CLASS OF 1963 | 2015 | ISSUE 3
Ron Tallman from Augustine, Fla., said that right now the big excitement is that one of his daughters from his previous marriage, Kelly Clements, has just been appointed Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees for the UN. She started her career in government way back as a presidential intern with Pres. George H. W. Bush and now this. She will be moving to Geneva. He has a second daughter, Jennifer, who teaches elementary school in South Carolina, and between the two he has five grandchildren, ages 8–20. Ron retired at 61 due to health reasons and it was then that he and his wife, Noel, moved from Chicago to St. Augustine. He developed cervical dystonia, which limits his physical activities more and more now. Prior to his retirement he had been dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Roosevelt University, Chicago. Three years ago Noel also retired. She had owned her own ad agency. He’s not sure how they got into it, but they really like going on cruises. They went to Tahiti last year and will go to the Open in the UK this year and then cruise way up the Norwegian coast, perhaps even encountering the newly emboldened Russian navy. And in the fall they will go to Lisbon and then cruise in the Mediterranean. He has fond memories of their exciting encounter with the tail end of a fierce hurricane in the North Atlantic. Ron played #3 on the WesU golf team but due to his physical ailments, now thinks his golfing days may be ended. He also remembers that he “kind of lost track” academically and being young and “seeking adventure,” he and John Burt ’65 left WesU January ’62 for Europe and returned November ’62. Upon hearing of their plans, Dean Barlow told them he was sure they’d never return to WesU. They visited pretty much most of Europe, drank “about 1,000 bottles of wine, hundreds of bottles of beer and there were all those young ladies to befriend.” The last month of their European jaunt they lived on “50 cents a day room and board.” A surprised but pleased Dean Barlow readmitted them and Ron found his lost academic track and actually graduated with the class of ’64. “But I identify with the class of ’63,” he says. Ron then went to the University of Maine, got a PhD in Canadian history and eventually became the director of the Canadian-American Center of the University of Maine, where he created the largest Canadian Studies program in the U.S. (and the world outside of Canada) with up to 1,200 students per year enrolled in various courses. He was also president of the Association for Canadian Studies in the U.S. for two years, as well as a founder and, for many years, a board member of the International Council for Canadian Studies, which allowed him to travel and lecture around the world.
Appearing for the first time in these notes in decades, Skip Short, living in Hamden, Conn., has had a very interesting career or rather, careers. Not at all sure what he wanted to do in life for his first three years at WesU, he took an inventory of his likes and found four areas of interest (1) artistic/scientific problems, (2) construction (“as a kid I was fascinated by construction sites”), (3) analytic challenges and (4) people. So he decided that architecture would include all those interests and hustled to take courses (especially math) that he’d not needed before. After graduation he enrolled in Yale’s architectural program from which he graduated. While there he began to buy and renovate rundown buildings. And along the way met his first wife, who became the property manager for what turned into almost 180 units. Eventually he became very tired of the renovation work, so when he and his wife divorced, he sold her his half of the units, which she owns to this day and which their two children, Matthew, 36, and Sarah, 31, now manage. For the first 20 years after graduation, he worked for an architectural firm in New Haven. He eventually left and opened his own private practice for 15 years. But while he really liked dealing with clients, he did not like hassling with contractors or building inspectors and at age 50 walked way from the field. Wondering what to do, he noticed that his bookcase was filled with body/mind books. He decided to take a course in massage therapy at the Connecticut Center for Massage Therapy. He liked it and learned the Trager method of massage, which he practiced along with some more conventional methods from his early 50s up to three years ago. He now does a lot of volunteer work. With his architectural knowledge, he is very useful to and active on his 120-unit condo board. He is also very involved in a peer-to-peer counseling group in Connecticut and an officer of the Connecticut Butterfly Association. He recalled that he and Ed Fineberg used to relax while at WesU birdwatching in woods up towards Long Lane School. Skip married his wife, Deborah, in ’01. She is an RN and is a unit manager in a dementia unit.
Living in Kaneoha, Hawaii, Richard Armsby retired from his work in 2010, after 42 years as a clinical psychologist. He had worked with seriously ill patients. After graduating from WesU, as he’d been an English major, he was thinking of going to grad school to become an English teacher. But as he was pursuing that, JFK was assassinated and he was so shaken that he decided to try to do something possibly more in response to that terrible crime and so applied to Penn State’s graduate program in psychology. While there getting his PhD, he met Judy, a social work student, and they fell in love. They had two daughters but lost one to a car crash. They now have two granddaughters, 10 and 8, and Richard spends much time ferrying them to and from school and to their various after school activities. When not being a chauffeur, he works out three times a week in the gym. His wife, Judy has also retired. She was a social worker, working with frail elderly people. Due to the long travel entailed, Richard was unable to make the mini-Delta Tau Delta reunion held a few years ago in Mexico at Bill Roberts’s home, but he has heard much about it from DTD brothers who were there. He and his family are traveling to Alaska next summer to take the Inside Passage cruise.
Dean Schooler lives with his wife, Vicky, on the edge of Boulder, Colo. They have five children, one adopted, ranging in age from 25–46. (I neglected to ask how many grandchildren.) A government major at WesU, in ’64 Dean spent one semester at the Methodist Theological School, in Delaware, Ohio, and then briefly served a Methodist congregation in Westminster, Ohio. However, he returned to his college major and got an MA and PhD in governmental political science from Ohio State University During the academic year ’70–’71, Dean was a Fulbright-Hays Advanced Research Scholar in the JFK Institute, Catholic University, Tilburg, The Netherlands. Dean has had a long career in several fields. In higher education he’s taught various courses in government/politics at several institutions—Capital University, University of Arizona, University of Colorado, and for a limited period was a Regents Lecturer at the University of California, Irvine. And in public service: he has served and still serves on numerous boards, helping schools/school boards, community health care organizations, and philanthropic organizations. In ’05 he was awarded the Indiana Univ. Center on Philanthropy’s Henry A. Rosso Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Ethical Fund Raising. When I asked Dean if he had any hobbies, he said his ongoing community service and philanthropic consulting were his “hobbies.” He also mentioned mowing his lawn. Dean actually participated in the DTD reunion in Mexico and had a vivid memory of being part of the very serious confrontation that took place while we were all at WesU with the National Board of DTD when both the Stanford and WesU chapters pledged an African/American. As president of the board of house presidents and a DTD member, Bill Roberts was very much involved in this. The confrontation ended with the national board of DTD capitulating and reversing their stand on refusing to admit an African American!
If you have any suggestions of classmates you’d like read about in this column in the future or think of classmates who have never been written up, please e-mail me with your suggestions.
BYRON S. MILLER | tigr10@optonline.net
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