CLASS OF 1966 | 2015 | ISSUE 2
Aloha, all.
By the time everyone reads this, summer will be a remembrance of the past. Hopefully, everyone has had their fill of “soda, and pretzels, and beer.”
This is late in coming, but first I want to recognize our classmate Bill Dietz, who has joined the ranks of our retired after a long and very distinguished career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). I personally need to thank Bill for his helpful thoughts and advice to a diabetes program I was directing in Hawai`i a number of years ago…a big mahalo, Bill, and welcome to our ranks!
The big news for us is that our 50th is now well over the horizon! Our classmate Rick Crootof has been hard at work twisting elbows and peering in various neighborhoods to put together a great Reunion Committee. The committee is already beginning its work and includes: Rick and Dave McNally as our co-chairs; Jim Andrus, Essel Bailey, David Bartlett, David Boyle, Howard Brodsky, Tom Broker, Al Burman, Frank Burrows, Clark Byam, Graham Colville, Gary Conger, Donald Craven, Pat Curry, Bob Dannies, Bill Dietz, Jeffrey Evans, Steve Giddings, Paul Gilbert, Al Ibargüen, John Knapp, David Luft, Jim O`Leary, John Neff, Irv Richter, Sandy Shilepsky, Pete Spiller, yours truly, Sandy Van Kennen, and Dale Walker and Wes staff Pam Vasiliou, Mark Davis ’96, and Nicky Bennett. Thank you one and all for serving. Rick has notified us that Professor Rob Rosenthal has agreed to be one of our class guests and did a great seminar at our 30th Reunion comparing the top 10 songs of 1966 with those of 1996….Can you imagine what that comparison would look like now? Now it’s up to all ’66ers to do the right thing and to start planning now on attending next year’s gathering. Let’s make singing our old Wesleyan Fight Song at least one more time together a reality on the steps of North College…see you there! And maybe even the Douglas Cannon will show up for another appearance!
The Committee has already been at work and invited Don Russell to join us, and he has accepted. Speaking of sports…congratulations to the Wes baseball team and Coach Mark Woodworth ’94 in winning its second consecutive NESCAC championship, and a welcoming to Dan DiCenzo into the head football coaching position. Thank you, Mike Whalen ’83, for a great job and congratulations in your new athletic director positon.
A final note, and one more somber, is the concern I know we all have for the seemingly ongoing gun tragedies across our nation. This is not meant to be a political statement, I simply want to call to mind how we of the ’60s era at Wesleyan were all so privileged to have lived at a time which witnessed Wesleyan’s involvement in race relations bringing together us as students and Middletown youngsters in tutorial programs; serving as a hub for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s efforts in the Middletown/Hartford area and evenings in the Foss Hill dining hall; sending its students to Washington, D.C., to march and to Tuskegee to learn. It also brought future Dean Edgar Beckham ’58 to Wesleyan, whose legacy on campus lives on through the Edgar Beckham Social Justice Award. Let us remember those days for, in many ways, they formed the glue which has cemented us as the class of ’66.
As with other Notes – a final Hawaiian `olelo:
Aia no ke ea i ka puka ihu: “There is breath still in the nostrils”—a reply when someone asks how a friend or relative is.
And so, ’66, our breaths live on!!!