Class Notes

NEWS OF 1983
Reunion Homecoming 2003

From Dawn Bullaro Stawiarski:

On February 22, my husband, John ’84, and I were guests at a Valentine/reunion party at the home of Joanne Belletti ’82 and Dean Molle. It happened to be the 20th anniversary of John’s and my first date—Joanne and Dean’s as well. Partying up a storm in true OGO and AEPi tradition were Pam Wilson Gazda and Rich, Barb Updike Wilhelmy and Craig ’82; Mary Yavorski Bender ’81, Cindy Baird ’82, Faith Lamorelle Butt ’82 and Randy, and Patty Murray Hanna ’82 and Ken ’81. We laughed a lot, looked at pictures of our college days, and exchanged stories about our kids, who all seem to be about the same age.

Our 20th reunion is this October 24-25 at Homecoming!

From the Alumni House:

David Ifkovits is in his fifth year as director of choral activities and chairman of the fine arts department at Archmere Academy in Claymont, Del. He’s also in his fifth year as director of music and worship at Church of the Holy Child in nearby Wilmington. The University of Alabama has invited the choirs of Archmere to be ensembles-in-residence for the International Cathedral Music Festival in July 2004. David is also choral director/conductor on the CD of Rasputin, starring Ted Neeley (the original Jesus Christ Superstar).

NEWS OF 1982

NEWS OF 1981

From Craig “Kegger” Bartlett:

I saw John Fiore recently. He is a major accounts manager with Xerox in Allentown. He and his wife, Anne, live in Bethlehem. Their son Mark is a freshman at Bethlehem Catholic High School and their daughter a sixth-grader at Notre Dame of Bethlehem School.

The seventh annual Woozfest was held February 22 at Moravian. In honor of the late Chaplain Robert Woosley and now, as well, Noel J. Foster ’82, we revisit our great times and friendships at Moravian. It all starts at Potts Hog Dogs and then moves to the HUB. We saw the Moravian women’s basketball team beat Juniata College, then went on to the old Mickey Kelly’s, now called Our Beerbelly’s, across from Steel Field.

Those who came included Doug Geiger, Stan Rugis, Jeff Gumina, “Kegger” Bartlett, Andy Bender, Chip Shelly, Mark Kluk ’82, Richard Lemke ’82, Ed Ford ’80, Dave Dunn ’80, Greg Bershedt ’82, Mark Knowalt ’79, Dave Wood, Craig Wood ’79, and Peter Leffler.

NEWS OF 1980

From Molly Donaldson Brown:

Hello, everybody. The Class of 1980 news well has dried up. You may have noticed I didn’t do a column in the winter magazine. Please put me out of my pain and drop me a message in the weeks ahead via mail or e-mail. I’d love to hear from you.

I celebrated my one-year anniversary as marketing director for the continuing education program (the Wescoe School) at Muhlenberg College. I team up with another Moravian grad, independent art director Chris Friedenberg ’95, on our promotional projects. In March, Chris and I won three Addy Awards for Muhlenberg: one gold, one silver, one bronze. The awards are sponsored by the American Advertising Federation.

NEWS OF 1979

From the Alumni House:

Judith Grant has been living in Los Angeles since 1986 and teaches at the University of Southern California. She’s getting ready to move back east to teach at Ohio University, starting in September 2003.

Candy Barr Heimbach joined the board of directors at Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman & Goggin. She also will serve as senior vice president of the law firm. Candy concentrates her practice in medical malpractice litigation.

In March at Moravian, John Burke presented his new book, Mestizo Democracy, which offers a model for an American community of increasing cultural diversity. He is an associate professor of political science and chair of the department at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, as well as an active lay minister in a Catholic parish characterized by its diversity.

Photo: Joyce Dougherty

In an upstairs room of the Allentown Art Museum, eight women are messing around with paints and sponges and squares of fabric. Their clothes may be shabby, but their faces are eager as they outline their own hands and experiment with colors, simple print techniques, and an assortment of buttons, bottle caps, ribbons, scraps, string, tiny plastic toys (the kind you get from a bubble-gum machine), and whatnot.

At first glance, the fabric squares with the hand outlines seem whimsical and not very challenging. After all, kindergarteners outline their hands and take the picture home so Mom can hang it on the refrigerator.

But these women are all convicted felons, serving time for drug offenses, prostitution, and other petty crimes that flourish among the poor. All are mothers, and all have been separated from their children by their sentences. Some of their kids are in foster care; some are so angry with their mothers for abandoning them that they refuse to talk to them. Up close, it can be seen that each woman has worked her story, and often her remorse, into her fabric square. The colors, the buttons, the texture, the tiny pictures traced with a simple embroidery stitch—all have their significance.

“What I have seen is that this kind of work turns on the light,” says Joyce Dougherty, who taught sociology at Moravian for 16 years, from 1982 to 1998. Four years ago, she became executive director of the Program for Women and Families, a social-service agency that provides assistance with housing, nutrition, education, and health care for at-risk single mothers and their children, in order to break the cycle of need, violence, and crime.

“It may look like play, but what they are learning is basic life skills: problem-solving, decision-making,” Dougherty says of the quilt project. “It’s their choice of design, color, pattern. It’s about setting goals and achieving these goals.” Until they got into the Program, some of these women may not have been able to read or add or sew a button on a shirt, which cut them out of the job market and sent them into drug deals, pilfering, and streetwalking.

This is the second quilt project for Dougherty and her staff, which includes Jessica Edris ’00, Alisa Guthrie ’00, and Frank Barella ’84. (“He showed up with a couple of notebooks from classes he took with me,” Dougherty said.) During the making of the first quilt, which now hangs in the museum, they saw that the makers were able to view their workmanship with new eyes. As with all programs dealing with prison populations, some of the offenders are back within months of release; but many succeed in staying clean and reconstructing their little families.

“There’s one young woman whose ultimate goal is to go to law schoool,” said Dougherty. “And I think she’ll do it.”

When the women finish their squares, a cadre of seniors will stitch them together and quilt them. The whole project is called the Birthmarks Quilt.

—Judith Green