magazine

Class Notes
This happy, young-looking group had a wonderful time celebrating their 60th birthdays together on
Martha’s Vineyard late last summer. L-R standing: Andree Howard ’77, Louise Close ’77, Sue LaRese
Vivian ’77, Lynn Freedman Byrnes ’77, Alice Strachan Barr ’78, Jill Schoenfeld Ikens ’77, Lita Kochakian
Zuchero ’77, Sarah Zartman ’78, Lynda Gaines Hathaway ’77, Terri Weisberg Smith ’79, Elsa Whitmore
Morse ’77. L-R seated: Margaret Smith Lee ’77, Lisa Brookover Moore ’77, Francesca Wright ’77, Ellen
Broderick ’77, and Judy Birofka Brown ’77
of her daughters. “I want to work toward ending
the stigma of not talking about mental
health disorders,” she writes, “and hopefully
improve our fragmented system of care.
Please ask your own congressmen to support
these initiatives!”
I (Margaret) cannot seem to stay away
from water! Last summer my classroom at
the Taube Museum of Art was flooded due
to road construction and rain. Thankfully, we
were able to save most of the art supplies.
We had to move all of our summer classes
to the main floor of the Museum and then
proceeded to do renovations.
1978
Pat Mucci Tayco
Andi Gassman Anderson brings us up-todate:
“I left the big Bean for Vermont right
after graduation and enjoyed directing a day
care center until 1985. I left teaching for an
affordable job with the Postal Service. (We pay
more to sort mail than to set those building
blocks straight in the formative years!) I
have had the great opportunity to watch my
day care babies from 1978 to 1985 grow into
adults! I have seen unresolved issues become
life-rendering problems. I have seen great
successes where I saw supports behind them.
I am looking forward to retiring soon from my
31-year career at the post office and returning
to teaching or some sort of research. Have to
tackle those three massive college bills first.
I have a son, 26, working in Boston with the
Treasury Department. Son #2, 23, just about
finished an outdoor education degree. And
my daughter, 21, graduated from UVM with
a B.S. in nursing and landed a great job at
the local tiny hospital she was born in. In all
my observing of all these children I’ve been
blessed to watch grow and flourish, there is
one common denominator I feel I must go
back into education and work on: self-esteem!
Without it, how can any child learn? I really
want to go back into education and make
a difference! I have been working on The
Virtues Project as well. I can really see this in
every school in our country. It’s a nonreligious
course of 52 virtues where everyone, even the
bus drivers or lunch folks, are on the same
page each week, teaching the basic virtues:
assertiveness, commitment, friendliness,
generosity, courtesy, just to name a few.” Andi
also mentioned that she “went to [the 2014]
Wheelock symposium and got inspired again.”
Gail Ann Rosewater writes: “I retired from
the County of Bergen (NJ) after 25 years in
2013. I moved to Asbury Park, NJ, within a
month and live two blocks from the beach. I
love it. I am on the board of directors of the
local Child Care Resource and Referral Agency
and the chair of their advocacy committee.
I also volunteer in the local hospital and am
on a local commission for the lake I live on.
Since I graduated from Wheelock, I became
a director of a child care center, got my
master’s degree from Bank Street College of
Education in New York, became the director
of the Bergen County Department of Human
Services Office for Children, and was then
the Department’s operations officer. It was a
good career. Hope everyone is doing well!”
1981
Sarah Bowman Merry
REUNION 2016
JUNE 3-5, 2016
Best wishes to Nora Lerdau Howley, who
decided (after her youngest graduated from
college in 2014) that she’d been out of school
long enough and is now working on an
Ed.D. through the low-residency program at
the University of Glasgow (Scotland). She is
about halfway through the three years of
coursework and will then have a dissertation
to write. Meanwhile, she continues to provide
consulting services to a variety of nonprofits.
Nora and her husband are still in the D.C. area
with their children and their partners in New
York and Montana. In her spare time, she
knits, reads, and takes lots of walks.
1982
“The school year 2014-2015 was a year of
great accomplishments,” Kathleen McGrail
Campbell writes. “My son graduated from
the University of New England, and I moved
out of the classroom (again) and into a new
role as a Reading Recovery/RTI interventionist,
while going back to school to become
certified as a Reading Recovery teacher. It
was an intense year, but so valuable! Thank
God for a wonderful husband who held
everything together, and gave up a lot, while
we hit the books! I am so proud and grateful
for my family, and for the solid educational
foundation that I received with all of my
friends at Wheelock.”
Jo-Anne DeGiacomo-Petrie still keeps in
touch with Karen Mutch-Jones and Randi
Panken Goodman ’83: “We reminisce about
our Wheelock years and the fun we had.” Last
year Jo-Anne and Karen went to visit Randi
for a girls weekend in Los Angeles and had
a blast. Jo-Anne is currently the manager
of operations at BrightStars in Warwick, RI,
which she is loving: “I am able to keep my
hand in the field of education mixing it up
with a business twist.” She and husband
Adrian enjoy traveling and being “footloose
and fancy-free” and are looking to downsize
as their “blended brood” are: Mallory, 25
(Wheelock graduate), a patient advocate at
Children’s Hospital in Boston; Ryan, 21, who is
in his senior year at URI; and stepson Frank,
who is a junior at UMass Dartmouth. Anyone
in the Rhode Island area should contact Jo-
Anne to catch up!
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