Class of 2004
Greetings fellow ‘04 Alums!
I hope this letter finds you all doing well.
On October 17, 2009, we celebrated our 5-year reunion! We had lots of festivities at CLU and saw many alums! It was nice to see all these familiar faces. Homecoming Saturday was busy! I went to the CLU Alumni Choir rehearsal on Saturday morning. It was fun to work with Dr. Morton again in a choir. Then after rehearsal, I went over to the football field for the pre-game tailgate party and football game. CLU won! After the football game, CLU hosted their Alumni and Family Festival over on North Campus at the Gilbert Center Courtyard. There was a beer and wine garden, lots of good food, activities for the kids, and good company to share memories! I then headed over to my parent’s home in Thousand Oaks where I was hosting our 5-year reunion party. I had a great time seeing old friends and learning about what everyone has been doing for the past 5 years. Below is a photo we took at the reunion. The next day, Sunday, October 18th, I went to another CLU Alumni Choir rehearsal and then right into the special 50th Anniversary Homecoming Concert. The Alumni Choir, CLU Choir and Women’s Choir all performed at the concert. It was fun to be back on campus!
Here is a brief update of what’s going on in the lives of those who attended the reunion!
• Matt and Becky (Badertscher) Anderson are living in Thousand Oaks with their two cats, Melody and Sylvester. Matt works at Ascension Lutheran Church as their 11:00 worship coordinator and he leads a weekly Bible study for young adults. He summed up the past five years as doing “theology, music, and coffee.” He earned a Masters degree in Theology and is awaiting ordination in the Lutheran church. Becky works as a bank teller at Chase Bank and also directs three children’s choirs at Ascension Lutheran Church! Becky’s favorite CLU memories are walking with cookies to visit peer students with Jon Gonzales, dancing with Katelin in the bathroom, and singing with Matt in the gazebo on campus.
• Ryan Hodges married Megan in 2006. They live in Camarillo. Ryan’s favorite CLU memories include making and enjoying so many pies! He is currently teaching elementary school in Camarillo. Ryan and Megan were on the CLU Class of 2004 reunion committee and were such a great help and brought laughter to our meetings!
• Cory Hughes was married on June 30, 2007. The past 5 years he has spent time working at Disneyland, teaching outdoor science school to 5th graders, and he is now working for the Forest Service. He lives in La Habra, CA. He remembers back to his freshman year at CLU when he painted his face yellow and purple to root the Men’s Basketball team onto the Conference Championships.
• Heath Williams went to grad school at Colorado School of Mines. He works in production engineering at E & B Natural Resource management Corporation. He lives in Bakersfield, CA.
• Erik Hagen is living in Thousand Oaks and is CLU’s Webmaster.
• Kristen (Smith) Tolson was married on October 10, 2009 to Joel Toslon. Just a week after their marriage they both came out to California from Dallas, Texas, to join us at the 5-year reunion. If you ask Kristen what she has been up to the past 5 years, she’d respond, “working in a lab researching fat mice!” A couple of her favorite CLU memories include taking random pictures at night at car dealerships and going to the beach at 2:00 am!
• Jonathan Gonzales moved to Portland, Oregon about two years ago to work at Reed College as the Resident Director. His favorite CLU memories include road tripping to Oregon, Washington, Canada, Idaho, and all over California with Steve Carrier and Kristen (Smith) Tolson.
• Robert Munguia works at CLU and lives nearby in Moorpark. His favorite CLU memories were all the pranks he pulled on the RA’s, his friends, the staff and faculty, and getting caught with a bottle of Jack (he claimed it was a water bottle).
• Claire (Hillard) Matney was married in 2005 and lives in Mesa, Arizona. She started a jewelry business. Check it out at www.SilverDappleJewelry.com and support a fellow alum! She also manages a pet store.
• Jessica Helms is living in Oxnard. She started her masters work in music as well as a collaborative pianist. She now works with several Ventura County choral ensembles and theater groups. You can also find her on the CLU campus as an accompanist for the voice students at the CLU vocal studio! Her favorite class memory was the choir tour trip in 2002 to England.
• Ryan Palmer resides in Oxnard and is a satellite engineer at General Dynamics in Point Mugu, CA. He earned his Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado State. He is currently on the CLU Alumni Board.
• Holly Halweg lives in North Hollywood and teaches piano and voice lessons in Ventura and Los Angeles Counties. She also is a Music Director at College United Methodist Church and works with Jessica Helms who is her accompanist. In 2007, she finished her Master of Education degree at CLU. She loves hanging out with her dogs, Toffee and Jake.
CLU is celebrating its 50th Anniversary this year. There are a lot of exciting things going on at the campus to celebrate. I went to the 50th Anniversary Party on October 22, 2009. They had the Gilbert Sports and Fitness Center decorated so nicely. They had food stations at various locations, each from a different decade. The program they put on was phenomenal. They showed a video narrated by the current president, Dr. Chris Kimball. There were a lot of old photos that were fun to see and I learned even more about the history of CLU. There is also a 50th Anniversary book entitled “California Lutheran University, College of Our Dreams: The First Fifty Years 1959-2009” that is selling in the bookstore that I bought. The photos, stories, quotes, and the history were complied by retired professor, Dr. Tonsing.
If you have any updates such as a new address, phone number or email address; new job, another degree, or a wedding or birth announcement, please let me know! CLU’s Alumni and Parent Relations office is doing their best to keep the CLU Alumni data updated, but they and I need your help with any new information. As I had a call night to contact everyone in our class, I noticed a lot of old addresses and wrong numbers. If you talk to a fellow alum and they are not receiving the CLU magazine or this class letter, please tell them to update their information with me and pass along my contact information. You can also go to www.callutheran.edu/alumni to update information or find out what’s going on at CLU.
Happy 5 Years! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!
God’s blessings,
Holly-Anne Halweg
CLU Class of 2004 Class Representative
hollyhalweg@aol.com
7709 Lankershim Blvd. #206
North Hollywood, CA 91605
805-444-6559
Save the date for Homecoming & Family Weekend October 21-24, 2010!
