Class Notes
This edition of Class Notes was collected through 2023 and early 2024. Due to onboarding a new, dynamic magazine team along with a fresh rebrand for the Westover Magazine, the Class Notes are hitting the press later than we expected. While some of what is shared in this issue may be old news, we hope you will still enjoy catching up with the life and times of your Westover classmates.
You are welcome to share your news anytime at westoverschool.org/classnotes. If you would like to help collect news on behalf of your class, please email classnotes@westoverschool.org for more information.
1943
Secretary needed!
Catherine Curtis Allard
Getting very very old now but still have happy memories of my days at Westover.
1946
Beatrice Bronson Garvan ’46 beagarvan@gmail.com
We are a hardy lot. Located east and west, and probably considered somewhat aged, we remain in touch with each other with concern for events beyond our view. A fine note from Michael Geer about Smitty (Mary Gibson Geer), who passed away in 2018: “I like thinking of all you young women and the memories you have.” Memories surely but still ongoing.
Peggy Evans Dennis wrote: “I hope the world will be able to accommodate all the new children. We badly need some changes. Grateful for Biden.” She has a new address: #8077, 501 Portola Road, Portola Valley, CA 94028.
Corky Corkran Nimick resides at the Beaumont at Bryn Mawr retirement community near Philadelphia, as did Westover pals Ann Newbold Godfrey, who died in 2021, and Sue Colket Rakestraw, who died in July 2022. Corky wrote: “Living in a retirement community is a bit like living in a boarding school… scheduled meals and activities, exercise, and jigsaw puzzles (my favorite). I still drive but not often. I will celebrate my ninety-fifth birthday on a daylong boat ride with children and greatgrandson, aged nine months.
As for me, Bea Bronson Garvan, all is well in my productive family, nine grands and three greats, all over the country and working: federal firefighter, real estate, finance, NFL, law, healthcare, design. Summer visits to “camp” on Raquette Lake in the Adirondacks with various members
and grands’ weddings are yearly highlights. Retirement living is comfortable, even fun, balanced with some civic enterprises. Alas, the hazards of carrying Covid back into our community closed down my museum “career.” The skies seem to be expanding thanks to science, while AI seems to be unloosening unthinkable terrors. Best to all.
1947
Secretary needed!
Anne Farquhar Griffin
Like those remaining in my class, I am about to enter into age ninety-three. It’s challenging. I often think of my four Westover years and my friends.
1948
Secretary needed!
Kathleen Craig Knight
Missing Tom. Still in my house seeing friends, playing bridge, enjoying our four sons and grandchildren—nine boys, four girls. Sad that Stephanie Stunzi Zuellig died last year; she was a wonderful friend. We have lost many in our class of ’48.
Sylvia Handy Bowman is living in a 770-square-foot cottage with a dog, a cat, and a view of the nearby Olympic Mountains. Very healthy and busy writing a somewhat fictionalized memoir.
1949
Secretary needed!
Judith Blair Green
This year has had its challenges: the loss of my younger sister, Betsy Milton ’55, and a dear friend from here at the Barrington. Tom and I are still as well as can be expected for two ninety-one-yearolds. Family doing well, unfortunately all my grands and fabulous great-grands live in different cities. This country badly needs
strong women—urge them to become politically active! My greetings to those hardy souls left amongst us.
Luigi Horne Mumford
I still go to concerts, Lyric Opera, and various theaters. I go to meetings of several clubs such as the Chicago Literary Club, the Fortnightly of Chicago, and the Cliff Dwellers. I also “go to” a weekly Zoom Board meeting of the Chicago chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians. All this, more or less, keeps me out of worse trouble.
1950
Secretary needed!
Starr Taber writes, “I’ve been back living in Belvedere, California, for ten years. My son, Ted Arleo, and family live in San Francisco, and I see them frequently. He and his wife are both architects. Their daughter, Sofia, graduated from Colby in ’23 and son, Torin, will be a freshman there in the fall of this year. My daughter, Adrian Arleo, is an accomplished ceramic sculptress living in Lolo, Montana. Check out her website (adrianarleo.com) to see her work! Her daughter, Celia Duncan, got married in June, and I attended her wedding in Seattle, where she and her husband are living. My son, Michael, is now retired and living in San Diego, where he and his family have lived for a long time. He is an avid surfer, as is his son, Connor, who now lives right around the corner. As far as my news, I keep busy caring for my two corgis and two ragdoll cats. I enjoy painting, gardening, and playing bridge and mahjong. I find it hard to believe that 2025 will be our seventy-fifth reunion!”
Patsy Chickering Fish writes, “Still running around at ninety-one years. My husband, George, is also at ninety-three. I’m also still driving and cooking delicious meals. Lunching out with friends old and young, Bible study once a week, active in Colonial Dames, Mayflower Society, lots
of reading—mostly Westerns and WWII stories—painting and bonsai. I am standing on my sweet little rug showing Westover, which is by my bed and remembering it all the time. I’ve been in contact with two young people from my class: Rev. Cass Shaw, daughter of my wonderful roommate, Cass Ruxton Shaw (whom I later learned was related to me), and Elizabeth B.B. Conger ’80, daughter of my dear friend Faith Emeny Conger. I also talk with Starr Taber often. She sends me jokes! That’s about it. I always send my love to any of my classmates who are left.”
1951
Secretary needed!
Constance Heckscher Wood writes, “Curt and I are doing well at ninety years old in Naples, Florida. Loving the weather and the people we’ve met in the retirement community. Let us know if you are down here; we love visitors! Remembering our years together at Westover—those great days, finest teachers, and wonderful friends. Sending love!”
1952
Secretary needed!
Terry Shrady Fry shares, “On my eightyninth birthday, I began dialysis for three hours every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I have a condition due to my kidneys ruined by my diabetes, but I am not sick. I actually feel better, but it’s nine hours I would rather be doing something else. I still drive, just around town in daylight, but had to give up duplicate bridge because I can’t sit that long anymore.”
1953
Secretary needed!
Katrina Hoadley Delude has been battling pancreatic cancer since March 30, 2022— a long road with operation, chemo, and radiation.
Mary Reynolds Moser says, “I am very lucky and doing well for eighty-eight! Spent seven weeks in the Adirondacks last year in late summer and early fall. It was gorgeous and is the home of my heart. My kids are doing well. I just downsized to a two-bedroom townhome. Is there anyone still out there? I still sing in the church choir. Thanks, Westover.”
1954
Aldys Chapman Davis writes, “Alive and kicking at Waverly Heights in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania. Still involved with the Garden Club.”
Nancy Watson King shares, “I am in a retirement place (alone) in Haddam, Connecticut. Well and happy, mostly. Yay! My family is nearby-ish: Boston, Maine, Connecticut, New York City, and Philadelphia. Westover sounds like a wonderful place (with excellent leadership!), which I loved in ‘the olde days.’ Love to all, Nancy/Nani Watson/ Tighhe/King (Hohum...)”
Bourne Gafill Morris-Buss shares, “I’ve gone back to school. The University of Nevada has a special senior institute (an Osher Center) that offers classes and lectures for over-fifties. I take two seminars a week on current issues and events. It’s called a colloquy. Keeps my mind up to date.”
Mary Maier Walker writes, “Husband Bill and I are still lucky enough to spend time on Hilton Head Island. We returned to Milwaukee and senior living this spring with a shoulder replacement on my calendar!”
1955
Secretary needed!
Jane Rawlings Odenweller shares, “Here I am in Columbus, Ohio—sorry Anne Atlee Webber moved to Pennsylvania! We’re quite settled, despite several hospitalizations for my husband, Bob. I’m writing again—a few hundred haikus in a year and a half. Cheers to all, Jane.”
1956
Secretary needed!
Suzanne Reitz Weinstein: Between the corner, Coca-Cola, and peanut butter cups (very infrequent) to the pleasures of “sit-sit” senior year with more peanut butter, chitchat, cardigans, speculation about men, college, and graduation around our “senior tree.” I send my love to all our 1956 class. At this stage in my life, I can try and keep the tune of ‘Jingle Bells.’ I celebrated my 85th birthday with much festivity and gratitude for school, college, New York City friends, and so many memories: my late husband, Fred; my
life in Oil City, Pennsylvania; West Virginia; and Florida. My love and best wishes.”
Jennifer Manocherian ’56 at her book launch with writer Jimin Han on September 14, 2023.
Jennifer Robbins Manocherian shares, “Married sixty-five years to the same man! Five children, fifteen grandchildren, and in May added a fourth generation. I wrote a novel, Alpha Bette, available on all online book sites, and cowrote and coproduced a feature film, Boundary Waters, which we hope to get into festivals in 2024.
Francie Perry Jacober ’56.
1957
Lavinia Meeks ’57 laviniameeks@gmail.com
Greetings from the Class of 1957!
Alex Chappell Cole has retired after thirtyfive years as an architectural historian in Santa Barbara, California, helping to save historical buildings. She now happily enjoys her children, one grandchild, and friends.
Barbara Edwards Hicks and Paul are very proud of their grandson, Toby dePeyster, who is a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.
Gretchen Hill Kingsly and Charlie are well, but slowing down and have moved to a nice retirement community, Essex Meadows, in Essex, Connecticut, where Dorie Milner Pease also resides. Gretchen will be glad to have fewer domestic chores and more time to stroll, paint, and read.
Varick Katzenbach Niles spends winters in Naples, Florida, and summers in Westport, Massachusetts. The grandchildren are beginning to graduate from college. Varick continues to paint local subjects, which can be seen on her website: varickniles. com.
Sandra Lazo Washington is happy in her residential community in Denver, Colorado. She is a DJ with a weekly radio show, interviewing 300 residents and staff about their interests and backgrounds and helping to introduce them to one another, a popular community project. She is also on the excursions committee arranging for outings to local cultural events. She continues with hospice work as well.
Florence Lincoln Short reports that she feels happy and fortunate in spite of her hometown of Woodstock, Vermont, being flooded last summer and not having water at her camp in the Adirondacks for a time. She says, “Safe drinking water is so precious all over the world, as we all know.”
Lucy Noyes has recovered well from surgery on two vertebrae. She has explored Mayan lands, cities, and ruins and present-day settlements in Chiapas, Mexico, and Guatemala. Also a trip to the Yucatan and Quintana Roo. She had a nice visit with a first love (of 65 years ago!) and his family. She says she can still climb pyramids but has trouble walking up cobblestones at home. She is very involved with Mexican life and has one family living with her. Son George works in Monterrey, Mexico. Lucy is grateful for a fascinating life.
Dorie Milner Pease shares, “I have a busy life at Essex Meadows, a life care community. I serve on the Resident Council, have led the Employee Appreciation Fund for the last three years, and have raised $250,000 for our dedicated staff. I also am chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, which is made up of both
staff and residents. We held an amazing multicultural fair last September 11 with 14 countries represented. In my spare time, I love making needlepoint Christmas ornaments for family and friends. My three stepdaughters are all well: Susan is living in California; Sarah moved to St. Simons Island, Georgia; and Katie is close by in Fairfield, Connecticut. Grandson Dan graduated from Drake University in Iowa and is working for Cigna in West Hartford. Ben is at UCONN, and Lizzie is off to college in the fall. Thanks to all classmates who have given to the Westover Fund. I love you all.”
Mary Denny Scott Wray is in a fabulous retirement spot in Virginia with many old friends and some family. There are a lot of activities, lectures, concerts, and various classes. She loves an “off campus” life as well. Her three sons and their wives are in Richmond, Virginia; New York City; and Fishers Island, New York. Five grandsons are out of college and working and not wed yet. Her sixth grandson is rowing as a senior at the University of California, Berkeley.
“I, Lavinia Meeks, have been in an assisted living facility for over four years in Lenox, Massachusetts, with AFib and COPD. Fortunately, I am still active as a docent at Ventfort Hall and with the Lenox Library book sale. I hope we have not missed anyone. It would be nice to hear from more of you. Best wishes to you all.”
Mary-Rose Hickey Cooney writes, “Last February my traveling companion, Sally, and I had a sailing trip down the Mekong, starting in Siem Reap and the famous Angkor site of the twelfth century Khmer Empire. We are always seeking the sun in the winter, as we don’t have Florida or the West Indies on our doorstep! Next year we plan to do a Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and find an apartment in Goa for a few weeks. Love to see any classmates who would like to join. Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2024. – Mezzie”
Adrienne Leichtle Maxell writes, “I live in a wonderful retirement community in Richmond, Virginia, called Westminster Canterbury. Mary Denny Scott Wray is also here.”
Sharon Anderson Smith moved twelve minutes away to Satellite Beach, Florida, soon after her husband of 22 years passed away in June 2023. She went to Atlanta
in December for Christmas and New Year’s and also to St. Barts in October to celebrate her daughter Leslie’s sixtieth birthday!
1958
Martha McCormick Porter ’58 mmporter@fairpoint.net
Jane Trask ’58 ptrask3@gmail.com
Mary Brereton Frost writes that she moved to assisted living in August 2023. “Good, lucky move for me!”
Marcia Catlin Coffey writes that she lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, with her daughter. Though she claims to be in her dotage now, she has built a small web design business with her other daughter, who lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Selden Dunbar Illick writes that after the weekend at the school for our sixty-fifth reunion, “I think that it so heartening to see that in the chaos of the world today, the motto ‘to think, to do, to be’; as well as kindness; diversity; and the female capacity to endure persist. It is so exciting to see that Ann Pollina’s ‘transformational’ expertise in engaging girls in math, science, and technology is fundamental to the school curriculum (the WISE program). A shout-out to Mary Tremaine Soutendijk for getting the ball rolling at Westover for the Gina Walker project! And just sayin’ about staying in the dorm: Despite the totally accurate description of the dorm rooms, I would do that again for the gatherings in the hall, bathroom, and ease of participation.”
Brita Patten Gwinn writes, “I am in Florida and going to visit children this fall in Seattle, Denver, and London (Christian will come here in the winter). Life is good.”
Penny Jones writes, “My life is pretty settled here in funky Eugene, Oregon. Much of my time is spent on the Quaker meeting, several committees, and a huge renovation of the property to amend drainage, which is partially funded by the charmingly named “Trout-Friendly Landscapes!” We have committed to putting 300 person-hours of labor into it.
“More time is spent working in my community garden plot, preserving applesauce, making blackberry jam, and reading. Recently I was joyfully surprised
to have both twins visit, and yesterday my brother returned home after being in Germany for two months. We talked, went on walks, and cooked and ate together. I was impressed that the young folks are mostly vegetarian now! We are planning a grand family reunion for next spring. I’m in pretty good shape, but just today I made appointments for physical therapy for a gimpy shoulder. All in all, I say ‘thank you’ every morning for the sun coming up; and my coffee; and my family; and the beautiful, awesome, and generous planet we inhabit, and I try to be kind! Love to you all!”
Deborah Morgan Luquer says it was great to be back for our reunion and to meet Head of School Polly Fredlund. She was surprised the bedrooms were the same as sixty-five years ago, but loved brushing teeth in the new bathrooms with the ‘old dames’!
Betsy Patterson Lancaster writes, “Most of our news is good, and I am grateful for that. Bill and I moved to Asheville, North Carolina, four years ago into a retirement community, which we love. We have three children and seven grandchildren. All are doing well in a variety of wonderful jobs. Now the bummer: Unfortunately, I have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and it has changed my life. I am having the best of care, and my Bill is a wonderful caregiver, and I am grateful.” Betsy, you will be much in our thoughts.
Lana Richards is living in a cottage in a continuing care community at the beach in Lewes, Delaware. She has two dogs: Amazing Grace, a terrier, and Dickens, an Australian labradoodle who is named not for Charles but for “you little dickens!” She loves the class Zooms but has had some health problems this year with AFib.
Sally Saunders is busy writing and sharing poetry live, on Zoom, and on conference calls. She is very grateful to Miss Kellogg for publishing her in The Lantern. She loved seeing Joan Lee Kremer when she was in Philadelphia last year.
Emily Taylor Ambler recently enjoyed a family gathering at Alpine Meadows near Lake Tahoe. “There were four of my five kids, some spouses, and seven grandchildren. It is an every-other-year event and terrific fun. Unfortunately, my husband, who had moved to a continuum of care facility in Virginia, passed away. It was, in fact a blessing, as he suffered from
Lewy Body dementia, an illness no one should have to experience. I am still living in Jackson, Wyoming, and also Carlsbad, California, where I now escape to in the winters. All is good. I was happy to read about the new Westover head, who is young and seemingly very energetic and vibrant.”
Mary Tremaine Soutendijk enjoyed being back for the reunion, but in some ways “it felt a bit like being in prison! Staying in our old, unchanged rooms with one light bulb, no AC, and eating outside in the rain with parkas and raincoats on. But no matter, it was just us again—only sixtyfive years later. Memories confirmed. Dirk and I are fine, and our sons and grands are happy and gainfully employed. Aside from trying to stay healthy, I have been playing mucho bridge. But what makes me feel worthwhile is helping to raise money for my friend, Gina Walker, professor of women’s studies at the New School, who is developing a course on the role of women whose accomplishments have not been recognized over the centuries. She is working to integrate it into the curricula of private schools like Westover. (More info at thenewhistoria.com).”
Timmy Warriner Wood was widowed in Feb ’21. She is still farming summers in Pennsylvania and was looking forward to a trip to Tanzania over Christmas with twenty family members.
Peyton Chapman Horne writes that she doesn’t have any news other than giving kudos to Westover for our wonderful reunion.
Penny Jackson Trask is still hanging in! She shares, “I am very busy in my little gated community with social events and committees. I am so lucky to have two of my three children in Denver, as well. I had a trip in May 2023 to Virginia and North Carolina for grandson graduations and was east again in July for fun family time on Cape Cod.”
And Marcie McCormick Porter writes that “it was so good to hear from those of you who responded, with the expected mix of good and not-good health news, sad losses of spouses, but also reunions and happy times with family and old friends. The ten of us who were able to go back for our sixty-fifth reunion found comfort—and some hilarity—in commiserating about our various health issues and the indignities
and challenges of life in our eighties. The school seems to be thriving—so changed from our day, needless to say. Steve and I are still in Maine, both reasonably active despite some routine health issues. We had two Viking trips in twelve months, the second one to Egypt in April, but I think this will be our last major venture out into the world. No more marathon flights!”
Jodie Merrill Eastman ’58 and Louise Munson Herring ’58—friends at ten years old and still friends at eighty-two years old.
1959
Laurie Blake Sawyer ’59 laurieblakesawyer@gmail.com
Mary-Clark Seymour Garfield was first to respond to our request for news in 2023 and writes, “Not too much to tell—a few more aches and pains each morning. The family gave Michael and I a sixtieth wedding anniversary party at our Cape house with 22 family members for the weekend. Cut short Saturday night, as the septic system backed up. That’s one way to end a party early. Not too much traveling in the future, as Michael will be on dialysis within a year or so. Life has been very good for us, and we are very blessed to have a close and supportive family. Our thoughts and prayers go out to you, [Class Secretary] Laurie, with all the fires in Hawaii.”
Peggy Day Jones writes, “News, at this point, is more about learning to live as gracefully and graciously as possible. Mimi Sammis’s passing felt like a great loss, although her legacy will endure forever in the works she left behind and in a heart energy that was as huge as the tsunami of love that she sent out to the world every day and which she will continue to send from wherever she is now, I am certain. I am so grateful for contact I made with her over the past year. My family is well, although my oldest sister passed away two years ago. Grandchildren are a joy and a privilege
and a responsibility and a challenge, from time to time. We have four, the oldest being 19. I continue to study and read with a small group that I completed a two-year course in the perennial philosophy with. I completed the course twice and would happily do so again! There are just six of us—all the others younger than me, three men, three women. It’s a real blessing, as is our little house in Cornwall, which I get to as often as possible (never feels like frequently enough). But our flat in Richmond has a terrace that looks out to the vast expanse of Richmond Park, where I can hear the red deer stags bellowing in the autumn—and that is wonderful! With love and very best wishes to all!”
Sally Wade Smith reports, “In March, we moved to a cottage in a retirement campus near us. No more worries about upkeep and responsibilities. Unfortunately, Jay had some health issues during the move, but he is on the mend now. We are looking forward to our new adventure in life.”
Pam Eakins Wharton writes, “I have not written since our fiftieth, I think. Hope all is well with all of you. Here is my news: First of all, I cannot believe how old we are. I still live in Akron, Ohio. Right now, along with wonderful caregivers, I take care of my husband, who has Parkinson’s—the stiff kind, not the shaking kind. He fell two years ago and broke his femur and was in and out of hospitals and nursing homes for several months. We are fortunate that he is able to be home because nursing homes are terrible. One of my daughters lives around the corner from us, is a breast imaging radiologist, and has two boys (sixteen and thirteen) and a husband who works at Smucker’s. The other daughter lives in Barrington, Illinois, with her husband, who works at Neuberger Berman, and daughter (nine), and son (seven). They were in Maui last year during the fires, on their way over that Tuesday to a restaurant in Lahaina at 4 p.m. They got a text from the restaurant that the power was out, and that they were closed. They turned back! I still play golf (just won our ladies club championship for the twelfth time), am active in the Akron Garden Club, church, and various golf roles. My older daughter was in the same class at Hathaway Brown in Cleveland with Westover’s new headmistress—small world.”
Laurie Blake Sawyer and her Westover Class of ’59 corresponding secretary, John, continue to enjoy life in Kailua, on
the windward side of Oahu. Almost all of our eight grandchildren, ranging from sixth grader Stella to second-year law student Sabrina—and a couple of their boyfriends—were here with us at various times last summer. Laurie talked with Christie Renchard Huffman, who reported that her granddaughter, Jane, and Laurie’s grandson, Oliver, are both at Colgate. One of Christie’s grandsons spent a week with Laurie and John on his way back from Asia.
Christie Renchard Huffman also wrote in, saying, “Highlight of the year was having all the grands at our house in Eaglesmere. Ages range from nineteen to twentyeight: five boys, one girl. Keith and I have not been anywhere. Keith is consumed with his garden. I have just finished putting together my second aquarium. Have a horse and a pony belonging to friends in our barn. Two dogs, two cats. Definitely slowing down. Hoping that our granddaughter, starting her last year at Colgate, meets Laurie’s grandson, just starting his first year at Colgate.”
Nina Truslow McKee ’59, Kate Munson Rowe Archer ’60, and Phoebe Pier Fairburn ’59.
Nina Truslow McKee writes, “Charlie died in 2014. I sold our winter home at Spring Island, South Carolina, returning full time to Scarborough, Maine. I live in a condo on the marsh and also have an apartment at Piper Shores, a beautiful assisted living community a few miles from my condo. I am not ready to move to my apartment there but will one day when needed. Phoebe Pier Fairburn lives near me in our condo complex. Kate Munson Rowe Archer ’60 lives at Piper Shores with her husband, Peter. We all enjoy our summer activities at Prouts Neck. My family is in ‘fine fiddle.’ All well, happy, and busy. Because of space, I will not describe each family member, but each one is a huge source of my love and respect, and even awe. I have a dear pug, Daisy. I try to be informed on our local, state, and national politics, and I enjoy receiving the writings of Heather Cox Richardson, Joyce Vance, and Robert Hubbell. We all need to vote in November,
and I am sure we all will! Remember that, ‘We are the Class of ’59, and we all think we are mighty fine!’”
Elizabeth Hartmann Rand writes, “Hello all! I’m glad to still be around. Richard and I are still, or I should say again, living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It was a shock to move here from New York roughly forty years ago, but we got over it and celebrated by retiring and moving to Paris (France, not Texas) for ten years in 2006. We loved every minute but are glad to be back here, where our three married children and five grandchildren are living in New York City, Atlanta, and Birmingham. We have a plentiful supply of Democrats to keep company with as well, primarily former English department and psychiatry department colleagues at the university. I see Betsy Shirley Michel fairly often in New York City, where Richard gets a fair amount of medical care, and she continues to be a lifelong friend and magnificently helpful host. I miss Penny Levy Peet since she moved to California. My primary hobby while practicing psychiatry was learning to play the cello, but since letting my medical license expire and going to Paris, it has been photography. I’m hoping to get to Japan in November to pursue that with some fellow photographers. Richard has had a mountain of medical problems since 2015, which I try to help with and which remind me every day how fortunate I have been from age zero to eighty-three. On y va! And love to you all!”
1960
Priscilla White Givan ’60 pwguvan@gmail.com
Leezee Scott Porter is happily living on the West Coast in Portland and part-time on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. “My daughter, Erin, and her husband, Jesse, and two of my three grandchildren are in Portland and on SSI. I have many friends from the years Erin and Jesse lived here and raised their kids. Feeling mighty lucky!”
Diana Delefield Muir ’60’s pottery studio.
Diana Delafield Muir writes, “My life continues to be filled with family, friends, and my passion for clay! Still teaching out of my studio here on my property. The beauty of my garden constantly brings pleasure! Continuing to age as gracefully as humanly possible!”
Elise “Tayne” Clement Cutler writes, “Tony and I are the same old fools with a small standard poodle and a Yorkshire terrier, both just over a year old. Thank God for Tylenol. Love to all.”
Cynthia Burdick Patterson writes, “Jim and I summer at our farm in Tiverton, Rhode Island. Our vegetable garden has just kicked in with the usual Italian kitchen produce. I wonder how Tonia’s [Antoinette Lapham Wheeler] garden is doing, having much of the weather we have. Much of the rest of our plants have been shared with the deer, who take more than half of everything. However, there are a few plants they seem to avoid. It may tell you something!”
Lawrie Perry Diack-Wilson and her therapy dog, Rosie, are part of the Canine Corp and visit the hospital together quite often.
Jody Johnson Olson writes, “My happy news is that I now have six greatgrandchildren, four boys and twin girls, ages two to two months. I love making new discoveries with them and joining in their wonder. It is a real blessing… still teaching art to kids and working at a farm store parttime as well as doing my own creating… really fun and fulfilling. My very sad news is that my husband died in December 2022. I am making my way but miss his presence and humor a lot.”
Ann DiGiorgio Costigan reports, “I don’t have anything that is newsworthy for the magazine. I have spent a lot of time ($) on house maintenance, which is very time consuming and dull, but necessary. I took a trip to New York in mid-June 2023, luckily missing all of the smoke, bad weather, and airport drama. Other than that, keeping up with the children and grandchildren keeps me busy. I have a little trip to Baja planned for the first week in November 2023, but that’s about it for now. I look forward to connecting with some of our class on Zoom.”
Jennifer Jones was getting ready to visit with several family groups last summer. “I will spend most of September and October in London with my daughter, Sarah Jones ’90, and family in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, including five days sailing along Turkey’s Turquoise Coast. The latter is something I’d always hoped we could do as a Westover group with [the late] Karen Kroll Ural, whose husband was from Turkey. This trip may be the last hurrah before the body, mind, or finances give out. Except I plan to visit Algeria and Tunisia next spring with a side trip up the Nile.”
Babs Mallery has had a wonderful summer at Pocono Lake Preserve. “Daily hikes, kayaking, weekly presentations—all connecting with friends making fun and happiness post-pandemic. Due to a winterlong apartment flood in the bedroom, I and all my furniture were squeezed into the living room. It required endless patience from Home Depot. Hence such happy times at PLP. Plus, morning movie times with empty seats a block away are happening daily. Yet another relief from the challenges. Still healthy as a horse! Thankfully! Similar wishes for all!”
Meanwhile, your class secretary, Pris White Givan, is so happy to be living in Laguna Woods, California. There is so much to do and so many new friends! “I play lots of golf and participate in other activities, including art classes and two book clubs. Sailing is on the back burner at this point, but I may get back to it eventually. I love living so close to my daughter, Amy, and granddaughter, Samantha. We see each other frequently and share fun and fine meals together. My son, Curtis, and his family live in Rhode Island, so we take turns traveling from one coast to another! Grandson Patrick and his wife live in Maryland. We do the same East Coast–West Coast back and forth! Visits are so wonderful when we share precious time together! Amy and I will be taking a long cruise to Hawaii and the Polynesian Islands in November 2023! I am so excited about that! I have been elected to Westover’s Board of Governors and look forward to participating and contributing in any way possible.”
1961
Ann Skelly ’61 skipper4488@hotmail.com
Hello to all of you, and thank you for responding to my plea. Also, Happy eightieth to all. Hard to believe, but here we are.
Kerry Noble has joined her whole family to help care for her ex-husband, who had a stroke last summer. She also took a fabulous trip to Japan’s Inland Seas in April. Her three grandchildren are entering middle and high schools, so she attends lots of soccer games. She had a wonderful visit with Jannie Whitcraft Mills in Muskoka, Canada. Lots of chatting, swimming, canoeing, hiking, and remembering Cynthia Hiss Grace and Abby Browne. Jannie also loved Kerry’s visit. She and Paul now vacation in their original cabin, having given over the larger cabin to their grown sons and their families. First grandchildren’s weddings coming up. How quickly the wheel of life spins and how heavily the toll of wildfires weighs. She is ever grateful for all that Westover gave her a lifetime ago and the friendships and memories that last.
Carolyn “Cockie” Lincoln Fisher is dealing well with being eighty. After deciding not to become the “grandma in the attic” in her kids’ homes, she moved to independent living community Edgehill in
Cynthia Brill Patterson ’60’s garden in Rhode Island.
Lawrie Perry Wilson ’60 and Rosie in the Canine Corp Hospital.
Stamford, Connecticut, just seconds from Greenwich. Lots of great activities and people. She even sees Jeannette Model from time to time.
Susan Russell Watson lost a brother and son this year, and her husband is in hospice on the nursing floor, so it hasn’t been a great year so far. She’s worn out and ready for someone to take care of her. She’s suffering comfortably. Love to you, Susan. And to you, Sky Wilson Field, who lost her husband of forty years to Parkinson’s and dementia in July 2023. He thoughtfully gave the family a wonderful eightieth birthday celebratory trip to Turkey. What a good man.
Joan Atwood Kunzelmann continues to congratulate herself for giving up her apartment in New York and enjoying life in Mountain Lake, Florida. Yes, it’s hot, but croquet, Mah Jongg, and water aerobics with friends compensate for the weather. Merry Medina Murray still plays tennis three times a week, but as her legs begin to crumble, she is assiduously working on Plan B: croquet (guaranteed to lose less than thirty calories an hour) and memoir essays. No one mentioned pickleball. Are we skipping that? One of Merry’s daughters gave her Storyworth.com for Christmas. Write a memory piece each week, and at the end of the year, Storyworth sends you a bound book. Great fun!
Laurie Lisle returned to Westover for Alumnae Weekend for the announcement of the audio edition of Westover: Giving Girls A Place of Their Own and had the pleasure of meeting new Head of School Polly Fredlund, who is very warm and outgoing. At home she is on the library board (reopening after the first expansion and renovation since 1893!) and the land trust trail maintenance crew. She is politically active, doing a little writing, and making sure her husband, Robert, stays healthy and happy.
Our lifelong birder Ellen Thayer Vahan finally got to Italy in 2014 after having visited all the world’s exotic birding locales. On a tour through the Doge’s Palace in Venice, she turned and asked, “Is that a Tintoretto?” (Yes!) And later a comment on Uccello and his horses. The guide complimented her on her knowledge of Italian art. She was ever so proud not only that she had paid attention to Mr. Schumacher all those many years ago, but also that she had remembered! At home
she is trying to stay together and sane with grandchildren in tow; one a senior in college and one about to start the college applications as a senior in high school. Good luck!
More grief in the class. Johanna Holverstott Atman lost her partner, Jan (whom we met at our fiftieth reunion), in September 2022. “Grief is not something one can imagine until you are visited by it. So strange that something so universal is rarely acknowledged or understood; as a culture we have just begun to integrate it into the cycle of birth, life, death, rebirth.” Johanna has never related to herself as deeply as she has this year and is currently doing presentations on self-love beyond the basics like eating well, exercising, and sleeping. It is a transformative journey— grief, self-love, and self. She wishes us all well, especially those who are also living with deep loss.
Marry Peck Burr has been living with health issues for years. She and her husband have been living in a senior living community for fourteen years, but looking toward the future have decided to move to a continuing care retirement community nearby, where a number of their friends live. So at the moment, they are deep into the downsizing project of “what do we get rid of, what do we keep?” And listing their house. Quite a project, I know.
Skipper Skelly just went through the same process. “My mind is fine, but my infrastructure is a mess. I have terrible balance and have a really hard time walking. So, in April I moved into an independent living place just minutes from my daughter Laura’s house. I love it! I can just zip around on my rolling walker and all sorts of new people to meet. Eight happy granddaughters, the oldest going for a PhD in environmental engineering, and a new ten-month-old addition in Colorado. I am one lucky lady.”
Sibyl Fulenwider Cohane lost her sister and wonderful friend, Cynthia Denham ’56, in the fall of 2022, and after avoiding Covid for over two years, both she and her husband were humbled last March, Sybil with a severe case. All is well now, and she keeps busy with bridge, walks, books, crosswords, golf, travel, and four young grandchildren nearby (ages 3,5,5,10). She sends her best to the intrepid Class of ’61.
Katie
Cavanaugh Maslow and her husband
live in Bethesda, Maryland, in a place they love. So far, they have been able to bounce back from problems age has created for them, but it does make her wonder what’s coming. She hopes all of us are also bouncing back and sends love.
Marcia Haight Erickson made a wonderful trip to London and Somerset to visit her sisters. A month later, her husband, David, fell down a 14-step staircase. No broken bones, but a shock and a new awareness. Lots of X-rays, doctors, PTs, and caregivers in the first weeks, but progress was made and they are on their own again taking brief walks. Grateful for days when there is a breeze, for the ripening tomatoes, and for the house wrens who made a nest on the front porch and stayed all spring. Above all, this past year, Marcia has found a growing understanding of prayer and its power.
Last but certainly not least, Katrina Rauch Wagner is crazy busy but very happy in New London, New Hampshire. She’s just become the president of the board of Adventures in Learning (AIL), an adult lifelong learning arm of Colby Sawyer College. They recently were honored to receive the college’s Community Award. Way to go, Katrina! Her faith and issues reading and discussion group for St. Andrew’s still meets weekly on Zoom. Her kids are thriving, and, thankfully, she’s healthy!
So that about covers everyone. I think Sybil summed it up when she called us intrepid. Keep it up, lovely ladies!
1962
Secretary needed!
Penn Willets Mullin ’62 with her grandchildren.
Suzanne Dyer Wise writes, “Most of us will turn eighty in 2024, and I think we should gather somewhere to celebrate that achievement and share time connecting in person with classmates who have been important to us for over sixty years! I personally don’t want to wait for a reunion year. I just want to hang out with a bunch of ‘girls’ who have known each other forever! If you are interested, contact me at suzanne.dyer@verizon.net or 917-5660738. I am thinking of fall of ’24, so after summer events and vacations with family. It could be anywhere that would be fun and easy to gather. Let me know your ideas! Spa? Chicago? West Coast?”
Sandra Ray Holland writes, “Still living in Nantucket year-round. Feel blessed to be here. Hope everyone is doing well.”
Nancy Newhard Martin and her husband, Sandy, have recently moved. After years in their home in McLean, Virginia, they have relocated to Bethesda, Maryland. They are both well and settling into their new home.
Margreta “Gretsie” Kroll Ames ’62 with Bishop Roger Ames and pup Wini.
Margreta “Gretsie” Kroll Ames shares, “Thank you for keeping us together all these years! Westover is a true family heritage for us, beginning with my mother, Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Greene Kroll ’37, and her older sister, Mary Green Hartdegen ’35, and through Cynthia Kroll Dwyer ’68, my cousin. Christopher, our son, taught history and political science at Westover and enjoyed his time there with his wife, Robyn. He is now head of the upper school at the Winston School in Dallas, Texas. My husband, Roger, just retired as an Anglican Bishop in North America, and we live in our home of forty years in Akron, Ohio. Our daughter, Mandy, lives nearby in Columbus. I love to write, watercolor, and walk our pup Winifred (Wini), a rescue dog. Love to all, Gretsie.”
1963
Nancy Reeder El Bouhali ’63 nancyb@cyburban.com
Adelaide MacMurray-Cooper ’63 adelaidemacmurraycooper@gmail.com
Rosie Maria Aguilar has been made a grandmother again! Her youngest son, Mauricio, who has lived in Miami for many years (after having gone to high school in West Virginia), has just welcomed a baby girl named Martina. Mauricio has another daughter, Camila, who is now thirteen years old.
She shares, “My ex-husband, George, passed away last August 5, 2023, but nobody from school met him. My three sons—Jorge, Ernesto, and Mauricio—were his sons also. Jorge and his wonderful wife, Ana Paula, live with their sons, Santiago and Alejandro, in Texas. Ernesto and his wife, Paulina, live with their sons, Lorenzo, Emilio, and Alonzo, and cats, Asia and Morocco, in Merida (close to Cancun). Mauricio lives in Miami with his wife, Karla, daughters, Camila and baby Martina, and Dante, a very adorable street terrier.”
Rosie writes that she and Alison Wardrop had a long catch-up chat recently, during which they remembered all those years at Westover—the chats at night, and especially Libby. Rosie’s father and Alison’s father worked at PPG in Pittsburgh, and a man from PPG told Rosie’s father about Westover. And that is the backstory—why Miss Dillingham arranged for Alison and Rosie to be in Room 100, and how we got lucky to have Rosie in our class—which we all know is the best class that ever went to Westover!
Weezie Bailey Connor
Good news and more good news! “I had my hip replaced and it was ‘easy peasy.’ And it’s over! The PT is hard but so far doable. If you’re preparing to go down that road, call me, and we’ll make a plan.
Bailey is running his own AirBnB and has had some success. He has been open for a month. If you’re coming to Denver and need a place to lay your head, look up Bailey Connor. Bailey and I are going to the Ausable Club in Keene Valley, New York, at the end of August for a week. I’m hoping to have lunch with Happy Clement Spongberg ’64, a fellow Undertone.
I am thinking of a retirement home in
Florida. If there is one you’d recommend, please pass it along.
Lyn Bremer Chivvis writes, “I’m still practicing massage therapy and doing a tiny bit of manual lymph drainage. I’m also still involved at church and doing Stephen Ministry work.
Beecher is still teaching at CUNY–Baruch College. In summer of 2023 Beecher and I visited lifelong friends in the Dordogne—it was spectacular.
Dana Kate is working on another season of Serial—this time it’s about Guantanamo.
Devon is working on a film called The Harvard 5 about a group of mid-century modern architects based in and around New Canaan, Connecticut, in the 1940s. In addition to Philip Johnson, who designed the famous Glass House, Marcel Breuer and Eliot Noyes were part of this group. The stunning house that Lyn lives in today was designed for her and Beecher by Eliot Noyes. You can ‘meet’ people who knew (and were related to) these architects—including our very own Lyn—at theharvard5.com.
Lyn’s son, Christopher, is director of American statecraft at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He hosted a discussion about Washington’s ‘strategic alternatives in its relations with Brazil.’ Among the many topics that should garner awareness are Brazil’s relationship with China, deforestation, and climate change. You can learn more at: https://bit. ly/ChivvisBrazil
Enid Fraser Robinson ’63 and family in summer 2023.
Enid Fraser Robinson shares, “Here on the home front, we enjoy seeing our boys and their families. Fraser, Alex, Xander (twelve), Eliza (ten), and Raef (six) love their Dorset life. Eliza is showing signs of musical talent at Hanford, whilst Xander is
sporty and making great academic strides at Sandroyd. Raef, also at Sandroyd, is fleet of foot and runs like the wind; ‘the beautiful game’ is his forte.
Fraser continues at the helm of Beacon (beacon.com), skillfully navigating the technical wonders of the global supply chain, while Alex’s home-decorating designs and products are becoming an international success.
In April 2023, Lauder, Tava, and Lochlan (eleven) took the plunge and moved from Los Angeles to London! They traded in all that sunshine to give Lochlan a shot at an English boarding school education and to spend more time with family. He has taken to English school life and boarding like a duck takes to water and has just completed the winter term of year six with flying colours.
Lauder has the unenviable task of commuting back to Los Angeles in order to manage his growing drone business, Dragonfly (dragonflyuas.com), and most critically to be on set for filming TV shows and feature length films. Tava has settled into English life, where she is very involved in Lochlan’s school, and in her spare time, she is searching for ways to exploit her years of being in front of the camera and on the red carpet to launch a new career in the U.K.
In the meantime, the two of us love spending as much time as possible in our bolt-hole at San Lorenzo on Portugal’s southern coast, where we enjoy the sunny climate, yummy food, and walks to the beach. When in London, Enid continues her property consultancy business and treasures her time in the wonderful acapella world of the Treblemakers (treblemakerslondon.co.uk). Pickleball is now our go-to sport, and in spite of all the septuagenarian and octogenarian aches and pains, we are in good health and making the best of our sunset years.”
A publication called New York Social Diary has produced a breathtaking, multipage photo essay with an interview about Kitty Hawks and her beautiful home, gardens, and Bizzie. You can read it at newyorksocialdiary.com/kitty-hawks.
Kitty’s husband, Larry Lederman, has taken the photographs for Du Pont Gardens of the Brandywine Valley, a book that was published in September 2023. Last October, there was a lecture, book signing, and exhibition of Larry’s garden photography at the New York Botanical Garden.
Catharine “Kitty” Holden describes her travels in a most informative and interesting December 2022 letter: “My spring tour of Tunisia, site of the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2011, went as scheduled, to my surprise. Between the ruins of Carthage, we checked off many World Heritage Sites. Bonuses were delicious strawberry juice at breakfast and a $6 laundry bill at one hotel. Downsides were six-hour bus rides across the Sahara Desert and precarious footing both in the ruins and on the slippery-when-wet marble bathrooms in fancy hotels. While I’m glad that I did it, because I wanted to visit a friendly Muslim country with fabulous archaeology, I think my days of clambering over ancient stones are over.
My sister, Ellen, and I did the grand tour of the Loire Valley, Bordeaux, and the Dordogne Valley with five days in Paris tacked on at the end. Sign me up for more of this kind of travel in my golden years! After nearly daily wine tastings, I now sneer at what I used to drink happily from Trader Joe’s. One French invention most definitely should be imported to this country—in our hotel in Sarlat, our entire group had great fun indulging in a sixteenbottle vending machine that doled out tastes of fancy French wine. Brilliant idea!
Finally, in Paris, we stayed at a very cute hotel called Relais Christine in the Île de la Cité/Île St-Louis area. Paris was filled with hordes of tourists; I fled from the jam-packed Louvre. Our favorite museum was the smallish Musée Marmottan, which featured lovely collections of Claude Monet and Berthe Morisot.
Chez moi, I continue to take Zoom classes. In addition to enjoying two shallow American movies, Top Gun: Maverick and Elvis, I saw five operas in 2022, quite a lot for me, with one that followed up on
my France trip, Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, set during the French Revolution. While the music was sublime, I will remember it for its high body count—at the end, sixteen nuns were guillotined!
My niece, Darcy, is engaged to her British boyfriend, Ben, after five years of being together. No date set yet, but [sister] Ellen is tapping her foot about grandchildren.”
Mary “Polly” Hayward Griffith shares from fall 2023, “It is the season of goblins and ghosties and the Griffith Annual Report! While it is not quite clear whether Covid is still the threat it has been over the last three years, we are behaving as if it has gone away, no longer wearing masks and returning to public transport, museums, restaurants, and theaters with enthusiasm. Jon and I, being so old, are vaccinated up to our eyebrows against everything known to pharmacists, so hopefully that will do the trick: So far so good.
It has been a generally quiet year, mostly spent at home. Jon continues with regular games of chess and bridge, while I do exercise on Tuesdays, and French and guitar on Wednesdays. I am still in Guitar Group 3, and we are about to start practicing Christmas music.
We did get away in February 2023 in search of sun, this time to Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. The highlight of the year was yet another mass family gathering in September 2023 in Maine, where my brother found himself hosting a basic party of fifteen with part-time guests swelling numbers up to twenty-five. In honor of our mother’s 100th year, we gathered in what had been our grandparents’ house and is now my brother’s.
An update from December 2023: Nina and Tim are in the process of adopting two little girls, ages four and six, half-sisters named Evie and Mimi. They have just moved in, and we are all getting to know each other. A very positive beginning. The little girls continue to meld into a family, which is wonderful to see. Count one’s blessings.
Nicky Johnson Weaver Cheek was the only member of our class who planned (but was unable) to go to the reunion to meet the new Head of School and to see the Jane Cook Johnson ’33 Quad, which is the little courtyard in front of what used to be the chemistry and biology labs when we were budding scientists. Nicky has very generously had the quad named for her
Kitty Hawks ’63 with Larry and Bizzie.
mother, who was an enthusiastic Westover alumna, Class of 1933. There was an article on the quad in the last Annual Report (westoverschool.org/support/annual-report).
Christie Krementz Graham lost her husband, Sandy, in October 2023. Sandy was originally from Bedford [where I, Nancy, live], and Priscilla, granddaughter of Sandy and Christie, became a Special Olympic swimming champion at the Wilton, Connecticut, pool where my grandchildren swim. My daughter sends me photos from the pool at least once a week, and every time I see that beautiful blue chlorinated water in a 94-degree room, I think of Christie and Sandy, their son, Ian, who coached swimming, and of Priscilla, whose photo with her medals was published in the Westover magazine years ago.
MacMurray-Cooper ’63 and family in New Hampshire in summer 2023. Denver gang to the right: son Alex, daughterin-law Naomi, Maxwell (sixteen), Gavin (fifteen), Emily (ten), and perfectly behaved Otto in front. Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, gang to the left: son James, daughter-in-law Sara, Gabe (fourteen), Russ (twelve) and Colette (nine). Lolly and David in the center.
and family at Christmas 2023
Lolly MacMurray-Cooper shares, “Greetings from Lexington. Reading 2022’s letter, I see we were worried about Ukraine, the climate (both political and meteorological), and Covid. That list, alas, is still current, but we must now add the horrors in Israel and Gaza. I still hope that good sense and goodwill will prevail. Meanwhile, the past year has brought both challenges and delights.
My pre-Covid delight at auditing a few courses at Harvard has been replaced by Zoom attendance at a rich menu of offerings by the OLLI program from Tufts. Recently I’ve enjoyed exploring the poetry of Seamus Heaney, the philosophy of Montaigne, a novel by John Banville, and Verdi’s “Requiem.” I continue to write poetry with a long-standing Zoom group and memoir chapters with another. And I’m once again visiting a young man sentenced to life in prison. Reinaldo has just finished a Tufts degree while behind bars! An enormous achievement, that will help launch him in an unfamiliar world if and when he is paroled.
From McLean, Virginia, my brothers and I, plus David and Connie, drove further south to Williamsburg, where we had arranged to visit the archives at the College of William & Mary. Our maternal grandmother, Adele Blow Chatfield-Taylor, knowing my love of history, had urged me numerous times to look into the collection of Blow family papers at the college. Now fifty years later, we made it. The librarians had laid out a feast of letters and papers, dating back to the seventeenth century. Apparently the collection is much used by researchers. Most moving to me was a small notebook dated 1841 in which my great-great-great grandfather, Richard Blow, kept detailed notes about the four different plantations. In the back were notes about “Louisa,” whose nine children had no father listed. Most likely, according to the archivists, these were Richard Blow’s children. We left with the unsettling firsthand, unavoidable knowledge that some of our ancestors had been in the thick of the cruel system whose legacy is an ongoing blight in our country. I’m still thinking about Louisa and her children.
I prepared for rotator cuff surgery on December 15 of last year. It was pretty excruciating, as I was told it would be. My two dear daughters-in-law banished me from the kitchen for our family Christmas in New Hampshire. So, except for making
crepes with the kids, I had the chance to play nonstop board games and do puzzles with them.
Meanwhile, David was diagnosed with myasthenia, an autoimmune disease that messes up the connections between the brain and the muscles. The disease has morphed into a variety of muscle issues; the biggest impact is extreme fatigue. Treatment is focused on cleaning up the immune system! Despite muscle issues and side effects of treatment, David has been leading a course at Tufts on the eighteenth century in Britain—innovations in business and technology during the time of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution—and traveling with Lolly to London to see Hannah, Alex, and greatgranddaughter Felicity!”
Markham Nicholson ’63 and Phil in their new apartment at the Academy Retirement Community.
Beth Markham Nicholson shares from summer 2023: “It has been a very busy spring and summer, but all is going well. I have appreciated all the encouragement from those who have moved into a retirement community of some sort. It has been a good move for us, just more work than we expected. Mostly having to do with the finding of mold in the attic—who knew? In Colorado?
After several months living in a furnished house in Longmont, we are now in a lovely bungalow at the Academy. It is not clear when we’ll make our third and last move, but hopefully sometime in the fall. Our temporary location is great, though, and we are getting to know our retirement community. We are really liking it so far, and the food is unbelievably good. There are many great places to walk or hike.”
Elizabeth
Lolly MacMurray-Cooper ’63 and Enid Fraser Robinson ’63 in England in April 2023.
Lolly MacMurray-Cooper ’63
in New Hampshire.
Lolly
Beth went on a short trip to San Luis Obispo for an organizing meeting for a mini college reunion. Her Stanford in Germany group has been getting together regularly for fifty-eight years now! During the reunion weekend, Beth was visiting the elephant seals who are the local celebrities!
Margaret McClave Snowden shares, “I wish I could report that my sons and their families are moving back east from Seattle and Eugene, but they seem to be perfectly happy out there without me for some reason. I, meanwhile, devote myself to the care of trees instead of people and animals as I did in my younger days. Trees, I have discovered, don’t run away from you, scream, bleed, sue you, or any of that other nasty stuff humans do!
This has been a great summer for trees, flowers, eggplants, and peppers here in Voorheesville, New York, because we have had equal parts rain and sunshine, so I give thanks to be able to wake up in the morning surrounded by the beauty of nature and the songs of birds.”
Robin Reath Graves’s son, Porter Fox, wrote a fascinating and detailed article that appeared in the May 14, 2023, New York Times Magazine. The name of this article is “Hurricanes of Data,” and in it, Porter asks: “Climate change is causing superstorms at sea to grow ever more powerful—and less predictable. Can studying them help us adapt to them?” You can read it at: https://bit.ly/FoxHurricane
Robin Reath Graves ’63 and Sid Graves in the Azores in September 2023.
Robin’s husband, Sidney Graves, died on March 6, 2024. Robin sent a beautiful photo taken on a trip they took to the Azores in September 2023. In it, Robin and Sid are photographed high on a hill overlooking landscaped green fields and the sea against a clear blue sky. The picture is perfect.
Robin’s son, Porter Fox, was expecting his second child in March 2024. His daughter, Grey is going to have a brother or sister, and I hope we have a photo before press time.
Jody Shirley Gill ’63 and family in Islesboro, Maine, in 2023. Photo includes Jody and her husband in back row on the right; sons Peter (director of mental health at Bentley University), Adam (attorney), and Ben (a producer whose film, The Flagmakers, was recently nominated for an Emmy); two of three wives (Ben’s wife was at a Taylor Swift concert); and seven grandchildren.
Robin Reath Graves ’63, Jody Shirley Gill ’63, and Marie Bannard Lockwood ’63 on June 19, 2023.
Jody Shirley Gill sent a wonderful photo taken during summer 2023 at her annual family gathering in Islesboro, Maine: “My clan includes our three sons, Peter (director of mental health at Bentley University), Adam (attorney), Ben (a producer whose film, The Flagmakers, was recently nominated for an Emmy), and seven grandchildren. The photo is missing Ben’s wife, Anna, who ducked out to attend a Taylor Swift concert.”
Porter Fox, son of Robin Reath Graves ’63, had article in the New York Times Magazine, May
Grey Elizabeth Fox, granddaughter of Robin Reath Graves ’63.
Maizie, granddaughter of Robin Reath Graves ’63.
Charlie and Reese, granddaughters of Robin Reath Graves ’63.
2023.
Julie Slocum Dahlgen ’63 with ten-day old granddaughter Leota.
Julie Slocum Dahlgren shares, “My big news is welcoming a new baby, granddaughter Leota, to the world on February 15, 2024. What a joy! Leota is Tess’s daughter. Tess and her husband are terrific parents, and I’m loving being here to enjoy the first month when babies quickly change. My other two step-granddaughters are seventeen and eighteen already. The oldest will be going to Western Washington University next year. One in the first year of college and one in the first year of life. Quite a span! Otherwise, I’ve been in a pattern of mild ranching, hiking, and fishing with annual trips to Cuba for flats fishing and to Guatemala to volunteer building bottle schools. I went down to the Grand Canyon for the first time ever in April 2024. My new hobby is beekeeping and had my first harvest last fall. I volunteer at a historical museum and continue fighting for progressive values in a very conservative state.”
Alison Wardrop shares, “My news includes no baby pictures or trips to Petra. Pittsburgh has had a bubble over it, so we have had sun and rain. Period. However, there is a lot of work, sadly, in the work we do at CLEAR (Coalition for Learning, Education, Advocacy and Recovery). I have been with them for eight years now, and it has been rewarding.
We are now embarking on a new project setting up meetings for a retreat where people can get help after they have gone through rehab. We have been looking at a series of large houses with lots of land where there is a feeling of serenity. Lots of fundraising. So far we have been outbid, but something has come on the market that might work. Fingers crossed. My knees are tired from going on bended.
February 2024 update: Alison has been working hard to organize CLEAR’s annual Pastoral Care Conference. There will be discussions about addiction and recovery, marriage and families, mental health and wellness, community outreach, and reflections in ministry. This last topic [your editor had to ask] is about attracting people to spiritual organizations (churches among them) and helping these entities help the people who come to them. It’s complicated, as this is not about missionary work, but about providing a resource, an anchor, to those floundering in a sea of inner uncertainty or turmoil.
Turner Tackett ’63 with husband, Dan, and Joy at Christmas 2023.
Mary Turner Tackett ’63’s son, Scott, wife Kate, Tappey and Leighton in May 2023.
1964
Polly Ferenbach Franchot ’64 polly6468@icloud.com
Jeanne Edmonds Anderson writes, “I bought a cottage on the Greek Island of Hydra, so I can spend four to five months per year there. It will be a nice change: My daughter lives in Hydra.”
Christine McArdle McGuire writes, “Well, time keeps marching on, and we get a little older—maybe wiser, but I sort of doubt it. Yet, you know what? We are facing our sixtieth reunion; that is amazing, and I just bet you we are all gorgeous. Until then, Tina.”
1965
Secretary needed!
Patty Semenza Swanson shares, “The past two years have been busy ones, making up for lost time with the pandemic. Our son was married last summer in Sunriver, Oregon, and he and his wife are expecting a baby in November. Kenny and I have been spending a lot of time at Tahoe and enjoying the beautiful summer, a welcome change from our incredibly snowy winter. I missed celebrating our seventieth birthday reunion with Westover friends but have had wonderful visits with Polly Wingfield, Miriam Wingfield ’66, Cricket Wingfield ’72, Edith Glassmeyer Heilman, Leslie Parker Hume, and Martha Bacon Martin in Montana. I hope all of our classmates are doing well and enjoying our seventies. They’re going fast!”
Granddaughters of Elsie Walker ’65: Lila (five), Vivian (two), and Caroline (one).
Elsie Walker writes, “My daughter, Rebecca, has two girls, ages five and two; and my son, John, has a daughter, oneand-a-half, and a new baby, Henry. The three generalissimo cousins are getting ready to train Henry in best-behaviortoward-girls as soon as he’s off the bottle. Other than being a doting grandmother, I still work on conservation projects with Tibetans and a housing program with the Lakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Thanks to Martha, I am a proud member of the Westover Book Club and enjoy getting to know alums of different ages.”
Mary
Frances Perry Jacober shares, “I think about my class often and hope to make the next reunion. I am up for reelection this year for Pitkin County Commissioner. It’s a great job!
Elizabeth Smith Golden shares, “Delighted to hear positive feedback on Polly Fredlund and her dynamic vision for dear old alma mater! The Class of ’65 is scattered far and wide, so it is hard to get together. A few of us were happy to have lunch with Edie in New York City in February when she and Richard came to the city for a culture hit. Many of us have more time than previously so are enjoying a reduced pace.
Looking forward to having a special sixtieth reunion in 2025—how did that happen? There is some talk of adding a couple of days and planning our every fifth-year birthday party two years early, by finding a perhaps local retreat near Middlebury, since we’ll already be in that vicinity. Think about it. There will be one rule: Everyone will be allowed a five-minute ‘organ recital’ to discuss our aches and pains. That’s all.”
Charlotte Beyer
Our off-year reunion on Cape Cod in 2022 was a highlight for me, and witnessing our grandchildren grow up is a joyful experience! After hosting twelve years of retreats, my Principle Quest Foundation transitioned into a donor-advised fund while I continue to host calls and gatherings for the community of 140 women—my lifeline!
Secretary needed!
1966
Kathy Tarbox McLeod writes, “Glad to be living in a continuing care retirement community in Durham, New Hampshire. No house to worry about, new and interesting people to be with, and healthcare right next door when needed.”
Cynthia Choate Bjorlie shares, “Still plugging along. No kids. Still married.”
Helen “Bicky” Homer writes, “Except for visits to see my husband, Nick, who’s holding down the fort in Brookline, I have spent the last few months in New Mexico; my studio is outside Santa Fe in Lamy. I’m drawing and painting and taking a ceramics course at the Institute for American Indian Arts. IAIA is an amazing place; most of the faculty and students are indigenous, and everyone is serious about their art.”
Mary “Mimi” Kuryla Thompson shares, “We spent a fun and relaxing month in Bali. We enjoy the food, culture, and lovely, friendly people. In April we took a cruise along the Japan coastline and then crossed to Alaska. We did this last year, and it was a marvelous trip. In October we will take a cruise around Iceland. Was happy to see Katherine Bader in New York City in April!
Beverly Cutler ’67 bevcut@gmail.com
1967
Happy to report that our class is saving the world, reveling in grandchildren, and still traveling internationally, and alas, fretting occasionally about the “eighth-decade” aches and pains.
Ruth Selden Sturgill, healing from a retina reattachment that has taken a toll on her ability to read, recommends to us the following book: Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury, by Drew Gilpin Faust. Ruth realized that, while she has lived most of her adult life in the South, she has been a Northerner witnessing the South’s history being made. “Perhaps because as a Northerner, and feeling somewhat less emotionally involved, I have experienced events as might a reporter. Not so for the recently retired president of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust, a woman who grew up in rural Virginia after WWII, a bit older but still our contemporary. Her newly published memoir really resonated with me and may be interesting to anyone who watched The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and the tragic events which unfolded in Dallas.” Ruth says the book sensitively captures the intersection of personal and public events that shaped all of us, Northern or Southern. I can’t wait.
Mari Hill Harpur ’67 and Ann Quarles ’67 visiting
Mari Hill Harpur concentrates her interests on conservation and education, with a special emphasis on women’s opportunities. In both New Zealand and Quebec, Canada, Mari and Doug have provided internships and fellowships for women’s activities pertaining to farming and ecological studies. Westover participates in one of their many sponsored
in Mari’s condo in Montreal in September 2023.
From Charlotte Byer ’65: My visit to Westover in February included a remarkable assemblage of institutional memory! All of us look forward to Polly Fredlund’s bold, brave vision that captures the best of Westover’s past and the beautiful initiatives for Westover’s future.
nature projects, where junior girls shadow advanced researchers for one week on Mari and Doug’s Quebec property of 64,000 acres near Kenauk, Canada. During these sessions, Mari and Doug host the Westover interns at their home for dinner with delightful discussions of all sorts of subjects.
Q.
Initiating and participating in the Kenauk Institute’s charitable venture has kept Mari and Doug’s perspectives open and alive to the ever-changing post-Covid years. They enjoy being often in the company of their daughter and her family, including grandchildren Max (thirteen) and Alex (nine). It is a full Mari delight to be constantly exposed to the younger mind, so open and sensitive to nature. Grandchildren are a wonderful gift.
Mari has a book in the works about their New Zealand venture and hopes to have it published by 2025. You already may have noticed while reading this magazine that Mari was instrumental in our class’s fiftyfifth reunion gift of new shrubbery for the school entranceway.
Margot Clement Clark and Jeff traveled to Bergen, Norway, on a Viking Cruise for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Margot can’t imagine they’ve been married this long. [I suspect other classmates have good fiftieth wedding anniversary tales, too—at least those who made it that far— while I’ll confess to being on marriage number three.] Margot and Jeff have four granddaughters, ages one to six, from California to New Jersey, and are grateful for their adventures with them.
Sue McCullough is tickled to have a grandson entering the honors program at Michigan State University and a second grandson who made the National Honor Society last term in high school tenth grade. Her final and third grandson won the Scholar Athlete award in seventh
grade. Sue humbly notes that she has no idea where they get their brains from. I will now poke back and say, “Because you followed the Westover motto, ‘to think, to do, to be!’” [Credit to Margot Clark.] Sue and her husband reside in the Villages, Florida.
Esme Rose sums up her half-century plus five: “Life has been a wild ride so far: getting married right out of Duke, moving to seven states because of Steve’s job, having three children, adding three grandchildren, as well as working in several diverse professions—including event planning for President and Mrs. Carter’s Atlanta Project at a ski resort in Colorado. The ride continues. My passion has always been education, so that is what I am focusing on now. After teaching K-12 in public and private schools (history, econ, English in the high school were my favorite), I am now working part-time in reading intervention in elementary school in a ‘free and reduced lunch’ public school for high-risk students in Durham, North Carolina.” Esme also is taking a grad course to have additional skills to help these students.
Galen Savage McWilliams shares that she is passionately involved in abolishing the death penalty in South Carolina, where that state now has on the horizon the firing squad plus lethal injection. Galen notes while she has lived in South Carolina for thirty-eight years, loving her residency there, there are some things she is ashamed of. She would enjoy hearing from anyone else involved in social justice issues, which are giving her purpose, something others of us probably are reevaluating at this point in our lives. Galen’s original goal was world peace, but now she’s settling for what might be possible—even small things done with great love, as Mother Theresa would suggest. Galen recommends we read Mother Theresa’s bio if we haven’t.
On an uplifting note, Galen heard very good things about our new Head of School from a grandmother of children who went to the new Head’s former day school in Seattle. Galen fervently hopes the new Head’s talent extends to understanding what boarders need emotionally.
And here’s our love and marriage news! Peggy Roberts is very content practicing psychiatry part-time and grateful that her family made it through the pandemic
well enough, although everyone got it. John Leshy, her partner of seventeen years, and Peggy got married in October 2022 at a small gathering outside in a lovely park in Berkeley, California, with family and close friends and much general happiness. Who’s to say that marriage is only for the young?! Please enjoy the attached photo. [By the way, from yours truly, John is an attorney of great renown for those who know D.C. law and the Department of the Interior. Of course, Peggy is too modest to volunteer this.) Peggy and John remain permanently “over the moon” with their three granddaughters, ages eleven, eight, and twenty months.
Isabel Hill recently wrapped up a month-long visit in Colorado with her granddaughter, Isabella, daughter, and husband. It was a true return to summer camp: hikes, dog walks, horseback riding, bungee jumping, and lots of pool. Isabel was sad—though a bit relieved after all the activity— to see them go.
Her older daughter, husband, and granddaughter, Lia (age five)—location Pasadena, California—also enticed her to visit, and on the second visit, Isabel bought a five-year-old OTTB (off-thetrack thoroughbred)! Isabel also took up tennis again (under the name Izzie) and joined a monthly poetry group.
“I’ve been involved the last two years with Afghan women refugees coming to the U.S., particularly women judges and lawyers, most often in the D.C./ Maryland/Virginia area. What incredibly talented women, yet completely upended and distraught most of them are, justifiably, though it is getting better now for some. They had positions and homes and children doing well, and then had to leave everything behind in just one day to avoid being killed because being a woman lawyer or judge in Afghanistan is the complete antithesis of what the Taliban want a woman to do or to be. I continually appreciate how lucky I am to have my pension from forty years of judicial work allowing me to assist them pro bono. I’ve seen up close that no personal or professional loss of mine can compare even slightly to all they have been through. It is a privilege to have these new sisters and daughters.”
Mari Hill Harpur ’67 with Sarah
’26 and Kendra G. ’25, who worked on her farm over the summer.
Margaret Karp ’67 married John Leshy in October 2023.
1968
Secretary needed!
Elizabeth “Ibby” Taylor Greer writes that her son, Andrew, finished his Pennsylvania law clerk job and will be visiting in Virginia this summer. She says, “Friend me on Facebook!”
Emily Thomson Williams shares, “It was wonderful to get to the reunion this year, even though I could only stay for one dinner. Life is good. My kids (Jake, Tom, Mary, and Mike) and step-kids (Emily, Hannah, and Lily) and grands (Emilia, Leah, Jack, Margot, Ava, Beatrice, Cole, Lowen, Freya, and Dashiel) are all healthy and doing well either at work or in school/ daycare. My husband, Lee, and I are active and busy. Lee is in training to row in the Head of the Charles in October. We live in Connecticut but spend lots of time in D.C. (where there are kids and grands) and Vermont (where I own what was my folks’ home). We are very lucky. I hope everyone else is well and happy. (No picture from me—there are too many of us!)
At the fiftieth wedding anniversary party for Teddy and Cynthia Perry Colebrook ’68, P’25, in September 2022. From left: Karen Sawyer O’Brien ’68, Wendy Payson Kerr ’68, Cynthia Perry Colebrook ’68, P’25, Diana Smith Hall ’68, and Clinton Savage Standart ’68.
Cynthia Perry Colebrook writes, “My daily life in the mountains of Colorado is filled with family, horses, chickens, and (except winter) growing, harvesting, and preserving garden produce. Additionally, I continue to serve local nonprofits as a consultant. Teddy is a gardener and a compost maker when he is home, and he continues to travel around the country to paint commissioned interiors.”
Patsy Simonds Taylor shares, “We had a small but fun group at the reunion, and staying on Senior Corridor, which was beautifully renovated by Leigh’s family, was a kick. Also, Weezie’s family has created a beautiful raised-bed community garden! The other highlight was meeting Polly Fredlund, Westover’s new Head, who will be a strong and innovative leader. I am spending the summer in Yarmouth, Maine, and have put my name into Piper Shores, a retirement community in Scarborough! It is a long wait, so I will continue to enjoy Brooklyn until then. Hope that everyone is well.”
Marion Thompson Murfey ’68 visits Patsy Simonds Taylor ’68 in Yarmouth, Maine, in June 2023, after their fiftyfifth reunion.
Marion Thompson Murphy writes, “It was fun to see the few who showed up at the fifty-fifth reunion last June, and especially fun to stay in the dorms! Then my husband and I spent a few days with Patsy Simonds Taylor in Yarmouth. Daughter Libby lives in the Denver area with her two-and-a-halfyear-old son (I’m finally a grandmother!). Daughter Clara lives in Salt Lake City and is a private chef and caterer. I’m in Boca Grande, Florida all winter, as I’m now a Florida resident. Come visit!”
Mini-reunion lunch with Susan Logan Whitman ’68 and Caryn Cluett Gregg ’68 (with Hal and Rob)!
Susan Logan Whitman shares, “Our fiftyfifth had ten of us strong, with missing all others. We’re entering a period of, in my opinion, a more difficult time than our teenage years because of the unknown. When we were at Westover, we had many years ahead of us to solve our past problems, but now we have fewer years to face how long we’ll be alive. Health plays a major part of our future, and that will take family strengths, friendships, and a lot of luck. As Hal and I have said, ‘If the plane goes down and we’re on the plane, don’t shed a tear. We’ve had a wonderful life and have appreciated and learned from the ups and downs.’ Looking forward to future reunions and continuing to travel.”
Helen “Lynn” Behr Sanford shares, “I had the warm, welcome, easy pleasure of meeting and chatting with Polly Fredlund when Leigh introduced us to one another a few weeks ago, and I not only think the world of her demeanor of bright optimism, but I was tremendously appreciative of the patient way she listened to what I felt the need to say. Sending love and hugs to all of you wonderful classmates and friends who are reading these notes.”
Elizabeth Reed ’68 and husband Jan Wampler.
Elizabeth Reed writes, “‘Still’ is the operative word for my life. Still living in Boston (spring/fall); Block Island, Rhode Island (summer); and the west coast of Florida (winter). Still active in grassroots political activism, hopeful, horrified, and aware that one must be. Still very happily married to Jan, who finally retired after sixty (!) years of teaching architecture and urban design. Still traveling some (to Death Valley and France in 2024). Still holding still long enough to write, read, and remember Westover. And still learning that getting old ain’t for sissies, and I am lucky to live long enough to find out firsthand.”
Westover grads recently reunited in Mountain Lake, Florida, to play golf and rekindle friendships made at Westover many years ago! From left: Lynn Behr Sanford ’68, Leigh Keyes Phillips ’68, Beverly Johnson Jaques ’68, and Lili Warner Geehr ’69.
1969
Gayle Garivaltis-James ’69 gajjames8850@verizon.net
Toni Walker Hamner writes, “Vero Beach, FL has been busy this year. Ann Mullin ’83 has just joined our little club, so that brings Westover grads up to seven! And that leaves the other seven who live in Vero out! Lots of former parents and children and grandchildren of alumni live here, and I am always finding connections! Gayle
Garivaltis James, Linsley Pietsch, Leslie Walbridge Smith and I had lunch in Stuart this March. What a lovely visit we had. (Did someone get a picture?) One of the most exciting things that happened this year was that I got hearing aids! The TV is on a lower volume, and with technology, I am having a blast directing the volume and angles at which I can listen in. Real spaceage stuff. Last summer I visited with Kim Hoagland, my former roomie, in her new digs in Stonington, Connecticut. It is a really beautiful spot. This year has been filled with travels and children, and now I am taking off to visit five African countries— when I come home, I’ll repack to take my grandson to Iceland. I will be searching the crowded airports for familiar faces, so if you hear your name shouted across a crowded concourse, don’t be surprised!”
Rhu Melum McBee reports two recent “road scholar” trips with Burrett to the Aegean, with Crete being the highlight (though the view of the Acropolis from their hotel was memorable). Living with Burrett’s cancer means frequent trips up serenely beautiful NH 89 to Dartmouth Medical. Rhu and Burrett celebrated their fiftieth in 2023 with fond memories of all the Westover folks at their Wonalancet Chapel wedding and their Long Island reception the next day. Rhu looked forward to meeting fellow Northwestern grad, Head of School Polly Fredlund, at reunion on June 7. [Our class graduated on June 7, 1969—Rhu’s eighteenth birthday.]
Wilder Dominick Witt ’69, a.k.a. “Amma,” with Caeden.
Wilder Dominick Witt writes, “We had a busy and wonderful year. Granddaughter
Noa was born on January 13, 2023. A preemie, but she’s feisty and doing well— now starting to walk. Big brother Caeden (who turned three in March) thinks she’s a fun addition to the family but is actually more interested in learning to ski in Colorado. Our son, Alden, and his fiancée, Candi, got married July 1, 2023, at Stonehenge, England. An absolutely extraordinary experience. Afterward, Bill and I spent a couple of weeks in Ireland and Belgium. Prior to that (March/April), we took a six-week trip to Malaysia, the Philippines, and Japan, including a twenty-seven-day cruise on Windstar. Fabulous! In the fall, we hoped to go to Egypt, Jordan, and Israel but had to drop Jordan and Israel. Thoroughly enjoyed Egypt, including a four-night Nile trip with seven other passengers. Still loving life in St. Petersburg, but appalled by Florida’s political direction. Hoping for change in 2024.”
Noa, granddaughter of Wilder Dominick Witt ’69, at Christmas time.
Wilder, daughter of Candy Rundin ’69, with her boyfriend, Chris.
Evan and Logan, grandsons of Candy Rundin ’69.
Wilder, daughter of Elaine “Candy” Rundin ’69, with her two sons, her fiancé, Chris, and his two children.
Elaine “Candy” Rundin writes, “It has been a good year; looking forward to reunion in 2024. Thank you to the classmates who continue to support the Annual Fund year after year. You know who you are. I continue to go to Rock Steady Boxing three times a week. It is an exercise program for people with Parkinson’s Disease. I was diagnosed six months after I retired. I am doing well, keeping most symptoms at bay with
boxing and pickleball. Daughter Wilder was married this spring to Chris, who is a police officer in Bristol, Connecticut, and serves as a court officer and former SWAT officer as well as a veteran who served at Guantanamo Bay shortly after 9/11. Wilder is the dean of students at A.I. Prince Technical High School in Hartford. She will also be introducing a trauma and support dog to the school, hopefully in the fall. Grandsons Evan (ten) and Logan (seven) are doing well. Son Robert is still in California. Saw him in 2022 when he came east for his dad’s funeral. Rhu Melum McBee has been a huge help with Westover fundraising, writing to every classmate individually. If anyone else would like to help us, we would be happy to share the task. Also, with reunion coming, some classmates need to volunteer to organize, etc. Love the Zoom calls. People are very chatty, and it’s great to learn what’s happening in everyone’s life—but sometimes it’s hard to get a word in. LOL. Take care all and I hope to see you in 2024.”
Barbara Fearey West writes, “We have a new grandson, born in July 2023. Two weeks helping care for him brought back memories of long nights and bottle washing. What joy to now have a granddaughter in New York City and a grandson in Santa Monica. I look forward to frequent visits between other travels, including accompanying Mike on some of the sixteen (!) cruises he is scheduled to speak on through the end of 2024.”
Gayle Garivaltis-James writes, “I truly enjoyed seeing Toni Walker Hamner, Linsley Pietsch, and Leslie Walbridge Smith in March. What a treat! Linsley and I had a “virtual lunch” on July 27, when she was up visiting her daughter and family. We met on FaceTime and just munched away and conversed. Although we talk a couple of times each month, we always have something to talk about. Allen and I are looking forward to our thirteenday Mediterranean Viking Cruise. We are traveling with our sister-in-law, Hilary, and her daughter, our niece, Leland. Our quarterly class Zoom calls are still going strong, and the hour just flies by! It seems we all are busy, traveling, connecting, working, volunteering, fundraising, babysitting, and family-visiting group.”
We’d love other classmates to join us on our calls! Please stay safe, healthy, positive, and engaged!
1970
Missy Taylor ’70 melita4@sbcglobal.net
Nancy LeSage Hellmuth shares, “Hello all, I am entering a new year after a painful 2022–2023, with the loss of my husband to fatal brain tumors. I had a great summer (once the two celebrations of life were behind me). A full family was with me in Rhode Island. In Florida for last winter, which was tough in the beginning, but what a great group of supportive friends there! Being outdoors is huge for the spirits, too. I know we are at the age where our mates, or we ourselves, will start seeing the wheels fall off, so reach out and get some well-timed shout-outs from our great Classmates of 1970. Thanks to all who sent emails and notes. What a great gang we are—and getting even better with age. Love to all, Nancy Hellmuth”
Susan Mohn shares, “2022 marked the onset of major changes in both my life and my husband, Butch’s. After many, many summer months spent at our cottage in Cape Brule, we made the decision that it was time to take advantage of the seller’s market up in New Brunswick and list it. Thankfully, it sold quickly. We miss our longtime Canadian friends up there, but certainly not the nine-hour drive to get there! On January 2, 2023, Butch fell down our set of stairs, resulting in fractured ribs and a minor brain bleed. He was finally diagnosed with vascular dementia with Parkinson’s. He is now at a nursing home nearby, so I can easily visit him. We were so incredibly lucky to get a bed given the one- to two-year wait lists to get one! It has been a really heartbreaking 2023. The two dachshunds, however, keep me smiling and laughing—thank goodness! I am also so very blessed and thankful for all the love and support from family and friends to help us get through it all! Best to you all! Stay well and happy!”
Gigi Bradford Stanford ’70, husband Jim Stanford and their two granddaughters in January 2024.
Gigi Bradford Stanford shares, “Since Covid canceled our fiftieth reunion, I am hoping we can see each on our fifty-fifth. It’s been fun keeping up with classmates and seeing Westover continue to dedicate itself to the education and growth of women. I have a bit of a bird’s eye view with my cousin, Kim Hoagland ’69, serving as Board Chair. The good news is that I have little news: still puddling along in Washington, D.C., and Stonington, Connecticut; still teaching poetry; playing tennis; and basking in our kids, their spouses, and our granddaughters. Community, history, legacy—more important now than ever, isn’t it? The memory of those Westover years shines brightly.”
Pamela Gordon duPont writes, “Looking back on my life, I think right now I am the happiest I have ever been. It took me fifty-six years to marry the love of my life, Bix duPont, and we have both been so happy ever since. Next to my marriage, my retirement two years ago is the best thing that ever happened to me! I finally have time to play some golf (albeit not well!), learn new stuff, and visit friends, some from Westover. I hope I will be able to reunite with Missy Taylor on Block Island, where I know we have connections. Welcome back to the East Coast, Missy! I loved seeing everyone at our quasi-fiftieth Westover reunion. Many of us keep up on Zoom.”
Olive “Lili” Warner Geehr shares, “I have been absent from these postings for some time and have decided to write. First off, Bob and I are doing well, though admittedly slowing down somewhat. We split our time between Pittsfield, Massachusetts,
and Lake Wales, Florida, which really is fortunate.
I am still an avid golfer, but have added golf croquet to my sports. We are very lucky to have a father-son team (national champions) here as our teachers. Bob has finally tried it and is now seen practicing croquet as much as golf.
It shouldn’t be too surprising that here at Mountain Lake, Florida is quite a group of Westover gals. Leigh Keyser Phillips ’68, Helen ‘Lynn’ Behr Sanford ’68, and Joan Atwood Kunzelmann ’61 are all in residence; Lynn lives next door. Lenkie Angier Trumbull ’48 was here as well Debbie Massey ’68 came in 2023 to play in a Pro-Am golf event, which was more about the fun than the golf. Even Elizabeth ‘Beppie’ Huidekoper breezed through here a few years ago, and that was a sweet surprise for me.
As an aside, Westover’s new Head, Polly Fredlund, came to Mountain Lake for a visit—and ladies, she is, in my opinion, the real deal! She was eager to hear anything and everything about our time at the school, shared her ideas, and listened to our questions.
Bob and I have two granddaughters, Lily (ten) and Caroline (eight), who are the utmost joy in my life. We try to see each other as much as possible, but it’s never enough for me.
Gardening is still ‘my therapy,’ even though my body complains. My gardens in both locations are very different, constantly evolving, and keep me busy. I still do some board work, but not as much as in the past. All in all, I’ve been happy, live as busy a life as I want, and am grateful for it all. I hope this holds true for my fellow classmates. Sending love and best wishes to you all!”
Missy Taylor writes, “After forty wonderfully enriching and most memorable years, I bid farewell to my beloved Carmel-by-the-Sea and returned to the land of my ancestors in Rhode Island. Of course I hadn’t an inkling of how monumental a transition this would be for me and my loved one, else I would never have taken the first step. Now that I have settled happily into my new, yet so very familiar, environs, I can at last exhale. I feel a profound sense of gratitude in being able to return to ‘my deep home’ in the living years. Up until now I had regarded life as a linear journey, but now
I have been reawakened to the circularity of this adventure. This I find especially comforting.”
1971
Lisa Stockwell ’71
lisabstockwell@gmail.com
During 2023, most of our class turned seventy, an age we definitely don’t project in attitude, or even looks (in my humble opinion). We were considered an unconventional class, and we’ll be unconventional in the way we approach aging. Our motto, after all, was, “To Live. To Laugh. To Forget Time.”
Class of 1971 in Dogfish Island, Maine, September 2023. Left to right: Francene Young, Nancy Reilly Cavanaugh, Mary Rhodes, Beryl Brown King, Audrey Smith Abbott, Jane Watson Stetson, Susan Clark, Tamis Rehill, and Lisa Stockwell.
To celebrate this milestone birthday year, a group of us gathered in Camden, Maine, at the end of September. Jane Watson Stetson generously hosted eight of us at her home there for several days. The group included Jane, Beryl Brown, Nancy Reighley Cavanaugh, Susan Clark, Tammis Rehill Lazarus, Mary Rohde, Audrey Smith Abbott, Francene Young, and me. We hiked, we picnicked at Dogfish Island, we cruised the bay in Jane’s siblings’ sailing yacht, we ate lots of lobsters, we wandered around town, and we had a wonderful time relaxing together and forming stronger friendships with classmates we hadn’t seen in years or decades. We missed those who couldn’t make it but have vowed to meet again soon!
While many classmates couldn’t join us, our communications in putting together the reunion offered a glimpse of their current status.
Liddy Schneidman Lindsay was involved with the Opera Festival Weekend in Philadelphia. Misty Carter Beyer had to work. Debbie Edmonson Drake had just left Long Island for the summer and returned home to Carefree, Arizona, where she was attending to her husband, who had back surgery. Peg Urvoas Urvek was limited by health issues but sent everyone her best.
Several classmates were traveling. After several years of putting off trips, it’s been a great year to take to the roads and air:
Susan Hicks Jernigan was in Japan. Penny Stewart Brennan was sailing in the Greek islands. Campbell Rogers Jolly was in the mountains of North Carolina at her son’s wedding. Suzanne Hooker Ainslie was on a family trip. Colleen O’Rourke Carson was in the U.K., and Sarah Carleton Wechsler was traveling Europe.
Jules Connoly Means was on a trip to London, a gift from her son, Chip, for her seventieth. She wrote, “Still single. I have grandies, Ellie (eleven) and Juniper (seven), who are Chip and Hanna’s kids. Ellie is going to middle school soon and Junie to second grade. They live in South Portland. Angelica (‘Geli’), fourteen, who is Amanda’s, is going to high school soon. They live nearby in Salem, Massachusetts, with Amanda’s partner, Colin. Amanda is forty-two and Chip is forty-one. How is that possible?!
My ninety-four-year-old mum died in December, so now I’m officially an orphan. Not sad. We teased her that she was past her sell-by date, and that was her favorite thing to tell her pals in the assisted living place she was in for six years. I am still making art in my studio condo in the old bricks-and-beams shoe factory here in Beverly, Massachusetts. Life is quiet and peaceful.”
Katy Angstadt Rahe was also in England walking through the Cotswolds. She was in Maine last summer for a summer camp reunion. In spite of staying active, she noted that she found turning seventy harder than she thought it would be.
Tanya Kazanjian was finally taking a trip to Japan after having had to cancel it three years in a row. She will head to Quebec for Christmas, with the thought of moving to eastern Canada next year. She’s been on a massive French reading binge.
Hilary Higgins Parker wrote, “As I hobble into my eighth decade (arthritis has found its way into all my major joints—not fun), I find myself incredibly grateful for my family and friends and for the connection with all of us in the Class of ’71. I think this is the decade to finish ticking off those important bucket list items. The clock is ticking. Now or never! To that end, Tom and our son, Warren, and his wife, Katie, and I are heading to Egypt on Thanksgiving day, where we plan to try and do it all: Cairo, Giza, Luxor, Abu Simbal, Aswan, Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, and every temple in between. I think we will need a vacation from the vacation if we survive! It's always been my dream to go there ever since I took my first ancient history class in the 8th grade. I'm just sorry my teacher Alden Sector, with whom my family remained close, passed away before I could tell him that I finally made it. And how fabulous that the kids want to travel with us. Thrilling for this mama!”
Other classmates are enjoying family time, especially with grandchildren: Anne Lloyd du Pont was at a family reunion with her siblings and grandbabies.
Heidi Swan ’71.
Heidi Swan was helping two of her three daughters with newly born grandchildren, numbers four and five. One daughter delivered in August 2023 and the other in September 2023. Three of five of her kids live in San Francisco or Tahoe. Her eldest daughter (39, who lives in Tahoe) had her first child, a girl, in August. A daughter in San Francisco has a son who is eighteen months and just had another son. Her middle son lives in Boulder and has two little boys (ages one and three). Her third daughter lives in Seattle with her boyfriend. And her oldest son got married last fall, which initiated a visit in Maine with Jane. All three of them (Jane, Heidi, and Michael, Heidi’s significant other) got Covid in
Maine, so she was not able to attend her son’s wedding. She recently moved to Idaho with Michael and has kept her condo in the San Francisco Bay Area so she can visit her kids and grandkids there frequently.
Sheila Jackson Brown was busy with her horses, hounds, and children. She reported that she enjoyed a summer road trip out to Upper Peninsula Michigan for her second son, Alec’s, wedding in Copper Harbor on Lake Superior (fiancé is from Ahmeek). They’ve just moved from Buffalo to Shreveport, Louisiana, so that will mean more road trips for Sheila! Her oldest son, Colby, is an ENT surgeon in Cleveland, where they visit as often as possible to see their almost two-year-old grandson. She says life is good!
Ann Bickford Keller was expecting a grandchild in August or September and wanted to stay close by to be of help.
Elizabeth McCabe Keith spent time last summer in Portsmouth visiting northern grandchildren and had to return to Houston to balance her accounts with the little folk there.
Caroline Owen Waterman-Smith was awaiting another grandchild (number nine!) to be born in Andorra. She lives in the southwest of England, on Dartmoor, has a daughter (doctor) nearby with three children in Plymouth, another daughter near London, a third in Sydney, Australia, and her son in Andorra.
I can report that:
Tammis Rehill Lazarus was to spend one night in Maine and then head off to Vermont, where her children organized a birthday gathering for her.
Beryl Brown recently endured a reverse shoulder replacement but was not going to let that get in her way of seeing old friends.
Susan Clark ’71 adopted two new puppies.
Susan Clark is looking forward to finding the right next-generation steward for her newspaper, Redding Sentinel, so she can retire for real. She’s hoping to turn the experience of launching the paper into a how-to manual for other communities in need of a local news source. And she’s also looking forward to travel, weddings, books, gardening, and all that.
Nancy Reighley Cavanaugh faces this next decade with the hope she can continue to play tennis, ride her bike, be active, do some traveling, and enjoy lots of time with her children and grandchildren. When in Florida, she lives on the same street as Karen Kjorlien Phillips in Hobe Sound and thinks it’s wonderful to have her close by and continuing a friendship that began fiftytwo years ago at Westover.
Magnolia, granddaughter of Jane Watson Stetson ’71.
Jane Watson Stetson spent a good part of summer 2023 with her grandson (son of her middle daughter, Catherine) and was looking forward to a second grandchild in October (her older daughter, Nancy’s).
And as for myself, Lisa Stockwell, I’ve been kept busy with work (primarily writing for an herbal supplement company and a hyperbaric oxygen therapy clinic these days), helping two of my kids with my four grandkids (ages five, four, three, and two), connecting with old friends, and doing some traveling (to Mexico, Europe, Texas Hill Country, and several national parks in Northern California and Oregon this past year). I turned the reunion into a month-long trip, visiting a college roommate on Cape Cod before heading to Maine. Then on to Boulder, Colorado, where both my parents are still thriving at ninetyseven. My boyfriend (yes, that’s a great new development after eighteen years single!) was going to meet me there to take a road trip through the Southwest to do some hiking and biking.
As Sheila said, life is good!
1972
Secretary needed!
Dianne Crary shares that at the time of her note she was, “very much looking forward to getting together with several classmates this spring—Sarah Goodin Martin (Sarah was a student from England our senior year), Kathy Klopfer O’Brien, Amy Benson Cutting, Ellen Greulich Coco, and Margaret ‘Peggy’ Morehead Williams ’73. Haven’t seen any of them for years!
Karla Lawrence Keating shares, “Richard and I are still living in Pinehurst, North Carolina, which we love and where we have a wonderful group of friends. We are doing lots of traveling, a week in Mexico in April, an eighteen-day trip across Canada by rail in July, then a week in the mountains of North Carolina with our four grandsons. In September we are going to Italy and Greece for sixteen days. And in October we are off to Churchill, Canada, for the polar bear migration and seeing the northern lights (both on my bucket list). God, life is great!”
Robin Tilghman Stevens ’72 with some of her helpers.
Robin Tilghman Stevens writes, “Greetings from the Stevens clan on the tundras of western Massachusetts. Needless to say, life for me is full and filled with much joy. My business of equine therapy has finally found a rhythm after Covid, and I am living my passion. My husband and son have helped me enormously, and I wouldn’t be able to have my dream if it weren’t for them. We are all healthy and loving this chapter for however long it lasts. My best to all of you.”
Katherine Dixon Thomson shares, “Thinking of our wonderful Class of ’72 as many of us turn seventy this year! Wondering how that is even possible! I am very fortunate to still be happily married to my husband of forty-eight years and still happily living in Woodside, California. Our extended family is thriving, and we have four busy grandchildren. We spend a lot of time in New Zealand and travel to England quite a bit. I ride two gorgeous horses as often as possible. Reinvented myself as a show jumper at the age of sixty-four, and I now compete against ten-year-old girls on ponies. I love it! Still working with several nonprofits in various capacities, and still very active with my extended multigenerational family on investing, philanthropy, and governance. While I rarely make it to the East Coast, I keep up with the news from Westover and am so proud of its resilience and excellence. I send fond regards to all!”
Newly retired Margaret Johnson-Orrick and husband Jack have been traveling more this year and last, including enjoying bicycling parts of the Camino in Spain and Portugal. “More recently we checked off another item on the bucket list: swimming with the dolphins in the Florida Keys. Soon we’ll be in Minnesota visiting one of our daughters and our delightful three-year-old grandson.”
Elizabeth Bucknall Petty writes, “Currently helping to maintain and improve a historic, walled, secret garden overlooking Long Island Sound; only one of two public park gardens directly on the East Coast of the United States. Fighting against herds of deer and gophers for the territory, we are planting native perennials and shrubs, and keeping the garden as weeded and mulched as possible; hoping to preserve a long-lasting, ephemeral legacy for the town; keeping a balance between rewilding and restoring a woodland, coastal, and beautiful area. The secret garden, my grandchildren, good books, hair color, and the seventieth-year birthday celebrations of the Class of ’72 keep me seven decades young.”
Gretchen Handy Comstock shares, ““I am writing from the highlands of Costa Rica, celebrating my birthday (happy seventieth wishes to you, my friends!) with the monkeys and macaws!
“In June I got married to Rob Hernandez in Vermont with our ten children in tow. Rob’s career was with National Geographic, and as world travelers we’ve enjoyed some wonderful trips together over the past three years. He has recently been asked by Nat Geo to lecture on their trips, and I am lucky to get to tag along on some of them. My other love is my two-year-old granddaughter, Beatrice, who lives close enough by for me to visit her often. Nothing like being Grannie “Gogo”! Marianne Tompkins Kassab and I went to Jamaica together in January and in April we gathered in Connecticut with Robin Tighman Stevens and Anne Spalding ’72 , who will be visiting from Switzerland. Nothing better than spending time with ‘old’ Westover buddies!”
Secretary needed!
1973
Nancy Handy Grogan ’73 and Marion Markham ’73 at Snowbird.
Nancy Handy Grogan writes, “A good group of us really enjoyed our fiftieth reunion a year ago. The school seems to be thriving under the tutelage of the new Head. She is lovely, and if you have the chance to meet her you should! It was a real treat to see Mr Molder, Bob Havery, and Anneke Rothman, too!
My husband and I have both retired and are happily living in Marion, Massachusetts. Our three adult children are producing children of their own now, and being grandparents is the best medicine, as many of our class know! Because one of my daughters lives in Portland, Maine, I often get to see Elizabeth Wood Crane when I’m up there. And the past two winters I met up with Marion Markham for some ski runs at Snowbird.
Elizabeth Wood Crane shares, “We had a wonderful fiftieth reunion for the Class of 1973. It was really fun to stay in the senior dorm, share a bathroom (that part was fun, right?), and remember the crazy days in the ’70s. I feel so fortunate to have wonderful friends from Westover—some of whom I knew well back then, and others I’m getting to know as the years go on. It’s fun to have friends to grow old with.
I am now retired from private practice in social work and still living in Portland, Maine, with my husband, Tom. Our oldest daughter recently got married in Maine, and our second daughter is not far behind. Still playing tennis, squash, and golf and seeing Westover friends at least once a year.”
Marion “Mares” Markham fulfilled a bucket-list item of visiting Greece this past fall. She is still acting, directing, and singing her way through life. Get it touch if you find yourself in Salt Lake City in the colder months and want to ski.
Members of the Class of 1973 at their fiftieth reunion weekend. Left to right: Anne Hewson Keen, Elizabeth Wood Crane, Kathleen Floyd, Annie Scott Lynch, Palmer Marrin, Nancy Handy Grogan, Janet Costikyan Waite, Louise “Calli” Guion, Alison Solbert Paine, and Ellen Harrington Campbell.
Palmer Marrin shares, “So great to see you all from our fiftieth! Still on the Vineyard enjoying our six grandchildren. Hoping to get in more travel after selling a business and pretending to retire.”
Margaret “Peggy” Morrhead Williams ’73 and granddaughter Margot in a hammock.
Margaret “Peggy” Morrhead Williams writes, “Hi Class, Hope everyone is healthy and well. I’m happy to report I became a grandmother to Margot Palmer Williams July 18, 2023. I finally understand all the fuss about what it means to be a grandparent. I’m trying to find all kinds of excuses to go down and visit with her in New York City. We still live in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, and are currently enjoying traveling and taking
hiking vacations off and on throughout the year. In my seventieth year, one thing that is really ringing true is the desire to connect with old school friends and acquaintances from my past. Please let me know if or when you are in Maine, and I’d love to connect!”
Grandchildren of Rosemary Furse Taylor ’73: Oliver and Liam (Annie’s boys), TJ (Tolly and Beth’s son), and Caecilia, Ruzzie, and Emile (Charlotte’s three, Taylor-Goedmans).
Rosemary Furse Taylor writes, “Enjoying our lovely place in Virginia Beach—would love visitors, as we have three guest rooms! Also a pool, hot tub, and boats galore! We have six grandchildren now— five boys and one girl—and much of the time Paul and I travel to help the parents out so my adult kids can have a getaway or date nights! We move around between Nashville, Baltimore, and D.C. Loads of fun family times amidst the challenges of our aging bodies! The two youngest boys are just two weeks apart and at one year old weigh twenty-two and twenty-four pounds—however did we do it with our own?”
Secretary needed!
1974
Marcia Neidley Lynch
My husband of thirty-eight years and I have downsized to a condo in Arlington, Virginia. For the past nine years, I have been designing and sewing little girls’ dresses for a shop in Berryville, Virginia. The dresses have handmade dolls in their pockets wearing an identical dress. The past few years, my poems have been published in several print and online journals, the most fun being a poem printed on the buses in our neighborhood as part of the Arlington Arts program. Our three adult children live in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Orlando, but we enjoy destination Christmases.
1976
Beth Lubrano
Dwyer ’76 beth_dwyer@verizon.net
Greetings, Class of 1976! T-minus two years until our fiftieth reunion in spring 2026. 2023 was quite a year. Sadly we began with the passing of our classmate and dear friend Marianne Barbino Dubuque on January 30, 2023. Marianne will be remembered as a trusted friend, a dedicated professional, and a beloved wife and mother. She was blessed to learn just prior to her passing that she was going to become a grandmother as well. Barbino’s son, Dan, recently welcomed his son into the world. Her daughter, Erin, was due with her first child later in the year. Marianne leaves an amazing legacy of love, faith, and family devotion. There was a group of eleven Westover friends who gathered to celebrate Marianne’s life. We will miss her and remember her deeply.
The Maine contingent of ’76ers has just increased. Annette Hall Quezada, myself, Kristin Hartley, and Mihae Lee (a part-time Mainer) welcomed Susan Dubin Nahley to the area. Susan and Steve have settled in Falmouth for a while until they find the perfect new home. It’s been fantastic to get together so often. Kristin is excited about her big move to Bath, Maine. The move also brought her a new job after she retired permanently from Hampden Academy. Kristin has been back and forth to Westover in her role as a Governor and has had a chance to visit with Deirdre
Sullivan and Leilani Crane often. Kristin and Deirdre got in a short trip together to Florida, where they had lunch with Dana Pollock. Deirdre is consulting three days a week working on websites, customer portals, and branding. She loves a shorter work week and the ability to travel more often.
Annette Hall Quezada has been busy busy with her work, completing just “one more” finishing touch on her house and hosting friends and family in her home. You can always count on Annette to host a spectacular gathering. I’ve had the pleasure many a time. Annette has had many a visit from her grandson, Eddie, and his mom, Kaley. This summer Eddie was up for camp before heading to Spain to visit his grandpas. FYI, Annette, we are all still waiting for the book of Uber driver stories!
Paul and I saw Cathy Stewart and Tom not too long ago for a ukulele concert at the Stone Mountain Center in Brownfield, Maine. By the time this hits the press we would have also gotten together for a Willie Nelson concert in New Hampshire. Cathy has become quite the ukulele player. She has traveled to Puerto Rico and Nashville to attend instructional gatherings and concerts. You can see the joy that radiates from her as she is playing. Nice to have something that makes you so happy that you can share with the world.
Lauren Caldwell is enjoying boat life on the Connecticut shore with hubby Steve. She draws a lot and is working part-time at an art store in Old Lyme, Connecticut.
I’ve had the pleasure of being able to see Mihae Lee and her husband, Bill, a lot when they are in Maine. They sold their condo in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, but are back often. A Westover group made up of myself, Susan Dubin Nahley, and Annette Hall Quezada attended the first summer concert of the 2023 Sebago/Long Lake Music Festival, where Mihae and Bill both performed at the Deertrees Center in Harrison, Maine. Mihae continues as the music director for the festival as well as the Essex Winter Series back home in Connecticut. The house Mihae stays at during the festival is just up the road from our family place in Bridgton!
Kathleen Floyd ’73 and Annie Scott Lynch ’73.
Cathy Stewart ’76, Jessie Cogswell Tichko ’75, and Beth Lubrano Dwyer ’76 at King Arthur Baking school in Norwich, Vermont.
As for the Dwyer clan, Paul and I are both great and loving our new life in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, on the fifth hole of the Dunegrass Golf Club. Our life revolves around friends, family, lots of visits with grandsons, golf and more golf, travel, and some consulting gigs for Paul. Downsizing was tough, but we love our new condo and its location. Only an hour away from the shores of Moose Pond in Bridgton. I am looking forward to a Westover gathering for a weekend on Moose Pond in September. We leave shortly for a monthlong road trip. Making our way to Omaha, Nebraska, to visit our daughter, Grace, and her boyfriend. Then road-tripping down to North Carolina and Virginia before making our way back to Maine. Jessie Cogswell Tichko ’75 and I attended a three-day British baking class at the King Arthur Baking School last May. What a blast, and we learned so much and brought home so many goodies. A highlight was having Cathy Stewart drive down for breakfast.
of the Class of 1976: Susan Dubin Nahley, Beth Lubrano Dwyer, Annette Hall Quezada, and Mihae Lee at Sebago–Long Lake Music Festival at Deertrees Theatre in Harrison, Maine.
Thanks to all who responded to my plea for news and to those who allowed me to lift tidbits from social media. Hopefully, I won’t wait another three years before submitting notes for us. Stay well, everyone.
Em and her partner, Josh, have settled in Richmond, Virginia. Em is a software engineering manager at Spotify. Hoping she can adjust the algorithm so that Step and she don’t keep hearing ’70s remixes (not that there is anything wrong with those!). Tibbie reminds us there is our fiftieth to look forward to. Onward!
Jennie LaMonte was so excited about joining folks at the reunion and was unable to do so at the last moment. “I’ve been pretty sick this year, and I’ve learned to value all the time I can spend with those who are important to me. Mark takes great care of me. My family, friends, and neighbors have been incredibly supportive and kind.”
1978
Shotsie Bissell Wilson ’78 shotsie.wilson@genmills.com
Hard to believe we had our forty-fifth class reunion! It was great to see those who attended: Susan Johnson Currier, Jeanne Parisot Bell, Debbie James Case, Karen Prifty Haverly, Lynn Sheldon, Lori Bellini Cannistra, Emily Renz Barron, Carla Skinner Malstrom, Deborah Sininger Lepore, Christine Gamble Brooks, and Lisa Deschenes
Susu Cook Scott reports that things keep merrily rolling along on the other side of the pond. Over the past year, she really enjoyed being part of a mentoring program for young people from disrupted backgrounds at the University of Cambridge. She was paired with a lovely, bright young woman and found the whole thing really rewarding.
Emily Renz Barron is now officially retired and really enjoying retirement.
Debbie James Case is busy working on her house and will probably work one more year for H&R Block.
Tibbie Uhl was bummed to miss the reunion but reports everyone is healthy. Alex graduated from college. Kat is switching gears and headed to Napa to take a one-year intensive chef program at the Culinary Institute of America. They are beyond thrilled for her exciting adventure.
Lori Bellini Cannistra reports she “retired at the end of September 2022, traveling more to Florida, Washington state for Anthony’s thirtieth birthday, and then a stop in Colorado Springs on the way back to visit with Shotsie Wilson and Steve. Spent a week in Aruba in June 2023 on a yoga retreat. It was great to see all those who attended the reunion! I see Andrea Manzi Frank and husband Steve every few months for dinner.”
Teddy Burr Zeleznick says, “This year has been more of the same for me as a diplomatic courier for the Department of State, with bigger cargo loads; more frequent and urgent no-notice trips; and more young, smart, and diverse couriers being assigned to our Frankfurt, Germany, office. In fact, right now, I’m returning from a large truck trip to Copenhagen; last week, it was from Almaty, Kazakhstan, and next week it will be Tel Aviv. The weather last summer was as varied and unpredictable as in the U.S. Apart from work, during vacations, I’m continuing to explore possible retirement locations, my favorite being Chisinau, Moldova. I hope all of you fellow ’78 classmates are doing great and wonderful things and, most importantly, keeping healthy and happy. Until next time, Teddy.”
Christine Gamble Brooks enjoyed seeing classmates and hanging with 1976 ladies at reunion. She only was there for a short time but had many memories flash before her eyes and made a few new ones. She said, “Congratulations Shotsie, you continue to make me proud with yet another award.” She said it was great to see Bruce Coffin and Anneka Rothman, sorry she missed seeing Mr. Molder. Life is sweet.
Members
Members of the Class of 1976: Mihae Lee, Tami Bettcher Walker, Kristin Harley, Rowena Fenstermacher, and Deirdre Sullivan at Bob Havery’s gathering at Westover.
As for me, I was thoroughly humbled to receive the Maria Allen ’42 Volunteer Service Award at reunion. I am happy to serve and assist Westover in any way possible to ensure other young girls have the opportunity to have the education and experiences I cherish from Westover. Colorado continues to treat Steve and me well. We love hiking, fishing, cultural events, and, of course, I had to pick up two new sports—pickleball and paddleboarding! Work has been amazing, as the growth in my territory abounds. I received an award for my accomplishments from General Mills for just my first year in my new territory. We have had the pleasure of having family and friends come and visit, including Lori Bellini Cannistra and husband Tony. If you are out this way please let us know! With our fiftieth just a few years away, I hope to see you all there.
1979
Sarah Bliss Seamans ’79 sbseamans@comcast.net
1980
Victoria Bucknall Silsby ’80 vnsilsby@gmail.com
Sandra Nichols Nash ’80 sandy@cliffjump.com
Victoria Bucknall Silsby writes, “Immersed in substance misuse prevention in southwestern Vermont for over fourteen years. Adjusting to life as a widow— slowly and with resistance. Visiting our daughter in Portland, Maine, and our son in Plymouth, New Hampshire, keeps me busy.”
Gabrielle Gerstein Kalis shares, “Still living my best life in Asheville, North Carolina. We have regular bear sightings in our neighborhood, which is very exciting for our corgi, Henry. Tom has retired but is always busy. I’m working part-time and looking to retire next spring. My oldest and her husband have moved to Asheville! She will work at a local law firm that represents a lot of our breweries and restaurants (hoping for freebies!), and her husband took a job at a local boarding school—very Westoveresque. My younger girl bought a house (all by herself!) in Fort Worth and will be bringing a new golden retriever to the family this fall. Everyone seems happy and healthy, knock on wood!”
Sarah Knowles Dent writes, “I’m about halfway through my twelfth year here at Dana Hall School. Time certainly has flown—my last daughter graduated in 2021 and is happily ensconced at St. Lawrence University. My eldest works in Boston for an educational tour and travel company and is an official globe trotter, enjoying every minute of it. My middle daughter has been helping us out here at Dana in advancement, and everyone was so excited to have her back on campus that she was scooped up as varsity lacrosse goalie coach and AP exam administrator. She was headed out to Boulder, Colorado, in a few weeks to find her fortune. My husband, Dan, continues his work as a media relations manager writing about exciting innovations and all things science and engineering. Hope everyone is well and will definitely see you in a few short years for our (gasp!) forty-fifth!
1981
Sonja Lindgren ’81 sblindgren@msm.com
Jeanne Anderson Christie writes, “Reside in West Virginia. Have a property management company. Delighted with three grandchildren and our lovely home.”
1982
Lee Hammett Peterson ’82 LHP111@aol.com
First of all, I have to say how great it was to see so many at the reunion in 2022 and spend some quality time catching up. Those who saw the picture in the alumnae magazine know that Mela McDonnell Stewart , Annie Hunter Tingley, Alison Chase Moore, Amy Franklin McCoog, Adela PiersonEguilior, Joanie Wetmore Yahn, and I all attended. Forty years. Where did the time go?
Here’s the news I was able to gather: Adela Pierson-Eguilior reports that she is very busy planning her daughter’s wedding. Karina and Michael were married Oct 14, 2023. She is thirty-five already! Crazy how fast time flies! The hardest part has been to find herself a dress!
Michele Milne Perkins ’82, Kim Avis
and Christina Sieminski
Kim Avis Pateas writes, “All is well with me! I had a dinner party with Christina Sieminski Trammell and Michele Milne Perkins in January 2023. Michele and her husband, Geoff, were down here on a road trip, and Christina drove down from Port St. Lucie with her husband, Tom, to join! So fun to host them!
I turned sixty in May 2023. My husband and I took a river cruise down the Rhine and then spent a week in Switzerland. It was amazing to finally take a trip with my husband, who has never taken a long trip with me like that! Planning our next adventure! I saw Christina a few times recently. I went to her house to celebrate her mom Joy’s ( my second mom) eightyfifth birthday! So fun! She and Tom then came to Orlando to attend a party for me!
I just saw Michele again in New Hampshire. I go up in the summers, and she was up to attend her husband’s high school reunion. Always fun to see them! Definitely going to try to make it to the next big reunion! I was sorry to miss our fortieth. My sister, Jeannie Pearce ’72 was there for her fiftieth. Last photo of us together last month in New Hampshire.
Vanessa Spang adds that she and Weezie Webber Fallon spent time together over the summer in 2023 in Blue Hill, Maine, with her sister and her family, who rented two wonderful rustic cottages right on the water. Pure relaxation!
Weezie and I had our usual summer fun together in Manchester at my parents’ home with her family, my family, my sister’s family, my mother, and my brother’s family. Weezie loves living in Duxbury, Massachusetts, in her beautiful old home with her gorgeous gardens. When she’s
Pataes ’82,
Trammell ’82.
not working on those projects, she’s helping out her dad or knitting up a storm, selling some of her creations at historic Deerfield’s gift shop. Weezie’s daughters are great and halfway through college. Phoebe is majoring in accounting at Endicott, and Bean is a linguistics major at UMass Amherst.
Vanessa also shares, “I’m still in San Francisco painting, catering, and doing some curriculum development contract work for Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA). My oldest son, Benjamin, is about to embark on a fantastic four-month journey as the videographer for a bike tour of Africa starting in Egypt and ending in Cape Town, South Africa. My younger son spent the month of June driving around Belgium and France visiting WWII sites and is now catching up on college work that got sidelined during Covid. My husband and I are contemplating a move back east in the next couple of years to be closer to my mother. I hope all is well with our classmates and their families. I look forward to our next reunion! Hugs to all from us both!”
The news from Mela McDonnell Stewart is that she and her husband recently sold their home in Concord, New Hampshire, and bought a ski Chalet in Mittersill, New Hampshire. When not skiing they are living in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Mela has recently taken a new position at Cornerstone Montessori School in Stratham, New Hampshire.
She is thrilled to be on the coast and in the mountains—living close to Alison Chase Moore and her husband, Charlie—hoping to connect soon. Mela’s oldest son, Max, also lives in Portsmouth; Sam and his Avery live in Charlestown, Massachusetts; and daughter Gabi lives in Medway, Massachusetts. Life is great!
Holly Gyde Costaregni writes, “The Costaregni household is about to go from four to two people again. Our son, Jack, will be a junior at Tulane this year and will spend his spring semester in Madrid. We will all meet him over there in May and spend some time in Spain and then go on to Italy for a couple of weeks. Mark had some health issues this year, so we had to postpone our planned trip for June 2023. Our daughter, Carly, graduated from Portsmouth Abbey in May and will be attending Holy Cross this fall, where she will try out for the women’s golf team—fingers crossed.
Last fall, we had a mini-reunion in Bridgehampton, New York, for the wedding of Wendy Bigio Fryer ’83, including Lisa Tagney Whitney ’83, Natalie Callender Bagley ’83, and Janann Baker ’83. We all attended her spectacular wedding on the beach. As always, it’s like no time has passed when meeting up with Westover friends. We were all Wests, by the way! Just saying—Wests are still the best!
Adela Pierson-Eguilior and I always get together once or twice in Miami every year, and Amy Franklin McCoog usually comes south to say hi to us every year.
Sad to have missed the reunion last year. Wishing all my classmates and family good health and happiness. Stay well!”
As for me, Lee Hammett Peterson, personally, I am still working part-time, taking care of my granddaughter, and enjoying life. My biggest news is that I am installing solar panels on my house.
As the class secretary, I usually close out the column request for a volunteer to assist in my secretarial duties; however, this time I am going to sign off with a request: Please keep updating your contact information. Use Facebook (LLLHP), email, phone, or snail mail. Remind others, who may not be receiving my emails, to do the same.
In closing, I have one final takeaway from collecting class news: Everyone closed their letters with, “Life is good!” Way to go, Class of ’82!
1983
Natalie Callender Bagley ’83 natalie.bagley@hotmail.com
1984
Lucy Lincoln Frost ’84 lucylincolnfrost@gmail.com
For the latest notes submission, members of the Class of 1984 considered the following: Our extraordinary friendships started when we were together at Westover. In what ways are you the same, and in what ways have you changed since then?
Jen Eveland’s reply surely speaks to all our minds: “I don’t feel fifty-seven. Does anybody else find it hard to believe we’re the age that we are?”
Kecia Walker Ford would say that she has “not changed much! Maybe a bit older, a bit wiser,” which was echoed by Lori Kinniburgh Whittaker, who says, “I would say I’m the same, just a little wiser and wider—LOL!” There’s your answer, Jen: We’re just a bit older, a bit wiser, and a bit wider!
Hilary Rice captures the essence of evolution so beautifully. She writes, “When I first arrived at Westover, I was an immature, fakely confident eighteen-year-old with anger issues. I was repeating a junior year, had nothing stable in my life, and wasn’t taking anything seriously. Forty years later, I have a decent sense of structure and security, I’m sober, responsible (relatively), and fairly accepting of who I am. I have gratitude for my life I never imagined then. Honestly, I don't see much resemblance at all.” Hilary, we loved you then, and we love you now!
Catharine Murray shares, “I’m still introspective, and I love good literature. I still love to be goofy, play outdoors, and dance. I have changed my attitude about myself and my life. These days I am feeling entitled to some joy and pleasure. That was a long time coming! And I finally have begun to develop more self-respect than I ever had before. The fruit of all this work is a growing sense of gratitude for my amazing life. That sense of appreciation is also quite new.”
Andrea Combes, like so many of us, feels thankful, too. “My appreciation of and reliance on my female friendships, especially the intense and amazing relationships established during my time at Westover, has not only remained the same but grown. I gained incredible strength, support, and love from my friends, who became my family during my adolescence. To this day, these women are my strongest defenders and supporters. I know without a doubt that should I ever call on any one of them for help, the immediate response would be, ‘I’m on my way, and do I need a shovel?’ However, what has changed over the years is my need to please and accommodate other people’s pain and anger. Learning to recognize when a person is projecting their own ‘stuff’ through cruelty or meanness has been a lifetime lesson. Harder still is figuring out how to set boundaries to protect oneself while also remaining compassionate and loving. I no longer need everyone to like me nor assume that someone else’s
unhappiness is about me (and, therefore, in need of fixing or pleasing).” Amen, Andrea. Amen!
Emily Webber Brown contentedly shares, “I’m so much more clear and comfortable with who I am, warts and all. I sometimes think about the advice I’d give to my younger self, and the first thing I’d say is, ‘You’re fine. Nothing is wrong with you. Relax and enjoy life.’”
Although Hillary Huggins Fehsenfeld submitted her reply with the caveat that it should be edited to be less raw, her full reply captures her beautiful spirit so well. “I think the essence, the foundation, the core of who I was is definitely still here, but at that time it just was undeveloped or uncultivated. Now that I have blossomed into a fabulously fine fifty-seven-yearold woman, it’s not necessarily about how I have changed, but rather what I have learned, so here it goes! Listen more, speak less; wisdom truly is knowledge; it’s perfectly fine to be imperfect; intuition will carry you further than you ever thought imaginable; your heart is more powerful than your mind; beauty is everywhere, stop and look around; karma is so real, so move with caution; live wildly; love passionately; swear less [editor’s note: what?]; laugh hysterically; and know how friggin’ lucky you are to have amazing friends and family.
How have I changed? I have finally learned to accept and like myself. It has taken me over fifty years to say that. My God, I’ve never written that before, and it is odd to see! This lone fact may be sad but most definitely is true. Lumps, bumps, wrinkles, idiosyncrasies, insecurities—the list goes on and on! I’m finally at peace with most of them, and you know what? I am freer now—like a weight has been lifted. Still working on it (you’ll notice I said ‘like myself’ and not ‘love myself’)—a work in progress that hopefully will not take another fifty years!”
Gratefully, Michele Cavallaro Dasse “still question[s] everything, especially authority. I am still scrappy and feisty. I am still lucky enough to call my friends my chosen family. But I hope it puts a smile on your faces to know that I meditate daily, live in gratitude, and experience joy, always with my dogs—and sometimes even with humans (LOL)!” Michele, you always make us smile!
Kirsten Jeppesen ’84 and her husband, Todd, enjoyed spring skiing in Sun Valley in April.
Kirsten Jeppesen shares that she has the “same love of nature and adventure. Different in viewing the world through more experience and less judgment.” Hear, hear, Kirsten!
Ginny Cheston Spencer shares, “Many things about me are the same, but perhaps more are different. I am now— mostly—comfortable in my own skin. While I try to be respectful, I am no longer seeking validation or acceptance at every turn, as the teenage me did, when expressing my thoughts. I also don't feel pressed to look to others to form my opinions. And yet, that said, I credit the years of conversations, banter, and support from my Westover friends, as I have no doubt that those interactions informed many of my opinions—or, at least, have given me the confidence to push ahead with expressing my ideas despite what the reception might be. The other thing that has changed is my ability to listen. Talking has never been a challenge for me (a shocking idea to those who know me), but listening— actually listening not just to what is being said, but also to what is not being said, or in what manner the ideas are being expressed—is something for which I feel very grateful. Perhaps it was just being young or maybe being unsure, but I think when our friendships began, I offered the response that I thought was wanted rather than the one that might provide more solace or support. In learning to listen, I learned to be a better friend. Through the forty-plus years as our friendships have evolved, I find that I have come to know many of my friends far better than I did during the four years at Westover. While I cherish those high school memories, I think that I am far more connected to you all now than I was then, and that is a welcomed and very lucky change.” Beautifully said, Gin!
Anne White Schoenhuber writes, “Deep down, I am truly the same person. However, I used to need to be with my friends, now I choose to be with them (with a special shout out to the Westover ones). I used to love to play paddle tennis, now I prefer pickleball. I used to avoid schoolwork, now I am a teacher. I still can collapse on the floor with the giggles, but now I have to worry I might break my hip.” For sure, getting up off the ground ain’t as easy as it used to be, Pitter!
Alex Hutchinson Kline agrees! “My mind still thinks I am twenty years old, living the life, but my body is telling me something very different! ‘Head, shoulders, knees, and toes, knees and toes’ isn’t quite as easy to sing and dance to as it used to be! But still able to enjoy boating, fishing, and pickleball. Tennis was always my favorite but is too hard on my knees.”
Speaking of the lovely effects of aging, Marj Summit Anzalone hit the nail on the head about one of her biggest changes: “Easy. When I was at Westover, I didn’t need to worry about sneezing!” Ha!
Mary Jo Leatherdale Emfield “still love[s] a good party with girlfriends and being with my friends. Instead of tennis, I now play pickleball.” Yeah, Mary Jo, but can you slather on baby oil and use a reflector to get a tan on a pickleball court?
Mary-Helen Velde Black replied, “You’ll have to ask my friends!” Okay, MH. Your friends said you’re every bit as organized and communicative as you’ve ever been. You still talk about New Trier and Camp Cheley, and your auburn hair is as gorgeous as it was in high school. What’s different about you, maybe, is that you also go by Mary-Hyphen-Helen. Who knew?!
As for me, Lucy Frost , I still have a foul mouth, don’t get ‘caught up in’ (read: worry about) hierarchy, am not quiet, and am all in for whatever I’m doing. And while I don’t think this has changed, I’ve finally leaned into the fact that I’m an introvert. You heard that right: an introvert. All those years of chaos and judgment and panic and anger were, I now realize, the result of never allowing myself to recharge in quietude. Years of FOMO kept me from genuinely being with myself. Peace, for me, only truly comes when I am not trying to keep up or—as many might recall—set the pace. So, put that in your pipe and smoke it!
Lastly, to wrap up this part of our notes, Liz Wahlers Connors says it beautifully: “I continue to feel truly blessed for my Westover friendships, and all these years later, these wonderful women continue to fill my life with love, support, and laughter!”
In terms of general updates, folks offered the following: Catharine Murray shares, “I broke off my engagement of four years. What a liberating decision that was! I moved out of his house and have been traveling and house- and dog-sitting since and haven’t looked back. It’s been wonderful. I am excited about this upcoming year of being a traveling writer while I work on my second memoir and continue to edit and teach writing online. Since my first memoir came out just a few months before lockdowns, I will finally be heading out on my long-overdue book tour this month. Let me know if you would like me to come speak or lead a workshop on writing as a tool for healing in your community. And I’m available to house-sit—worldwide! Sending love to all of you.”
Jen Eveland writes, “I’ve changed careers. During the pandemic, I studied for my certification to teach English as a second language and started working in a language school here in Singapore. It was the best move; I absolutely love my job! As my folks get older, I plan to be traveling back to the States more frequently, so I hope to see more of everybody along the way.”
Andrea Combes shares, “As of the fall of 2023, I will be an official empty nester! After making a slight career shift from school counselor to owning my own therapy private practice, I will now navigate this new chapter of trying to figure out who I am after twenty-five years of having kids in my immediate orbit. It’s both exciting and a little heartbreaking, so if anyone is ever in Rhode Island, please don't hesitate to visit!”
Helen Velde Black ’84 and Marj Summit Anzalone ’84 enjoyed a visit in Deerfield, Massachusetts, in July.
Mary-Helen Velde Black shares, “In November 2022, I started a new role at Harvard in Alumni Affairs and Development as director of clubs and shared interest groups. I lead a team of ten staff working with 260 Harvard alumni organizations around the world. In family news, my son, Luke (twenty-two), earned his black belt in Kempo Karate. I had a nice visit with my Dad and stepmother in Boston in May 2023 and visited my mom in June; they’re all doing well!”
Emily Webber Brown writes, “I’ve been a bit caught off guard by the classic empty nest syndrome. I don’t mind it—both time and money are more available for myself and my goals versus kid-related expenses—but I’m feeling nostalgic and supremely aware of being at the proverbial half-way point. That said, my dad is ninety-two, living independently, and still sharing strong opinions (usually counter to mine) on all topics, so I don’t mean any of this in a macabre way or sense. I guess that I’ve got the luxury of time now and am being reflective. When I’m not pondering life like a stoner, I am working at Wells Fargo with Marj and volunteering at a local barn that provides hippotherapy—a type of physical, occupational, and speech therapy that uses the movement of a horse to help patients with physical and mental disorders. I’m working to become a certified instructor but mostly enjoy being around the horses and people we serve.”
Hillary Huggins Fehsenfeld ’84 enjoying dinner with her sons, Wyatt and Willem.
Hillary Huggins Fehsenfeld writes, “Two seniors: Willem is graduating in spring 2024 from URI with a major in supply chain management and logistics. Wyatt will be graduating from Exeter-West Greenwich High School and headed to college. Alex and I have been married twenty-five years this September, and we both are looking forward to this next stage in life. Our fortieth Westover reunion was in spring! I would love to see everyone a, and we have missed seeing Ranelda, Neaka, Kocka, Pierce, Pris, Debbie, and Beth—just to name a few.”
Andrea Combes ’84 hiking with her kids, Mary August, Berrit, Axel, and Red.
Emily Webber Palmer Brown ’84 getting carried away with her kids, Henry, Annie, Gus, and Abby.
Mary
Kirsten Jeppesen shares, “Great to still be in Vermont. Spending time with my sister and her three beautiful boys, ages six and twins, age four! Enjoying my gardens and adventuring with my husband, Todd—lots of cycling and skiing.”
Amanda Williams Dube ’84 and her brother, Hall, celebrating the wedding of Amanda’s son, Madison.
Lori Kinniburgh Whittaker ’84 enjoying life with her grandsons, Bryce and Ayden.
Lori Kinniburgh Whittaker writes, “Since Covid I have gotten divorced, sold my house of twenty-eight years, retired, and am living and loving life to the fullest. I am blessed to have two grandsons (ages seven and four), so they keep me busy. I’m starting to do a little traveling, just visiting family, etc. Life is good, and I am blessed!”
Marj Summit Anzalone ’84 and her kids—Phoebe, Emily, Drew, and Ryan— celebrating Phoebe’s recent high school graduation.
Marj Summit Anzalone says, “Happy life in San Francisco. Sent the last of four off to college.”
Mary Jo Leatherdale Emfield shares, “My daughter, Kendall, graduated from college and is working at Optum. My twins, Travis and Austin, are at ASU and Boulder. They are fantastic people, and I’m very proud of them. I hope to see you all at our fortieth reunion!”
Alex Hutchinson Kline writes, “We recently sold our home of twenty-eight years in Montgomery County, Maryland, and moved to the Eastern Shore (Easton). We absolutely love it there and enjoy being able to squeeze out a bit more water and boat time. We still go to Martha’s Vineyard every summer from June–August—come visit! Ashton, my eldest son, is living in Charleston and loving it. Tori graduated from Bucknell early and started working for JP Morgan in Baltimore. Drew, my youngest, is a senior at Penn State. Three dogs, three kids, and one awesome hubby!”
Kecia Walker Ford says, “Hoping to see everyone soon!”
Michele Cavallaro Dasse agrees: “Looking forward to seeing all your fabulous faces soon!”
Hilary Rice shares, “Forever onward, and love to you all!”
A sampling of pieces made with beach finds by Lucy Lincoln Frost ’84 (a.k.a. @ beachthriftlove).
As for me, I realized a dream a year ago, and we moved to the Bahamas! My life is incredibly tranquil and full of beach cleans and beach trash art making (yes, really—check me out on Insta at @ beachthriftlove). Jim goes back to Hawai‘i every other month to care for our little farm there and work for the University of Hawai‘i (retirement is a four letter word to him). Kids are great. Life is wonderful because—as they say—it’s better in the Bahamas!
Ginny Cheston Spencer ’84, Mary Helen Velde Black ’84, Liz Wahlers Connors ’84, and Andrea Combes ’84 enjoyed a mini-reunion in Boston last winter.
1985
Heather Lundy Macdonald ’85 hmac3@msn.com
Carolyn Wilson wrote, “Living in Southern California with my husband and two kids, Caitlin (thirteen) and Braedon (twelve). Still working for Disney in the Studio. Let me know if Westover visits Southern California.”
1986
Secretary needed!
Bettie Gurnham Bransfield writes, “Things have been busy for the Bransfields down here in Savannah, Georgia. My oldest, Samuel, goes off to Georgia State in Atlanta in a few days. My other two kids are doing great in high school and in middle school. We are working on adopting our foster son, whom we’ve had since he was six weeks old. So, my gray hair is coming in fast and curly. I am enjoying my job working for Stryker as a remote senior IT project manager while my husband, Jim, continues in the construction industry working on the nice condos down on River Street. The thought is to move back north (possibly Maine) in two years. (Heads up Maine friends!)”
1987
Secretary needed!
Elizabeth Charlston Dolan shares, “Our children are twenty-four and twentyone. One lives in New York City and one in Texas. We spend half the year in Vermont now and have enjoyed connecting with old Westover friends”.
Amy Machson O’Connor ’87 and Jennifer Gold ’87 playing a round of golf. (The jock and the dancer—you can imagine the score.)
Amy Machson O’Connor writes, “Living north of Boston with husband, John, and
two kids. What a shocker to think I’ve been married for twenty-three years and have a kid in college (with Stephanie Maddox’s son, no less!). But didn’t I just graduate a few years ago? Jen Gold just came east for our at-least annual visit. We drove all over Maine feasting on lobster. Chairing our local school board has kept me busy. Grateful we don’t see in Massachusetts the kind of chaos happening with school boards across the country.”
Roxanne Guesnon and her husband, Daniel, live in Canberra, Australia. While youngest son Julian heads off to Sydney University in 2024, they are not yet empty nesters, as Roxanne’s mum moved in last year. In May 2022, the family also welcomed beautiful Hudson Oliver, born to eldest daughter Renee (who attended Westover for sophomore year in 2010–2011) and her partner, David. Last year also brought much joy with the wedding of middle son, Nicolas, to lovely Ali in Sydney just before Christmas 2023. Roxanne is a consultant for software vendor Pega in the roles of senior business architect/decision architect.
Kate Yarhouse writes, “My husband, David, and I just celebrated ten years of living in Montclair, New Jersey. After our earlier frequent moves, we never expected we would be in one place for so long. We both continue to work in nonprofit operations in New York City, and much of our free time is spent planning for and enjoying traveling, as well as appreciating what New York and New Jersey have to offer. I visit Connecticut each month to see my father, who is living in Southbury. In March I saw Jen Wheaton in Florida, which was such a treat after too many years!”
Jennifer Burlington Hague shares, “Doing well in Pomfret, Connecticut. Working as a learning specialist at Rectory School. Husband Hank and I are soon to be empty
nesters, as our daughter, Rebecca, graduates from Pomfret School and heads to Northeastern University, with her freshman year in London. I remain close to roomie Sara Lynn Leavenworth; live vicariously through Cavarly Berwick Garrett ’86’s photos of New York City as she sells its real estate; and love, love my beloved sister-in-law, Megan Mann Burlington ’02.”
1988
Nicole Cintas ’88 neek2know@gmail.com
Neil Patterson King ’88 npking@hotmail.com
A handful of us attended our thirty-fifth reunion last year. What a delight to spend time within the school and even, for some of us, spend our nights in the dorms. Many we missed, and we look forward to planning another round of gathering that is not an official Westover reunion.
Carrie Appelbaum Gray Buchmann ’88 and family.
Carrie Appelbaum Gray Buchmann was sad to miss the reunion last year but thinks of all of us often. She and her husband are exhausted but have never been happier with their lives with two little ones. Their long struggle with fertility had very delightful results, named Summer (three) and Maisie (one). Exploring New York City with them has changed their subway rides from a commute to a super fun train ride! She continues to love working in public relations and volunteers with DOROT and Soldiers’ Angels, aiding homebound elderly and providing support to deployed USA military.
Roxanne Guesnon ’87, P’13 at a family reunion in Canberra in June 2023.
Corrie Heinz ’88.
Corrie Heinz is living full-time on Block Island off the coast of Rhode Island. She continues to run her eco-tour business and also has a part-time job as a land use administrative assistant. Marcus (twentytwo) has graduated from URI, and Katie finished high school. Corrie is always up for visitors, especially in the fall. Feel free to come hike and paddle. We had a fantastic September gathering there a few years ago. It was unforgettable.
Eileen Gharzouzi De Lantzendorffer ’88.
Eileen “Zouz” Gharzouzi de Lantzendorffer is one of many of us who is now empty nesting. She continues to play a role in the family business and is still also life coaching. She is always looking for new adventures. She writes, “So now that my kids are away, Nico a senior at Knox College and Sebas a freshman at LSU, I’ll be starting my own camino at the end of April. I’ll be walking from Oporto in Portugal to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. A 280-kilometer, twenty-day pilgrimage mostly along the coastline and a bit inland as well. I’m looking to live small parentheses in my life, let go of everything, and just be with myself. Who knows, maybe you’ll be reading
about it soon! Let’s plan a get-together in Guatemala! What about February 2025? Come to the beach, drink amazing coffee, climb a volcano, walk cobblestone streets in Antigua, visit Tikal—you name it, we can do it! Miss you all very much and I’m looking forward to our next meeting!”
Stacy Gevry Prall is a gastroenterologist in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. She started horseback riding again after a long hiatus. She states what many of us are feeling, that the kids are growing up too fast. Her oldest, Mason, just turned twenty-two, Ryan is seventeen, and Elise is twelve. Stacy also celebrated twenty-five years of marriage recently.
Claudia Schildkraut Pettit ’88 and Alex. Claudia Schildkraut Pettit is currently a licensed professional counselor working for Michigan Rehabilitation Services, assisting people with disabilities to find employment. She and Alex celebrated their thirtieth anniversary in June with a trip to Spain. They continue to live in Ypsilanti, Michigan. I have always been a fan of their dog Sauternes, who I have viewed from afar through Facebook.
Sloan Tomassetti Stefanik is a kindergarten teacher in East Hartford, Connecticut. She enjoys time with family, friends, and puppies. One son just graduated from college and the other son just started.
Morgan Birtwell Bau’s father, John Rodger Birtwell (1928–2023), passed on February 13. After his passing she changed careers, leaving the world of pediatric speech language pathology after twentytwo years for a less demanding office managerial position with a small nonprofit in New Haven. At the time of writing, her son, Hayden (sixteen), is entering his junior year
of high school. He plays the tenor sax in the marching band and will be finishing up his Eagle Scout project by this time next year. Her stepson, Ethan, is soon to be twentyone and is in his senior year at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, where he will be graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering. Her stepdaughter, Emily (twenty-six), is still in Arlington, Virginia, and enjoys living in the city. She works in the field of statistics with Interos as the senior manager of software engineering. Morgan and her husband, John, have lived in Wallingford, Connecticut, for seventeen years. John continues to exercise his extrovert skill sets as the director of career development for the School of Computing and Engineering at Quinnipiac U. They still go to Cape May every summer and hope to arrange another reunion at the shore sometime.
Three generations: Neil Patterson King ’88, Elise Thayer Patterson ’61, and Thayer Hannah King (who attended Westover from 2018–2019).
Neil Patterson King shares, “We’re still in Arlington, Virginia, and live not far from son David and his new bride, Kate, who recently married. I get to see daughter Thayer Hannah and my mom, both in Dallas, when I make the trip. And it’s about time for our class to have a mini-reunion, right? Hope you girls are doing well!”
Neil Patterson King ’88 with her family at her son David’s wedding in December 2023.
Helen McGrath ’88 with her daughter.
Helen McGrath has a new job teaching reading intervention to bilingual students in middle school. Her daughter just started preschool, and she loved visiting mommy’s school for the reunion.
Nikki Witkin Keldsen is another empty nester in our crew. Toby started at UConn and is living his best life, and she and her husband are, too. Toby benefitted from a more gradual adjustment into college as he took summer classes and lives only twenty minutes from home. Nikki also enjoyed seeing everyone that came to the reunion and missed those who couldn’t make it.
2024 is a huge year for Barbara Rands Valente: two kids graduating high school and she got married May 18! Erin Zyko Hussein will again be her matron of honor at her Asbury Park, New Jersey, beach wedding. In January 2023, Barbara moved into her dream home in New Jersey with her fiancé, Marg Ventura. The two love attending concerts and traveling, starting and ending the year with concert trips to Las Vegas. For their honeymoon, they traveled to Nashville and Wildwood, New Jersey, for country concerts and then are planning a bucket list trip to Australia. Barbara had a great time at her thirty-fifth reunion in 2023 and hopes for a Class of 1988 gettogether before her fortieth.
Tilda Rose Cantwell is still living in Northampton, Massachusetts, with her spouse, Angela, and her two boys, Olin (sixteen) and Haical (thirteen). She is in her sixth year as chaplain and director of religious and spiritual life at Smith College. She says: “Two of the highlights of not only my year, but of many years— and I have a good life, that’s just to emphasize how great it was—was being at my thirty-fifth reunion, staying with Nicole Cintas in her old room on junior corridor overlooking the quad, right
across the hall from Morgan Birtwell Bau Nikki Wittkin Keldson, and Neil Patterson King. It was so fantastic to spend time with them and with Helen McGrath and her deliciously adorable two-year-old daughter, Annabel, and Barbara Rands Valente and Erin Zyko Hussein. We missed so many of our classmates.”
Another highlight for Tilda was that she and I [Nicole] and another friend went with our teenage kids to see two Dead and Company (the reconfigured Grateful Dead) shows in Saratoga Springs, New York.
A big shout out to Marla Stelk as well, thanks to Tilda’s update: Marla has been the executive director of the National Association of Wetland Managers for the last ten years. Marla was just interviewed by Ari Shapiro on NPR’s “All Things Considered” about the loss of wetlands protection because of recent Supreme Court rulings. It is both a sobering and super informative interview. We are so impressed by our humble Marla.
The other day I, Nicole Cintas, asked my son, Charlie, now fourteen, if he thought birds really got upset when their young birds finally left the nest. He teased me that, of course, I had to think about the biology behind the expression and added that other animals, like foxes, have nests. It turns out the term “empty nester” was coined in 1914, but it became popular in the 1970s. I was tongue-incheek when I asked my son, but he is very literal, and I will miss him terribly when he learns to fly on his own. Emma, now sixteen, is an ace at travel with Metro and buses in the greater D.C. area and is far more independent than most kids her age. She is basically flying. This year will be my twentieth year as a biology professor in northern Virginia; I am still highly entertained by my students. A few years ago, Zouz inspired me with her talk about achieving certain goals by fifty. I decided to start at fifty by considering adventures that seemed too far in the clouds. Last summer I went on a twoand-a-half--week mycological foray on the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal. We went past the clouds when we hit 18,000 feet. Keep realizing those dreams!
1989
Secretary needed!
Liz Casey writes, “I am in my sixteenth year working in development for the Lawrenceville School and love being a part of a boarding school community. I think of my Westover days often! My daughter is a junior at Boston College, and my son is a senior and will be off to college next fall. I stay in regular touch with Jane Banta Fisher and Samantha Conklin Moro and with many other classmates on Facebook. If you’re ever in the Lawrenceville/Princeton area, please email me at lizcasey89@gmail.com. Go Overs!”
Shyla Packwood Middleton shares, “I always said I wanted to do something different after ten years, so I made a big change as I moved out of my beloved fourth-grade classroom to take on a Title I reading interventionist position last fall. This involves managing a small staff as well as aggregating data, meetings, and some work (hopefully) with students who need serious intervention, one-on-one. Working in a Title I district comes with so many challenges, and this is the first time we’ve seen this much effort toward this kind of work—and with it, all of the pressure to succeed! John and I just celebrated our second anniversary, and we often spend time with our two grandchildren. Wishing everyone all the best!”
Andrea Lawlor writes, “I’m living in Northampton, Massachusetts, with my partner and martial arts-, math-, Star Wars-obsessed ten-year-old. I teach creative writing at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley and recently got tenure. I occasionally run into Matilda Cantwell ’88 in town!”
Jennifer Corzine-Pisani ’88.
Wheaton Bullock Mahoney shares, “It has been a busy year with my photography: one solo show (put together by none other than Michael Gallagher), two magazine covers, two features, and three cooperative exhibitions. Excited to see what the rest of 2024 has in store!”
Dayna Kaltman writes, “I am currently living in Reno, Nevada, with my mom. Life is short, so remember to smell the roses and appreciate each day! Hard to believe it’s been thirty-five years since we left Westover—hope everyone is doing well!”
1990
Marra Francis Clifton ’90 marrafrancis1234@yahoo.com
Greetings from the Class of 1990. Despite the fact that we did not win our group Powerball for a billion dollars, this year has still been one of many milestones for our classmates: fiftieth birthdays, admirable wedding anniversaries, kids graduating from college, kids starting college, kids starting high school, kids starting middle school, and even kids just starting school.
Shonda Murray-Link ’90 and Kara Ganley ’90.
Shonda Murray-Link has been keeping up with old classmates as well as former Westover teachers and staff. She was able to spend time again with Yesenia Huerta Lara, Kara Ganley, and Jillian Evans-Beauchamp Franciscovich. She also saw Alice Halloran, Tom Hungerford, and Mrs. Rothman, and will be getting a visit from Dale Thorton. She continues to work and spends time on the ranch with her mom, two adult daughters, Bryel and Brooke, and husband, Russ. Shonda is always open to visitors to Montana, and I am sure she would be willing to take any of us for a ride in the giant, heavy machinery she works.
Shonda Murray-Link ’90 and Mrs. Rothman.
Jillian Evans-Beauchamp Franciscovich and Dan continue to travel the world with their kids. They celebrated their twentyfifth wedding anniversary recently in Grand Cayman, and we have all agreed that neither of them looks a day over their wedding day! Their son, Ethan, continues to do great and is a junior at UVM; their daughter, Aisy, received a full scholarship to Washington and Lee University; and their other daughter, Winn, has started tenth grade. Jillian still teaches fifth grade, and she spent some time this past year with “the two Jens” – Jennifer Brent and Jennifer Baron Brandt
Jennifer Brent bought her house and officially moved back to Connecticut! Her daughter, Josie Andreoli ’25, is entering her senior year at Westover. She’s a dancer, was second head of Overs, and in the midst of learning to drive. She’s now a day student, and Jenn loves having her home along with their new puppy, Honey, a sweet boxer mix. Her other daughter, Amelia, just made the trek from Texas to Hyde Park, New York, to begin her freshman year at the Culinary Institute. She’s studying baking and pastry as well as business management, and I am thrilled for her as she enjoys some newfound
independence. Jennifer continues her role as Associate Manager of digital content at BSN SPORTS, working remotely, which is the perfect situation for this homebody. She and Jillian attended and presented at Westover’s Founders Award Celebration honoring Mr. Havery.
Jillian Evan-Beauchamp Franciscovich ’90, Mr. Havery, and Jennifer Baron Brandt ’90.
Jennifer Baron Brandt and her husband were on their way to Greece for several weeks at the time this is being written. She is dividing time between Brooklyn and the Catskills with her husband. Her son, Parker, is finishing up at Northeastern University as a computer science and marketing major, and her other son, Ben, is at University of Southern California and has started a production company. It was a fun year of travel to Spain, France, Greece, and Westover reunions—with Tracy James, Jillian Evans-Beauchamp Franciscovich, Jen Brent, Liz Tortorella Atlan ’89, Lubna Abu-Osba ’89, and Mia Leahy Miller ’89
Jillian Evan-Beauchamp Frenciscovish ’90 and Jennifer Baron Brandt ’90.
Jennifer Geoghan and her husband, Rob, celebrated their twenty-sixth wedding anniversary recently and are back to a full house in Princeton (after brief enjoyment of empty nesting). She is still working at ETS in technology. Her daughters are doing great: Fiona (twenty-four) is in her third year of law school, commuting daily to Rutgers in Newark. Lola Finnegan ’18 (twenty-two,)
Marra Francis Clifton ’90 and Jennifer Brent ’90, P’25.
just finished a post-bacc premedical program at Scripps in Claremont, California, and is now home studying for her MCAT. She extends an open invite to anyone headed to Princeton for a college tour—they are walking distance from campus and there always seems to be a party happening at her house!
Jennifer Geoghan ’90 and Avery Francis (daughter of Marra Francis-Clifton ’90).
On a random night, while she was in New Orleans, I got a text from her saying that she was sitting at a restaurant and convinced she was seeing my daughter, Avery, at a nearby table. A few moments later, I got a photo of the two of them— made my heart so happy!
Erika Watkins ’90 and family.
Erika Watkins has been nothing short of a warrior! She has been an inspiration to all of us and has reminded us of the strength of the Westover bond that we still share today—there is nothing better than “sisterhood.” Despite her busy year, she and Jennifer Geoghan were able to spend some time together; she took a welldeserved girl’s trip to California with her mom; and her twins, Charlie and George, started sixth grade this fall and are the most adorable kids.
Patty Brown Lea is still living in Chicago. Her high school freshman, Alex, and kindergartner, Charlotte, keep her very busy. This past summer, they took a fun family trip to Quebec and Montréal and visited with family back East.
Introducing the newest doctor in our class: Dr. Sarah Jones Garcia! Sarah completed a PhD in mental health in the medical school at Imperial College London. She is celebrating her twentyfourth year in London and is still waiting for a classmate to visit (hint hint). She took a wonderful family trip to Costa Rica with Jennifer Jones ’60 and Debby Jones ’88 to celebrate mom’s eightieth.
Anecdotally, I can tell you that the following classmates are alive, well, and living their best lives: Tracey James, Mary Arnold Kennedy, Tammie Silva, Johnna MacArthur, Alice Roche, Eliza Wolcott Brown, Diana Jones Greenberg, Fusy Fabrega Cardoze, and Marlene Cardoza de Mendoza
I had the absolute joy and pleasure of spending time, albeit too short, with Carmen Valls in Madrid. She graciously took a few days out of her busy life as an attorney and a mom to come see me and meet my daughter, Britton (update on that below). Another inspirationally strong woman, Carmen is as elegant and fabulous as ever. Her two sons, Vicente and Santos, are both in college in London—hope you are still reading, Jonsey—and her daughter, Carmen, is finishing high school in Alicante. Despite being thirty-plus years beyond our Westover days, seeing our Westover sisters instantly transports us back to being sixteen again.
As for me, my biggest news is becoming a grandmother. Our son and his wife had a baby girl, Solei. Our girls are doing great—Maddie graduated from LSU and is getting her MBA there now; Sydney is getting her master’s at the Bush School of Government and Public Policy through Texas A&M in D.C.; Avery is at Tulane majoring in chemical engineering and leaning toward medical school; Britton has decided to leave the States and attend college at SLU–Madrid (I am grateful that she has Carmen as a home base abroad); Emerson is a senior in high school and not sure where she will end up. I am loving life fully into my second year working as a consultant in the biotech world. Bryan has made the same professional move, which gives us more time to spend at the lake with family and friends. As always, we welcome any visitors to Texas!
Jennifer Geoghan ’90 and Erika Watkins ’90.
Sarah Garcia Jones ’90 and family.
Eliza Wolcott Brown ’90 and Diana Jones Greenberg ’90.
Carmen Valls ’90 and Marra Francis Clifton ’90.
Secretary needed!
Pia Guido Crary ’91, P’21 and Robert Crary were married on May 6, 2023. Pia Guido Crary writes, “Robert Crary and I were married on May 6, 2023.”
Caitlyn Loring Thomas shares that at the time of writing, “Our family is looking forward to attending my daughter Alayna’s graduation from Cornell University this spring, and we are happy she will be moving back to Massachusetts and working in Boston at PricewaterhouseCoopers. We are looking forward to seeing more of Alayna and have been seeing much of Emma, as she is in college near us at Tufts, only thirty-five minutes away. She also waitresses and is painting a restaurant mural right in Beverly, so she is home a lot. And, of course, I’ve got fifth grader Adam still home. I am loving being a boy mom! He keeps me busy with ping-pong, chess, and piano concerts. And Greg and I will be celebrating our thirtieth anniversary this June! We are hoping to fit in a special trip with just the two of us when Adam is at camp. Not sure where to travel yet—so I’ve got to start planning!
Elizabeth Kostojohn writes, “My family had a nice February break at Whistler in British Columbia. My sixteen-yearold son had been looking forward to this trip for months. It was fun for us to ski and snowboard somewhere that actually has some winter weather, unlike Massachusetts. We had a great time, but I did kind of miss a vacation that involves a fruity drink and napping on a hammock somewhere warm.”
1992
Amanda Darrach ’92 akd2137@columbia.edu Jessica Gray ’92 jessicahgray@gmail.com
Jennifer Haddad Mosher lives with her husband, Father Joshua S. Mosher, who is the priest at St. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Meriden, Connecticut. They have three grown boys in college and also take care of and live with Jenny’s mother, Anne Haddad, whose grandmother, numerous cousins, and other family members attended Westover.
1993
Secretary needed!
Wendy Leavenworth Halpert shares, “This past year has been filled with activities for our boys, including our oldest, Alex, attending his freshman year at Canterbury School, Sam completing seventh grade, and Jacob completing second grade in Watertown, Connecticut. Sports kept us busy throughout the year, with Alex playing varsity soccer and varsity golf at Canterbury and Jacob and Sam on travel and premier soccer teams and basketball teams. How fun it is to watch prep school sports and the camaraderie they all have with each other on and off the field. The days brought back many memories of soccer at Westover with Keira McGrath Haley and Paige MacDonald Haley! I managed to catch up with a few Westover graduates throughout the year, including Christine D’Angelo, Heather Sherman Chirumbolo, and also saw Marisa Biello Shaker ’92 often at the gym. Hope everyone is doing well, and I was sad to miss the gathering for reunion weekend.”
Macaire Carroll-Gavula writes, “I had so much fun reconnecting with other ’93 friends at our thirtieth reunion in June 2023. I stayed on corridor with my daughter, Aoife Carroll-Gavula ’22 . It had been too long since I managed to attend a reunion and was especially glad for the support of Westover women, as I was dealing with a new breast cancer diagnosis at that time. I am happy to report that my treatment went well, and I am cancer-free. Hope to see Westover friends again before the next reunion!
1994
Johanna Catherine Cox ’94 johannacatherinecox@gmail.com
Madeline Cantwell Miller writes that she has stepped away from full-time work, finding the daily grind of three kids and two full-time working parents was more than her family could manage happily. She is working as the very part-time director of a small community arts organization, doing a little bit of consulting, and spending lots of time with her kids (stepson Owen is starting sixth grade, Dorothy is in second grade, and Fred is in kindergarten). Her husband, Will, is still teaching and is a fellow in the national Rural Schools Collaborative. Madeline is finding time to take a couple of art classes, which she hasn’t done since Westover! She hopes to see lots of you at the reunion.
Erin Sadler Wantoch is still living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and teaching fulltime. She is a PhD student at Marquette University in the field of education policy. Erin’s daughter, Anna, is a sophomore in high school and she writes that all is well on their block!
Sarita Bhandarkar ’94 and Kevin Klein at their wedding.
Sarita Bhandarkar ’94 and Kevin Klein with their wedding party.
Sarita Bhandarkar has exciting news! In August she married Kevin Klein in a small outdoor riverfront ceremony in the Hudson Valley. She writes that she brought
him to Westover to see the place that helped shape the woman that she is today. She hasn’t introduced him to Bruce Coffin but looks forward to doing that soon! (And to telling Bruce that she knew Kevin was the one when he recited the prologue to The Canterbury Tales.) Two days after the wedding, Sarita started a new job as a trust officer at Orange Bank & Trust Co., a regional bank in the Hudson Valley.
Ali Mayhew ’94, her daughter, Piper, and Victoria Campbell ’94’s darling Coco!
Victoria Campbell and her daughter, Coco, are fully planted on Martha’s Vineyard with her folks. She is teaching middle school English and world history at an island public school. Quite a change from her Bronx teaching years, but all good. Some of Tori’s short films and a feature documentary, DIMKA, were screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival and the School of Visual Arts film lecture series. She is still trying to carve out creative time to film and edit her work amidst teaching, caretaking folks, and Coco, who is three! They enjoyed a visit from Ali Mayhew ’93 and her daughter, Piper, this summer! Coco is smitten with Piper.
Tricia Carlson ’94, Jennifer Kelly ’94, and Allison Carasone.
Tricia Carlson and her daughter visited Jennifer Kelly (Allison’s godmother) in Ireland. She writes they had a great time, and it was wonderful to spend time with Jen, her husband, Fergus, and her two boys.
Liz Hansburh Waisanen ’94 on the front page of her local paper.
Liz Hansburg Waisanen is still alive and well in California, running an affordable housing advocacy nonprofit that she cofounded in 2017. Her work got her on the front page of the local paper as one of the most influential people in 2022. Liz’s daughter is sixteen, which is hard to believe.
Stacy Tattar writes that the summer went by way too fast (as always). She met Polly, the new Head, and is totally in love, and she is really looking forward to our thirtieth! She said she, Norm, Pearl, Sterling, and Toshi are doing really well!
Stephen Quackenbush, Katherine CoxLittrell, Liam Cox-Littrell, and Zowie (Johanna) Cox ’94 while on vacation on Isla Holbox in Mexico this summer.
I, Zowie Johanna Cox , am finishing up my last semester of an MBA program and recently completed a graduate certificate in business analytics from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. My family and I moved to a home on a lake where I can watch the sunrise as I make my coffee and we can paddleboard and swim each night in the right seasons. My daughter has moved down the street as a freshman at Mizzou, and my son is a junior. Shockingly, we are very close to an empty nest (my stepsons have both moved out and have adult lives now)! I can’t wait to see everyone at reunion and have plenty of room if you find yourself visiting the Midwest!
1995
Ledlie Mosh Pastor ’95 ledlie.mosch@gmail.com
1996
Lauren Collins Cline ’96 lauren6997@yahoo.com
Karen Bresson ’96 Klbresson@yahoo.com
Jennifer Demchuk is a veterinarian working at the Humane Society of North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Palm trees and puppies? How could it be better?
Leonora Johanna Passari, born February 2, 2024, to Katia Allexi Passari ’96.
Katia Allexi Passari and her husband, Rocco, welcomed “our miracle baby, Leonora Johanna,” in February, and she is keeping them very busy! Katia is looking forward to getting back on her horse and riding again.
Nikiruka Emeagwali is a pulmonologist and ICU physician working in rural Vermont and New York City. [Editor’s note—she was a rock star at the center of the pandemic.]
Martha Woods Yancey is an attorney practicing federal appellate litigation, fighting to get benefits denied to disabled people. She spends her free time keeping up with her nine- and thirteen-yearold boys and their sports, as well as the family’s three dogs.
Kelly Agnew Medvigy left the classroom and is now the assistant principal at the school where she’s been for twenty years. She and Brian still live just outside of Baltimore with their sons, thirteen and sixteen.
Ann Clark Prifits is “feeling officially ancient” having attended the graduation of her stepdaughter, Nia Gilmore ’23, last year. She and Jon zoom around after their eleven-year-old son, Harlan, and dog,
Bruce, [Named after Mr. Coffin?] She works as an art advisor and art business strategist and relocated back to Seattle in June after two years in Des Moines, Iowa.
Hannah Lee Hackathorn left New York City after twenty years and now leads a studio for an architectural company called Gensler, living in Scottsdale, Arizona, with her husband, Brian, and eleven-year-old daughter, Alexa. She keeps them busy with equestrian competitions.
Vanessa Serotta does herbalism and grief work, based in western Massachusetts.
Karen Bresson, cosecretary, is back in Connecticut, where she owns a moving company, Marie’s Movers. They do a lot of work helping nonprofits, taking donations, and setting up housing for refugees and survivors of domestic violence.
As for me, Lauren Collins Cline, we still live in New Hampshire, where I recently joined a strategic communications firm as a VP and still hustle Slightly Crooked Pies on the side. The older boys somehow grew up (nineteen and twenty-one), and Drew, Sebastian (eleven), and I are looking forward to a trip this summer to visit Katie Collins Simon ’98 in England, where she lives with her husband and two boys.
1997
Elise Desjardins Stanford ’97 edesjar@gmail.com
Katie Marages Schank ’97 katieschank@gmail.com
1998
Jennifer Galluzzo ’98 jenngalluzzo153@gmail.com
Allyson Doherty writes, “My apologies for not attending our recent reunion. It looked like a beautiful time. I would have loved to catch up with everyone! For the last five years, I have been the proud principal of Kailua Elementary School on the island of O’ahu. This summer, I started a doctorate in education program through the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Both work and school keep me quite busy. However, I try to find time to enjoy the island by hiking. On increasingly rare occasions, I still dance in shows. If you are ever on the island, please let me know. It was wonderful to catch up with Rebecca Fabas a few months ago in Kailua. With much aloha, Allyson Doherty.”
Heather Burke is living in California with her nine-year-old son, Jaxon; is a partner in the antitrust group at White & Case; and is the head of the firm’s Silicon Valley office. But the most exciting part of Heather’s year was meeting Miss Romy Galluzzo, the sweet baby girl of Jennifer Galluzzo! Heather can’t wait to see the amazing woman she will become with the best mama ever.
1999
Brooke Whiteley Weise ’99 brooke.weise99@gmail.com
Jessica Gray ’99 athena4715@gmail.com
2000
Susan Broomhead Taylor ’00 sbroomhead@gmail.com
Nikki Sieller Warnek ’00 nicole.sieller@gmail.com
Hello Class of 2000! I hope everyone had a great 2023 and is having an even better 2024. Here’s the latest news from a few of us.
Back row: Nikki Sieller Warnek ’00 and Sarah Schipul Swift’00 with their children. (l-r) Back row: Nikki, Carver Warnek, Sarah. Front row: June Swift, Sage Warnek, Cleo Swift.
Nikki Sieller Warnek shares, “It’s been a big year for the Warnek family and our CrossFit gym, Iron Cross Athletics. We expanded, hired new coaches, and our teen athlete qualified to compete at the CrossFit Games for the second year in a row! She had a great performance and placed fourth in the world for teen girls ages sixteen and seventeen. (Reese Littlewood, for those interested!) Outside of the gym, I’m coming up on twenty years working for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I recently switched back to an inspector position, which means a bit more travel, visiting power plants from Maryland up to New Hampshire. On the
home front, our kiddos are growing fast: Carver’s ten, and Sage is eight. They’re as different as can be, one an introvert who loves to read and play in creeks, the other loves to be surrounded by people at all times and never stops moving. Luckily, one thing we all agree on is a love of the outdoors, so that’s where you’ll find us in our ‘free’ time, hiking or biking the many trails in southeast Pennsylvania, and of course, visiting the Swift family (Sarah Schipul Swift) whenever we can! X’s and O’s to the Class of 2000; I hope you all had a banner year in 2023 and are making plans to travel back to Middlebury in 2025.
Elizabeth Fitzgerald writes, “After living in Florida for more than twenty years, I moved with my family to Wake Forest, North Carolina, in February 2023. I have been staying at home with my son, Elliott, since he was born in March 2022. Elliott was born with Down syndrome and congenital heart defects. In 2022 Elliott had two successful heart surgeries, and I’m so happy to report that he is doing great. The past year has included challenges I never thought I’d face, but I wouldn’t change a thing. Having Elliott in our lives has given us new perspectives on what’s important in life and a better appreciation for everyone’s differences and strengths. Since moving to North Carolina, we’ve gotten involved with Gigi’s Playhouse Raleigh and the North Carolina Down Syndrome Alliance, where we have met a lot of wonderful people. I hope everyone is doing well!”
Tina Shields Fink and family took a trip to visit Rachel Clement and her family. Tina said they had a great time mountain biking, eating, swimming, and running!
Tina Shields Fink ’00 and Rachel Clement ’00.
Jordyn Harper Taylor, born February 23, 3023. Daughter of Susan Broomhead Taylor ’00.
There were a lot of big changes for the Taylor family this year. My [Susan Broomhead Taylor] son, Phillip (twenty), graduated this summer with his degree in electrical mechanical technology and has just started his first “big boy” job— as we like to call it—as a maintenance technician at Great Lakes Cheese Company. As I sit writing this update, he is moving out of our home to live on his own! He’s not sure about having to be a real adult, but we are all excited for him and this new adventure.
My daughter, Larissa (nineteen), has just begun her sophomore year at Texas Tech and has also moved into her first apartment. So much adulting happening all around! More exciting news on the Larissa front—she has asked me to adopt her, so if all goes well, by the time you read this, we’ll officially be motherdaughter.
As for myself, I completed the first semester of my physician assistant master’s program in fall 2022 but had to take a leave of absence for the best reason ever. We were surprised in summer 2022 with the news that we were having a baby! For those who don’t know the ins and outs of my reproductive journey, this was extremely unexpected but amazingly welcome news. Our daughter, Jordyn Harper Taylor, was born February 23, 2023. My amazing husband, Richard, who retired in January after twenty years in the U.S. Air Force, started working again so that I could be a stay-at-home mom for the majority of Jordyn’s first year. I’m spending my time enjoying my sweet girl and refreshing
my learning from fall 2022 so that I’m prepared to return to school full-time this coming spring 2024 semester.
I hope everyone is well and can’t wait to see you all in 2025!
2001
Courtney Yadouga McDonnell ’01 cmyadouga@gmail.com
Rachel Stock Lesher ’01 lesherfive@gmail.com
Dena Simmons is thriving since leaving her faculty role at Yale University. She is in her third year as founder of LiberatED, an organization that centers radical love, healing, and justice in education so that all children can live, learn, and thrive in the comfort of their own skin. Along with running LiberatED, she is a scholarin-residence at the Institute for Racial Justice at Loyola University of Chicago. She continues to speak nationally about creating communities of belonging and liberation. She recently received a fellowship for a writing residency at Baldwin for the Arts, founded by writer Jacqueline Woodson, and is finishing up her term as a Spring Point Partners learner-in-residence to work on her book project. She remains in touch with Marisa Montanari ’02, Alex Thayer Seeber, and Rebecca Paolino Holshouser, who are all doing well.
This year, Caroline Rodgers Swetenburg embraced forty, wore a leotard to Taylor Swift, and switched to a center part because (apparently) side parts are for old people. Caroline still lives in Athens, Georgia, with her husband, Raymond, and
her two boys, Jack (seven) and Lee (ten). In addition to a long-standing career as an artist specializing in family portraits, she also started a new e-commerce business, Stadium Shoppe & Co.
Jenny Rodgers is thrilled to report that she is still thriving in Birmingham, Alabama, with her four unusually attractive cats. She recently ordered some great lamps for her living room. After multiple production delays, she received a full refund for her order and purchased replacement lamps. In an exciting twist, the original lamps showed up a couple of days later, and the company graciously let her keep them for free. 2023 was Jenny’s year.
Elizabeth Salzberger Casaus ’01 and her partner.
Elizabeth Salzberger Casaus writes, “My partner, Autumn, and I left Brooklyn and moved to Durham, North Carolina, with our pitbull, Chowder, and Maine Coon cat, Tater. I’m the director of food service for Counter Culture Coffee and love being so close to HQ. I met up with Anne-Nicole Hanus ’02 for coffee in Connecticut and reconnected with Courtney Yadouga last May. Lovely to be back in touch with those amazing folks!”
Katie Perkins Marko shares, “I am still living in Charleston with my husband and three daughters. We are nearing the end of a two-year historic renovation to our new (but very old 1731) home and look forward to hosting Westover friends soon!”
Caroline Rodgers ’01.
From left: Sarah Bill Murray ’01, Margot Murray, Theodore Lesher, Eleanor Lesher, Rachel Lesher ’01, Mary DeStefano ’01, Lena Peters, Evan Peters, and Phelps Murray.
2002
Ashley Kalaus Mariano ’02 akalaus@gmail.com
Greta Atchinson ’02 greta.atchinson@gmail.com
Aimee Gough ’02 aimee.gough@gmail.com
Caitlin Reynolds Marian ’02 caitlin.reynolds@gmail.com
Kelly O’Connor Polinski lives in Upton, Massachusetts, with her husband, Matthew, and her two children, Krista (five) and Evan (three). Kelly is using her master’s in public health as a national public health consultant for a major insurance broker. Life is busy but good!
2003
Karimah Gottschalck ’03 meetkarimah@gmail.com
Danielle Stewart Knope ’03 Danielle.s.knope@gmail.com
The Class of 2003 had our twentieth reunion and it did not disappoint! Also known as the “overachiever” class, it’s no surprise we were the largest represented class year in attendance. We had so much fun and are so thankful to the Alumnae Office for putting together such a thoughtful weekend. From sleeping in the dorms again to seeing Mrs. Rothman teach the younger classes how to line up for Chapel, our reunion brought many nostalgic laughs and tears of which we’re still fondly thinking.
Also, this past summer, Ellie Magin got married, and Julia Isenberg and Sara Chaudhri Martucci were in attendance; many of us got the pleasure of meeting her spouse at the reunion.
Danielle “Nelly” Stewart Knope reports having an amazing time connecting with classmates at the reunion. She still lives in Orlando, Florida, with her husband, Zach, daughter, Olivia (six), and son, Teddy (two) while working in finance for Darden Restaurants.
After twenty years of living in New York City, I, Karimah Gottschalck, moved to Los Angeles the weekend after the reunion (which was a perfect sendoff!). I love my new city for its nature and healthful lifestyle, although I am currently on vacation in Upstate New York with Elizabeth Kveton; we have been wearing our matching Westover robes (thanks again, Alumnae Office!) around the cabin.
2004
Crystal Velez ’04 velezcr860@gmail.com
Heather Pytel ’04 hpytel@snet.net
Sarah Cave happily moved back to Bombay last year and took a new job teaching third and fourth grade at an international school in Bombay. She is also conducting musical sound healing and composing. Her most inspired project is writing her first one-person show, featuring original music and the healing journey of recollecting parts of herself in order to find belonging. It will explore themes of her Korean ancestors, adoption, musical fulfillment, inner rhythm, and courage. She is terrified and totally excited, especially after reconnecting more deeply to her Korean roots this summer and conducting sound healings for adoptees from around the world. Once she hones the show, she would love to share it with the Westover community!
Eileen Lonegan and her husband had their first baby on July 14, 2023, a baby girl named Breelyn.
Elizabeth “Sunny” Alper recently completed her second term on the board of directors for the Writers Guild of America West. She was in leadership during the five-month writers’ strike for better pay and working conditions in Hollywood. Post-strike, she worked as a writer and supervising producer on the upcoming Amazon series Ballard, a spinoff of the Amazon series Bosch. She is currently developing a TV pilot for AMC.
Dr. Jin Lee is the founder and CEO of IMIDeology, a virtual clinic for patients living with chronic inflammation and autoimmune conditions, where eighty percent of patients are women. She’s working with her sister, Rona Lee ’06
2005
Christianne Dawis ’05 crizzy.dawis@gmail.com
Jennifer Hart ’05 jenniferhart87@gmail.com
Naomi and Arthur, little ones of Akyssa Siefert Jarvi ’05.
Alyssa Siefert Jarvi is living in Higganum, Connecticut, a rural spot near Middletown that she’d never heard of until they bought a house there, with two little ones at this point (Naomi, age three-and-a-half, and Arthur, age one-and-a-half). Her husband, Donald, has a burgeoning woodworking business (jrv-designs.com) and is expanding into residential engineering, and she is working for a healthcare investment firm while moonlighting on a long list of soul-filling writing and teaching projects.
Abby Calhoun Sherman is living in Seattle with her husband, Sam, and their toddler daughter, Bixie (Beatrix). Bixie joined them in late February 2022 and has been an absolute bundle of fun (and a little chaos) ever since. Abby works as a fulltime copywriter, writing campaigns for an online business coach and mentor. The magnetic force of grandchildren pulled her parents to move to Seattle in May 2022, and it’s been a blast having everyone together on this side of the country.
Claire Fetherstonhaugh now lives in Dublin, Ireland, with her husband, Felim, and daughter, Niamh (born February 2023). When not on maternity leave, she works for LinkedIn. She’d love to see anyone who is coming to Ireland and is always happy to
provide tips on using LinkedIn or what to see on the Emerald Isle.
Kimberly Kruge now lives in Mexico City and is founding a free-to-use artist residency space called Casa Comala (casacomala.mx) in the mountains of Jalisco. She recently published her second full-length collection of poetry, There’s Something They’re Not Telling Us, with Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Jessica Smith Nadeau is living in Dallas, Texas. She has a toddler and is excited to welcome her second kiddo soon.
Jennifer Hart ’05 and Lisa DonDiego ’07 in Switzerland.
Jennifer Hart has spent the last two years living in Zurich, Switzerland. She’s enjoying her work at a female-founded Swedish startup called imagi, which creates inclusive coding education tools that are designed to increase engagement amongst girls and help close the gender gap in tech. She was recently delighted to have a visit from a fellow Westover gal, Lisa DonDiego ’07, and she’d welcome others!
Murphi Cook went back to grad school to get her Master’s in Library and Information Science at the University of South Carolina. The university recently hired her to run their literacy outreach program, Cocky’s Reading Express, which travels across the state to provide storytime programming and free giveaway books to prek–second grade students in Title I schools. She’s also a faculty member there, so she gets to share her zest for children’s books with college students—and hopefully get them energized to continue doing service work after graduation.
2006
Melissa Arsenie ’06 melarsenie@gmail.com
Alisa Forney ’06 forney.alis@gmail.com
Melissa Arsenie and her husband, Jon, purchased their first house together in June 2022 and have been spending every spare moment (and dollar) working on it. They were married in June 2024 in Salem, Massachusetts. Melissa continues to work as a meeting and event planner and now works for BioNTech US planning U.S.based gatherings for the company.
Mackenzie Buchanan Callahan ’06 with her husband, Peter, and their son, Leander James Callahan, born on April 21, 2023.
Mackenzie Buchanan Callahan reports, “I work as the digital library manager at Choate Rosemary Hall and am currently enrolled in a Master’s in Library and Information Science degree from University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. I am also excited to share that my husband, Peter, and I welcomed our second baby, Leander James Callahan, to our family on April 21, 2023. His big sister, Clare, was over the moon!”
Alisa Forney continues to work at Bain & Company, now leading the internal data and analytics team. Alisa is fortunate to see fellow classmates throughout the year. Just recently, she got together at Meg North’s house in New Hampshire with Melissa Nalband Nesbitt, Melissa Arsenie, Megan O’Keefe, and Sarah Milnor. She and her significant other, Dan, are excited to begin their house hunt in Chicago.
Lauren Metz and her husband, Wes, currently live in Denver, Colorado. They married in 2020 and now have a two-yearold golden retriever, Eddie. He is the real love of her life! Lauren is still at Platte River Equity, where she was recently promoted to vice president of business development. Outside of work, they’ve been enjoying the summer, spending time with close friends and family, and trying to get enough good sleep!
Sarah Milnor continues to live in Salem, Massachusetts, where she works as a therapist. She opened her own private practice in February 2023 and has been enjoying a more flexible schedule, which has allowed her to spend more time doing things she really loves (mostly including developing new pizza recipes and perfecting the classic breakfast sandwich). She spends a lot of time with fellow Salem resident Megan O’Keefe and is also able to see Melissa Nalband Nesbitt and Meg North on a regular basis!
Melissa Nalband Nesbitt is in her second year at Bain Consulting and is enjoying her work in technical product management. She and her husband, Brad, adopted a sweet, energetic puppy a year ago, bringing their four-legged friend count up to three. They were looking forward to beginning their house search north of Boston, while Melissa trained for a marathon in October.
Meg North is based in Concord, New Hampshire, near her sister, Liz North Boucher ’04. She enjoys spending time with her nieces, family, and friends. She travels as much as she can—a trip to Namibia last year was a highlight. She highly recommends this stunning country!
Courtney Mulligan Whitelock is now the vice president of arts and events for Brookfield Properties in New York City. Brookfield Arts and Culture presents free arts and events programming for all to enjoy.
Members of the Class of 2006, from left: Sarah Milnor, Meg North, Melissa Nalband Nesbitt, Melissa Arsenie, Alisa Forney, and Megan O’Keefe.
2009
Kayla Howell ’09 khowell329@gmail.com
Catherine Hin Moy Ahkong ’09 cahkong@gmail.com
Rachel Hickcox graduated in December 2022 with her PhD in zoology from the University of Otago (Dunedin, New Zealand). Her thesis presented research on the marine ecology, distribution, and habitat use of the endangered yelloweyed penguin. For most of the year, she now lives in Akaroa, New Zealand, where she leads the research and conservation program at Pōhatu/Flea Bay, one of the largest little penguin colonies on the mainland. Rachel also works remotely for Proteus, an ecological statistical consulting company.
Bridget Hinz just finished a Master’s of Library and Information Science degree with a concentration in archives management from Simmons University.
2010
Jordan Willis Carter ’10 carterjordanm3@gmail.com
Lane Buckles,
Grace Louise Buckles Eaton and Mike Eaton welcomed a baby girl, Delia Lane Buckles, on March 12, 2023.
2012
Keelin Sweeney ’12 keelinmsweeney@gmail.com
Emily Crocco ’12 emilyncrocco@gmail.com
The Class of 2012 has been busy since our ten-year reunion in May 2022!
Chesley McCarty recently spent nine months traveling through Europe and working remotely before returning to her new home of Washington, D.C. After six years working in real estate strategy, Chesley is preparing to leave corporate life and go full-time with her side hustle of the last four years: her business will focus on real estate, photography, and design. She continues to enjoy travel, her church community, cooking, and architecture.
Pia Furkan writes that she is lucky to have “the three best cats, Pancake, Clementine, and Omelette!”
After graduating from Boston University’s journalism program in 2021 and spending two years as a local news reporter, Lilly Eden recently began the job of science writer for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s biology department.
Keelin Sweeney recently started as a pulmonary and critical care nurse practitioner at Logan Health in Kalispell, Montana. She is deep in the midst of wedding planning after getting engaged to her fiancé, Sam Wall! They are enjoying fixing up their 1950s farmhouse and spending time with their dachshund, Bear.
In September 2023 Megan Boucher married her best friend, Ben, in a garden ceremony surrounded by their closest and dearest family and friends! They were showered with love and even a torrential downpour or two, but the weather held out for some great photos and even greater memories! Megan’s sister, Lauren Boucher ’18, and Emily Crocco were by her side as her co-maid of honor and bridesmaid, respectively, and they all celebrated with Alexandra Pape and Bethany Simmonds
2016
Secretary needed!
Isabelle Morrissey is currently serving as a lieutenant junior grade in the U.S. Navy and is stationed in San Diego.
Delia
daughter of Grace Louise Buckles Eaton ’10.
Wedding of Brooke Flowers ’10 and Ahmen Chopra on October 9, 2022.
Megan Boucher ’12 married her best friend, Ben, in a garden ceremony in September 2023.
From left: Emily Crocco ’12, Bethany Simmonds ’12, Megan Boucher ’12, Alexandra Pape ’12, and Lauren Boucher ’18 at Megan’s wedding in September 2023.
Climbing on the Exit Glacier with Dylan Norris ’19, Emily, Joscie Norris ’16, Anna, and Shanshan Chan ’17.
Secretary needed!
Gina Nicole Buerkle ’17 graduated with her Master’s of Science in translational pharmacology with a specialization in clinical pharmacology and clinical trial design from The Ohio State University.
Gina Nicole Buerkle writes, “I graduated with my Master’s of Science in translational pharmacology with a specialization in clinical pharmacology and clinical trial design from The Ohio State University! I have also been enjoying my time back in Connecticut by spending time with Westover friends and am looking forward to exploring PhD programs and continuing to strengthen my bond with the Westover community.”
Brianna Bergen ’17 got married on March 14, 2021 (and fellow Westover grad Emma Barhydt ’17 was her maid of honor)!
Brianna Bergen got married March 14, 2021, and Emma Barhydt ’17 was her maid of honor!
In September 2021 Mariah Pelaez achieved her goal to teach high school Spanish in Boston! Three years later, her first-ever group of students are seniors,
earning scholarships to college! Mariah is so proud of them and herself.
Grayson Beaulieu’s fiber art and sculptures were showcased in more than eight exhibitions across the United States in 2023.
Abigayle Hodson ’17.
Abigayle Hodson writes, “After graduating from Westover, I moved to California to study numerical and machine learning modeling of water resources! I now work as an environmental engineer in the Bay Area and hope to get involved with using models to inform more equitable environmental legislation.”
Joscie Norris writes, “I’m living in the sweet and funky fishing and art town of Homer, Alaska, with my partner, Anna, who shares my love of cheffing up our own foraged food and learning how to hunt and fish. I continue climbing and hiking and am learning to white water packraft and make pottery. I love my work supporting student and staff wellness and accessibility at a small environmental education nonprofit.”
2018
Lilia Gardner ’18 lilia.gardner@gmail.com
Lauren Boucher ’18 laurenboucher18@gmail.com
After graduating in 2022 with a degree in music education, Chaylee McAdam completed an internship at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. She is now living in Massachusetts and is excited to be the middle school choir director for the town of Franklin, MA.
Lauren Boucher just finished her second year of law school at Quinnipiac University
School of Law in Hamden, Connecticut. As of right now, she is hoping to pursue a legal career in environmental law or trusts and estates.
Willow Galusha writes, “I graduated from Middlebury College with a BA in agroecology, moved to Burlington, Vermont, and spent last summer working at a tree nursery focusing on conservation species.”
Jyne Dunbar graduated from Cornell University with a BA in information science and is now living in Salt Lake City with her two cats. When she’s not skiing, climbing, or writing, she is an analyst at Goldman Sachs.
Scott McClearn writes, “I spent the past year serving for City Year Boston. Otherwise, I spend lots of time exploring Boston with my friends and dog. Most exciting, though: I went to the Olympic trials in curling leading up to the 2021 Winter Olympics!”
Madeleine Steele shares, “Hi everyone! Hope you are all doing well. It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen most of you—can’t believe almost six years!! I’ve been living in Rotterdam, Netherlands, doing my master’s in global business and sustainability. I really want to have a career in sustainability consulting (particularly in biodiversity and nature-based solutions), so I’m doing my thesis research and internship at Guidehouse, consulting on their sustainability team and hope to continue there after I graduate. I hope to see you soon! Please reach out if you’re ever in the area.”
Lola Finnegan writes, “I spent the past year gearing up for med school and am now preparing to apply next cycle. I am doing research on the patient-centered care approach! In my free time, I practice trampoline arts and my passion for glutenfree recipe curation.”
Jacquelynn DeSantis is living in Boston and working as a labor and delivery nurse. She is thankful to Westover for giving her the tools to be independent and live in a new city and take chances.
Lilia Gardner writes, “I graduated from the University of New Hampshire and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina! I’m starting my job with Liberty Mutual, and I’m really excited!”
Madison Hurtgen shares, “I currently live and work in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, as the alumni relations coordinator for Sea Education Association. I love being so close to the ocean, family, and friends. I also dropped my little sister off last fall for her first year at Westover! Love you, Sophie. ;)”
Grace Bollard works in investments and lives in Boston.
Ireland Thompson writes, “I live in New York City and work in the TV and print industries as a model and actress while also working in social media and marketing. I do believe the strong work ethic and determination I developed at Westover has allowed me to continuously and confidently follow my passions.”
Madison Burns shares that she works in IT auditing at SC&H Group and lives in Baltimore.
2019
Secretary needed!
Saint Franqui recently graduated from Oberlin College with degrees in anthropology and English. He is currently serving as a fifth grade ELA teacher and reading interventionist at Amistad Academy Middle School in New Haven, Connecticut. He is also working towards his master’s in teaching at the Relay Graduate School of Education.
Caroline Broude ’19 graduated from Williams College in June with a BA in chemistry.
Caroline Broude graduated from Williams College with a BA in chemistry. She is
currently working at Stanford University as a research technician in the department of engineering. In the Fischbach Lab, Caroline is researching CD8+ and CD4+ helper T cells and their ability to attack melanoma tumors in the presence of tumor-specific antigens. She is also investigating the immunodeficiencies within the human gut and working to develop immune therapies to attack gastrointestinal autoimmune diseases.
Elizabeth Cook writes, “Since graduating college, I’ve been working as a trip leader for Wilderness Adventures, where I’ve led camping trips for youth in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Hawaii.”
2020
Secretary needed!
Madeline Siefert is excelling at Manhattan College and double majoring in education and history.
2021
Secretary needed!
Isabelle Poskas writes, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind...”
2022
Secretary needed!
Anastasia Meyer ’22 at the Bates Dance Festival in Maine.
Anastasia Meyer writes, “The summer after my graduation from Westover, I taught crafts to some local children, danced at Akhmedova Ballet Academy in Maryland, and met good friends at an introductory program called Science Launch. In the past year, I’ve studied dance (ballet, modern, improv, and performing in a student show) and physics at Mount Holyoke College and taken two semesters of German. I was
involved in a student organizing group to try to save the departments of German studies and Russian and Eurasian studies at my college from being unexpectedly defunded. While we were very successful in increasing student awareness and faculty support with flyers and testimonies, it was unfortunately not enough for the faculty senate, who ultimately voted by a slim majority to discontinue the program I love. This past summer I earned my driver’s license, took Calc 2 at nearby Georgetown University, and danced for three weeks at Bates Dance Festival in Maine, where my favorite class was countertechnique. I plan to continue my studies of dance and physics in the fall and focusing more on dance.”
2023
Secretary needed!
Interested in becoming a secretary for your class? Email alumnae@westoverschool.org to learn more.
At Westover, students are seen—keenly and truly seen—for everything they are, and everything they want to be. Here they are celebrated for their intellect, wit, vivacity, insatiable curiosity, and unique interests that make them who they are.
Here, they are part of an entire community that inspires and roots for them. A global community full of classmates eager to explore and collaborate, faculty that encourage them to seek challenge and share ideas, and dorm parents that listen with full attention and open hearts. This is a place fortified by sisterhood, where friendships are family, lifelong and unbreakable.
During their time here, students are challenged to grow into the boldest version of themselves; to be compassionate, resilient, and knowledgeable; confident leaders, capable of speaking their truth; a striving scholar, ready to conquer the future, chase every dream, and build a better world. Because at Westover, students have the community, the resources, and the freedom to become who want to be.
