1998

Pamela Wilson Colaluca
540-631-5928
pamelacolaluca@gmail.com

Erin Goley reported that, despite an unfortunate leg break, she had a wonderful time playing in the Hood Alumnae Soccer Game with Laura Kontes Ames, Naomi Cross, and Suzanne Benson ’00 this spring. Karen White is living in Fargo, ND with her dog Tera. This September, she will be celebrating 16 years at the advertising agency Avenue Right. She is also the Director of Christian Education at Prairie View Church. Laura Kontes Ames, Melanie Gorr and Angela Gennaccaro Brooke got together in Nashville, TN this June to celebrate their 40th birthdays! Any news to share? Please email me at pamelacolaluca@gmail.com.

Pamela Wilson Colaluca
540-631-5928
pamelacolaluca@gmail.com

Congratulations to Ann Frances Price-Davis, husband Michael, and big brother Asa! On December 16, 2014, they welcomed their second son Ezra Granville. Major Steven A. Czap is an operations officer in the United States Army and is stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany. He resides there with wife Marta, son Ian (age 7) and daughter Katia (age 2); and is looking forward to retirement in January 2016 after 26 years of service. Melissa Sines has a new position as the director of education and accreditation at Maryland Nonprofits and is an adjunct professor at Hood College. Erin Goley, wife Erin and big brother Beck were overjoyed to have daughter Remy Beatrice complete their family on September 5, 2014. Remy has already wrapped the entire family around her chubby little fingers. Erin’s lab at Johns Hopkins is up and running with four awesome Ph.D. students and a great group of undergrads. They were excited to have their first research article recently accepted for publication. Ginny Treanor lives in the Glover Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C. with her husband Steve, son Stephen (age 6) and daughter Genevieve (age 3). She received her Ph.D. in Art History from the Univ. of Maryland in 2012 and is currently the associate curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Jenna McCarthy Pietropola lives in Washington, D.C. with husband Matt and daughter Alexis (age 3). She is an avid traveler and has visited many countries in the years since graduation. In 2005, she received her master’s degree in accounting from George Washington Univ., and is a senior contract specialist for a government contractor. In April, Jenna hosted Robyn Ackerman Cranston and her fiancé for a tour of the cherry blossoms in D.C. Diana Guner Doss ’99 and husband Jimmy have recently moved to Dallas, Texas. Michelle Reed Bassett has lived in Grand Rapids, Mich., since 1999. She was widowed in 2002 when her husband Dwight fought against an aggressive form of cancer that sadly ended his life. As she learned, life somehow continues and in 2006, Michelle married Kevin Bassett. They have two blended families with four teenage children together. She is now working on her second generation of family members and is Grammy to Briggs (age 3) and Matt (6-months).  She is an independent business consultant working with Grand Rapids-based organizations. She also volunteers as a board/committee member for several non-profits, including Gilda’s Club (a cancer and grief support community), Funds for School (a literacy project in the South Sudan) and Our Hope (a women’s addiction recovery center). Rebecca Sunderlin Riggins is an assistant professor of oncology at the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, D.C. In January, she was a featured guest on the Kojo Nnamdi show (WAMU). Rebecca spoke about the decline in funding for scientific research and its effect on young scientists. Rebecca lives in Fairfax County, Va., with husband Seth (a program analyst for the United States Department of the Navy) and daughter Sarah who will start kindergarten in the fall. Andrea Clark Mason and husband Tim Mason ’99 live in Lutz, Fla., and expanded their family in November 2014 by adopting son Gage (age 7) and daughter Faith (age 2). This March, Andrea got together with Laura Kontes Ames and sons Kevin (age 6) and William (age 3) who were   visiting from their home in Havre de Grace, Md. Angela Gennaccaro Brooke lives in Brooksville, Fla., with husband Aaron and daughters Alexa (age 8) and Aubrey (age 4). After five years of mommy duty, she is back to work as a clinical research coordinator at Meridien Research. Jessica Rollins Magno married husband James in 2003. They reside in Hollywood, Md., with their two children ages 10 and 8. Congratulations to Melanie Gorr and partner Paul Anderson who welcomed Seren Grace Marshall Anderson, born Dec. 10, 2013! Melanie is a licensed massage therapist at Ohana Wellness in Bethesda, Md., and lives in Harpers Ferry, W.Va. In April 2015, Renee Endia Hargrove became the associate executive director of Partners for Education at Berea College in Berea, Ky. Jennifer Massagli Morgenthaler married husband Timothy in November 2014. Shannon Mack ’99 was the wedding planner. Jamie Szocinski Gillette, M.S.’01, C’02 and Erin Janney Kanner ’00 were bridesmaids; and Stephanie Kane Mummert attended. The couple lives in Columbia Md. In April, Penelope Weiss Wagner and husband Matthew welcomed daughter Jocelyn Brenna who joins her two big sisters Isabella (8) and Juliana (5). Her family lives in Connecticut where she is a senior quality assurance manager at Aplicare, a Clorox Healthcare Company.

1998
Blythe Chambers
blythe.chambers@gmail.com

Greetings Nuns! This time of year reminds me of when we received our very first assignment from Hood College during the summer of 1994, right after we graduated high school: we were to read Diane Ackerman’s, A Natural History of the Senses. I remember it being the most delectable book I had ever been assigned to read after four years of high school exposure to English literature’s finest selection of books on paranoia, such as Clockwork Orange, Macbeth, A Brave New World, 1984, The Metamorphosis and The Lord of the Flies. The lush book cover alone was enough to begin a brand new journey on the most optimistic of feet. Piled into the auditorium to listen to Ms. Ackerman speak those first couple of days of orientation, our friendships marked only by timid greetings and pre-determined roommate situations, the space smelled and creaked of old wood and history. The air in the auditorium was thick with the sense that the next four years were going to be nothing short of awesome! The magical world of the Hood College campus left imprints on all our senses: snow touching skin while running through the pergola on frigid night; decadent desserts served abundantly in Memorial; Handel’s lyrics “His yolk is easy, his burden is light! His burden, his burden is light” ringing in our ears like sleigh-bells; emotional bonds of friendships forged forever. Now, unbelievably nearly two decades later, I do not know about you but I still wear the same ragged Hood College heather-grey sweatshirt I wore back then: every stain a memory, every frayed edge a moment. It is somewhere around here. I would wear it now just to write the class column if it were not so darn hot in Texas! So, let us wait no more for what we came here for: the news! Jennifer Massagli became engaged to Timothy Morgenthaler in December. Her wedding will be in Sykesville, Md., Messiah weekend. Jamie Szocinski Gillette, M.S. ’01, C’02 and Erin Janney Kanner ’00, Jennifer’s “little sister,” are bridesmaids. Shannon Mack ’99 is the wedding planner. Sally Schaeffer is the director of public policy for Girl Scouts of the USA. As the president of the Women’s Congressional Golf Association, Sally presented a First Tee of Greater Washington, D.C. LPGA/USGA Girls Golf $1,500 college scholarship to Attiyah Jenkins ’18 who will attend Hood College in the fall. Renee Endia Hargrove , mother to an active 23-month-old son, became the director of business administration/chief financial officer and family engagement chair for the Cristo Rey Network of Schools. She is in the executive education program at the Kellogg School of Management and hopes to bring innovation to pre-school and secondary education institutions. Stephanie Gordy Clark recently enjoyed three weeks traveling to Japan and South Korea, visiting with friends and touring solo. She recently met with Hoodlums Sally Schaeffer and Allison Bell Barrett ’99. Stephanie completed the Dirty Girl Mud Run and looked forward to her annual trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Ann Frances Price-Davis became president of the Ladies Auxiliary Maryland State Firemen’s Association in June 2014 for a one-year term that takes 13 years to achieve. Becky Turner Finberg attended the ceremony. Danielle Adgerson Clarke became a licensed minister in October 2012. Fellow Hoodlums Tami Brasfield Smith ’99, Vanessa Voundy Hawkins ’00, Venette Voundy ’00, and Melinda Miller Wright ’00 were in attendance. Danielle founded The Sister Network, a nonprofit, and is joined by Hoodlum Dzauya “Dizzy” Nkuchwayo ’99 on the board of directors. As for me, Blythe Chambers, I am the happy single-mother of an amazing 4-year-old whose summer 2014 will be known as the summer he went camping with his mommy for the first time, learned to fish and attended nearly every Vacation Bible School in San Antonio, Texas. In my independent consulting practice I serve as the editor and director for the Marcus & Millichap publication, Mobile Quarterly, and in other advisory capacities for multiple clients in various fields. And with that, fellow nuns, I bid you adieu a final time. This will be my last class update for the Hood Magazine as your dutiful and faithful class reporter for more than a decade.  I am now passing the torch to the lovely Pamela Wilson Colaluca who will be contacting you all for the next issue. Thank you for letting me into your lives for the past decade-plus! Cheers to your successes, hugs for your struggles, smiles for your Hood memories. Be well and God bless. Onward! “We are the nuns, nuns, nuns of Hood College!”

Nuns, friars, I may never get used to 75 degree holiday season weather in South Texas, and as I sit here trying to imagine the live oak leaves and limbs (still green) covered under millions of burdensome flakes of snow I am transported back to a time of magic and wonder that we all experienced this time of year on our beautiful Hood College campus, with a surprising aftertaste memory of Goldschlager and half-frostbitten phantom tips of woolen sock-covered toes in smelly Birkenstock sandals (don’t deny it!) and I hold myself there in that memory as if I were back in time for only the few minutes it will take to write this column to you. Remember for a moment the excitement of Messiah and the snow-covered steeple of our picturesque, yet simple chapel. The smell of our historic residence halls, old creaky wood that sagged ever so slightly under snow-covered heel, the immediate warmth from the radiator, and the buzz in the air that tonight there was a party on some floor of some hall and midshipmen coming in for the weekend, not knowing yet that the end result would be running out into the heavy snowfall of the evening, laughing, into the snow covered pergola, and landing hard on one’s back to make snow angels while watching your cinnamon schnapps breath steam upwards like a locomotive. And maybe in a moment of quiet bliss you could hear the snow falling in a failed attempt to bury you, and maybe you would hear Amy Zavada ’99 serenading you while hanging out of a 3rd floor window of Shriner Hall with “Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say on a bright Hawaiian Christmas Day! That’s the island greeting that we send to you from the land where palm trees sway!” could not be much further from a palm tree, but it was the spirit that captivated us on our beautiful little snow globe of a campus each holiday season, buffered from the world of professionalism and duty. With the reunion coming up this June it is hard to believe that our Hood rings really ARE that old, but so fun to recall that at one point in our lives that did not seem so long ago we made Goldschlager fueled snow angels and ran through the pergola and made our own mistletoe with whatever we desired. If there was even a speck of snow here in San Antonio I would relive the memory, after I put Stone to bed, of course, as I am far more responsible now than I ever have been, as you can all relate in your own way. And, with that, onto the news!

Congratulations to Jessica Myers-Staley, her husband CP and daughter Hannah who welcomed Christopher David Staley on Dec. 26, 2011. Pamela Wilson-Colaluca’s new phone number is (540) 631-5928 and new email address is pamelacolaluca@gmail.com. Erin Goley has started a Facebook group for our class entitled “Hoodlums ’98” to connect classmates for the upcoming reunion this June. Please join the group if you haven’t already! And, as for me, Blythe Chambers, I received my first professional athlete action-portrait commission, in watercolor, for a former defenseman of the San Antonio Scorpions’ soccer team who has since continued his career in Germany. I would like to close with this: I would like to hear from more of you. I welcome all submissions for the class news for the Hood Magazine. My email address has changed to blythe.chambers@gmail.com. I hope next time I can report some news from your life, too. Until then, happy holidays and a magnificent new year! Love, your faithful class reporter, Blythe.

Class Reporter: