I might as well have been a Walton ....

Dear Class Mates,

Well, another Holiday Season has rolled around and here we are again, sending cheer to our old friends. I have enjoyed keeping the web site and reading all the email from Sharon Williams and Ted Anderson ~ and look forward to continuing the effort in 2008.  Which reminds me: our good old friend, Dean Irwin, likes our site so much that he'd like us to put a link on to the Class of 1963, too. I, of course, couldn't say no, because my sister Mary also graduated in his class.

The Christmas and Thanksgiving seasons have always been special to me. I might as well have been one of the Walton family members. As you all remember, Mary and I lived on a farm in Needham Township with our parents, Mae and J.D. Fowler. I still wonder if the animals really did kneel down at midnight on Christmas Eve.

Mom was a cook at Needham Grade School for many of you. She passed away in 2002 and Christmas Dinner has never been quite the same without her excellent recipes for noodles and red velvet cake and all the rest. We just can't make it taste the same. Some of you will remember that our Dad took our classmates on hay rides at Halloween parties at the farm. He's gone now, too: January 2006. We miss them a lot during the holidays and I'm sure you all have similar memories of the old-time family gatherings.

My daughters, Jill and Jenny (Liggett), live in Virginia Beach and Atlanta, respectively. Each has a little boy: Kellan Crist and Tyler Stultz. At Halloween Kellan was Spiderman in Virginia Beach and Tyler was Nemo in Atlanta. I think I was a ghost or a hobo one about every year as a child. Mom didn't like it when we cut holes in the sheets for eyes! Someone in the neighborhood had a store-bought witch costume and we thought she was rich.

My husband, Mike Robbins, and I are getting ready for Thanksgiving company, now. He put his 1958 Porsche Speedster in the garage for the winter (thank God!) I am completely retired but still enjoy pecking around on the computer. I left the School of Journalism at Franklin College in 1997 after 18 years of bringing computers and the internet "kicking and screaming" into the classrooms.

Fair winds for the coming year and God bless you everyone!   ~ Judy