Sally Jackson Chapman
Sally Jackson Chapman married Bob Chapman in 1969 and they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on Dec. 21, 2018. They moved to Raleigh, NC in July 1989 and that’s where they still live. Sally is a retired preschool teacher. Bob and Sally have two children: Sara Jane Chapman Jernigan (husband, Joe); and Rob Chapman (wife Becky Helton Chapman) who have three children Rachel, 16, Lily, 14 and Ella, 11.
Sally keeps busy volunteering for Habitat for Humanity and at Lynn Road Elementary School. She is an active member of Christ Episcopal Church, Raleigh and enjoys knitting for the Prayer Shawl Ministry.
Carol Jensen Rychly
Bob and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary in February with a party with friends and family in Aiken, South Carolina. We’ve both been retired for over a year. Bob was an internal medicine and geriatric medicine physician, and I taught mathematics at universities before moving to the “dark-side” and becoming the Vice President for Academic and Faculty Affairs at Augusta University in Augusta, Georgia. We both loved our jobs and were pleasantly surprised to find retirement to be so much fun. We spent a lot of time on the road last year including time in Big Bend National Park, Egypt, Italy, and a great trip to London and Paris with our two granddaughters and their parents. Our two sons, David and Matthew, live in the Augusta area with their families so it was a big decision to settle in Asheville from Augusta when we retired. We all travel that 3 1/2 hour stretch of highway often, and they all love Asheville so it is working out well. Church activities at Central United Methodist Church, volunteer work with the Friends of the Blueridge, tai chi class, and four book groups keep me busy. We have a 1 year old Welsh Corgi and have taken up tent camping which she loves doing with us. Looking forward to seeing everybody later this month!!!
Nan JohnsonTucker
I have been lucky to enjoy all the different stages of life [so far]. One of my favorite things has been to be a docent at the High Museum in Atlanta. When I began 25 years ago I realized that my Janson art text from ASC ended about 1960 - just a few things to catch up on! A highlight of that experience was a three year exchange program between the High and the Louvre. The staff from the Louvre would come to the High to teach us and we enjoyed a week in the Louvre learning from their curators.
The value and pleasure of learning from good teachers - something I learned at Scott.
The wonderful picture is from our 50th anniversary celebration. (Tommy and Nan and grandson Pierce.
Peggy Johnston Nesbit
My senior year at ASC is sort of a blur, what with getting engaged that Christmas to my high school sweetheart, student teaching and lots of papers.
The summer after graduation, I worked as a proofreader for a law book publishing firm. Where were the computers when we needed them?
I got married in August and two weeks later I began my first teaching job in Decatur at an elementary school two blocks from Agnes Scott. Sally Richardson and I started our careers there at a time when there were no special services for any of the children in our care, and my first class had thirty-five students. Needless to say, we were thrown into the deep end.
Vance and I have two children: Heather Marie Nesbit Boggess born in 1973 and Scott Johnston Nesbit born in 1980. Heather actually attended first through sixth grade at Winnona Park, where Sally and I began our lives as working adults.
Thankfully I learned to study at Agnes Scott, so I was prepared for what lay ahead. I received my Master’s and Specialist’s degrees from GA State University, as well as add-ons to my certification in School Administration and Gifted and Talented Education from the University of West GA.
Subsequently I taught in several preschools, while my children were young. I went from those jobs to St. Andrews Presbyterian Preschool as director, until my husband graduated from Columbia Seminary and the drive on I285 from Cobb County became too much. When Scott was ready for first grade, we both came back to Cobb County for school.
After moving to Decatur in 1974, Vance worked as a teacher and a banker, but God had other plans for all of us. In 1979, he entered Columbia Theological Seminary from which he graduated in 1985 with his Doctor of Ministry Degree. He was called to pastor a new church development in West Cobb County, now known as Kirkwood Presbyterian Church. He retired in 2010 from Kirkwood. He then took a stated supply position at Eatonton Presbyterian Church in Eatonton, GA. Believe it or not, for our 6 years in Eatonton, this dyed in the wool Early Childhood Educator worked with teenagers as youth group leader.
I taught Kindergarten in Marietta City Schools and Early Intervention Program in Cobb. I also worked as the Family Support Specialist in Cobb Title I, ran the county mentoring program for elementary students, directed the GA Pre-K/Headstart Program in Cobb County Schools, and directed the Even Start Family Literacy Program in partnership with the Adult Education Department. I finished my career as an assistant principal of an elementary school in Smyrna.
Our two grandchildren (and their parents) live in Marietta. They are 14 and 16 now. They moved to Madison, GA from OK, when Claire was 1 and Graham wasn’t born. When Graham was 2 and Claire was 5, their daddy was called to Northwest Presbyterian Church on Northside Drive in Atlanta, and the family moved to Cobb County. We get to see them often and enjoy their lives.
In 2016 our son married a longtime friend from Philadelphia. She is a great person and a dedicated nurse at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and at Atlanta Women’s Crisis Center. Scott works for the film industry in Atlanta and has found a great outlet for his creative skills in set design. They live in Stone Mountain very close to the DeKalb Farmer’s Market. They are in the same neighborhood as Shelia Wilkins Harkleroad.
I must say I love retirement!
I am happy to have more time for reading, photography and gardening. We have enjoyed our church families along the way, traveling, going to the pool at Presbyterian Village for water aerobics, being part of a couples’ book club (challenging choosing books), having time to relax and be present with family and friends.
Terri Langston
Updated
After graduation from ASC, I went to Middlebury College in the summer of 1969. From there, I was offered a teaching assistantship at the Ohio State University Department of German, where I taught two years and earned a Master’s Degree. I then returned to Atlanta, where I worked for Emory University School of Medicine, ultimately running a research clinic near Grady Hospital. In those years, I began my graduate studies at the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University. In 1981 I received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Bonn, West (then) Germany. I stayed there from 1981 through 1984. I then returned to Atlanta to finish my dissertation in Comparative Literature on the German language, Jewish poet Paul Celan. I received the PhD in 1987. I then moved to Washington, DC, to take a job as a Program Officer at the Public Welfare Foundation, where I worked for 24 years, primarily on health care access for low-income people. I supported a network of advocacy organizations throughout the US, which successfully advocated for the creation of “Obamacare.” In 1989, I had married Stephan Richter, whom I had met in Bonn when he studied law there. We lived in DC for almost 30 years, raising Nathan Patrick, our son, who was born in 1990. In June 2016, we moved to Berlin, where we (and Nathan as well) live now. We are enjoying our new European lives centered in Berlin. My life has turned from the practical (health care) to the artistic, as I take piano lessons and art lessons in Berlin and enjoy the rich culture there.
Terri Langston is living in Berlin, Germany, with her husband, Stephan Richter, who does political and economic communications. Their son Nathan also lives and works in Berlin. After a couple of very quiet Covid years, travel around Europe has picked up to include Sicily, Sardinia, Austria, France, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Poland, Holland, and all around Germany. Life in Berlin is highly cultured and politically simulating in these times, though being 1300 miles from Moscow is less comfortable than earlier.
Windy Lundy
When I graduated from ASC, I headed to graduate school in Greek and Latin at Bryn Mawr College, fully focused on more education and eventually a position teaching in college. Toward the end of that multi-year process, I worked in the college library as a student and soon found that librarianship was my real calling. With an M.A. from Bryn Mawr and an MS. from Drexel University, I set out on a new career path, with successive appointments in the libraries at Bryn Mawr and the University of Colorado Boulder. In 1997, I moved to Boulder, Colorado, with my partner Penny and we love living in the West with its wide-open spaces, huge mountains, snow, and low humidity. Although my family all now live in other parts of the West, the South still holds a very special place in my heart. In July 2013, I retired as Associate Professor Emerita and nowadays I really wonder how I had time to work. The days are full of doing all those things I struggled to make time for before retirement. Gardening is a challenge in Colorado, but I have kept at it and applied what I learned as a Colorado Master Gardener 20 years ago. Travel, reading, photography, and attending cultural and artistic events are interests I now pursue. Life has been very good to me and for that I am grateful.
Patsy May Touw
Before my brother graduated from Princeton as an atheist with a degree in religion, I planned on attending one of the Seven Sisters. Afterwards, when my father explained no tuition assistance would follow me to the Northeast, I picked up the thick guide to colleges and declared in a huff that, without research or interviews, I would go to the first women’s college I found listed: “A” for Agnes. I did go, and it was a good thing. God works in mysterious ways.
I entered Scott with a plan to major in math. Dr. Rob, however, took me aside after a year of advanced calculus to explain I had the “spirit of math,” but it was not “in the marrow of my bones.” My plan squashed, I decided to enjoy my college years just reading as an English major and playing with art. Shockingly, that, too, proved a good thing.
While working as an artist at IBM in Dallas after graduation, life presented me a choice of transferring to Seattle in another capacity (Did their testing reveal math in my bones?) or marrying. Kenneth and l will be married 50 years in August. Our secret to making it past the fortieth anniversary is living 15 miles apart. I did not plan on that either.
Because we were told by doctors I could not have children, we had no real plans for parenting our surprises: Anduin, a rocket scientist; Kate, a chemist/teacher; and Adam, an artist/director of marketing. I am uncomfortable describing them by just their jobs as they are loved for being so much more. Now we also have two sons-in-law-- a think tanker and a composer/actuary-- plus one lovely nutritionist and three delightfully off-center granddaughters. Presently I enjoy the dichotomy of being a curmudgeon and the “fun” gran.
My career path took many interesting turns. An especially memorable experience was being called into the office of a bank VP on my first day to be told that I would hate working there. He had set up an interview for me with his advertising agency that morning. Unfortunately overqualified, I lost two jobs by noon. Over the years, I think my favorite position was managing a small toy store where I could order anything I wanted and create amusing vignettes jn the store windows and display cases. At present I assist a friend with Chapel Hill Social, a low key Cotillion with games and skits rather than white gloves. Who could have imagined that?
I found my stride in community service where I could use my writing and artistic interests to bring cultural and scientific enrichment into the city schools. One year I won a NC Governor’s Award for Volunteerism, and even my family was surprised that someone could get an award for messing up teachers’ class schedules.
My mother moved in with our family when my father died, and we took care of each other for 25 years until she died in our home at age 100. (Seventy-five doesn’t seem so old now, does it?) I never planned for my life as a caregiver, but it has been a very good thing.
My independent study at Scott focused on the spiritual nature of Reynolds Price, author of A Generous Man, the book that we, as an entering class, were assigned as summer reading. I disagreed with Dr. Alston when we discussed the book, and I, future curmudgeon, planned to prove him wrong. I do not have a copy of my work, but I suspect my conclusions might be defendable but not altogether accurate. Recently, as I am challenged by peculiar physical and mental issues related to a genetic condition, I picked up a book written by Price while he struggled with cancer and paralysis. He states that in our suffering, we must admit we are not the persons we once were. We must shut that door to start planning a “whole new life” (his book title). Hmmm. Planning. Well, God does work in mysterious ways our plans to divert.
Dianne McMillan Smith
I was from Little Rock, Arkansas, where I graduated from Little Rock Central High School. I now live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and have since 1975.
At Agnes Scott I lived in Hopkins. I was on a work-study scholarship and my job was operating the college switchboard (training which proved valuable, as you will see).
After two years I transferred to Hendrix College, Conway, Arkansas. At Hendrix I majored in History and Political Science.
In October 1969, after my graduation, I married. My husband was in the Army and we spent his two-year tour at Fort Polk, Leesville, Louisiana. During that time I taught Citizenship to foreign-born wives to prepare them to take the test to become American citizens.
After leaving the Army we moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, where I worked as a switchboard operator for Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company. After a year there we moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where my husband attended Harvard Business School from 1972 to 1974 and received his MBA. I worked as a switchboard operator for Harvard University.
After living in Stamford, Connecticut, we moved to Tulsa in 1975 and I realized we would be here long enough that I could attend law school, something I had wanted to do since graduating from Hendrix. I was accepted at the University of Tulsa College of Law for the 1976 school year and graduated in 1979.
I began work at a law firm, worked there for seven years and became a partner and then formed a partnership with a former partner in 1986. In 2010, I left to join a bank holding company, a former client, as General Counsel. I remain there.
I was divorced in 1984 and remain single.
Betsy Miller-Tretola
Upon graduation with a degree in Biology, I began my career in education. Initially, I set-up the first state kindergarten in my home county in Hawkins County, Tennessee and thereafter taught high school biology and other sciences in Roanoke County, Virginia. Upon completion of my Master’s in Science Education at The University of Virginia, I was awarded a NSF Fellowship at The University of Virginia that enabled my completion of my PhD in Education in Research Methodology.
I moved to New Jersey and began my second career that extended over 25 years in industry managing corporate education and marketing in consumer, business and government markets, primarily in telecommunications. I completed Columbia University’s Executive Master’s Degree in Business sponsored by my employer and married my husband, Joe Tretola in 1980.
Joe is a history major and is retired from his career in sales and sales management.
For the last decade I have been involved in my third career in higher education having completed a post-doctoral Marketing Program at Virginia Tech. I teach and do research in marketing and am a full time faculty member in the School of Business at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.
My husband and I live in Northern Virginia in Oakton which is close to the university. In addition we purchased my family’s one hundred year old Homeplace and the Cherokee Lakehouse in East Tennessee and enjoy being in both the D.C. and East Tennessee communities. Joe is an Elder in the historical Presbyterian Church where I grew up in East Tennessee and we are active also in Vienna Presbyterian Church in Northern Virginia. We play bridge with our longstanding group of more than ten years. We also enjoy our travels among which are New Zealand, China, Australia and Tasmania, Alaska, Europe and other places.
Melanie Moreland Yulman
In a 1970s alumnae magazine, Ann Teat ‘68 observed that class note contributors are usually the high achievers. She contended that ordinary people should write in, too, and so stating, reported she was a waitress and quoted John Milton, “‘They also serve who only stand and wait’......tables.”
Our class’s 50-year notes reveal that many have earned advanced degrees, won awards, held high-level jobs, gained fame, and are truly high achievers. This is no surprise. Your stunning abilities and remarkable selves shone in college. But some notes reflect lives that are good but relatively ordinary, like mine, and give me the confidence to do as Ann Teat said -- though not as she did (ASC has now recognized her for career excellence). So here’s a smidgeon of what’s mattered to me these past years.
Lots of tangential lurches, usually serendipitous. For example, reading National Geographic led me to meet my husband, Jim, and the Vietnam War put us in Philadelphia. [We met in 1968 on Martha’s Vineyard which I chose for summer work after seeing a nice photo in NG. We came to Philadelphia for a Temple University program that guaranteed Jim a deferment in the imminently draftable years following graduation -- otherwise, we’d probably have moved to Canada.]
We have been lucky. Jim did not go to Vietnam. We liked Philadelphia and stayed.
And I still love Jim.
He has retired from practicing law and developing software and I from teaching at Friends’ Central, a Quaker nursery - 12 school. In 1969 I became a secretary at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I worked there for a decade plus, moving among departments and finally landing in Development in charge of grants (later returning in summers to write grants). In 1990 I moved to Friends’ Central, my children’s school, to pursue a long-held dream of teaching. Though very different, the Art Museum and Friends’ Central shared qualities, some life-changing for me. I felt seen, known, and cared about in both places. Neither pigeonholed employees, and both attract staff who love what they do and work collaboratively to do it well. At each I started in low-level jobs and moved up, and I retired after 23 years of teaching across four of the early grades.
Teaching is a happy job. I truly loved teaching, especially reading and writers’ workshop, and I found a muse in the teacher/writer Vivian Paley. Her books -- on the power of story (especially children’s own stories), the importance of social inclusion, and the need to seek and hear every single voice in a school community -- helped me define the heart I hoped my classroom would have as its anchor. Even on the rare mornings I didn’t feel like going in, within ten minutes of the kids’ arrival I’d be laughing or deep in a fascinating conversation or activity with my students. Sometimes upper school colleagues asked what on earth one did with those little children all day long, and my answer was always the same. A day doesn’t contain enough hours to do all the work, play, art, science, problem solving, and just plain talking we wanted to do together.
Family = joy.
We have two children, two children-in-law, and three grandchildren, and all seven are astonishingly wonderful, interesting, good people. Kait and Geoff live in Philadelphia with six-year-old Ezra and three-year-old Levi. Kait’s a social worker, home with the kids right now, and Geoff is a psychiatrist. Nick and Carrie are in Brooklyn with Hazel (also three), with another daughter on the way. Nick works at Kickstarter, and Carrie focuses on women’s issues at Amnesty International. [Check out Unnatural Resources, one of my favorite episodes of Nick’s podcast on creativity, Just the Beginning.] I marvel at each of them and at how lucky Jim and I are to be part of this family. We are enchanted by our grandchildren. They give me hope for the future and help me see afresh every day just how wonderful life and the world are.
I’ve so enjoyed reading about your lives since Scott. I have warm recollections of you as a group and deeply affectionate and happy memories of many of you individually. I wish I could join you at the reunion. Please take and post lots of pictures.
Minnie Bob Mothes Campbell
Updated
Too much to recap over the past 50 years, so will just bring my information up to date since our last reunion. I continue contentedly in my long (20 years) retirement. I stay happily engaged in activities and organizations in which I have a great interest. Gardening (not so much now – this aging body will not cooperate) and garden related activities continue to bring me great joy, as does travel. The accompanying pictures are of Mike and me in Charleston at Christmas. We intend to travel as long as we are physically and financially able to do so. Upcoming trips include San Miguel de Allende (Mexico) in March and London and Scotland in May. Mike (at 76) continues to do the work he loves, but is managing to cut back somewhat. We are blessedly healthy, but Mike is “wholer” than I am. I have a new hip (2012) and a brand new knee (2018). This body may have some age on it, but parts of it are very new!
For the last 18 months I have enjoyed working on our 50th reunion as your reunion chair. I am greatly indebted to a group of fabulous classmates who make up the reunion committee. I can’t wait to see everyone in April!
I look forward to seeing many of you at our 55th in April! I have enjoyed working with the other class officers to plan a wonderful gathering for all of us on Saturday night.
Mike and I continue to be blessed with good health, though I have added another new part - a new left knee. Now I have a matching pair! We still enjoy our travels. We checked Norway off the bucket list last summer, and we have a road trip planned through Provence and Tuscany right after Alumnae Weekend. Life is indeed good.
Mary Anne Murphy Hornbuckle
Updated
As I think back over the five years since our 50th reunion, I am struck by how much less busy I am. When life as we knew it screeched to a halt in March of 2020, my world changed, as I am sure yours did. Trips were postponed or cancelled, face to face contacts were limited, most activities away from home disappeared or were on Zoom! It was a frightening time because of the unknowns. For me, it was also a time of discovery and settling into a quieter routine. Since coming out of that period, I have maintained much of that way of life. We still are involved in the activities of our three grandchildren who now are ages 16, 15, and 13. We have come to appreciate the world of show choirs and continue to attend many basketball games. We have been on several trips. Two that we particularly enjoyed were a sibling (mine) reunion in Charleston and a GA Tech sponsored trip to Texas which Lalla and Al Mangin took with us. Our church life is important and evolving. I gave up being lay pastoral care chairman and have taken on the role of Eucharistic minister. Keeping in touch with old friends is a joy. As I said after my recent birthday, although I am daily surprised and sometimes dismayed by the old woman in my mirror, I am grateful for each day and for all of you.
Carolyn Owen Hernandez
Happy 50th to all of you.
Professionally I taught school for 42 plus years. I spent two years in regular education, and the remainder in the field of special education in TN. I achieved Lamar Alexander’s Career Ladder Level 3 as a teacher. I had the opportunity to participate in several federal and state pilot projects. I was very active in Very Special ARTS and Special Olympics. Like many of you I did win several awards, but they are insignificant when compared to my personal growth in knowing all the special people whom I served. The most amazing thing are the changes since IDEA first passed and how we all have benefitted from it. The young, the elderly, and the wounded have access to devices, support groups, and programs that have evolved from primitive, homemade, and awkward contraptions we made years ago.
I retired 5 years ago. As for many of our class, that means I get to volunteer more. I volunteer at the Chattanooga Area Food Bank. I also teach and fulfill several positions for my church family. We are a soccer family and Maurice and I attend all the CFC games.
My personal family is my greatest achievement and blessing. Maurice and I have been married for 44 years. Our older son, Scott (& Cathie), gave us three beautiful granddaughters. I tried to get their oldest, Gabrielle, to apply to ASC, but she had had enough of “all girls” schools. She is attending Northeastern University in Boston and is in the honors program in bio-chemistry. The other two are still teens at Visitation Academy in St. Louis and into ballet and swimming. Our younger son, Chad (& Kara), gave us our first grandson, Aidan, who is two years old, wild, and adventuresome.
Looking back over 50 years we probably all have had life’s ups and downs. Agnes Scott and our faith have made us resilient. Reflection makes me see and feel how truly blessed I am.
