Class Notes

Lisa Smith Arbelaez (Col ’79 L/M) retired in January 2019 following a 39-year career at the National Security Agency. She now spends time traveling, gardening, relaxing, and continuing to support the agency a couple days a week. She and husband, Bill, live in Columbia, Maryland. 

Robert Edwards Griffin (Col ’02 L/M) and his wife, Claire, welcomed a second son, Thomas Murphy, on Feb. 9, 2019. Thomas joins his older brother, Gordon Charles, and is grandson of Gordon Dix Griffin Jr. (Arch ’72 L/M). The family lives in Huntsville, Alabama.

Lauren Ritacco Seufert (Engr ’02 L/M) published her first book this spring, True Connection: Discovering Ourselves in a Distracting Digital World. The book covers topics such as emotional intelligence, self-awareness and inclusive communication, and provides tools and strategies for the digital age. Seufert has received her MBA and held several global leadership positions in the chemical industry. In 2018, she started her company, emOcean Coaching & Consulting, which supports individuals and businesses to develop the skills necessary for leadership and organizational impact in the future. 

Nick Deygoo (Col ’05 L/M) was elected president of the Georgetown, Guyana, Chamber of Commerce and Industry and, in March, launched the 2019 edition of the chamber’s Business Guyana magazine. The magazine is a resource for investors looking at the Guyanese market.

Ed Offley (Col ’69) won first prize for a print publication under 100,000 circulation) in the Military Reporters & Editors 2018 journalism competition. Offley’s winning article was an investigative piece revealing new details about the sinking of the nuclear attack submarine USS Scorpion and its 99-man crew on May 22, 1968. His article in MHQ—The Quarterly Journal of Military History revealed previously undisclosed eyewitness accounts confirming that U.S. Navy officials knew at the time of its loss—and immediately covered up—hard evidence that the nuclear attack submarine and its 99-man crew had been attacked and sunk by the Soviets.

Jean Gleason White (Col ’69 L/M), a Silver Owl member of the National Press Club, met CNN’s Wolf Blitzer at a Washington, D.C., event for the club in May 2019.  She is the immediate past president of the American News Women’s Club.

Tom Sutton (Engr ’78 L/M) is a fellow of the American Nuclear Society

Carole Kirkland Ramser (Col ’85, Educ ’89 L/M) is a speech-language pathologist for Hanover County Public Schools. She is married to Scott E. Ramser, who is a CPA. 

Barry Hall (Col ’70 L/M) and his wife moved in May 2018 to the Ashby Ponds retirement community in Ashburn, Virginia, after 33 years in Falls Church, Virginia. 

Kelly Cope-Randall (Col ’00) moved to Houston, Texas.

Paul Hurdle (Col ’70, Law ’73 L/M) is looking forward to the Class of 1970’s reunion!

Amanda Tuck Vizi (Educ ’06) married Frederick Michael Vizi Jr. in Las Vegas on March 28, 2019. They celebrated by watching the ’Hoos win their Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.  

Jasmine Drake (Col ’13 L/M) has relocated to the Washington D.C. Metro Area and would love to connect with Wahoos in the area. She is originally from New York City (Boogie Down Bronx, to be exact).

She hopes everyone is thriving and striving in their careers and personal endeavors! She is forever indebted to UVA for the lifetime of friendships she created and personal development.

Sunny DiSoco (Engr ’95) looks forward to seeing old friends, reminiscing, and catching up!

Jody Chance (Engr ’88, Nurs ’12, ’17 L/M) has joined Riverside Heath System on the Eastern Shore of Virginia after 10 years as a flight paramedic and nurse with VCU Health System. At Riverside, she serves as a nurse practitioner focusing on family medicine and gastroenterology. 

Neal Patton (Arch ’78 L/M) is now general counsel at International Market Centers following its recent merger with his long-time employer, AmericasMart Real Estate. The combined company owns and manages trade marts, trade shows, design centers, and exhibition facilities in High Point, North Carolina, Las Vegas and Atlanta, where Patton lives.

Nicholas E. Redmond (Col ’00, Educ ’02) was ordained as a Catholic priest for the Diocese of Richmond in June 2018. After serving his first year as a priest in Newport News, Virginia, he is now at St. Joseph’s in Petersburg, Virginia.

Interestingly, Sandy, whom I met on the 1st day at UVA, married me, and we had a boy and a girl together. To date, we’re very happy, and remain married. 🙂  I evolved into a professional salesperson, specializing in information technology sales, holding almost all roles between field sales rep to VP within companies that included local dealerships to major technology manufacturers, such as Canon, Xerox, EFi and Ricoh.  I currently work for Ricoh as a District Business Manager supporting dealerships in the mid-Atlantic area.  Socio-cultural anthropology became a useful template for recognizing cultures, power hierarchies, exchange systems and helping companies understand and choose technology that fits.  I’m still playing computer games, foosball, pool, golf, snow ski and attempt to surf on a log when both time and waves are available.  I travel for work, extensively, mostly windshield time, and I’ve built up a lot of points to explore new locations in moments of spare time.  A good microbrew and fresh exotic scenery still freezes time in my head, and this is very good.  Someday, I’m sure Sandy and I will have time to use the points and travel for fun.  As a 35 year reunion note, I really appreciate and thank UVA for introducing me to so many good lifelong friends over the years.  I also miss friends I made so many years ago, yet drifted away, and write this message to you, should you remember me.  Reading class notes is a non-facebook way of checking in on the past with a tidbit from the present. I also greatly appreciate the flavoring mix UVA and Charlottesville contributed to my continuously evolving perspective of life, work, love, friends and family since graduation.  C’ville hooked me, if only mentally.  Carpe Diem, caveat emptor and Go Hoos!

Geraldine Chi (Col ’03) earned her MBA in management and finance from the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School in May 2018. She was a member of Beta Gamma Sigma Business Honor Society and National Society of Leadership and Success–Executive and Advanced Leadership.

Curtis Tomlin (Col ’70) served as the first director of personnel for (then) Virginia Telephone & Telegraph in Charlottesville. He later served 10 years as director of development for Athens Collegem, now Athens State University, in Athens, Alabama. Beginning in 1980, he served in the hotel industry in Florida until his retirement in 1999.

Joe Essid (Col ’83) was coeditor of Writing Centers at the Center of Change, a look at how 11 writing centers internationally have adapted to widespread institutional change. He is director of the Writing Center at the University of Richmond.

Alice Brown Taylor (Engr ’78) was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States alongside 30 other graduates of Boston College Law School.

Andrew G. Lee (Col ’85, Med ’89 L/M) received the Sherilyn Gordon Memorial Award for Distinguished Leadership in Professionalism and the Houston Methodist Hospital Teaching Award from both from Houston Methodist Hospital in June 2019. He was also named a 2019 Health Care Hero by the Houston Business Journal. 

Jay Cost (Col ’01 L/M) earned a doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago in 2017. He is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and is currently writing his fourth book, a biography of James Madison, to be published by Basic in 2021.

Bob Goodrich (Col ’78 L/M), Billy Bolton (Com ’78 L/M), and others hosted an April 2019 retirement party outside of Charlottesville for their classmate Charlie Blair (Col ’78, Educ ’91 L/M), who retired this spring after a 40-year career as teacher, coach and administrator at Collegiate School in Richmond, Virginia. Blair received a letter of congratulations from UVA President James Ryan. Goodrich retired in 2018 after practicing law for 33 years. An ongoing battle with acute myeloid leukemia is taking him and his wife, Sally Tanner Goodrich (Col ’78, Educ ’79 L/M), to Duke Medical Center for a second stem cell transplant.  

John W. Warner (Col ’86 L/M) is a writer and “gentleman farmer” whose passion for history, vintage cars and the unsung heroes of WWII has inspired two large-scale creative ventures: a DVD documentary series on the early bootlegging days of NASCAR, ​The Golden Era of NASCAR​ , and a historical novel titled Little Anton.

Warner is the son of retired Senator John W. Warner III (R-VA), former Secretary of the Navy and Chairman of the Armed Services Committee (KBE), ​and Catherine Mellon, daughter of philanthropist Paul Mellon (U.S. Army, OSS, CIA, KBE). Growing up in a whacky military family that had a seat at many of the most historically significant tables––military, corporate, and intelligence––led to his insatiable quest to find and reveal the hidden truths behind world events. 

A “gear head,” he has spent most of his adult life quenching his thirst for knowledge about race cars, first as a professional Grand Am, IMSA, and American LeMans Series racing driver (a plodding “middle of the pack man” behind the wheel of a Corvette GT1 and a Porsche GT3R, back in 1995-2001), and later researching the southern history of the sport for his NASCAR DVD series, “The Golden Era of Nascar,” and the “Wendell Scott Story,” (find them on Youtube).

He has now finished his first book, “Little Anton,” which is the first in a series.

An avid researcher of revisionist/alternative history, both ancient and recent, he began writing this book series during a two year-long recovery from a racing car accident. His extensive research for ​”Little Anton​” evolved into a gripping historical narrative that reveals hidden truths about technological advancements, top secret German non-linear physics, and the many prominent leaders active in the WWII era, including Adolf Hitler, Henrich Himmler, physicist Walter Gerlach, Ferdinand Porsche, and Winston Churchill. Part love story and part satire, the book centers on Hitler’s use of Porsche’s brilliant engineering mind to build the world’s fastest and most advanced machines, and the occultism of the SS to further new advanced weapons of the ​”Wunderwaffe​ .”

He and his wife, Teba,  split their time between our Washington D.C. area residence and their humble Virginia hay farm, where he is finishing the sequel to L​ittle Anton​, titled​ Lion,Tiger, Bear​. They also host a biannual deer hunt and picnic for wounded veterans with the Virginia Wildlife Foundation.

St. Leger “Monty” Joynes (Col ’63) is the librettist of an oratorio, The Awakening of Humanity, that had its world premiere in Toulouse, France on June 2, 2019. The U.S. premiere with symphony orchestra and chorus is being planned for the 2020-21 concert season in Minneapolis with Joynes and composer Edmund Barton Bullock in attendance.

Joynes continues to publish poetry and prose from his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. His five novels in The Booker Series are considered pioneer works in the genre of visionary fiction. Joynes credits UVA Professor George Garrett as his literary mentor.

Cathy Carrell Teague (Educ ’80 L/M) retired Feb. 1, 2019 after 30 years with State Farm Life Insurance Company. She and Joe Teague (Col ’84 L/M) have been married 27 years and live in Bloomington, Illinois.

Tommy Holcomb (Col ’66 L/M) has won the American Advertising Association’s Silver Medal Award for his work in the creation and production of advertising-related music. His award-winning music has aired in markets nationwide, and he is currently the music producer for the Miss Virginia Pageant.

Casey King (Engr ’89), a physics professor at Horry-Georgetown Technical Collegesince 1997, was nominated for the 2019 A. Wade Martin Innovator of the Year and was named 2019  Professor of the Year at HGTC. He has also organized the Addiction and Recovery Lecture Series since creating the event in 2008.

Whitney Caudill Bandemer (Col ’99) and her husband, Chris, welcomed a baby girl, Alice Maxine. The Bandemers live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where Whitney is vice president of human resources and strategic initiatives at Manchester University. 

Jenna Martin-Trinka (Educ ’15) received a master’s degree, her second, from the University of Salamanca, Spain, in Spanish and Spanish culture. She works as a reading teacher in Harrisonburg City Public Schools providing bilingual reading intervention to students in dual language programming.

Thomas H. Cook Jr. (Com ’81 L/M) has been elected as a fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel. He is head of the tax practice group of Wyrick Robbins Yates & Ponton in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Tony Gentry (Educ ’06), associate professor in occupational therapy at Virginia Commonwealth University, has published his debut novel, The Coal Tower, a domestic drama set in Charlottesville on the first day of the UVA football season. The book is available in paperback or e-book. He will be reading from the novel at New Dominion Book Shop on the downtown mall on August 28, 2019.

Luis G. Pedraja (Grad ’94) was named one of the 50 most influential persons in Central Massachusetts by the Worcester Business Journal.

M. Ross Alliston (Col ’83, Arch ’90 L/M) has accepted a position as a foreign affairs officer with the U.S. Department of State in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, at their headquarters in Washington, D.C. He previously spent 16 years as a fish and wildlife biologist with the National Wildlife Refuge System.

Allison Powell (Arch ’07), an associate with Quinn Evans Architects, was recognized with a 2019 Green Leader Volunteer Award from the U.S. Green Building Council Virginia. Powell was honored for her extensive volunteer efforts for the state organization, including serving as chair of the council’s Green Schools committee for the past four years. The Green Schools committee oversees the organization’s Connect the Dots program, which challenges K–12 schools across the Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia regions to develop and implement the most creative, effective, no- or low-cost sustainable practices for their schools.