CLASS OF 1968 | 2014 | ISSUE 3
I will open with a lovely letter I got from Guy Baehr as it is a model for you all: “I guess I’ve been putting this off for a decade or two, But I thought I’d send you an update now that I seem to have come to a convenient turning point. Which is to say that I am now finally and firmly retired to a small town on the north coast of the Dominican Republic.
“I’ve built a house here, sold my house back in New Jersey and am looking forward to making friends among the expats and locals here, enjoying the Caribbean climate, and watching the fascinating process in a country of 10 million people moving, sometimes fitfully, from being a Third World country to an almost Second World country. (I guess that’s my CSS training.) Also I have a long connection to the Dominican Republic that started when I came here as a Peace Corps volunteer right out of Wesleyan and continued with a later marriage to a Dominican woman in the U.S. that lasted for 24 years.
“Most of my professional career was spent as a reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest newspaper. It was a rewarding and interesting career that let me cover a wide variety of people, from homeless people to Mikhail Gorbachev to survivors of the attack on the World Trade Center escaping Manhattan. I hope I left the state a little better than I found it. When the Internet started killing the newspaper business, I switched to teaching investigative reporting at Rutgers.
“With exquisite timing, I stopped working for pay shortly before the Great Recession, bought land here in the Dominican Republic and started building a house. It’s taken me until this year to finally move down here year-round. I’ve found the process challenging, absorbing and rewarding. Now I’m settling down to enjoy the more conventional pleasures of retirement: building small sailing dinghies, making new friends, and spoiling my 1-year-old grandson on periodic visits back to the U.S., not during the winter if I can help it.”
Rich Zweigenhaft ’67, a professor at Guilford College and co-author of Diversity in the Power Elite: How It Happens, Why It Matters, was cited prominently in a June 28th New York Times article on gay CEOs.
Bob Runk ’67’s musical career continues. He is writing/singing/recording. In 2013, he got nearly $55 in royalties from people downloading his stuff, and he has a wonderful website, the Runkus Room, at bobrunk.com. I caught Wendell Wallach, a fellow at Yale’s interdisciplinary Center on Bioethics, on a NPR talk show on July 1st, discussing the larger implications of some of our technological advances.
On the way up to Quebec, Judy and I stopped in Norwich, Vt., at the lovely hillside home of Andrea and Rich Kremer ’69 for a delightful dinner on the deck. Their big news was the birth of their first grandchild, a boy, in the spring. Andrea is adjuncting at Dartmouth, teaching freshmen writing intensive courses that focus on issues in medical ethics, while Rich is auditing all kinds of improbable courses. He is still consulting some but summers are pretty much dedicated to keeping the woodchucks out of his gardens.
In the crazy, tumultuous fall of ’67, I was befriended by Larry Dunham MAT ’69, a kind, spirited, accepting fellow. He was married—still is—and the father of two great kids who now have five of their own to whom he is a devoted grandfather. (The thing that really amazed me back in the day is that he was a graduate of the same repressive boarding school I attended and, nonetheless, had evolved in an open, wonderful way.) Anyway we reconnected after all these years and picked up where we left off. He lived in St. Paul and, finding his temperament ill-suited to traditional employment, worked on the railroad and then as a long-haul truck driver. Retired for a couple of years now, he is spending more time in the East to be closer to his daughter, Johannah ’91, and his son, Wheatleigh, who is a Yale graduate and an entrepreneur. Active in the McCarthy movement, Larry remembered Dave Siegel ’69 and Dave Caswell ’69 warmly.
I want to quote from a May 8th editorial from the Washington Post at some length: “On the merits, the race in the Democratic primary for attorney general in Maryland is a slam-dunk. State Sen. Brian Frosh of Montgomery County, who is among the most admired, intelligent, civil and hardworking lawmakers in Annapolis, should win the nomination in a walk.
“Over the course of nearly three decades in the legislature—much of that in leadership roles—he has been the author and driving force behind landmark laws to improve firearm safety, safeguard the environment and protect Maryland consumers. Other lawmakers take cues from Mr. Frosh when it comes to public ethics. Measured by achievements, qualifications and breadth of experience, the other candidates are not in Mr. Frosh’s league.
“At once self-effacing and substantive, Mr. Frosh has inspired bipartisan respect as a legislator who gets big things done without unduly tooting his own horn. He has shaped and sponsored much of Maryland’s most important environmental legislation for years. He wrote laws that cracked down on identity theft and teen drunk driving and has been one of the Senate’s most effective strategists in tackling gun violence.” (The best man won here; Brian took the primary handily.)
Locally, I am not completely sure what to do with my newfound freedom. Went to my 50th high school reunion, which even my wife enjoyed. Volunteering for Governor Malloy’s reelection bid. Laid low this summer as our condo has a pool and a beach, and feels like a resort. Trying to find my legs here.
Please do follow Guy’s example and update me on how you have been spending the years. It makes me feel like I am doing something of value here and not just rattling on for my own amusement.
LLOYD BUZZELL | LBuzz463@aol.com
70 Turtle Bay, Branford, CT 06405
203/208-5360