Tag: 1967

In the words of singer-songwriter James McMurtry, “It’s a damn short movie—how’d we ever get here?” Right, our 50th Reunion is this spring, May 25 to 28. Hope you can be there. You should have received an e-mail from Mike Feagley and Rick Nicita, and maybe some other e-mails about the Reunion, asking, among other things, for you to write something for the class book that will be published prior to Reunion. A block of rooms has been reserved for our class at the Radisson Hotel in Cromwell. I encourage you to reserve a room soon if you have not already done so (860/635-2000).

I’ve heard from many of you over the last few months, and here are some bits and pieces of what I have learned.

First, the writers. Jim Kates received a 2017 translation fellowship grant ($25K) from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the translation from the Russian of An Astounded World: Selected Poems by poet Aigerim Tazhi. Jim, a poet, literary translator, past president of the American Literary Translators Association, and current president and co-director of Zephyr Press, most recently translated Muddy River: Selected Poems of Sergey Stratanovsky (Carcanet Press, 2016).

Dave Garrison, also a poet, wrote to say that he is in a poetry-writing group at his local library and one of the other members is Thomas J. Donnelly ’83. Dave and his wife, Suzanne, spend most of each year in Dayton, Ohio, where she still teaches. Dave retired from teaching in 2009, but they also spend time at a condo they bought in Prairie Village, Kan., because they have family there. They now have discovered that Jim Ruhlen, a physician, and his wife, Leigh, live about two miles away from their Kansas condo. Although Dave and Jim didn’t know each other at Wesleyan, they now get together when Dave and Suzanne are in Kansas.

And Bill Klaber (whose specialty is prose, not poetry) wrote to say that he was preparing to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with his son in June. He explained, “I’ve climbed to 19,000 feet before on Denali (12 days on the mountain, -20°F), but that was 30 years ago when I was 40. So these days I’m walking the roads with 20 lbs. of cat litter in my knapsack.” Come to the Reunion to see if he did it.

Two of our classmates have turned to the performing arts as extras in films. Steve Pfeif retired after a 14-year part-time gig as a career consultant at DBM/Lee Hecht Harrison. He still runs a small business writing résumés for military veterans who are transitioning out of military service. Steve has been working as a “background artist/extra” for TV shows and movies shot in Atlanta. As he put it, “think of a deep background, out of focus, white-haired guy.” He and Devon have been married 44 years, and have two children and four grandchildren.

Also to be found on the silver screen, if you look carefully, is Bruce Morningstar. Bruce and Katie still live in Rosarito, Baja, Mexico. He writes that he, too, has worked as an extra in two films. The first was titled Little Boy and the other titled Compadres. “Both were fun…I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

And a few classmates sent word that they had retired. Jeff Hicks retired in May, after 26 years as chairman of cardiac surgery at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Here’s his take on his career at Rochester as a medical student, resident, and then staff member there:

“I have watched over the 49 years the progress of change in our medical profession as well as the vise-like grip the insurance companies and government have on health care today. My greatest reward was the teaching of more than 150 residents, both in general and cardiac surgery, and watching them as they blossomed into great surgeons in their own right. Serving nationally on the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, the president of the Thoracic Surgery Directors Association, and multiple other professional committees has been icing on the cake. Forty years at the operating table has provided me with a bad right knee, three back operations, and lots of memories.”

An e-mail from Alan Neebe revealed less about his career, but did report that he retired as professor of quantitative methods at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, UNC at Chapel Hill, and that he is “still happily married to Eloise (Weejy) Cole, Smith ’69.”

As of May, Pat Weinstein was still working as the owner of Weinstein Beverage, the franchisee for Pepsi-Cola in north central Washington (the business was started by his father in 1937). He and his wife, Susan, were running the company as a family business, which included the full participation of two of their children, one of whom, the company’s general manager (daughter Eileen) was living in Paris, France (the wonders of modern technology!). Pat still plays hoops, and travels around the world to do so. At the time he wrote, his team had won the World Masters Championships in Italy, and they were gearing up for the American Masters Championships in Vancouver.

Ned Preble moved about three years ago from New Hampshire to Oregon to be closer to his five kids in California (“Three have left since I got here?!”). He teaches business courses at Capella University, is trying to drink up his wines from France before it is too late, and is trying to decide what to do with his baseball cards from the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s. (“No, I do not have Mickey Mantle’s 1952 rookie card.”)

Ned provided info on what he called “a Delt Cluster.” Here is some of it: Phil Corkill, a retired superintendent of public schools, now lives in Tucson; Dave Reynolds is a doctor in Springfield, Mass.; Dave Butler retired from a career as an international lawyer at a big insurance company in Newark; and Jim Guard is an architect living in the San Juan Islands.

I have a new book out, co-edited with Gene Borgida ’71, and titled Collaboration in Psychological Science: Behind the Scenes (Worth, 2016). One of the chapters was co-authored by Phil Shaver ’66. We dedicated the book to Professor Karl Scheibe and to my mother, Irene Zweigenhaft, who hired Gene not long after he graduated from Wesleyan: “To Irene Zweigenhaft and Karl Scheibe, both of whom saw the best in us, even when we were young and foolish.”

Richie Zweigenhaft | rzweigen@guilford.edu

Classmates: It turns out that some of you keep running into each other, or arrange to meet with one another, or start what turn into e-mail chains with one another. Nice to know that you don’t have to rely on these Class Notes, which only appear three times a year, and are skewed by who does and does not communicate with me.

Random meeting #1. Tom Drew wrote to tell me that he and his wife were playing tennis in Florida, and only after the second set did they learned that the guy on the other side of the net was a classmate: Bob Kesner. Here’s Tom’s account: “This e-mail was prompted by a fortuitous meeting at the tennis courts a couple of days ago. We had a game with a couple from Vermont, found to be Bob Kesner and his wife, Andrea Torell, after a set or two. What fun. Last night we had dinner with Gar Richlin and Migs, who are in Longboat Key, possibly the biggest Wes ’67 reunion since our 45th.” Tom and Carolyn had sailed their boat from Rhode Island to Sarasota, Fla., and, presumably by the time you read this, have sailed it back to Rhode Island.

Planned meeting #1. Dave Sweet wrote to tell me that he and some Commons Club pals have been gathering almost annually in or near Portland, Maine. Here’s his account: “I had the pleasure of sharing a couple of meals last summer with several classmates/Commons Clubbers through the continuation of an almost-annual summer gathering in northern New England. The idea of assembling those within reasonable distance of Portland, Maine, for an extended lunch originated with Tom Bertocci and Punch Elliott. Last Sept., it yielded two get-togethers. Lunch on the Portland waterfront included Cindy Bertocci, Toby Astley, Tom Elliman ’65 and his wife, Betsy, and my wife, Glen, and me. Several days later, Toby and I met up with Punch and David Patterson in Concord, N.H. It can be reliably reported that all are doing well.” Dave and Glen live in West Chester, Pa., where he is self-employed as a consultant to local governments on matters of zoning, land use planning, and open space protection.

E-mail chain #1. After reading a New York Times story about Amherst College’s struggle with how to deal with the very bad behavior of its namesake (Lord Jeffrey Amherst), and whether or not the school should keep the nickname “Lord Jeffs,” Ted Smith sent an e-mail to a bunch of us (“This may help to explain why I never liked Amherst!”) and asking what we thought. This elicited a range of responses, including one from Peter Kovach (“The question we need to ask is why Wesleyan has fallen so consistently behind Amherst [Williams, Pomona, etc.] in all the ratings in the last decade or more.”), Bob Dyer, Bob Pawlowski, Howie Foster, Ned Preble, Aidan Jones (“Maybe David Foster Wallace would still be alive and writing today if he’d gone to Wes rather than Amherst”), and yours truly ( “I, too, have been following this Amherst story with interest, especially because Amherst has, in fact, become a much more diverse place than it used to be. Under its former President, Tony Marx, Amherst went from one of the least diverse of the elite schools to one of the most. In one of my classes, I use a book by a social psychologist at Amherst called Speaking of Race and Class that is based on a study of Amherst students.”). Oh, yeah, one more (late) participant: Jim McEnteer (“We’ll drink the wine tonight, drink the wine that makes hearts light”).

In addition to these random meetings, arranged gatherings, and e-mail chains, other classmates, when they write to catch me up, mention Wesleyan friends with whom they are in touch. In the past few months this has included Dave Garrison (in touch with Dick Clemmer, Jim Ruhlen), and Ned Preble (in touch with Phil Corkill, Dave Reynolds, Dave Butler, Jim Guard, Jim McEnteer and Ted Smith). I’ll provide more about these guys next time.

Meanwhile, I hope you will keep on running into each other, keep arranging meetings with your old (and getting older) friends, and keep e-mailing them (with copies to many other classmates). And let me know so I can share these things with the rest of the class, and, it turns out, share these things with other readers from other classes—you 1967 guys are not the only ones who read this column. Some from the class of 1966 read it, too. Just today I got a wonderful e-mail from my old (and getting older) friend, Larry Carver ’66, from whom I last heard decades ago, in response to something I wrote in my last column about the poet Richard Wilbur. Larry has been teaching English at the University of Texas since 1973. He is currently the Doyle Professor of Western Civilization, and is the director of the Liberal Arts Honors Programs. (He took two classes from Richard Wilbur, one on Milton and one on modern American poetry; he also participated in the now-legendary faculty-student charades competition).”

Richie Zweigenhaft | rzweigen@guilford.edu

Classmates: I head from Karl Furstenberg, who had this to report: “Charlotte and I are still in Lyme, N.H.. Great place to live after many years as dean of admissions and financial aid at Dartmouth. Retired several years ago, as did Charlotte, from research at Dartmouth Medical School. Now busy with granddaughters (Lizzie and Alice), who also live in Lyme. Daughter-in-law Emily teaches at Tuck School at Dartmouth and Eric does kid care and furniture building, as well as part time teaching at Dartmouth in econ. Great to have the entire family so close by. I’m plenty busy with some educational consulting, maintaining our old farm, coaching youth XC skiing, hiking and running, and an informal role at Dartmouth. Life is good in northern New England, if we ever get winter. Look forward to seeing folks at our 50th!”

Some of you responded to my e-mail, asking what courses you wish you had taken at Wesleyan. Bob Runk (after assuring me that it is not too late for me to take an economics class, but cautioning me to make sure that Paul Krugman is not the teacher) said there were many courses he wishes he had taken, especially more history. Bob continues to make music, including a music video that he describes as “a hip-hop/rap thing called La Playa Walk.”

Michael McCord wrote “I wish I had taken the Shakespeare survey course and maybe a course in music or art, though I certainly valued everything I did select.” Michael and his wife, Elisabeth, have lived in the same house on Beacon Hill in Boston since 1974. He is the headmaster of The Learning Project, a K–6 independent elementary school with about 120 students. Elisabeth is the business manager at the school. Retirement? “We anticipate retiring at some point, but there’s still satisfying work to do and, fortunately, we are in good health.”

Walter Beh wrote that he “retired from the practice of law in Hawaii after 45 years of fun and sun.” He now spends his time “going to the beach, watching the youngest of my nine grandchildren, and taking naps with said grandchild.” He did not identify a class he wishes he had taken, but he did remember one that he was glad he took: “I always remember with fondness my time at Wes, especially my freshman year in French class.”

A few people remembered (quite clearly!) classes they did take that they wish they had not taken. Jim Vaughan, for example, wrote this: “I’ll tell you what I wished I hadn’t taken….calculus. Got pneumonia the first semester of sophomore year, missed a lot of classes, and drew a blank on the final. Big “F”!! Put me in the academic doghouse, and the dean made me move out of the Psi U house (thankfully, in hindsight, because I eventually made up the lost ground and graduated on time). Should’ve taken an incomplete.” After Wesleyan, Jim was the supply officer on a U.S. Navy destroyer, went to Columbia Business School, and then worked as an investment banker, concentrating on the healthcare sector for the last 20 years. He now lives in NYC and Oyster Bay, N.Y.

William Vetter still regrets that he was not allowed to take calculus (maybe the same class Jim Vaughan was in) because he had previously taken a calculus class in high school. Instead, he was placed in a physics class he didn’t like, and then a linear algebra class, and then a multidimensional calculus class….all of which convinced him to drop out of science and math and go into the COL. After Wesleyan, he went to Stanford Law School, and then to Vietnam, and then back to Stanford Law, graduating in 1972. Over the next 35 years, he worked as an attorney, first with a small firm, and then in house for some large corporations (mostly for Martin Marietta and Rockwell International). He and his wife, Agi, who grew up in eastern Hungary (as Bill explains, “she escaped, got asylum in Germany, and eventually got refugee status in the U.S.”) have two children, both of whom live in Denver. Bill and Agi now live in Greenville, S.C., but their house is up for sale and they are planning to move to Denver (“If we’re successful, a place in Denver will be our seventh home in 38 years”).

I also heard from Dave Garrison. He and his wife, Suzanne, live in Dayton, Ohio, where Suzanne teaches commercial law at Wright State University. Dave taught Spanish and Portuguese there for 30 years but retired in 2009, and now spends his time “writing poetry, reading, playing golf and tennis, and sailing in the summer.” As for which classes he wishes he had taken, he had this to say: “I wish like everything I had taken a class with Richard Wilbur. Here was one of the most famous poets in America and I never signed up to work with him. A great opportunity lost.” [Note from your class secretary: I did not take a class with Richard Wilbur. However, thanks to Joe Reed, who put Richard Wilbur on his team in a student-faculty charade match we had in the fall of 1966, I did play charades with him once. He was quite charming. Their team also included Paul Horgan, so they were a tad more literate than we were.]

As Karl Furstenberg mentioned in his e-mail at the top of these notes, our 50th Reunion is coming—2017. Weird but true (seems like we just had the 45th). I hope you’ll be able to come back to Wesleyan for it. For those of you who have not been on campus for a while, there is a lot of new stuff to see, and, hopefully, a lot of old (and getting older) classmates…

Richie Zweigenhaft | rzweigen@guilford.edu

Classmates, I had a note from Susan Edwards McCarthy (Mount Holyoke ’67), telling me that her husband of almost 47 years, Kevin McCarthy, died in March 2015 from pulmonary complications that followed bypass surgery. An obituary appeared in the Los Angeles Times on April 12, 2015. A graduate of Fairfield Prep, Kevin majored in political science at Wesleyan, and then earned a PhD in sociology, with a focus on demography, at the University of Wisconsin. He worked as a social science researcher at the RAND Corporation for more than three decades. After retiring from RAND, Kevin and Susan traveled widely and often.

An e-mail from Jim Cawse in June 2015 revealed that he was recovering from the removal of his prostate (Jim noted that he was “glad to live in a time and place with really good medical technology”). Although he had to cancel a trip to Venice and Rome because of the surgery, he and his wife, Marietta, were able to travel to Florida with two grandchildren and to San Francisco for a meeting. While in San Francisco, he tells me, he had his “usual intense visit with Jim Sugar.”

Jim McEnteer has lived outside the USA since 2006, first in Bolivia, then in South Africa, and for the last four years in Quito, Ecuador, where his wife, Tina, teaches sociology. His two teenage sons, one a senior and one a fresh-person, attend bilingual private schools in Quito. The older one did a college tour in February 2015 with Daddy Jim that included visits to a bunch of New England schools, one of which was Wesleyan (imagine that—a McEnteer Legacy!). Jim is still writing, and recently published an article in Counterpunch (“Blast From the Past in Buenos Aires”) and a book (Acting Like it Matters: John Malpede and the Los Angeles Poverty Department).

That’s all for now. Send me info. Be well.

Richie Zweigenhaft | rzweigen@guilford.edu

Some good news, and some sad news.

First the good news, about my friend Tom Drew. It turns out that the medical staff at the Rhode Island Hospital, where Tom has worked as a cardiologist since 1977, honored him with the Milton W. Hamolsky Outstanding Physicians Award, the highest honor that the hospital gives. According to the chief medical officer at the hospital, “Dr. Drew is an extraordinary physician who has inspired other physicians through his dedication to excellence, unparalleled medical skills and compassionate care.” Sounds to me as if that chief medical officer got it just right, not only about Tom but about what one would hope for in a physician: dedication, skills, and compassion.

After finishing medical school at Columbia University, Tom did his internship and residency at Beth Israel in Boston, and has lived in or near Providence ever since. He and his wife, Carolyn (formerly the president of the International Institute of Boston, an organization that has provided, since 1924, services for immigrants and refugees), as of this writing (mid-May 2015) have four kids and seven grandchildren (with an eighth due any day).

In addition to his work at Rhode Island Hospital, Tom was also a clinical associate professor of medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.
In early 2015 he wrote that he was “officially retiring in March” but wasn’t sure it would take. (“Think it is more likely a six-month sabbatical. We will see.”) He and Carolyn were dividing their time between their home in Westport, Mass., and Sarasota, Fla., “spending some time on a boat, lots of time with grandkids.”

The sad news is that after a year-long bout with multiple myeloma, amyloidosis, and end-stage renal disease, Andy Barada died in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Feb. 8, 2015, a few weeks shy of his 70th birthday. After finishing medical school at UVA, an internship at the University of Wisconsin, a stint as the chief of medicine at Fort Defiance Indian Hospital on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, and a residency back at UVA, Andy served the Durham (N.C.) community as a rheumatologist for more than 30 years. According to the obituary in a Durham newspaper, he had been the president of the medical staff at Durham Regional Hospital and president of the N.C. Rheumatology Association. He also helped to found Project Access of Durham County, which provides medical care for the uninsured. He is survived by his wife of 46 years, Placide Noell Barada, two children, and four grandchildren.

Andy’s senior year roommate, David Webb ’68, who retired in 2012 after 42 years as a teacher and dean at Choate, told me in an e-mail that he had stayed in touch with Andy through the years, especially during the years Andy’s daughter was a student at Choate. Andy—who played tennis and squash at Wesleyan, and was an avid athlete throughout his life—kept encouraging David to read The Boys in the Boat, which he finally did. “Our final phone call,” he told me, “was about the 1937 Olympic champion crew team, The Boys in the Boat. On several occasions, Andy had urged me to read it, and when I finally did: What a book! I called Andy that last time to thank him for that!”

I’ve continued to receive e-mails about memories of Wesleyan people and events, as well as current life experiences. Here’s some more…

Don Stone, who celebrated his 35th wedding anniversary with his wife, Betty, not long ago, lives in the Bay Area, with two grown children and two granddaughters within 15 minutes (“it doesn’t get any better than that!”). For more than 25 years he has been active in a Jewish Renewal community in Oakland (Kehilla Synagogue) and he continues to work part time at St. Mary’s College, a Catholic Lasallian Christian Brothers liberal arts institution 10 miles east of Oakland.

Jim Vaughan retired from a health care investment banking firm at the end of last year but signed up to teach The Business of Health Care course in 2015 to MPA students at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service. He is president of the Board of Trustees of the Frost Valley YMCA (“the largest independent Y camp in the U.S. and arguably the best”). In the small-world department, Mike Ketcham recently joined the Board. Mike had retired as senior executive at a YMCA in the state of Washington and had previously worked at the Frost Valley Y. Cheng Ong ’94 is also on the Frost Valley Board.

Jim Kates’ book of translations of selected poems of Mikhail Yeryomin won the second Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation in 2013 and was published in the fall of 2014 by White Pine Press. Jim also encourages me to inform you that the Wesleyan Progressive Alumni/ae Network (WesPAN) has been revived on Facebook.

Bob Runk discovered some digital home music studio software and has become obsessed (his term, not mine) with writing and producing music. He has a music site, which is called The Runkus Room (bobrunk.com). What’s he do? “Probably the most fun I have had so far is doing… are you ready?… a rap video with a great guy named Jeff Kitt (cousin to Eartha!). What a blast: youtube.com/watch?v=q4Qv4w8hTgs”

Bill Klaber wrote: “My book, The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell, that was published last year by ‘indie’ publisher Greenleaf Book Group, has been purchased by St. Martin’s Press in New York, and will re-debut as a St. Martin’s book in February [2015]. It has also won a few minor awards including a Stonewall Book Award for a book with gay/lesbian content, an Amelia Bloomer Award for a book with feminist content, and a Shelf Unbound Award as one of the ‘notable’ indie books of the year. That and a buck-fifty will get you a ride on the subway.”

Jim Sugar’s film, Swimming: Mind, Body, Spirit, was selected by the California Film Institute for inclusion in the 2014 Mill Valley Film Festival. He spends a lot of time these days “seeing, writing, producing, directing, and editing movies.” When he wrote, he was “halfway done with a film on the return of harbor porpoises to San Francisco Bay after a 60-year absence.”

Bruce Morningstar and his wife, Katie, live in what he calls “Paradise, Rosarito, Baja, Mexico,” about which he says, “It is Florida on the water without that horrible humidity, and no hurricanes.” My comment: Watch out, Bruce, for Don Henley has warned us, “Call someplace paradise—kiss it good-bye.” They visited Wesleyan in Oct. 2014, when his father, Joe Barry Morningstar ’39, was inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame (his father won eight letters in three sports—football, basketball, and baseball). Their son, Kris, a chef for 12 years, just opened his first restaurant, in West Hollywood, called Terrine.

My college roomie, Steve Sellers, continues to live in Lexington, Mass., and work with SmartCloud, a start-up software company that provides energy planning services to various municipalities in New England but also elsewhere in the USA and abroad. It all happens in the cloud (smartcloudinc.com).

Jim Cawse, who holds 28 patents and has written many articles and a book, has added a blog to the website (cawseandeffect.com/chemistry-research/) for his consulting business, Cawse and Effect LLC. (“Experimental Design for Highly Productive Chemistry”). In February he did his first Webinar (“Effective Experimental Planning to Get the Most out of Your Freeslate Tools”).

And, finally, some sad news. Our classmate, Steve Hass, died at his home in Parkesburg, Pa., on July 31, 2014. Steve was married for 37 years to his wife, Jean, and had four children, seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. After majoring in chemistry at Wesleyan, Steve did post-graduate work in accounting at Drexel and Penn. He then became self-employed as an accountant. Donations in his honor may be made to The Jackson Laboratory, Development Office, and P. O. Box 254, Bar Harbor, ME, 04609.

Richie Zweigenhaft | rzweigen@guilford.edu

I did not have room for all the vivid memories that you all (as we say down here) sent me in response to my March 2014 e-mail blast asking for information and memories. First, a few more memories, and then I’ll catch you up on info about some of those who wrote.

Peter Kovach wrote about a number of lasting memories. Here’s one of them: “The paradigm-shaping moment in my life occurred in the spring of ’66, after returning to Wes from doing a year of penance for freshman wildness at the New School in New York, rooming with Tom Sloane ’68, in a parallel exile. And it involved a challenge from Jim Helfer (now Jim Stone), a professor who shaped my world view and, far more than any academic during three degree programs, changed my life. He had challenged me to spend my junior year at Banaras Hindu University in India to pursue my declared major in history of religion. I laughed it off. Then one April morning, I woke up in a sweat and, in a moment of epiphanic clarity similar to the one where I knew I would go to Wesleyan, I knew I was going to India. I banged on his office door (where he slept in those days) at about 6 a.m., and we opened Downey House to work out the details over tea.”

Steve Duck wrote the following: “You asked what event stuck out most vividly for me: I would suggest that I was emotionally and psychologically so ‘asleep’ that I missed huge chunks of ‘amazing’ that Wesleyan had to offer. But what does come to mind are: the camaraderie of the Commons Club men, or the experience of serving as a friend at the psychiatric hospital across the hill.”

Don Stone wrote this: “An event involving Wesleyan that has stuck with me? The Wesleyan-Tuskegee exchange when I was in Alabama very soon after the Selma march. Out of which experience I helped Prof. Dick Winslow ’40 organize the Wesleyan-Smith Glee Club southern tour—to Tuskegee, Morehouse/Spelman, Duke, and so forth, riding on the bus next to my first real girlfriend—who was from the South. And there was music, too!”

And, from Jim Vaughan: “Good Wes Tech memory: Skateboarding down the College Row hill to High Street with Dean Mark Barlow ’46.”

The last recalled memory (for now), is from Dirk Dominick: “Seeing the presidential helicopter parked in the middle of the freshman football field at Amherst College where JFK was in town to dedicate the college library. I remember Jim Branigan, my roommate and fellow football fool, telling me that we should go and see the president, since we might not get another chance. I, as usual, resisted at first, feeling there is always a second chance…. After a while, I realized Jim was correct and I saw the president. The assassination that so quickly followed awoke me to the reality of life and made sense of all the warnings I read in literature. Carpe diem was no longer just a cute Latin phrase but a warning, a very dire warning, that life can be short. Thank you, Jim Branigan!”

And now, some news about those who wrote. Three of those who wrote have had careers as physicians. Jeff Hicks has been at the University of Rochester Medical Center since 1980, and has been chief of cardiac and thoracic surgery there since 1990. He served on the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, and recently completed a four-year term as president of the Thoracic Surgery Directors Association. He still does clinical work, including transplants, artificial hearts, and adult surgery.

After Wesleyan, Steve Duck went to medical school at Cornell, and then to Washington University in St. Louis and the St. Louis Children’s Hospital, where he became a pediatric endocrinologist. He was at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee for 17 years, where he was the head of the pediatric endocrinology program, and then he moved to Evanston, Ill., to join Northshore University Healthsystem. When he wrote to me he had been there 22 years, but, as he put it, “I have my eye on retirement.”

The third doc who wrote, Andy Barada, retired in Jan. 2014, after 35 years “taking care of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and other serious inflammatory conditions.” A week after he retired, he was diagnosed with nephritic syndrome, and learned a week later that the cause was multiple myeloma. As of July 2014 he was six months into chemotherapy, receiving hemodialysis, and slowly improving. He and his wife (Placide) have two children and four grandchildren.

Whereas Steve Duck has his eye on retirement, and Andy Barada did retire, Bob Callahan tried retirement and didn’t like it. Here’s how he explained it in his e-mail: “I tried retirement recently and failed miserably. I had been associate vice president for development and assistant dean at Florida International University’s College of Arts and Sciences. I thought beachcombing and boating would fill my days. Mistake. Now back to work at Miami Dade College, the nation’s largest undergraduate institution (176,000 students) and the grantor of more degrees to minorities than any other school in the nation.” Bob also wrote that he had remarried: “I married a year ago, to someone I had known for 30 years.”

Other classmates, too, have married in the last few years. Hoff Stauffer wrote the following: “I live in Gloucester with my new wife and our two kids (son, 9, and daughter, 7). Our home overlooks the harbor, and I sail my 38’ boat in the summer. We moved to Gloucester because of its natural beauty and the diversity of the community. The kids are doing well in public schools and are very active in sports (soccer, gymnastics, and hockey).”

Finally, a few of you responded to a question from a previous set of class notes about favorite professors. Bob Runk wrote that “Karl Scheibe was also my favorite professor.” Andy Barada noted that, “On further thought, I have great memories of one-on-one for one year with Earl Hanson!” Mike Feagley wrote the following about Willie Kerr: “I have traveled to Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sapporo, Madrid and Pamplona on business this year, thereby avoiding most of one of the nastiest Chicago winters in recorded history. I credit Willie Kerr, one of my favorite Wesleyan characters, with teaching me that all those other places are likely to be warmer than Chicago.” 

Richie Zweigenhaft | rzweigen@guilford.edu

I used Wesconnect to send an e-blast to all members of the class for whom Wesleyan has an e-mail, asking for info. In that e-mail I also asked what event remains most vivid in your memories. I mentioned that a vivid memory for me was learning about JFK’s assassination (I was in Downey House). The responses have been fascinating—some brief, some detailed.

Not surprisingly, Kennedy’s assassination was also a vivid memory for many of those who responded. Mike Feagley remembered learning about Kennedy in the following way: “When someone on campus told me in my third month at Wesleyan that ‘the president has been shot,’ I wondered at first why anyone would attack Vic Butterfield. I got a bit less stupid as time went on and Les Gelb broadened my perspective.”

George McKechnie wrote this about the assassination: “The JFK assassination was a turning point in my life. I heard the news while dissecting a fetal pig for freshman biology. My fantasies of becoming a surgeon were quickly deflated, and I began to think about studying human motivation and personality—which I later did.”

Dave Garrison put the death of JFK in the larger framework of the five years he spent getting his Wesleyan degree: “My graduation was delayed by my year abroad in Spain. JFK was killed in the fall of my first year, then Martin Luther King in the spring of my last year, and RFK two days before my graduation. The speaker was Leonard Bernstein, who was a close friend of the Kennedy family, and he was grief stricken. Having my college years bracketed by assassinations left me, even at that age, with a sense of the fragility of life.”

Brian Sichol wrote: “Certainly JFK’s death. Got in a car and attended the funeral with Cliff Arnebeck, John Murdock, and Dave Cadbury. A moment in history.”

For a few who wrote, the moment in history they recalled had to do with Wesleyan football. As Mike Klein put it, “winning the Little Three football title in 1966 was Incredible.” Andy Barada was more specific: “One memory was being at Williams for a historic football victory! I have a splinter from there somewhere in the house. If my memory serves me correctly, our mutual friend, Ollie Hickel, caught the winning TD pass.”

Jeff Hicks did not refer to a historical football moment, but wrote about a more recent encounter he had with the football team in November 2013 (the team was on its way to winning the Little Three): “Was asked to give a talk to alumni, students, and athletes about the ‘pursuit of Excellence in Learning’ and how students differ now in terms of learning skills. This lecture was initiated by Mike Whalen, current football coach, and a person who, along with President Roth, has changed the culture regarding athletes and athletic success at Wesleyan. I had the opportunity to address the football team at their new practice field and both my brother (Peter ’72) and I spent the evening at dinner with Coach Whalen and Riley discussing the successes they were enjoying. Most importantly, the next day at the football game, which 6–7,000 people attended, was an incredible display of Wesleyan pride, spirit, and pure joy in being together watching history being made. The field behind the stadium was filled with cars, tents, venues serving food, drink, and selling Wesleyan wear for all in attendance. The crowd was passionately committed to Wesleyan and hopes that continued success with support will follow. Great to see some of the old boys at the DKE house and all the incredible facilities that the students today have at their disposal.”

Bill Vetter recalled working with Upward Bound students during the summer after his junior year, and described some memorable moments, including the following: “One Saturday, we took about six cars and drove to the mountains in New Hampshire. In my car, about four of them were in the back of the station wagon playing poker, trying to look bored. We finally got to the park where we could ‘climb’ the mountain, really just a couple of miles hike up a path, but up above tree line where the views were spectacular. The kids said they didn’t want to take the hike. They preferred staying in the car playing poker. The man who ran the program (sorry I don’t remember his name after 48 years) said, ‘Fine. Out of the car.’ He locked it, and the rest of us started up. Grumbling and griping, the reluctant four trudged on. As we got higher, the trees started to thin out, and one could sometimes glimpse a distant vista. The reluctant ones started to get excited. The higher we went, the faster they climbed. At the end, they literally ran up the path, jumping and shouting about how great it was. The memory of seeing them experience something so freshly has never left me. I learned a lot more that summer—about the poorer parts of Middletown down near the river; about government programs; about kids whose exposure was so small that they had never been to either Boston or New York City. It lifted me upward, I’m sure.”

And Bob Callahan sent a number of vivid memories. Here’s one of them: “One from my freshman year stands out as the metaphor for Wesleyan during the Butterfield years: I was passing the Chapel and heard beautiful organ music. I went inside that dark and welcoming sanctuary and was there alone, listening to E. Power Biggs practice in advance of a concert. A kind woman came in and sat with me, kind of amazed that a student would be inside the chapel on a gorgeous day, one that called for frisbee, touch football, or softball. We had a nice chat and then she invited me to visit her at home. It was Kay Butterfield, the president’s wife, and I visited with her and the president for an afternoon. Where else does that kind of thing happen?”

There’s more, including some news about those who wrote, but Bob’s question, “Where else does that kind of thing happen?” seems like a good place to end for now. More next time.

Richie Zweigenhaft | rzweigen@guilford.edu