing experience. All this news came in a photo card of her exquisite, award-winning Taj Mahal quilt, adorned with beads, braid, fabric paint and crystals.
A cruise with a “pirate drill?” Jane Locraft Head and Dan can brag about experiencing that as they cruised on the Red Sea past Somalia, on their way from Dubai to Barcelona. No pirates were sighted! Jane expressed the recurrent theme in all your responses, gratitude for good health, friends and family.
The fragrance of warm French bread almost came wafting through Jean Volpe Rotondi’s email. She and Roger spend six months every year in their Paris apartment, filling their days with jazz clubs and language exchange, volunteer visits with long-term surgical patients in Les Invalides, and daily trips to the bakery two doors away. The other half of the year they are in Naples enjoying Trinity friends, concerts, plays, restaurants and heavenly weather.
Mary Frann Somers Heidhues lives in Gottingen, Germany, but was invited to Singapore again this past November to give a lecture. In June she spoke in Leiden about the Chinese in Indonesia. She admits it’s nice to feel she is still in demand. She also fits in time with a Syrian refugee grandmother to practice German with her, helping her acclimate.
The Connemara news was from Louise (Lou) Collins McCloskey. She and Pete flew to Ireland in July to visit three granddaughters who were spending the summer there, biking to their jobs! They hosted their 16 year old grandson from Alaska this past year, so he could attend Gonzaga High School, and were initiated into today’s teens’ busy lives.
She says she’s going to retire, but Margot Kennedy Walsh is still Executive Director of the Jersey Shore Partnership, an advocacy group for ensuring funding from federal and state sources for beach protection. She still lives five miles from the beach. Jean Kennedy O’Brien lives an hour away in a retirement community. Margot was headed to Rome in November for the Pope’s Jubilee year.
Marjorie (Mimi) Argo Buss and Dick are the Dalmatian Coast travelers next year. At the moment, when not engrossed in genealogy, Mimi relishes the special moments around Annapolis, spotting a blue heron or baby ducks, the gorgeous sunsets and rainbows, and a new bundle of energy, puppy Zoe.
Barbara Bailey Kennelly celebrated her birthday on the Danube, but was back in time to participate as a delegate for Hillary Clinton at the Democratic convention in July. And that’s the international roundup, so now we will trek up to a small lake in the mountains of New Hampshire where Patricia (Patty) Hackett Sheehan and Jack have lived since 2001, on Checkerberry Lane. Besides entertaining their families, winter and summer, they volunteer for their lake association, church and, as good Irish-blooded people, bartend at the pub in an assisted living facility!
The 80th birthday celebration got off to a rousing start for Anne Harkins Holmberg at her half-century old, bi-annual family reunion in the Catskill Mountains with 34 family members. A year ago she and Bill started a foundation to distribute scholarships to the employees at their Florida retirement community and this year they were able to award 18 scholarships, totaling $61,000. Now they are involved in the first non-partisan political forum at the community to discuss severe river pollution.
Philanthropy is the driving force in Karen Bucy Wasik-Saunders activities. After serving the last two years as the Treasurer for the Maryland Federation of Women’s Clubs (a member of the International Federation), she has been elected First Vice President. Since the 1990s Karen has been actively involved in women’s clubs in the USA and abroad to combat domestic violence and “be God’s hands here on earth.”
Another unique birthday celebration: a hay wagon ride up to a mountain cabin in Vail for a gourmet birthday dinner. Sally Santen Gleason, Tom and their five year old grandson enjoyed that, while the rest of the family met them at the restaurant on horseback. They sold their beach condo and moved into a new senior living development on the grounds of their club in Florida, but still spend summers in Michigan and Colorado. A river cruise in Portugal was on the horizon in September. Sally had lunch with Margaret Rose (Ro) McCrory Foley in Vail when Ro was in the area visiting two daughters to celebrate her July birthday. From her email it looks like Ro is a realtor in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.
The “cursive award” goes to Theresa (Terry) Kelly Griffin in New Hampshire whose beautiful penmanship told of admiring swooping bluebirds, finches and butterflies from her deck on a quiet Sunday morning while Gerry plays cool recordings through open doors. A highlight this year was seeing Fr. Gonzalez and Fr. O’Donovan from Trinity days at Gerry’s 60th Georgetown reunion, plus their first cruise to the Bahamas. The DC visit included touring the “fantastic” St. John Paul II Cultural Center and Trinity’s newest building (“impressive”). “I did note that the St. Patrick statute still has two left feet!” Her sad notes were of the deaths of two of her brothers-in law.
Visiting family has been easy for Judy McAdams Cullen, as all 24 of them live in Texas, but DC may be seeing more of Judy after 2017 when one of their grandson attends GU on a lacrosse scholarship! Wryly, Jeanne Curtis Dickson remarked that it had taken her two weeks to decide she had no updates, but applauded Trinity’s current efforts to enrich the lives of young men and women who otherwise might not have the opportunity to grow. “Sr. Julia has to be pleased!”
Eleanor (Ellie) Moynihan Bagley had yet to have an 80th birthday, but did remark that “no news” is “good news” these days. Cathy Crotty Higgins isn’t 80 yet either, and her explanation for being with the “big kids” is that the nuns started a girls’ school and were desperate for bodies in first grade. The only requirement was that you had to be taller than the desks!
Judith (Judy) Fornilli Pauley and Joe are officially retired, but they keep getting calls from former clients asking them to run seminars focusing on dropout prevention. They fly SW Airlines so much that Judy is flying free on a companion pass for the 9th year in a row. In between they spend time at their cottage in Michigan, walking for an hour every day.
What do two knee replacements do for you? For Barbara Durand Zimmermann it meant dancing with 11 of her 13 grandchildren to “oldies” at “a great birthday party!” The exhausted coach of the Special Olympics bowling team, Paulette (Pauli) Lariviere Geurden, isn’t blaming the coaching chores. It was all the walking she did in Orlando with Gigi to see the sights. Her trophy, blue crystal Mickey Mouse earrings! Pauli is officially retired from H&R Block now.
Now a little history lesson. Sue Cherry Foote lives in Washington Crossing, PA over the Delaware River bridge from New Jersey. Yes, the place where George crossed, and so, according to Sue, he actually slept there! She takes Tai Chi twice a week and has become a big Elvis fan after seeing an impersonator two years ago. Do you remember her running through 4th North singing “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” in 1956?
What gives you joy? For Jean Ganley Caputo-Williams it’s a second copy of coffee while reading the Globe, doing the Sudoku, bridge and crossword puzzles, taking a walk before lunch, maybe afternoon golf with the grandkids and dinner with family or friends. Alice Levangie McIntyre eagerly anticipates the two winter months in Siesta Key, FL every year where one of their sons owns a home. She and Jack recently moved from Ashburn, VA to McLean to be closer to two of their children and they are now in the same parish as one of their daughters.
She feels like she’s “died and gone to heaven” since Tycie Shea suggested “Meals on Wheels”, but Ann Titterton Keen is still in Sarasota, enjoying independent living, including being mistress of the TV volume and room temperature. Cathleen (Cathy) Russell’s specific point of joy was the night after her cataract surgery when she could read easily again, while Janet Curran McDermott relished the beach week with 17 family members, including her dear husband, celebrating her birthday.
For Verna Hook Siford it’s tending her flower and vegetable garden, playing the organ at Mass weekly and accompanying the cantor and choir in season. Then there are her kind neighbors with whom she enjoys a glass of wine sitting down at the creek. She’s glad she drags herself to “Silver and Fit” three times a week, because of the male characters telling jokes. Maybe the thought that Barbara Schlaich Masciale sent me summarizes it most aptly – “Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want; it is the realization of how much you already have.” Barbara has soldiered through some serious medical issues this past winter and spring, but finds great pleasure in their new community in Poughkeepsie, with its interesting mix of people.
Lucky Yvonne Thel Driscoll saw “Hamilton” in NYC in May with two of their daughters and can attest that “it is spell-binding – the high energy, staging and music.” June saw the whole family in Martha’s Vineyard, and also produced birthday calls from Joan McIntee, Liz Booz Mauser and Tycie Shea.
My faithful “humorist at large”, Sheila Kallan Keegan, has exchanged her serene mountain view on Hood Canal for the busy waterways and ferry crossings on Bainbridge Island, seven minutes from daughter, Kathy. In the downsizing experience, Sheila utilized the tidying up tips from Marie Kondo’s book by consolidating like items – and discovered 25 packs of dental floss. She still finds time to exercise and create watercolors. Their summer had a sorrowful note, however, with the death of their daughter Beth’s husband in June in Evanston.
Suzanne (Sue) McGrath Dunn, too, joined the chorus of classmates grateful for health, faith, family and friends. My senior year roommate, Pamela (Pam) Connelly Bartlett, has been courageously straight-forward in acknowledging the onset of Alzheimer’s. She moved to a senior housing in Avon, CT this year, and has been lobbying for a bus to take the residents to various venues for a change of scenery.
Nancy Welch Ryan has had a difficult year with the death of her youngest and remaining brother, then back surgery, followed six weeks later by the sudden death of her husband, Joe, in October. She and Jean Ganley Caputo-Williams attended the wake and funeral of Joan Wargo Schroder May 29 in DeWitt, NY. They said Joan’s nine children had a beautiful ceremony and remarked how much Joan had loved her Trinity friends.
That Trinity love was so well expressed when Helen Murphy Moran’s husband, Francis, died this July. Helen writes “I want the class to know of the wonderful and generous help from Cathy Russell before, during and after the funeral. Such a friend makes it so much easier to carry on.”
Leave it to creative Barbara (Bobbie) McGeary Marhofer to come up with a magical image to close these notes. She and Joe live on the sixth floor of a condo in Reston, VA, 20 miles west of Trinity. They often sit on their balcony looking at the sky, so they joined the Cloud Appreciation Society, founded in 2005 in the UK (more than 40,000 members in 165 countries). Membership entitles you to a pocket-sized cloud-identifying wheel, and a daily email “Cloud-A-Day.” One week included towering cumulus with a verse by Percy Shelly, an ominous storm front over North Dakota with baseball-sized hail and a vivid blue outflow, and a Van Gogh painting showing a lenticularis cloud.
Happy Birthday everyone, current and future octogenarians! May God bless us all!
Kate Malone Geddes