KEEPING PACE CLASS NOTES
1937
Kent Place learned that Cynthia (Drake) Hugli passed away on March 10, 2021 (see below). We offer our sympathy. 1942
Emily (Churchill) Wood emily_wood46@hotmail.com Prue (Sanford) Regan died peacefully
at her home in Westerly, RI, on September 11, 2020. Prue was the sister of the late Jane (Sanford) Ziegler ’42. She was the beloved wife of the late Jack Regan and matriarch of the Regan family, which grew to include six children, nine grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. We extend our sympathy to Prue’s family. 1943
Kent Place heard from Katherine King that her mother, Mary (Dickason) King, passed away on February 20, 2021. “My mom always remembered her experiences, classes, and friends at Kent Place. Thank you for giving her such wonderful memories” (see below). 1945
passed away on September 21, 2020. We extend our condolences to Sally’s family.
Sally (Fordham) Dietrick
1947
Anne (Campbell) Dowell annedowell@triad.rr.com
This has been such a different and difficult year. I hope we’ve all had our vaccines and will soon see things improving. It was good to find most of us doing okay. Evelyn (France) Kalagher is doing fine. She can walk around the road out front and up to the clubhouse. During COVID, the bus drivers shopped for everyone. Now she drives herself for groceries. She loves to cook and eats at home more than at the clubhouse. She shares dinner on Sundays with a compatible friend. She goes to friends’ houses to Zoom for current events. Joan (Skelton) Holmes lives in Heritage Village, in Southbury, CT, and is doing okay. She uses a walker and on nice days goes out front to read. She does crossword puzzles, loves to watch Jeopardy!, and reads a lot. Her son Blair lives in Chicago with his wife and three children; son Hunter lives in Boston and is a professional guitarist. Her daughter, Trilby, who lives nearby, is a nurse and has three children. Nancy Purdy says she’s doing quite well. She still has her little spaniel, Henrietta, who is a great companion. Nancy lives in a ground-floor apartment with a
living room/dining room and three bedrooms. She usually eats at home but goes to the dining room occasionally. She has a helper who shops for her groceries. Eleanor (Rathbone) Nichols lives in a nice retirement home in Charlotte, NC. She had a brain aneurysm a while ago but is doing well. She does jigsaw puzzles, as her doctor recommended. She hopes physical and mental therapy will help so she won’t need a walker. Her eyesight is good and she likes watching history movies. Nancy (Vreeland) Waits lives with her husband, Richmond, in Westminster Retirement Home, in Winter Park, FL. They’re on the eighth floor of a large building. They go to different exercise classes and eat all their meals in the dining room. The whole family gathered at Easter. Their twin great-grandsons are 11 and they have another great-grandson, who is 2 years old. Giovanna (Mancusi-Ungaro) Breu
says, “We’re vaccinated but still wearing masks around Chicago. We’re using Zoom to do yoga and chat with friends. We FaceTime once a week with our 7- and 8-year-old granddaughters in Texas.” Their daughter, Eugenia, is a nurse in a hospital and is also a sergeant in the Texas State Guard. Their son, Christopher, is an English professor
at Illinois State University, teaching classes on Zoom.
Bobbie (MacWhinney) Schneidewind says, “Our family often gets to-
gether on Sunday evenings for supper at our daughter Donna’s home. This gives me a chance to get to know my 3½-year-old grandson and my 7-month-old great-granddaughter. We continued our 25-year family tradition of gathering at Hilton Head for a week in May. There were 18 of us to celebrate.” Helen (Preus) Mairs says, “Life at Episcopal Home, in St. Paul, seems to be getting closer to normal. We have a singing group, a writing group, and many movies. Daughter Julia will be returning from a winter in Indian Wells, CA. Heidi, my Houston daughter, will come soon for her first visit since Labor Day.” Elizabeth lives nearby and hosted a lovely Easter brunch on her porch with help from Preusy’s son, Rob. Kathanne (Harter) Webster says their restaurants are now open to residents only. She’ll return soon to working at their library. She’s been ordering books and having them delivered but she prefers going to the library. “I’m well,” she says, “though I can’t take long walks due to my spinal compression fracture, for which there is no safe cure.” Her Wellesley roommate died recently. They lived
Brave and Brilliant Then and Now In a time when postsecondary education was reserved primarily for men, Kent Place was preparing its graduates not only to earn college degrees, but also to advance the world. Cynthia (Drake) Hugli ’37 went on to graduate from Wellesley College with a BA in political science. During World War II, Cynthia worked at the Towing Tank at Stevens Institute of Technology, a facility where scale models of maritime vessels could be evaluated and which contributed to the history of America in the 1940s when work at the lab was devoted almost entirely to supporting the war effort. She passed away on March 10, 2021, at the age of 101. Dr. Mary (Dickason) King ’43 passed away on February 20, 2021, following an illustrious career in medicine. She had always wanted to be a doctor, and started working in a hospital laboratory in Newark at age 14. She worked there every summer until graduating magna cum laude from Smith College, and then earned her MD at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. She was a postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry at the University of
Chicago and pursued a fellowship at the University of Copenhagen; spent five years in the pharmacology and biochemistry department at Yale; and then served as associate clinical professor of pathology at the University of Colorado. When her children grew up, Mary took a residency in surgical pathology at Cornell and became a specialist in GYN-surgical pathology. After moving again, Mary pursued her work at Rush Medical Center and the University of Illinois. To keep up with her husband’s medical career, Mary moved eight times in 40 years, always managing to balance her pathology practice, teaching, and raising three children. Mary viewed it as a privilege to serve in the medical profession during a time of almost miraculous advances in both treatment and basic science. Source: The U.S. National Library of Medicine, “Changing the Face of Medicine: Dr. Mary Elizabeth Dickason King” Kent Place has a long history of empowering girls to be confident, intellectual, and ethical leaders. KPS graduates were brave and brilliant eight decades ago, just as they are today.
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