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Alumni Updates

Submit alumni updates & pictures (below) to update classmates and old roommates on what you have been doing.

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Bruce Rucker ’84

Hail SPE Brothers! Greetings from Oakland, CA where I’ve been since 1988 working as a licensed geologist in the hazardous waste industry. My wife Jeannine and I just sent our (only) daughter Mayfair to UCLA. She got in to UVA (pretty tough these days) but decided to stay closer to home. I’m always up for a visit from brothers so let me know if you’re ever in the Bay Area. (updated September 2018)

Bob Azelby ’90

Bob Azelby ’90 (Harvard MBA ’97) authored a new book on professional development: Kiss Your But Goodbye: How to Get Beyond the One Word That Gets Between You and Success.Azelby serves as Vice President with Amgen, directing the team in Oncology Sales.

 

Scott Slankard ’96

Living in San Diego with my wife Alissa and 3 1/2 son Xander. Have a daughter due in late August. Life is good, love living in SoCal. Work at LPL Financial, in their IT QA Department. Just promoted to Assistant Vice-President. Hope everyone is well and look forward to updates from other Dogs.

 

Don King '62Don King ’62

Come and see us at Monticello.

Wes Himes ’90

Living in London. 2 kids. Missing the SPE House. Be back for the 25th!

Bill Souders ’83

Souders family chillin’ (do they still say this?) outside Great Wolfe Lodge in summer of 2012. Twin boys you see in the picture are just completing their 1st year at UVA. The woman you see is my wife Stacy who was also my Mental Health TA at UVA. Yes the college has been good to the Souders family.

Hope that everyone of you  dogs are doing well.

 

Kevin Kennedy ’78

Swing Low choreography – I am pretty sure that Sweet Al ‘The Kitty’s Pal’ Archer and EZ Bob Higgins were the creative forces behind this bit of 150 Madison Lane entertainment. Certainly, Sweet Al, ever the devotee of Spirituals, never missed an opportunity to display his prowess with this un-official American Sign Language version of this moving piece played during each house Sunday morning church service. His rendition still brings a tear to my eye.

Brother Jock Scharfen (’78) was also quite fond of reciting the sad tale of the woeful protagonist in the “That’s Not What Made Me Mad” story. I don’t know if he or Brother Greg Spivey delivered the inaugural rendition to the brotherhood, but I can testify that they each imbued it with a style and sensitivity rarely encountered these days.

Steve von Storch ’78

Here to confirm Mr. Skilton’s account regarding the origins of a particular song.  The origins of the choreography for ‘Swing Low’ remain a mystery. Mr. Spivey ’78, introduced us to the riveting tale “That is what made mad!”

Peter Skilton ’79

I would like to correct the record on the “We’re a Bunch” song, innocently attributed in an article here to the rugby culture of the 80’s. Actually…the song came from the Class of ’74 pledge class at Kansas University. I learned the song from a very good friend who was in that class and with whom I was a counselor at a boys camp on Sebago Lake in Maine. Long days life guarding were made a little more entertaining by learning that song, which I then brought first to suite 110 of Dunglison House. Brothers Tom Tullidge, Chris Welsh, John Bannon (who am I missing?) and I, all from Dunglison, stood up on a UVA transit bus on a roll to RMWC and sang it to the brothers in the fall of 1975. By the time we were initiated in the fall of 1976, it had stuck. I remember a rousing rendition sung in the stands during a UVA-Va Tech football game – the one where my parents joined me in the student section for the game. And I remember singing it with a bunch of brothers on a MARTA bus after UVA’s first bowl victory at the Peach Bowl in Atlanta vs Purdue.