Class Notes

NEWS OF 1978

From the Alumni House:

Erich Mackow is an associate professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and works on National Institutes of Health-funded research on Hantaviruses and rotaviruses. Erich has been married for 20 years to Joanne, and they have two children: Jonathan, 9, and Natalie, 11. Erich also is the coach of an under-10 boys’ soccer team.

Barbara Murphy works part-time now. She says she is blessed with a great guy and a beautiful daughter. They live in the hill country of Texas.

NEWS OF 1977 - Reunion May 31 - June 1

From the Alumni House:

Bruce Weaknecht has two daughters and a son. Gretchen, the youngest, is 12. Marissa, 19, and Joshua, 21, are currently at Moravian College (Classes of ’04 and ’03, respectively).

Odell Guyton has been appointed director of compliance at Microsoft. Odell, a Moravian College trustee and a former federal prosecutor, is one of two new internal legal compliance officers appointed as a result of the proposed antitrust consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice and nine states. He will “oversee a comprehensive education and compliance assurance program at Microsoft,” according to the company’s press release, dealing with “a wide range of legal and ethical obligations, including employment law, anti-discrimination statutes, privacy, civil rights, securities, foreign trade interactions, competition law, and other areas.”

NEWS OF 1976

From the Alumni House:

Linda Diehl Magee is currently a project manager for IBM Global Services. She spends her free time with her two children, boating, fishing, and refinishing furniture.

Jane Howey Kunkle has been a secondary English/language arts teacher for 25 years in the Northwestern Lehigh School District, New Tripoli. She and her husband, Jeff, own Rexton Supply Co., a masonry/hardware business. They have two children, Julie ’03, a junior majoring in psychology at Moravian, and Jason, a high school freshman.

Amy and Bob Mende ’74 have moved into a new home in Kempton.

NEWS OF 1975

NEWS OF 1974

From Cyndee Andreas Grifo:

Sue Reynolds Schaeffer and her husband, Roger ’73, live in Douglassville. Sue has been teaching for the past 15 years at Birdsboro Christian Preschool, and Roger is the head of engineering and quality control at Garden State Tanning Co. Their 22-year-old daughter, Maggie, just began her career as a physician’s assistant. Katie, 21, is an elementary education major at North Carolina Wesleyan College.

Lynn Castagnoni Gardner and her husband, Tim ’73, are now living in Zurich, Switzerland, for the second time during Tim’s 20-year career with Crédit Suisse First Boston. (They’ve also had the opportunity to live in London.) Their daughter Kristin recently graduated from Syracuse University. They also have 20-year-old twins, Brian and Michael, who are attending college in the United States.

From the Alumni House:

Harry K. Roye has been happily married to Donna Seddon, an elementary music teacher, since 1974. His daughter, Christine ’00, married Nathan Henry of Chesterfield County, Va., on June 30. She is a fifth-grade teacher, and her husband teaches high school history and is an assistant football coach. Harry’s son, Tim, following in his father’s footsteps, will join the U.S. Army’s Military Police in August. Harry continues to work at McKesson Medical-Surgical Group in Richmond, where he manages the contract and rebate departments.

NEWS OF 1973

From the Alumni House:

Glenn J. Merkel, who has taught immunology and microbiology for 20 years to first-year medical students at the Fort Wayne campus of Indiana University’s School of Medicine, was selected by the medical faculty awards committee to receive the 2001 Trustees’ Teaching Award. (The award is for teachers of all subjects at any of the university’s campuses.) The citation praised his “sustained dedication to the art and science of teaching as well as . . . excellence in the practice of it.”

Timothy Gilman was renewed as assistant coach for girls’ soccer at Northampton High School for the 2002 season. As a first-year coach last spring, Tim led the junior varsity team to its first undefeated season in the history of girls’ soccer at the school. (Tim played soccer at Moravian for three years.) He currently serves as president of the Lehigh Valley Old-Timers League and is a player-coach for an over-30 and over-40 team. He also plays in the Lehigh Valley Summer Soccer League and the indoor leagues.

Paul R. Shelly recently received an award from a group of 18 New Jersey state college/university presidents and trustees for his success in coordinating a statewide public-awareness project called NJ College Bound 2008. It calls attention to increases in public university enrollment and the need for more regional institutions as the children of the baby boomers reach their college years. Shelly has been employed since 1989 as director of communications for the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities.

NEWS OF 1972 - Reunion May 31 - June 1

From Terrell McMann:

I recently spoke with Dinesh Pandya, who intends to be at our 30th reunion this spring. Dino has a podiatry practice in Rockford, Ill. He and his wife, Kelly, have two sons, Alex and Evan. By the time you read this, their third child should have been born.

At the National Podiatry Conference in Chicago, Dino ran into Paul Quintavalle, who has become a nationally respected podiatrist. Paul was a speaker at the conference. He practices in Collingswood, N.J., in partnership with his brother-in-law and fellow Moravian graduate Rick Rowe ’79.

Small world: The children of Karen Gerhart-Connor, a Presbyterian minister in Rockford, attend the same school as the Pandya boys. And Karen is a chaplain on the staff of the hospital where Dino sees patients.

Janine Jagger lives with her husband, Patrice Guyenet, and their two children in Charlottesvile, Va., where both are on the staff of the medical school at the University of Virginia. Janine, an epidemiologist, is the Becton Dickinson Professor of Health Care Worker Safety and director of the International Health Care Worker Safety Center at the university.

Janine was instrumental in getting passage for the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act, signed into law by former President Clinton in November 2000. The law requires the use of safety-engineered needles in order to prevent needle accidents to health-care workers. Janine was at the signing ceremony in the Oval Office.

NEWS OF 1971

From the Alumni House:

Joanna Tharp Holtmeier teaches English at Palisades High School in Kintersville. Janice Goldberg Fischel lives in Hanover, N.H., and works for Lexia International, which arranges foreign-study programs for college students.

Frank Pokorny writes: “On Labor Day weekend, a bunch of old Omicron Gamma Omegas got together for a picnic and to reminisce about ancient history (or at least it seems ancient). Steve Santucci ’72 and his wife, Barbara, Tom Goserud ’73 and his wife, Donna, and I and my wife, Jean Smith Pokorny, converged on Lititz at the home of Dale Dietrich ’70 and his wife, Cathy. Most of us hadn’t seen each other for almost 30 years.

“A lot of time was spent talking about the good old days at Moravian in the late ’60s and early ’70s. It was fun rummaging through our collective memories of Fun Nights, the OGO House, Hell Week, Homecoming floats, and OGO parties at St. Mike’s.

“Dieter is still teaching in Lititz, Touche is a dentist in the Philadelphia area, Gos works for Armstrong in Lancaster, and Pokey has returned to the Allentown area after a 28-year career with Sears. It would be great to hear from other OGOs from the Dark Ages.”

NEWS OF 1970

NEWS OF 1969

From Wayne Beaver:

I am currently deployed with the U.S. Air Force at Wilford Hall Medical Center, Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, as a clinical psychologist. My wife, Maryanne, is with me in Texas, and my younger son just graduated from college. If anyone has class information to share, please e-mail it to the above address.

NEWS OF 1968

From the Alumni House:

On Memorial Day weekend, Susan White Redfield went to Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco with Barbara Johnson Keller ’63 and Nancy Krause Bowman ’68. They had a truly memorable time together. Susan now lives in southern California.

NEWS OF 1967 - Reunion May 31 – June 1

NEWS OF 1966

NEWS OF 1965

From the Alumni House:

Cy Krajci is currently working for Exxon Mobil Corp. in Lagos, Nigeria. He planned to retire and return to the Lehigh Valley by the end of last year. Lloyd Kingswell has retired after 35 years of teaching elementary school. He has two sons, Philip and Keith.

Am I a person who is blind, or am I a blind person? William Newman knows the difference. His answer: “I am a person first. Second, I am blind.”

Born legally blind (he has 5 percent sight in one eye) and with a partial hearing loss, he grew up in a poor neighborhood in Philadelphia. He attended the city’s Overbrook School for the Blind, where he learned to read and write in Braille. Since graduating in 1967, he has been president of the Overbrook Alumni Association and received the school’s Distinguished Alumni Award.

A state agency, Pennsylvania Blindness and Visual Services, helped Newman get a job at the Bethlehem YMCA as a masseur. He earned 137 credits at Northampton Community College, after which he applied to and was accepted by three colleges. Moravian was his first choice.

He majored in social work and social science, and credits Professor Steve Maier for teaching him the academics and skills to succeed. Moravian had seen few blind students until then but did its best to accommodate Newman’s needs. His teachers gave him their booklists a semester ahead, and he’d have the books put on audiotape by a recording service for the blind. He found time to be a member of APO service fraternity. And he graduated in 1976.

Applying as a caseworker to the Northampton County Assistance Office in Easton, he had to convince the agency that he was capable of doing the job. He did, and celebrated 24 years with the office in February. Like any other caseworker, he interviews clients, opens and closes cases, and does home visits, using the LANTA bus system. (“Driving is not an option,” he jokes.)

Newman enjoys organ music and his ham radio; he follows the stock market and uses the Internet. He has been president of the Bethlehem Lions Club and is on the board of VIABL (Visual Impairment and Blindness) Services of Northampton County. At home and at work, his only special equipment is a computer with a magnification screen for text.

He says he enjoys his job, as well as his social and professional activities, because he feels he is giving back to the community.

—Debbie Laverty ’83