CLASS OF 1963 | 2014 | ISSUE 3

Dave Holdt is now fully retired, having stopped teaching freshman writing at the University of Hartford in December 2013. He says he’s now a house husband, in charge of all things domestic as his partner, Karen Chase, is still at the University of Hartford, where she heads the Education Department, teaching both PhD students as well as undergrads. He says he’s doing pretty well with the domestic chores except that Karen says he “cannot see spiders.” He is in a memoir writing class at UConn and as they live near several large forests, he takes one of his three dogs for daily hour-long walks and is now in much better shape than when he stood all day in front of classes. He has seen all sorts of wildlife during the walks and has become a bird watcher. They hear lots of owls calling at night. Recently a nearby sheep farmer reported that some “very big animal” was killing his sheep. There are some thoughts of America’s largest cat nearby. He and Karen enjoy going to CT Tigers, a Detroit single “A” farm team’s home baseball games in nearby Norwich. Go, CT Tigers!

Having retired in the summer of ’12 after 49 years as middle school department head of language arts at the Gilman School, an independent school for boys in Baltimore, Samuel “Bo” Grimes is now much involved with a group of parishioners working to draw up their profile for a new rector for a nearby Episcopal church in north Baltimore. Bo and his wife, Sabra, were married in ’75. They have two daughters. One is getting married next April. “Big expense,” chuckled a resigned but pleased Bo. He and Sabra live in Cockeysville, Md. The met at work, as she was in charge of schedules for the Gilman Middle School. She, too, is retired. They travel a little, last October to Montana to visit Glacier National Park. Sadly, that turned out to be just when Congress closed all national parks. One day before they were to leave, parks were opened again so at least they got in one day. Bo likes gardening and they both like reading, especially “quality” mysteries. Their next trip will be to Quebec. This is because they are particularly fond of a Canadian mystery writer, Louise Penny, winner of Canada’s highest civilian award, the Order of Canada, for her writing. Many of her mysteries take place in Quebec very close to the Vermont line and her descriptions of the scenery and characters are so pleasant that they’d like to visit the areas she’s described in her mystery series. Recalling times at Wes U, Bo spoke fondly of the John Wesley Club and his interesting friends there. Unlike the fraternities, it did not have a kitchen so JWC members ate at Downey House or at different fraternities. He particularly favored EQV, both for the friends and food there.

Also living in Maryland (Trappe, Md., on the eastern shore) but appearing for the first time in our class column, Ted Passyn has retired from a career in real estate development. He specialized in building moderate-cost housing, first in Pennsylvania and for the last 33 years in Maryland. Ted met his wife Julia (Smith ’63) on a blind date at a party at Wes U on Valentine’s Day weekend 1960. They were introduced by Bruce Meinke ’62 and got married in February 1964. The rest is history. Included in that history are 10 children, ages 28–50 (23 degrees among them!) and 20 grandchildren. Ted told me that number was to change on his birthday, the day after we talked, as a 21st grandchild was to be induced. So then their ages then would stretch from 1 day–24 years. When the Passyns travel, it is generally to see their children and grandchildren who stretch across the South from St. Louis to New Orleans. While he does not know all their favorite colors, he can pretty well recognize them all. One year he went to 43 football games! (Go, CT Tigers and everyone else!) Ted served in the Army as a finance officer after he was married, rising to the rank of first lieutenant, while on active duty and making captain later in the reserves. At one point shortly after the Gulf of Tonkin, his unit was on alert to go to Vietnam for five months. In the end they never went, but he found that his time in the army was very broadening and a valuable addition to his education. He is a serious cook with a 10-burner commercial range and a serious wine cellar. He is also somewhat of a gardener and has had a wonderful sounding conservatory built with many beautiful flowers and palm trees, all of which opens onto a very large, lovely enclosed pond with a waterfall.

It is possible that Jon Hopkins has had a unique experience among our classmates. And that is, that in the summer of ’68, primarily due to the immediate threat of his being drafted, he left the country and moved to Canada and applied for permanent residency. The day after Canada accepted his application, in ’69, he got a letter from the US Attorney General indicting him as a draft dodger. He said his father backed his move but his mother was worried that their friends might “think he was a deserter.”Canadians had no such problems and were very accepting of him as in general they opposed the war. In ’77, one of the first things President Carter did was to pardon all draft dodgers. After graduating from Wes U, Jon was ABD in the University of Delaware graduate program in chemistry. Once in Canada, he enrolled in McGill in a master of science program but when money ran out, got a job teaching at the Herzing Institute (now Herzing College) in Montreal, where he lived since moving north. There he taught junior college level students right out of high school along with older students/workers returning to college to grow professionally. For much of his life in Montreal Jon also free-lanced as a computer programmer though he says while he was never a particularly good businessman, at least he was never broke. At Wes U he was a chemistry major and he’s retained an interest in science and enjoys following some websites like Science Daily and Slashdot, on which he finds interesting comments on computer matters. He also likes to read ancient history, really ancient history. A couple of recent reads were Thucydides’ History of the Peleponnesian War (431 BC) and an early 20th century book on the Middle Ages, which proved difficult, not for the subject matter but for the text, which was all in small print and worse, the voluminous footnotes in ever smaller print. Jon lives in an apartment in downtown Montreal and wonders in what other city could someone live so well and inexpensively? He subscribes to Montreal’s Sept.–May annual 12-concert series, and enjoys walking to the concert hall, stopping along the way for dinner at a delicious Chinese restaurant. He finds the Canadian comprehensive health and drug care programs “a godsend!” and scoffs at Canada being called “socialistic” due to its health care system. Even before enrolling at WesU as a freshman, he had heard of the John Wesley Club and intended to join it, which he did. In high school John had been one of the very best students. At WesU he found what many of us also found: pretty much everyone fell into that category. He played clarinet in our not-quite-world-famous football marching band and found the JWC experience “fantastic—we had great guys, very liberal, and got outside speakers to come for discussions at the JWC. Many, like Hanna Arendt, John Cage, and C.W. Snow were there in residence, but came for smaller discussions at JWC. However, I think Pete Seeger came just to JWC.” He recalled one incident when two guys who may not have been JWC members but were just rooming there would boil peyote and then partake of the resulting concoction and collapse in great mirth and laughter. So, someone substituted spinach for their peyote stash. They boiled it, partook and collapsed in great mirth and laughter, which just goes to show—those were the times, my friends…

BYRON S. MILLER | tigr10@optonline.net
5 Clapboard Hill Rd., Westport, CT 06880