March 1999
Submitted 12/25/98
The class is on a countdown for its
40th Reunion on 23-26 May, and we’re packing our bags for the
Woodcliff (NJ) Hilton, where the days will begin, the buses will board, and the
nights will be filled with talk and drink.
Sprinkle in some nostalgia to be picked up at WP, and we should have a
pretty good time.
An early start on it all occurred on
23-24 Oct in South Bend, IN, where members of our super heroic undefeated 1958
Army football team enjoyed the Notre Dame game, reminiscing about its (and
Army’s) last great victory over the Irish at tailgate parties and at the
Legends Banquet on Friday at the College Football Hall of Fame. 59er teammates in attendance were John Corby, Pete Dawkins, Roy Greene, Monk Hilliard, Chuck Millick, Jack Morrison, Bob Novogratz,
Bill Rowe, Don Tillar, and Harry Walters, all with spouses except
for Morrison who is without and Greene, who, Tillar reports, had a weekend
pass.
Dawkins
was MC at a Sat night dinner attended by all of the above plus Joe Shea and Fred & Marlene Malek, and he did a great job of eliciting
reminiscences from the other team members.
More classmates seen at the game earlier that day included John & JoAnn Panko, Denny & Helen
Morrissey, Rush & Annie
Yelverton, John Eberhard on
unexplained crutches, and Jim Miller.
And Bill & Ann Turpin reported a very successful pre-reunion Navy
game party (Army won) on 5 Dec at their house in Centerville, MD. It’s a moveable rotating party, you might
recall, and it was the Turpin’s turn.
Everyone arrived with covered dishes, caught up with each other with
football as a backdrop, ate at halftime, and cheered at the final score. Those who attended, whom you may pick out of
the accompanying group photo, were Frank
& Elaine Besson, Rich & C.C. Clark, John & Mary Gurr, Bill &
Bobbie Fitzgerald, Mike & Felicity Gillette, John & Karla Moellering,
and Bob & Elaine Weekley. The
Weekleys’ mothers also appear in the picture.
Weekley and Powell Hutton are
discussing which of them will host next year.
Bill & Kathy Garcia live in Oakland, and Kathy says planning
for Bill’s retirement in Jan 2000 is holding their interest. They plan to buy a small roadster and visit
as much of the U.S. as possible with no time constraints, and they solicit suggestions
from classmates for an interesting itinerary.
Meanwhile, Bill continues as a project manager for Bechtel in San
Francisco, and his current project is a mega oilfield expansion in the Gulf of
Mexico for Pemex, the Mexican oil company.
The 3 Garcia daughters are married, living in various Northern
California locales, and producing grandchildren for Bill & Kathy. So far there are Grace, Matthew, William,
and Nicholas, all in the last 5 years.
Barrett Haight plans to retire this spring from doing charitable
estate planning and other legal work for The Citadel, and he will polish his
golf game, use his reactivated flying license, and catch up on maintenance on
the Sullivan’s Island home he shares with wife, Barbara. They are very
proud of their 5 children: two on active duty (one in the LTC zone), one a
regional manager of a paper company and active in the Reserves, one the perfect
mother of two who lives nearby so the grandchildren are accessible, and the
last, USMA ’92, now an internet securities analyst in San Francisco.
Barbara raised the children and then obtained
her Doctor of Public Health degree and is a tenured professor of gerontological
nursing at the Medical University of SC.
Barrett says she works harder
than he ever did, and her specialty in gerontology will take care of him in his
dotage. And he says that our John Grinalds is doing a great job as
president of The Citadel.
John Grinalds writes to say that The Citadel is on the
rise thanks to a great group of cadets led by a strong Class of 1999. John himself is working on communications,
admissions, fundraising and other functional challenges, and he can see
improvement in all those areas. Best of
all, the cadet corps is positive about the future of coeducation there, and
about its ability to lead the development of the fourth classmen with tough and
demanding standards through exemplary leadership by the upper classmen. John says he has never been so happy in his
entire professional career.
John & Norwood have 4 children, two married with 6
grandchildren between them. Daughter
Kate was to be married on 17 Oct there in Charleston, and that leaves just one
to go, says John. And he has learned to
fly airplanes, as the accompanying photo shows. He takes great pleasure in flying around the city in a biplane.
Carl & Cris Groth, still in the DC area, are interested in
hearing any of our experiences with barge travel in France or elsewhere. Carl is planning to retire from consulting
work in the near future and devote time to teaching economics and operations
research at GWU and FL Inst of Technology.
They are remodeling their house at Lake Anna, near Fredericksburg, VA,
where they like to sail, fish, and generally relax. Cris plans to keep her hand in public health issues and perhaps
do some teaching of nursing students.
Daughter Amy was married a year ago in CO, and she devotes herself to a
full menu of mountain sports. Son Carl
III is a financial manager in NY. He
has progressed through triathlon to adventure racing. Our Carl was planning to be on his support team last Oct during
the “Beast of the East,” a 300-mile canoe-bike-mountaineering race in
southwestern VA.
The Gaineses have 7 children.
Roger actually had two himself, then raised two additional from his
second marriage (his wife died some years ago, and he remarried). Now he has gained 3 more stepdaughters, and
the total result has been 11 grandchildren.
All of the children are happily married save one, and she will probably
marry in the near future. One daughter
is married to a USMA ’82 grad.
Alex Grant is a senior counsel with the Halliburton
law department and the sole attorney in its office in Alhambra, CA, which is a
suburb of L.A. With Halliburton’s
acquisition of Dresser Industries last Sep, it was anticipated that his office
would close by year’s end, and Alex
& Linda would be faced with the question of whether to move to Houston
or retire. They have 3 sons, Scott,
Randy and David; and until Scott married Heather last Valentine’s Day, all 3 of
them were leading the active bachelor’s life in CA. But the wedding roped Scott, and it was attended by Greg Kadlec and by Tom & Jan Ballenger.
The
Grants spent some time with Chuck & Judy Darby on Nantucket in
Jun ’97, and Chuck and Alex found
time to play some golf. Then last Jun Barrett & Barbara Haight hosted the Grants on Sullivan’s
Island in Charleston. They wined and dined in that delightful city and
picnicked at the 1998 Spoleto Festival Finale concert at the Middleton Place
Plantation, where the concert ended with the 1812 Overture and spectacular
fireworks over the Ashley River. Barrett and Alex also golfed.
As
the photo shows, Howard & Eileen
Stiles and Jack & Nancy Neal
had an elegant time last fall during a two-week’s sojourn in France, one week
of which was spent on a barge doing the Rhone River. It was wonderful, according to Howard, and that’s why everyone is
grinning in the picture. Sounds like a
great source for Carl & Cris Groth
(see above).
Everyone
who wrote says he looks forward to seeing us all at the 40th.