CLASS OF 1976 | 2014 | ISSUE 3
Well, I was a little late in contacting everyone and did not expect much. But I got a barrel of news, so here goes.
Sara Avitzour is an active psychotherapist whose lawyer days are long behind her. This semester she is finishing up her master’s degree in English and creative writing at Bar Ilan University. She has published three short stories so far and a full-length memoir. Sara has four grandchildren, three boys and one girl, ages 1 to 5.
Leslie Anderson won the 2014 National Genealogical Society Family History Writing Contest with a story about her great-great-grandmother Tabitha, who was born a slave to a wealthy tobacco planter in Virginia. When Tabitha was about 60, she purchased 16 acres from her former owner. The story will be published later this year in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. Leslie is the project editor for an index of Virginia Slave Births published by Heritage Books.
Elizabeth (Betsy) Eisenmann writes that she has had three big life events in the past year. Her son and his wife (who live in LA) had twin daughters in Sept. 2013, her mom passed away on Oct. 1, 2013, after 18 years of living with Alzheimer’s disease, and Betsy retired in Jan. 2014, after 29 years as an RN, 28 with Lowell General Hospital.
Jeff Frank, who lives in Columbus, Ohio, got together with his three children for a week in Colorado Springs. (Hey, Jeff, my daughter went to college there.) Son George is a junior at the Air Force Academy; son Nathan, who is with the FBI, and his wife, Amanda, were in from Miami; and daughter Stephanie, who is a teacher, was in from Hawaii.
Karen Gervasoni, who was a great co-manager for the Wes wrestling team, and her husband, Tom Hansen, live on 100 acres in Kennebunk, Maine, with their son, Cole, who will be 16 in November. Karen is retired after 25 years as an actuary. She would love to hear from Janet Brooks, Kat Wilmore, and Diana Brody.
In July 2014, Cathy Gorin had a gathering of Liz Gissen Holder, Ed Papier, and Christine McCoy McNeil ’75 at her summer home near Copake, N.Y. At Wesleyan, they all had lived together at Kappa Alpha house (which was then university housing) and had come to this same summer home back in the spring of ’75. Their mini-reunion was full of wonderful stories and nostalgia.
Debra Haffner is still president of the Religious Institute, an organization she founded 14 years ago, to help religious leaders advocate for sexual justice, and she hopes to earn her doctorate in ministry by 2016. Her eldest got married in May and her youngest is a college senior. She just spent a week with Kath Booth ’78, her college roommate.
David Low, associate director of publications and arts and culture editor for Wes, just had his short story “Elevor” published at Solstice, a magazine of diverse voices. The story, which can be found at solsticemag.org/content/elevor concerns a young Asian woman’s adventures in NYC as she deals with claustrophobia.
Doug Hurd, who was a mainstay of the Wesleyan wrestling team, reports that his son Greg ’10 was a Division 3 New England champion wrestler for Wesleyan and went to Nationals twice. Greg is now in a PhD program in geology at the University of Texas in Austin. Doug’s daughter, Allison ’11, is pursuing dance in NYC. Doug, his wife, Cynthia, and family just returned from a trip to Cracow, Poland, and a hiking trip in the Tatra mountains.
Tom Kovar stays in touch with a lot of Wesleyan folks, including many who share his interest in music, including David Harmin and Karen Williams Harmin, Byron Haskins, Mel Blake, Marty Plotkin, Nat Needle, Libby Horn, Cheryl Alpert, BJ Buckley, Jim Fellows, Dan Cantor, and Winifred van Roden ’77. Tom, it is great that you keep in touch with so many of our classmates. Please encourage them to write in to class notes.
Gerry Rau writes that this fall over a dozen international students from various countries, none of whom speak Chinese, showed up at his church in Chiayi, Taiwan, and that the church is starting an English worship service for them. Gerry is coordinating the startup and will be speaking each week.
Mark Rubin attended Parents Day at Wesleyan this past September where Grace ’18, his youngest child, just started her freshman year. Mark’s niece, Lucy Rubin ’17, is also there. Unfortunately, Mark lost both his father and Eric, his younger brother, in the past 18 months.
This summer, Nancy and I had the pleasure of having Bruce Tobey ’75 and his wife, Pat, to our house for dinner. I also heard from Bill Devereaux ’75, who was president of our DKE chapter at Wesleyan. We have daughters at Bryn Mawr and Carleton and have met many interesting parents and alums from those schools. We both stay busy, and I have developed an interesting sideline by serving as an arbitrator and mediator in business disputes. Had an interesting case involving a well-known race car driver recently. During a break, he showed me a video of his 3-year-old driving an off-road four-wheeler solo and real fast through a bumpy field. When I asked him why his kid was not wearing a helmet, he turned to me with the most honest face and wide-eyed look imaginable. “Because his neck’s not strong enough to hold it up,” he said.
Well, we’ve run out of space. How about writing me for the next issue?
Mitchell Marinello | mlmarinello@comcast.net