YHS 1968 Profiles
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YHS '68 Classmates -- Please click on the"Add Your Profile," box below, and write a little information about yourself. Everyone loves photos! Adding "then" and "now"photos to your profile will help classmates to recognize you at the big event.
If you need help adding your profile, click on the "Contact Us" tab and we will assist you.
To add your Classmate Profile, you will create a Username and Password, so none of your friends has unauthorized fun with your profile -- but don't forget to hit "the submit" button to save your information! Also, you can edit your information (tap on the "edit your profile" button.)
This website does not share your personal information including your home & email addresses, or phone numbers, but it does permit other classmates to contact you privately, without revealing your email address on the website.
This website operates in a distinctly different way from Facebook. So don’t expect to be bombarded with emails every time there is a change. The Reunion Committee, however, will occasionally send updates and news to you about the reunion events as they evolve. But please check back on your own to catch up with new classmate profiles, photos and other news.
Leri Thomas
Then
Now
| Marital status: | Committed Relationship |
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| Children: | 1 |
| Occupation: | Retired teacher/Innkeeper/Troublemaker |
| Comment: Greetings all! Thanks to those who put this together. I took the path less travelled to Alaska ('71-'75), returned to the country with the husband from hell where I worked on dairies, beef farms, in graphics, advertising and in multiple capacities for newspapers. Fired husband from hell in 1983. Single mom to one daughter living in Madison County. Gained a Bachelor of Liberal Studies in Theatre design/American Studies in '92. After my daughter was "safely" entrenched in college, I returned to grad school at U. VA. where I completed my M. Ed. and Ph.D. in Foundations of Ed. Held a couple admin jobs, Dir. Victim Witness Program in Madison, and Head Start for 8 surrounding counties. Bureaucracy doesn't suit me. Best of all, I was a sub-contract instructor at Woodberry Forest School in Set Design & Construction, and Psychology for 16 years. I've been happily unmarried to James Jarrell, Excavating Contractor/Farmer. We have run a herd of about 85 angus cattle up until recently - cut back to 25. We currently operate a small farm stay airbnb business which pays the taxes and guarantees visits from worldly guests year 'round. He has a boat load of kids and grand kids. I have 1 daughter, 1 granddaughter. We think we're retired, but we work harder now. | |
Tim Thompson
Then
Now
| Marital status: | Married |
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| Children: | 1 |
| Occupation: | Community Volunteer and Advocate |
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Comment:
Let me first say a big THANK YOU to the entire 50th Reunion Committee for the yeoman’s effort they have given us, the YHS Class of ‘68. I have, and continue to enjoy, checking these profiles to “catch up” with all of us – and even use it to reach out to classmates I’ve thought about but until now didn’t know how to contact Great Work All ! Now –the boring stuff. After college, went to work on staff of Texas Congressman Jim Wright for over 5 yrs. Then Dad insisted I take a job offer from Ma Bell – “do my 40 yrs there and retire w/ a gold watch.” Yah right! This led me to a career in international communications, predominately with INTELSAT (DC) & several successful (and a couple not so successful) international “start-ups”. Baby Bell NYNEX actually paid me to live & work in Bermuda for 3 yrs. Tho I retained a home in Arlington & Rehoboth Beach, DE, my bosses for about 25 years were always in Hong Kong, London, Dublin, Dubai, Calif or Bermuda – so saying I traveled a lot is an understatement. Several decades of flying gave me too many years of membership in the 100K Club, which started to get old, so decided I needed to settle down & become a responsible family man. This was a “bummer” as I had built up my nest egg so I could retire when I was about 50-55 - then HAVE FUN coaching high school lax & soccer. But instead in 1992, at 42, I got married to Tracy (Darien, CT) w/ Rob Hickey in our wedding; and our son Cameron was born in ’95. We lived w/in Yorktown’s boundary (yeaaa) but wife wanted more land, so we moved across county line into Langley HS area (booo) where we live today. Son followed my footsteps of playing lacrosse & soccer so I became a coach for his youth teams instead of for high schools. (I still played soccer in Great Falls adult league til I was 60). Happy to say Gary Adkins can attest my son has same track speed I had, tho a bit faster than Freddie Gosnell and me. Was able to reconnect w/ Gary via his profile and he met me at several of my son’s college track meets at Roanoke College. I guess not only my track speed, but the international travel bug was passed on to Cameron as he now teaches in and is assistant track coach at a prestigious boarding school in Beijing China, while working on a masters degree too. Luckily WeChat was invented - what a cost saver for texting & video chats despite the 13 hr time difference & so far saved us from 22 hrs of air travel to China too. After almost 40 yrs in international telecoms, over a 100 countries traveled & filling up countless 48-page passports, they "retired me" from my “day job” of business acquisitions & network development. So my “night job” was expanded. Because for 12 yrs I’d been on the PTA Executive Boards of our son’s schools, the county’s PTA Exec Bd and with the Va State PTA, I had lots of experience of actively “advocating” in Richmond for years to get increased funding for K-12 education & teacher pay. This has led me, the last 4 yrs, of being elected (to volunteer office of) president of the Fairfax County Federation of Citizen Associations. The Federation is 80 yrs old & has HOAs, civic and condo associations as it members. Today, I represent between 80,000 and 100,000 Fairfax County households. Spend many hours listening to our 60’s music (on satellite) as I drive across the state (3600 miles this past summer) for meetings w/ the various political leaders & committee chairmen of the state’s General Assembly. Or my 3-4 weekly trips from home to Richmond during the spring GA sessions as I’m repeatedly called to testify at (7am & 8am start times –ugh!!) committee hearings and/or advocate on behalf of the Fairfax County taxpayers (the Federation’s Membership). With a lack of creativity, I can only repeat what others have written prior to me in their profiles, which is, I too am looking forward to seeing & reconnecting – in person – with as many of you as possible at the Reunion events – The Prom ! … so please - STAY HEALTHY ! God Speed to all those traveling to Arlington – I know the Reunion Weekend will be well worth the trip back “home” to Patriot Country….. BTW – for those who’ve moved, the hotel venue is now in “Ballston” – with its own subway stop so don’t go asking for Parkington or the Hecht Co – you’ll really show your age ! OH - And Tops Drive-In's are closed too. As The Happenings sang in 1966, See You In September |
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Anne Tickel (Reida)
| Marital status: | Married |
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Comment:
Houston, Texas has been "home" the past 16 yrs. When my husband retired from active duty in the Air Force after 28 years, his choice of a' retirement' job brought us here. Never planning for this to be a forever home, we keep intending to make one more move to the San Antonio area where he now works still full-time but life keeps getting in the way. Thankfully, our home has never flooded. But, Hurricane Harvey was too close for comfort when floodwaters filled our neighborhood streets stopping just shy of our doorsteps and remained for over a week. We were among the thousands in Houston evacuated by life raft able to take only a backpack each and the dog not knowing when we would return or to what. We remain grateful daily for the bullet we dodged! -- not an experience we'd want to repeat at this age! YHS was followed by the college years with expectations of a career afterwards. (Ohio U. for freshman year , Va Tech - BS in Clothing Textiles and Related Art; and, Graduate school at Texas Tech - Master of Science in Home Economics/Textile Science) Despite 6 yrs of higher education, I have no "occupation" to list above on this profile unless" retired military spouse" counts. My husband and I met at the start of our senior year at Va Tech. We both graduated in 1972. We married in Sept l973. Those first 28 years were spent making 9 moves to wherever the AF sent us! I was always lucky to work in the early years in smaller military towns with a glut of equally educated military wives for the few jobs available; and even once, found a "perfect fit" career employment job for 4 yrs. in St. Louis (which was very hard to leave) . However, military life was good to us. We enjoyed every place we lived and appreciated the many experiences, opportunities and especially cherished friendships it afforded us. A few assignments were like full-time vacations (southern Italy - San Vito Air Station in the late 70's, gulf coast of Florida - Hurlburt Field in Ft. Walton Beach l985-l988, and the final 5 years in Colorado Springs) Other stateside locations included Ohio, Illinois and Alabama twice. My husband had year-long unaccompanied tours in Korea and the Aleutian Islands. Among the 11 duty stations were 6 years in the D.C. area, My husband arrived as a geographic bachelor to be a student at Ft. McNair for a year (Industrial College of the Armed Forces aka ICAF) while I stayed behind until our house sold. That was followed by 4 yrs at the Pentagon during which time we lived in Burke. Only once did I knowingly cross paths with a YHS classmate! (at the UPS facility on Braddock Rd) Upon reading the profiles, I was amazed to learn how many classmates remained or returned to No. Va and /or Arlington creating legacies at YHS! The DC years for me were the parent care years. Bittersweet and a blessing at the same time with both parents in poor and declining health. Given the amount of time I spent in Arlington basically managing two households 40 min apart, errands with and for them, taking them to medical appts, the hospital stays, eventually assisted living and nursing homes simultaneously, I'm surprised not to have crossed paths with more! Sadly, the first one died in 1992 while we llived there and the other in 1994 only months after we left. Since moving from the area, with few ties left, I rarely get back. Even our family's house is gone! My brother, YHS "72, has remained tight with a couple of his YHS homies and made that discovery 2 years ago. We co-owned the house for a number of years as a rental after our parents died. When he bought a couple acres further out in the idyliic Maryland countryside about the time my husband retired, we decided neither of us would ever renovate and live there and it was time to let it go! Altho' my husband continues to work full-time, the pace of life has slowed. Our 4-legged surrogate children (cocker spaniels, now only one), have kept us more than busy the past 20 years and dictated life in our household. As rather high-strung, high maintenance pooches, they don't board or fly making any joint travel a road trip with dog(s) along. The" late" one introduced us to the world of dog agility and was our learning curve while the current one has become our accomplished "star." My husband does the hard part" handling" and running the obstacle courses. We joke that I'm" the manager" doing the initial years of obedience training and everything else. At least a couple weekends a month, they compete at trials mostly now in just the Houston area as they ease into retirement. In our younger days, we travelled more to trials elsewhere in the state and country as well as to wherever the breed specialty trial was held each year. |
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Paul Tilton
Then
Now
| Marital status: | Married |
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| Children: | 2 |
| Occupation: | Retired |
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Comment:
Hello, I can't believe it's been nearly 50 years. Great group picture on the web site. I recognized most of you. Looking good, people! My wife (Kelly) and I live near Olney, MD. We have two boys who are in their 20's and out of the house but return for free meals, now and then. I'm enjoying retirement from FDA, after a 40 year career, and now have more time for hiking, biking, and all sorts of other stuff. Looking forward to seeing everyone at the reunion. This is a selfie taken by my son at the top of Old Rag Mtn. |
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John Tucker
Then
Now
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Comment:
Over the years, I’d been given to fantasize about this moment, upon occasion, how I would react, how I might attend. A decade or so, the chances seemed quite bright for me to pull up in my ’59 De Soto, with Amanda the mannequin driving and an assortment of attractive young ladies piling out to greet my old classmates, but the maintenance on that car and that whole lifestyle grew wearisome. “Yes, listen to the mathematician, and don’t think that mathematicians have no concern with women! We are the land surveyors of their personal landscapes!” Quite prophetic, wasn’t it. So now, there is a piece of my computer code running on the navigational computer of every single ship on the high seas, complete with the procedural error I included in my lack of vision which no one would ever allow me to go back and fix, once it was discovered. So of course I had to go back to peruse my copy of “The Grenadier, 1968”. Yes, there were quite a few hazy stirrings of long-abandoned cobwebs deep in the recesses of my mind. Maybe it was that all, all of our heroes were murdered, JFK, then Robert, then MLK, and finally adding insult to injury they even went after John Lennon. Maybe it was that our hopes and dreams were so thoroughly shattered and abused in our earnest efforts to end a war that the USA ultimately lost anyway, and all the flowers are gone, and no one learned a thing. Not only that but the former Camelot has steadily, inexorably, descended towards the chaos of evil empire and the prophetic novel of George Orwell, assigned in our English classes, has so devastatingly come to pass in the particulars as well as the generals. Maybe it was that the two people I remember most dearly from Yorktown, the one has been dead now for over 40 years but her shadow still haunts me and the other has been banished from the realm after a hell most damnably unexpected. By reading some of the fervent, sincere, and heart-felt comments written by my friends from that by-gone era, I recall that my individualism and non-conformism goes way, way back. For a time I had my back turned on everything and everybody and was making detailed plans to relocate in Ethiopia. Such was not meant to be. I have since cobbled together a most unlikely life in a most unlikely locale and garnered bits of fame and fortune in the dirty down-and-out fading red neck railroad town. I do little landlord duties and I back up (on tenor saxophone) a successful little black men’s gospel group that tours the state doing benefits, and I amuse myself with bits of wood and fabric that I call “art”. I mentor and kid around with a young and beautiful, charming, witty Ethiopian woman who adopted me from the dusty streets of Debre Zeit 15 years ago. So while I could perchance come to show off, I could easily in fact rent a limousine and fill it with lovely young female acquaintances delighted to participate in the joke. But there has been so very much troubled water under the bridge…so very many different peoples coming in and out of my life, as the decades have gone by, as the miles and miles have been traversed … there are so few of you that I can remember well enough to ask any interested questions about your lives and what you have accomplished and what you have loved and enjoyed. I am indeed here, in Brunswick, the armpit of the greater Washington area, and my doors are almost always unlocked, save when the bitter cold wind comes through chilling my bones. I am turning my back against all things digital in the growing horror of how they are coming to be used. I wish you all the best, have fun, party like there is no tomorrow, and drink to me a toast if you happen to remember anything good about me. Come visit if you like, I’d be glad to see you. I think that I will just stay here and keep the home fires burning until they will not burn anymore. At least, through all of my trials and escapades, there is one little thing of which I can be proud and for which I hope I can be remembered. I, for one, have never contributed to the ever-present and growing over population crisis on this planet. Best wishes, John Tucker |
Charles Tweed
Then
| Marital status: | Married |
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| Occupation: | Strategic Sourcing Manager |
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Comment:
Amazing that so many of us have survived this long.... After Yorktown, I attended and graduated from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - twice!! I worked for the State of North Carolina and then went into the electric industry. I have worked a total of 43 years for two Investor Owned Electric Utilities and two Power Generation companies. I am now working in Roanoke for Virginia Transformer. In fact, I will be there the weekend of the reunion as well. Retirement is coming soon though..... I married late in life (2004) to a retired Russian Dentist. Central Virginia is and will be a great place to retire! |
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Debbie Underhill (Farmer)
| Marital status: | Married |
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| Children: | 2 |
| Occupation: | retired |
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Comment:
Wow, 50 years. Whre has the time gone.... Thanks to all who are workinig on this big event. I hope I will be able to attend. I retired from the Chesterfield School System in Richmond, Va. at the end of 2000. My husband is a retired Special Agent/Secret Service. He was also Basic Law Enforcement Director for Coastal Community College in Jacksonville, NC and Lenoir Community College in Kinston, NC. (retired) We have lived at the coast in North Carlina since 2001. We have two children. Our son is a Commander in the Navy and our daughter is a nurse in Jacksonville, NC. These days we sit on our porch and watch the boats go up and down the intercoastal waterway. |
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Bruce Vail
| Marital status: | Married |
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| Children: | 8 |
| Occupation: | Retired |
Tom Van Pelt
| Marital status: | Married |
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| Children: | 4 |
| Occupation: | Retired builder |
Ted Vaughan
Then
Now
| Marital status: | Committed Relationship |
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| Children: | 2 |
| Occupation: | Made it alive-RETIRED! |
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Comment:
After high school-college. Retired from two jobs in Northern Virginia- 39 years in Law Enforcement. Two lovely grown and successful grown daughters. My overall life philosphy is to laugh more than you cry! Got a good education at Yorktown..many fond memories of people, places and events. Wish all my Yorktown classmates happiness and prosperity in life! |
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