CLASS OF 1998 | 2023 | FALL ISSUE

Anthony Veneziale wrote in to say he saw a LOT of our classmates as he went to the 25th Reunion at Wes and it was awesome. He saw soooo many amazing humans—too many to name! Since last he wrote, his show Freestyle Love Supreme (which he created along with Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02, Hon. ’15 and Thomas Kail ’99) won a special Tony Award and then did a national tour, which reopened many of the national regional theaters after COVID. The tour included nine major cities and fellow Wes alum Andrew Bancroft ’00Sadia Shepard ’97 (now professor of film at Wes), Ashley Knaysi, and Anthony organized a Gag Reflex reunion show for the 25th Reunion along with current Gag Reflex members in the World Music Hall. They had an absolute blast performing and doing a talk back afterward about improv in our lives.

Gag Reflex alums and current members at Reunion 2023.
From left to right: Ashley Knaysi, Sadia Shepard ’97, and Anthony Veneziale at Reunion 2023.

Sachita Shah is enjoying the Seattle summer, working as an ER doctor in both Seattle and Anchorage, and loving taking care of her two daughters and pup Cookie. She’s been in contact with Caleb Langsam ’99, who has an awesome dog named Max and lives in Portland, Oregon; and Matt Downes, who, with wife Kim, just had a second kiddo, and lives in Geneva, Switzerland!

Rev. Dr. Yolanda Denson-Byers has been called as the senior pastor of Shepherd of the Hills (SOTH) Lutheran Church in Edina, Minnesota (sothchurch.com).  She will be formally installed in September 2023.

Yolanda Denson-Byers
Yolanda Denson-Byers

And Dana M. Peterson was so very honored to receive the prestigious Wesleyan Distinguished Alumna Award in Recognition of Outstanding Achievements and Service at the May 2023 Annual Meeting of the Alumni Association.

From left to right: President Michael Roth, Dana, and David Hill ’86

CLASS OF 1998 | 2023 | SUMMER ISSUE

Hi fellow classmates,

Hopefully by the time you’re reading this, everyone who went to our 25th (what?!?) Reunion will have had a fabulous time reliving the glory days on Foss Hill and kvetching about what’s changed since our time. . . .

In individual news, your previous Class Notes collector, Jason Becton, and his family (husband Patrick, daughters Marian and Betty) recently moved about 20 minutes south of Charlottesville to North Garden, Virginia, for an even quieter life in the country. Jason and Patrick still own MarieBette Café & Bakery, and their second location Petite MarieBette, in the “city” of Charlottesville. Jason is looking forward to catching up with everyone at Reunion this year!

Nicole Macotsis lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, with her two kids and pandemic dog.  She was happy to get paid a trick-or-treat visit by Laura Polonia and her son, who also live in the hood, last Halloween. She sees Annie Ackley as much as she can and aspires to see long-lost Luiselle Rivera by the time this is in print. Nicole got a second MA at Goucher in cultural sustainability but has been transitioning out of public folk arts work (due to her full-time single parenting gig) and is now a movement teacher, offering sessions to women for pelvic floor and core health at macotsismovement.com.

Last summer Georgia Silvera Seamans met up with Nadia Wynter and her family—yay! She is excited to be seeing more of Carrie Seabury. She is happy to be teaching a course about the environmental and cultural history of urban parks and using two public parks in NYC as her muse, and is the creator and host of the Your Bird Story podcast, now in its third season. If you’ve got a bird story based in a city, she wants to know about it!

In April Lynn Chen screened her directorial debut I Will Make You Mine (that her husband Abe Forman-Greenwald edited) on the Wesleyan campus with a Q&A. The movie also features John Newman and is currently streaming on Paramount+ and VOD.

Cassie Mecsery wrote in with a bit of heartache. After a two-year battle with glioblastoma (the most deadly form of brain cancer), her husband Sean passed away in May 2022, leaving her to run his family business started in 1945, Cos Cob TV & Audio in Greenwich, Connecticut. Cassie has children from her marriage to Sean: Calista (7) and Westley Stephen (4). The GoFundMe which was used for Sean’s medical treatments and caregiving, has transitioned to help pay for future expenses for their children in the coming years. Cassie writes, “Sean’s diagnosis in 2019 with stage 4 brain cancer, glioblastoma, rocked our world. One day I was at home with our two kids, and the next I was being told my husband had months and, if lucky, a couple years to live. We got two years, but not without a lot of grit and challenge. We are still struggling to come to terms with his death, but are learning to live life with gratitude for the time we had. I see life a bit differently now, and am working on how best to live out his legacy.”

That’s it for now. Be well all and be kind to yourselves and others.

Best,

Abby

CLASS OF 1998 | 2023 | SPRING ISSUE

Hello fellow ’98ers,

I don’t know if you all are like me, but I have a feeling some burnout is going around . . . or maybe everyone is just out living life!  No updates to report this time, so let’s all send out some warm thoughts to each other and the world.

And you can email me anytime with your updates, Wes sightings, ideas for changing the world, or anything else you want to share!

CLASS OF 1998 | 2022 | FALL ISSUE

Hello, fellow ’98ers,

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the world; about Wes and the broad-reaching education we got there; about my fellow classmates (you!) who encourage(d) each other to think and grow and “fight the patriarchy” and make the world better. And I’m grateful for that experience, and for all of you out there who are bringing all that skill and caring and thoughtfulness and brilliant braininess out in the world around you. Keep it up and keep getting support from the world around you (in whatever form) as much as you do your part supporting outwards.

Just a few notes to share this time, all very smile worthy:

Pastor Yolanda Denson-Byers and her wife Tasha welcomed a new child in July 2021. Baby Kalan is a bright and cheerful child—Wesleyan Class of 2039.

Rev. Dr. Yolanda Denson-Byers’ adorable child Kalan—future Wes class of 2039!

Juniper Hill is still living in Würzburg, Germany, where she works as professor of ethnomusicology and lives with her mathematician-cyclist husband Jesse and two daughters. This year she is immensely enjoying a long maternity leave after the birth of a beautiful strapping baby girl in February. She delights in long walks in the local beech forests and in the Alps and in bike rides along the Main River and local Weinberg (literally ‘wine mountains,’ or hilly vineyards). Occasionally she bumps into other Wesleyan folk at Sacred Harp sings. When she returns to work next year, she’s looking forward to bringing in some international postdoctoral fellows to research the music of immigrant communities in Germany and Central Europe.

After scrolling through all the joyous Reunion & Commencement photos on Wesleyan’s Instagram, Marcus Chung is getting very excited to see everyone at our 25th (what, 25th?!) Reunion next May. He hasn’t seen many Wes friends recently thanks to a certain global pandemic, but he did start a new role as chief operating officer at Coyuchi, a bedding and bath brand that’s focused on premium product that’s also good for the planet. It’s a role that marries his experience in supply chain along with corporate sustainability. He’s enjoying learning about regenerative agriculture, carbon capture, and also pillow shams!

Okay these brought me smiles except for maybe that 25-year thing—“what?!” indeed! But what an occasion to celebrate! Twenty-five years of making the world better in our always-unique Wes way . . . . Here’s to 25 more.

Best,

Abby

CLASS OF 1998 | 2022 | SPRING ISSUE

Amy Davenport is still in Carrboro, North Carolina, where she lives with her spouse and their three children (6, 6, and 8). She’s entering her seventh year as a nurse-midwife at UNC Chapel Hill. She recently stepped down from her role as postpartum medical director, because, well, “pandemic and that whole work-life balance thing.” She plans to spend that extra time reading, knitting, baking, and riding her Peloton.

Kate Wetherhead still lives in New York, splitting her time between NYC and Putnam Valley with her husband Jeff Croiter (who, coincidentally, was the lighting designer of Broadway’s Freestyle Love Supreme, co-conceived by and starring Wes alum Anthony Veneziale!) This summer, Kate will be in Chicago, Illinois, premiering the Broadway-bound musical The Devil Wears Prada as part of the writing team, along with Sir Elton John and Shaina Taub. Directed by Anna D. Shapiro, Prada begins performances at the Nederlander Theater July 21, 2022. If you’re in Chicago this summer, come check it out!

Peter Isbister lives in Decatur, Georgia, with his wife Robyn Painter and their three kids, Mira (12), Eliot (8), and Ezra (8). He is an attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center in the Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative, representing immigrants detained in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He is still in touch with his good friend David Lubell, who now lives with his family in Berlin, Germany, after spending a few years also in Decatur, Georgia, and with Rachel Wellborn who has long lived in Atlanta.

Sara Brenneis and her family were in Madrid in the spring of 2020, just hitting their stride during a year-long sabbatical when . . .  well, we all know how that worked out. After Spain’s strict six-week lockdown when their two young boys were not allowed outside, they were grateful to return to the wide-open expanses of Northampton, Massachusetts. Sara has her hands full as professor and chair of the Spanish Department at Amherst College and full-time childcare juggler. She caught up with a very bearded Nick Coleman on a recent trip to Wisconsin and has enjoyed some Zoom happy hours with Margaret (Solle) Salazar and Rebecca Alson-Milkman. Sara wants to know: Anyone else up for a swing through Middletown for our 25th?

Speaking of Margaret Salazar, she was just appointed to a post in the Biden Administration.  She will be serving as HUD regional administrator, advancing the administration’s efforts in the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska), starting this past February.

Marianne Benet lives in Rye, New York, with her three sons. After her divorce, she started rowing crew again, and competed at the Head of the Charles last October, for glory and to raise money for the Angelman Syndrome Foundation, an organization that is close to her heart because her middle son was born with this rare genetic disorder. This May, she and Heather Marciniec celebrated their combined 90th birthday (45 + 45) in Key Biscayne, Florida, with Erin (Fieler) Collins, and Miki Kawashima, whose daughter, Elia Matrician (’26) will be attending Wes next fall! While there, they partied and reminisced with Ken Anderson, who lives in Key Biscayne and works in finance. Finally, she has a new love (and Wesleyan connection), Mario Manna ’00, also divorced, and a wonderful father to three extraordinary children. This year, they traveled with their six kiddos to Disney, Key Biscayne, and skiing in Vermont. Of note, she sent her notes in from Cartagena, Colombia, where she had just spent a day visiting the historic walled city with her dear friend, Isabel Vega, who is now living in Colombia and working on her independent film projects. Isabel is happy, healthy, and always involved in creative endeavors: She produced and directed a documentary called La Corona (The Crown) that was nominated for an Oscar and now, many years later, is at Sundance for the second time. The film is about a beauty pageant at a Colombian prison for women.

Abe Forman-Greenwald was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award last year as a producer on the Netflix series Big Mouth and was looking forward to the debut of their spinoff series Human Resources, which came out on March 18 of this year. Also, now that live music is back, he’s been enjoying going to concerts with fellow ’98er Sascha Paladino here in Los Angeles.

John Speck is excited to be in the midst of his third year as a software engineer, and still finding time to make music with exceptional New Yorkers. He has two daughters, ages 3 and 7, who are thriving in the quality public schools of South Brooklyn. They explore nature as much as possible these days: Prospect Park, Jersey, and Miami(!). He had the good fortune of seeing Harrison Owen and his son, Russell, recently, and recommends Harrison’s book Niji Umi (“for children ages 0–100”).  He also had a fun hiking adventure on the Appalachian Trail with Jason Gonzalez and Dave Montgomery ’97 last summer. Jason has recently completed an MBA and continues his impressive tenure as an attorney at the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, and has four adorable children with his lovely wife Ayisha.

In harder news, Cassie Colletti Mecsery shared that her husband Sean Mecsery has been fighting glioblastoma for the past two years while she manages their family and their family business in Cos Cob, Connecticut. Unfortunately, there are no approved treatments and she asked people to look for their GoFundMe to help as they work to pay for his experimental treatments and support their two children, ages six and two.

Finally, we sadly lost Angie (Montgomery) Arnold in December 2021.  At Wes, she was a triple major in English, film study, and African American history, and afterward got an MFA at Columbia, and an MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. She published her first book, Rivers Under Water, in 2018, a story of a woman who searches for love and spiritual liberation over the course of three generations in the Deep South; and she wrote and produced an off-Broadway play, The Standard Upgrade. She also won the Miss Black Connecticut Pageant.  She leaves behind her beloved husband, Artis Arnold III, and many family and friends.

We also sadly lost Christopher Lawrence Rosaschi in February.  He will be missed by his children, his family, and so many who knew him.

CLASS OF 1998 | 2021–2022 | WINTER ISSUE

Hello fellow ‘98ers.

It was great to hear from a few of you, and from some farther off spots than usual. Please keep sending in your notes and sightings. I know we would all love to hear a whole range of everyone’s experiences.

Here is the most recent news:

Jehan Manekshaw continues to live in Mumbai with his family—wife Shez and two kids Aden, 7, and Zaya, 3—and have been, like every other family on the planet, dealing with the balance of WFH, Zoomschooling, and staying safe. He continues to run two organizations now in the digital/blended medium: the Drama School Mumbai, and with his wife Shez, Theatre Professionals Education, which focuses on giving schoolteachers the tools from drama with which to do a lot more in their classes. He really misses Miller’s Pond in the summer.

It’s been a long 1.5 pandemic year for Sarah Margon, with both her boys (8.5 and 11.5) doing virtual school until this May (when they returned for just a couple days a week) and her husband and her working from home—sharing an office for much of the time—after nearly 20 years of regular travel for them both. They are nonetheless all healthy and know they are lucky and are so grateful to science for the vaccines that have led to cautiously returning to some version of the “before times.” To that end, Sarah got to join a “just what we all needed” NYC dinner with Amy Rowland (Abbazia), Danielle Woodrow, Emma Cooper-Serber (‘97) and Lauren (Tehan) DiLoreto ‘97 in late May where they laughed and hugged and laughed some more. For the most part, Sarah is now relishing the time at home and with family as she has been nominated by President Biden to be the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. It’s a tremendous honor, with no lack of urgent issues on which to focus. She reports confirmation will hopefully happen by early fall and then she’ll hit the ground running with a grueling schedule, to carrying out the president’s and secretary’s agenda and restoring the U.S. government’s commitment to meaningful human rights and democracy around the world.

Nathan Eddy reports life is good in London—though lockdown restrictions in the UK have made him miss family and friends in New England. He’s been serving as Interim Director of the Council of Christians and Jews since September. CCJ is the oldest interfaith organization in the UK, and their patron is the Queen. He finds it a privilege to be leading dialogue over Israel-Palestine, Holocaust education, and theological education for clergy and rabbis.

Sarah Miller Lipton is happily working at Kaiser Permanente in the Occupational Medicine department in Panorama City, California. She and her husband Glenn have two boys, ages 8 and 6 years old. They are busy with all the kids’ activities—baseball, soccer, tennis, and swimming! They are looking forward to a nice summer in Los Angeles and enjoying the warm weather. Wishing everyone from Wesleyan good health!

Nathan Camp is returning to Connecticut after two decades out west. He is joining Yale University’s Office of International Affairs and looks forward to reconnecting with New England friends and alumni.

I, meanwhile, have been searching out open camping spots, trying to remember, and slowly regain, the feeling of having real-life social activities, and looking for ways to make the world just a little bit better– so send those ideas too, we could all use them.

Best,

Abby

CLASS OF 1998 | 2021 | ISSUE 1

Hi classmates: It’s hard to know what to say these days. I don’t know if the time since our last notes has gone by quickly or not moved at all. Or as a good friend always says, “Why can’t it be both, Abby?” As of this writing, the COVID vaccine is slowly making its way into more and more arms and immune systems—but not with the equity so desperately needed—while we all continue to try and figure out what is safe enough or not, each of us balancing our own risk-benefit calculation as best we can. There are joyous moments and heart-breaking ones, and a whole lot of the in-between. I hope you are all as well as can be, and finding lights at the ends of all the little and big tunnels.

     Here is the news from our fellow ’98ers.

     Jesse Vincent is living in Oakland with his wife Kaia and four-year- old son Ira. For most of the past month, he’s been neglecting his day job running keyboard.io to serve as one of the volunteer coordinators of cinateca.com.

     Adam Borden’s family decided to decamp for a month with remote learning and work to Stowe, Vermont. They were able to ski every day during winter break and then for a couple of weeks each day after Emma and Ian finished remote school. It was such a welcome relief to have a change of scenery and get in some great skiing. Before they left, Adam and Ann Bakun surprised them with a holiday muffeletta shipment from NOLA’s Central Grocery which definitely took care of any muffeletta hankering they might have had for years! The Bordens returned in mid-January in time for Adam to start a new job as the VP of digital advertising for Live Casino and Hotels, a Maryland gaming company with properties near Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and in Philadelphia. He has much to learn about the gaming industry but is learning quickly!

     Laura Kirk enjoyed a New York snowstorm in Central Park with her son Theo and sent an adorable happy snowy masked picture that I wish I could include!

    Brendan Armm, DAOM, LAc, Dipl OM, lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two kids, practicing as a doctor of acupuncture and Oriental medicine at Lotus Integrative Medicine in Santa Monica (lotussm.com), which he founded in 2007 and serves as director. He hosts the weekly integrative holistic health and wellness talk show The Well with four other doctors and health care practitioners, to tackle all things body, mind and spirit, which is also on YouTube. Back in 2015, Dr. Armm received a U.S. patent for the BackInBand, a lower back pain relief acupressure device (BackInBand.com), after completing a six-month study showing the device’s medical efficacy. Brendan continues to play drums like he did back in the days of Wesleyan when he majored in world music (and pre-med, too), and used to play with campus bands Neptune, 2:10 Train, and others, with his schoolmates Kevin Strait ’97, Dan Gilbert, Eric Werner ’99 and others. He now enjoys watching his daughter (River) learn the guitar, and his son (Leaf) learn the drums, carrying on the spirit and pulse of music. Brendan’s also been playing tennis weekly, again like in his days back at Wesleyan, when he was on the school’s team his freshman year. Some things change, some things remain unchanged, and always each day is a present.

     Finally, as many of you know, on December 13, 2020, we lost Catie Lazarus ’98, MA ’99 to breast cancer. Catie was a comedian, writer, and producer­—well-known as the longtime host of the talk show and podcast Employee of the Month—and a friend and a light of optimism to so many. She switched from a doctorate in psychology into comedy after prompting from Tina Fey, and no doubt used skills she learned at Wes in psychology/sociology in her interviews with celebrities and laypeople alike, including a series in The Atlantic interviewing people who had lost their jobs. She brought both depth of feeling and humor to all her work, and it is clear from even the most random candid photo or interview moment that there is no more infectious smile than hers. You can find much of her work as well as wonderful tributes to her online, including one (at jta.org) written by a friend she made doing that most Wesleyan of post-grad experiences, an immersion experience in Israel. She is survived by her parents Simon and Rosalind, and two brothers Ned ’95 and Ben and their wives Nahanni and Katherine. She will be missed by so many.