Judith (McDonald) Thomas ’58 taught a 2-week Orff Schulwerk Certification course at the University of Cincinnati this past summer.  She also played the Gershwin Preludes and solo version of Rhapsody in Blue for the Saratoga Springs Jewish Festival prior to that.  February of 2017 took her to San Francisco to present a workshop on Nurturing Wonder in Children through the Arts which was repeated in NYC in May.  Judith resides with her husband in Saratoga Springs, NY.

In a house concert on July 16th, Bob Riseling ’59 and pianist Denise Jung performed a “pre-premier” of THE MOTOR CITY COLLECTION, 10 autobiographical pieces by Alan Torok (Toronto) related to growing up in Detroit in the 1960s and influenced by the Motown music and artists of the day. They are recording the work in August and the premier will occur on the 10th of November on the Friday Noon Series at Western University London, Ontario. Congratulations, Bob!

Joe Corsello ’59 has spent  33 years as an art teacher at Morris Community High School and 26 years as a teacher at Immaculate Conception Church. He’s also given private lessons to up-and-coming artists like Ray Grossi. Grossi, as a part of The Exhibit Fine Arts Center & Gallery in Morris, honored his former teacher and mentor this May by hosting a fine art exhibit of Costello’s work from 1963 to 2013.

You may read more in this article from The Morris Herald-News: http://www.morrisherald-news.com/2017/05/23/artist-joe-corsello-displays-more-than-six-decades-of-work/acsdhpb/

Congratulations, Joe!

Jim Ridenour ’54 is halfway through three family reunions.  The first, in Denver Colorado had all of the children of Hank and Ardy Charles all IWU grads or faculty, with 20 other family members there.  The Chicago Cub game, however, was postponed because of hail!! One of our cousins flew in from Sweden for the affair.
The second will be in Chicago with about twenty there, including several of Carol Pettyjohn’s  IWU ’56 kids in attendance.  The third next month in Baltimore with all of our children, plus about 20 others.  All three dates include Cub games, in celebration of the World Series win!
Jim and Doris will be visiting Mickey Drexler, ’48 (?)l Howard Berggren ’54, Helen Lacroix ’53, and Bill Jennings ’53, during these travels.

Here is a note from John Shaffer ’59 –

“We have lived in a retirement facility for one year now, known as Wesley Homes Lea Hill in Auburn, WA., located about 80 miles south of our former home in Stanwood, where we lived for sixteen years. We are enjoying this community of 250 people which provides full range of care. Makes it easier to travel and we just returned from “down under” where we visited Fiji, Australia and New Zealand. We are hopeful that North Korea does not send a bomb to Seattle, but if they do, it has been nice knowing you. Then you can be glad that you live in the middle of the country and far from military targets.”