CLASS OF 1968 | 2015 | ISSUE 2
2018 is not really that far off—at our age, we know how the years fly by—and yet that is our 50th Reunion, the big one, the Last Hurrah. To pull it off properly, there are a million things that need to be thought through and taken care of and, in all candor, we haven’t done much of anything. (Unfortunately, there is no group, unbeknownst to you, secretly organizing the event and my clear sense is we need to get in gear.) To that end, we are putting out a general call for volunteers of all stripes. If you would like to lend your talents to make this a truly memorable event, please contact Stuart Ober (ober@stuartober.com) or Sandy See (seescape@verizon.net), who have been kind enough to step forward and help identify a working group or Reunion council.
John Ashworth, after a doctorate from Harvard and a post-doc at MIT, has had an adventuresome career in renewable energy, starting in what is now the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The lab grew from 50 to 900 staff in a few short years and he worked with a variety of state governments initially and then helped set up an international program for assisting developing countries to create their own programs. There he met his wife, Nancy, and they were married in 1982. When the Reagan administration took a meat ax to the program, he joined a small consulting firm in Vermont that focused on technical assistance for the developing world. For five years, he did a great deal of travel for USAID and the World Bank, during which time he witnessed two coup d’états and spent countless nights in airport lounges. After which, he was delighted to find domestic work with a consulting firm in D.C., but his heart was not really into life in the Beltway.
In 1994, John joined a start-up software-driven environmental education firm in Phoenix and ended up running the environmental group. There he got a great deal of hands-on experience with desert plants and drip irrigation as they slowly landscaped a good-sized property in Paradise Valley. But the summers got to them, and they happily found a way back to Colorado through a job offer from his first employer, NREL, where he headed up their biofuels partnership development team for 11 years until he retired in May 2013.
In retirement, “Life is good”—in a smaller one-story house with a greenhouse and a koi pond. John works at the Denver Botanical Garden, has been teaching himself blues guitar and is working on his outdoor photography. He skis every week during the winter and they do a good deal of traveling when Nancy can fit it into her schedule as a certified executive coach.
Bob Svensk and Peter Swain ’71 have been partners for the past five years in a trade finance venture that was recently sold to Allied World Assurance. Bob reports that “Peter has moved to NYC and now works at corporate headquarters. I remain in Southport as an ‘independent consultant’—whatever that means.” Peter started Wes with us but finished in 1971. When I reached out, he kindly gave me “the bare bones of life since Middletown”: Taught art and history at Midland School in Los Olivos, Calif., 1971–75. Got his MBA at Wake Forest, where he met his wife, (Anne) 1975–1977. Worked at First National Bank of Maryland in their international and ship finance division with responsibilities that brought him all over the world (and for over five years in the 1980s he was very happily London-based), 1977–2000. This was followed by stints at Riggs Bank and as a partner in a small trade finance shop in Baltimore before receiving a call from Bob making him an offer he couldn’t refuse. The important stuff for Peter is Anne and three great kids: a psychologist, a med school student and “the third doing her thing.”
In April Rick Voigt taught a non-credit adult education course at Wesleyan that Don Logie attended. (Rick said Don was a disruptive student, continually asking questions that exposed the instructor’s limitations.) Since graduation, Rick taught at Miles College in Birmingham, Ala., a predominately black college that played an important role in the civil rights movement in that city. Then to the University of Virginia law school, where he met his wife, Annemarie Riemer. After law school, he worked for eight years in Washington, D.C., in the Solicitor’s Office for the U.S. Department of Labor, basically as a federal prosecutor under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Then he moved to Hartford to go into private practice, where he has been ever since. In the process of retiring, he is pursuing other interests, which for years had been on back burners. He is working in the Academic Support Center at Manchester Community College assisting students with writing, working with the Knox Foundation on urban “greening” and beautification issues, serving as a parajudicial officer (settlement officer) with the U.S. District Court for Connecticut, and teaching continuing education courses. They have two sons, both of whom live in Boston and have beards. From time to time, he sees Brendan Lynch, who deserves much credit for his civic work in the Hartford community.
Paul Spitzer forwarded a note he had gotten from Brian Frosh’s office. (Brian, you’ll recall, was recently elected Maryland’s Attorney General.) Some excerpts: “The death of Freddie Gray, or any person in police custody, is a tragedy… Baltimore is and always has been the very heart of Maryland. I know we feel compassion for our neighbors and friends, sadness over destruction and damage, and a shared commitment to rebuild and grow for the future…” Brian has been in the midst of things and, while lamenting the Baltimore that burned at night, he is uplifted by the Baltimore where residents help one another “and march together peacefully and with great purpose.” Let us keep Brian and Baltimore in our thoughts and prayers.