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Christmas 2006
Dear Family and Friends,
As Christmas Day approaches, we Lynchburg Thienemanns would like to share with our family and friends some reflections on our year.
Grant began the year with a new business venture - www.tecivera.com. Tecivera was founded to provide excellent Macintosh software for the Mac community. Grant established Tecivera to help him learn more about Mac development and programming. Tecivera’s first application, SurfLite Alpha, is a simple light-weight browser. Grant also does web design and computer support. Tecivera, you ask? It’s a scrambled word. (Look to the end of the letter for the source word.) Grant is now a senior at Radford University and will graduate in May with a B.S. in Computer Science with a concentration in Software Engineering. Also in January Sam decided to get his Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) and began working as a bus driver for the University of Virginia (these are very large city buses!).
Lucy and Keith travelled back to Keith’s hometown, New Orleans, in March to meet with family and friends and to see first-hand the destruction left behind when the levees failed after Hurricane Katrina hit land in August 2005. We were particularly fortunate to be invited to see Keith’s family home on South White Street. The new owners let us tour the house that was built by Keith’s grandfather back in 1923. The house had over seven feet of water in it for three weeks but the new owners are lovingly restoring it to its former beauty. Even six months after the event, words cannot describe the amount of destruction left by the levee breaks - almost every home in the Gentilly and Lakeview neighborhoods was damaged or destroyed. The lower Ninth Ward is simply gone.
March was a busy month for the family: Grant turned 21 and placed second in the Radford University programming competition. Sam, now in his second year at the University of Virginia (UVA), is working on a degree in English. Sam continues to pursue his singing at UVA with concerts in the spring and fall with the Chamber Singers and the University Singers. Sam serves on the Executive Board of the University Singers working as their Stage Manager.
In May we welcomed a new addition to our family - on May 24th our niece Sybil and her husband Carl Soyars became the parents of Anne Cailin Soyars, born in Greensboro, North Carolina. So yes, it is true, we are now Great Aunt Lucy and Great Uncle Keith! In May, Sam repeated his “win” on the annual Thunder Ridge cycling climb on the Blue Ridge Parkway (13 miles uphill ascending 3300 feet), besting the best of twelve other riders from Virginia Episcopal School and Woodberry Forest School by thirty seconds! One hour twenty minutes to go up; less than twenty minutes to go back down. This was the first time Sam rode his bike since his accident in June 2005.
In June Lucy was ordained as an Elder at First Presbyterian here in Lynchburg where she begins a three-year term on the Session. Keith and Lucy returned to New Orleans for Keith’s thirtieth high school reunion at Brother Martin. We were fortunate this year to have two opportunities to visit New Orleans and to spend time with Keith’s beloved godparents, Joe and Elizabeth Cali. Much time was spent working in Reidsville with Lucy’s sisters, closing out their father’s estate. The day after the mammoth yard sale, we all headed to the beach at Emerald Isle, North Carolina (minus Grant who was working) for a week of sun and relaxation.
Keith traveled in July with the Chancel Choir of First Presbyterian Church on a three-week concert/sightseeing tour of Iceland (Reykjavik, Blue Lagoon, Gullfoss, Geysir), Norway (Bergen, Naeroy & Aurland Fjords, Flåm, Geilo, Torpo, Oslo), Denmark (Copenhagen, Roskilde), Sweden (Kosta, Kalmar, Uppsala, Stockholm) and St. Petersburg, Russia (Hermitage/Winter Palace, Tsarkoe Selo, Peterhof).
Upon his return from Europe Keith had elective gall bladder surgery which went well. Sam began his Resident Advisor (RA) duty at UVA in August, working in a first-year dorm helping new students make the transition from high school to college. Grant worked all summer as a System Administrator at Radford University and also found time to take a few classes. Thankfully, we had some pleasant (but too short) visits with Grant and his girlfriend Caitlyn Colbs.
September marked the return of the Thienemann genealogical website. Please visit it to see what’s up in the worldwide family – www.thienemann.us (it also works if you type the name with one final “n” as it is written in parts of the USA, www.thieneman.us). Speaking of Thienemann genealogy, Keith returned to Europe in October for a special two-week research trip through Poland and Germany with his cousin Rolf Thienemann of Ahrensbök, Germany. Rolf and Keith discovered the village where the earliest known Thienemann ancestor, Nickol Duhnemann, lived in the 1520s. The small village, then known as Holzikirch, Bohemia, is now in Poland and goes by the name of Koscielnik. While in Poland Rolf and Keith toured Auschwitz and made a pilgrimage to Wadowice, the birthplace of the late Pope John Paul II. In Germany Keith and Rolf met with 25 Thienemanns and 9 related family members. The highlight of the trip was a visit inside the Hohenhaus in Radebeul (near Dresden), the former family home of Berthold and Rosamunde Thienemann.
Lucy took advantage of Keith’s absence to spend a delightful off-season week at Holden Beach, North Carolina with sister Martha Anne. October also brought the celebrations of Sam’s 20th birthday and the baptism of Anne Cailin in Reidsville.
In addition to handling a heavy class load at Radford, Grant devoted many hours to preparing for the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Mid-Atlantic Regional Programming Contest held in October. His team placed in the top fifty out of over one hundred thirty teams competing from colleges and universities across the region.
Keith continues his work with his company, ImageArtWork.com and as the Manager of Cantate, The Children’s Choir of Central Virginia. He is also now in his 18th year as tenor section leader for the Chancel Choir at First Presbyterian Church.
Lucy remains a project manager at SunTrust Bank. She continues to be active on the Churches for Urban Ministry Board of Directors. At First Presbyterian, she serves on the Community Missions group and rings with the Chancel Ringers.
Keith and Lucy celebrated their 23rd anniversary in 2006, on Keith’s 48th birthday.
As 2006 draws to a close, we look to an eventful 2007 particularly with Grant’s transition from college to the workforce! We hope that 2006 has been good to you and that 2007 will be even better.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2007!
Lucy, Keith, Grant and Sam
P.S. “Tecivera” is an anagram of “creative”.
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