In a corner of the Tap Room at the Historic Hotel Bethlehem, a group of six people were meeting for lunch on a recent Tuesday. Among the six are Ann Linderman Shanley, Suzanne Holton Hunsicker and Marian Heath Mundy. They have been friends since their school days at Moravian Preparatory School, the forerunner of today’s Moravian Academy, since attending in the late 1930s and early 1940s. These octogenarians are full of wit, memories, pep and laughter.

Joining them were Richard Stiles and Grayce Ruth, who both helped pull this mini-reunion together, and Stiles’ daughter Linda Stiles Korpel. Stiles’ late wife June was the granddaughter of Bethlehem Mayor Robert Pfeifle and classmate of Shanley and Mundy, and Ruth provides senior care and personalized assistance through her Home Care Hands business.

Shanley now lives in Nazareth, Hunsicker in Bethlehem, and Mundy has driven from her home in Manham, New Jersey. “We all grew up together,” said Hunsicker as service is provided at their table, and they are also visited by Hotel Bethlehem general manager Dennis Costello, who welcomes them to the Tap Room.

Each attended Moravian Prep early in their school years, Shanley until eighth grade, Hunsicker from second through sixth grade, and Mundy from third through ninth. Hunsicker mentions that Mundy was a wild kid, which Mundy seems to confirm when she says she was thrown out of Moravian Prep after ninth grade. Both Mundy and Hunsicker are complimentary of Shanley remarking that she had a great set of legs as a young woman. Their banter is endless.

Hunsicker explains that she grew up in the Macada Road area of Bethlehem, and that after leaving Moravian Prep she ended up at what was then called Moravian Seminary where she graduated high school in 1948. From there she attended drama school in New York City even appearing on television in a very small part. I think my line was “‘oh God,’ and then I had to scream,” recollects Hunsicker. She would marry and raise four children, worked retail for a number of years, and retiring at the age of 81 from Sodexo while working in food services at Lehigh University.

Mundy, whose father had been the president at Moravian Seminary, explained that her family resided in an apartment right in the seminary. After leaving Moravian Prep she went to Liberty HS graduating in 1947, and then attended Vassar College. Upon graduation from Vassar she lived in England for over two years, where she met her husband, a psychiatrist. She jokingly says that she was the only patient he ever had whom he couldn’t help. They would have six children and she would work in an advertising agency, as an office worker, and become a freelance writer.

Shanley says she grew up on Market Street while attending Moravian Prep, and ended up graduating from Liberty HS, also in the class of 1947. She attended Colby-Sawyer College, a liberal arts and sciences college in New Hampshire. She would raise two children and live in New Jersey for a number of years. She says she worked in several gift shops for over 25 years, including one in Moravian Hall Square, “and I loved every minute of it.”

Once the interviews were out of the way, the three longtime friends gathered at the end of the table, laughing and remembering so many fond times spent together as young women, and updating each other on life events over many years. It was very easy to imagine them as those vibrant fun-loving students over 75years ago, because not much had changed in these spirited ladies over the many years since