February 20th, 2005
Trish Nimr-Crampton, Duane Hopple (RT) and Amy Thompson-Steindorff.
Trish Nimr-Crampton has had a very interesting three decades since leaving Dhahran. She attended Salzburg International in Austria with our own Bruce Burgner. After graduating she crossed the pond to attend college at the University of Texas in Austin where she hosted some terrific middle eastern dinners. Basil Abu-Hamayel and Faysal Hamza were frequent guests.
Trish has lived in New York for most of the last fifteen years. She started a bar in Manhattan with her husband, Phil Crampton, whom she met in 1994. They were married two years later. Phil is a mountaineer of some reknown. He’s spent quite a bit of time in the Himalayas and has climbed several of the world’s tallest mountains.
After several years in New York, Phil and Trish moved to Juneau, AK, for much of 2002. They thought about opening a bar there, but after much consideration elected to start their next venture closer to home. They settled on Houston, where her parents live.
Their second bar (also called the Dusk Bar) opened in the Fall of 2003 in downtown Houston. It’s in an interesting location, right across the street from an Islamic studies center. What better place for a Palestinian-American girl who grew up in Saudi Arabia to open a bar?
Trish hosted a small gathering of Brats there in December of 2003, welcoming Donna Hendricks- Fontenot, Duane Hopple (RT 79), Amy Thompson-Steindorff and yours truly for a great evening of reminiscing and catching up.
They sold the Dusk Bar and moved to Lhasa, where Phil has been holding mountaineering clinics and Trish has been teaching English. They have been enjoying it so far. Trish has been learning the local cuisine (Yak sausage, anyone?) while picking up the language.
Ruth Maywald 1964-1992
I’m very sorry to report that Ruth Maywald passed away. She was born in Houston and lived in Calgary before moving to Dhahran in 1969. She was with us until 1974, when her family moved to Indonesia. There she went to middle school and high school.
Ruth went to college at Western State in Gunnison, CO, and lived in several parts of Colorado. Over the years she traveled to Indonesia, Nigeria and Trinidad among other places.
Ruth was a kind, friendly, free spirit, who was always up for adventure. She loved the outdoors and spent much of her free time hiking and camping in the Rockies.
Ruth loved her time in Arabia and looked back on it with great fondness. She often spoke of how much she enjoyed it. She will be missed.
Ruth is survived by her father, Richard, of Bellevue, WA, and sister, Julia, of Seattle. Her mother, Dorothy, passed away in 2003 after a fourteen-year battle with breast cancer.
