CLASS OF 1985 | 2016 | ISSUE 1
Class of 1985 Scholarship
Ali Friend ’19, North Easton, Mass.
Lucy Lehrer and I had fun texting while watching Grease Live on TV. (Is TV a thing anymore or was that streaming?) I know you’ll agree that Lucy and Marc Sholes ’84, in the ’92 Theater were the best Patty Simcox and Eugene Felsnic ever. Lucy Lehrer is a licensed clinical social worker/therapist in Manhattan.
Hilary Jacobs ’85, P’18, is a psychotherapist and author and I have enjoyed her New York Times Opinionator pieces over the past few months. I caught up with her over dinner recently, and she let me know her exciting news that she will be publishing a book with Spiegel & Grau in 2017. If you are curious to learn more until her book comes out, visit her blog at hilaryjacobshendel.com.
Joel Goldberg is senior counsel for Netflix in their LA office. His daughter, the talented actress and singer Julia Goldberg, alerted his loyal Wesleyan friends that Joel was featured on the cover of Boston College Law School Magazine. Congratulations, Joel! “It’s not like I’m jealous,” said John “JK” Kilborn, a Boston-based EPA lawyer, also a BCLS alum and very much a Goldberg devotee. (I agree with JK that the next, best scoop will be about government lawyers working in obscurity.) John and Lisa Riceman Kilborn ’86 live in Winchester, Mass., and have two daughters. Lisa is working on health and tech marketing projects through the Complex Stories collective (complexstories.com) with Jim McManus ’85. Lisa spent a number of years as a marketing executive in the technology sector, and is now enjoying her expansion into varied industries and is delighted to work with Jim. Jim is a prolific fine artist (jim-mcmanus.com) as well as accomplished visual communications designer.
Can’t wait for the revival of Becky Mode ’86’s 1999 comedy Fully Committed, opening this month on Broadway, starring Jesse Tyler Ferguson playing 40 different roles. I know that Becky and Chris Erikson ’87 (guitarist and NYC journalist) have also been super busy raising their two kids in Brooklyn: every once in a while I bump into Becky on the F train and catch up on family and neighborhood stuff. She never mentioned the Broadway show; I got a mailer!
I attended Sons and Daughters weekend in November 2015 with my youngest, and recommend it for anyone with family members starting the college application process, and not just for those thinking of applying to Wesleyan. I really enjoyed seeing so many familiar faces including Molly Renfroe-Katz ’87, Jon Roemer, Jennifer Flackett ’86, Amena Ali, Barbara Becker, Pauline Frommer ’88, Patty DeBenedictis Popov, Timothy Clark, Richard Yancey, Caroline Wilkins, and Eileen Coppola and everyone’s kids, of course.
Richard C. Yancey (AIA, LEED AP) is the founding executive director of the Building Energy Exchange, Inc., (be-exchange.org), an independent, nonprofit organization that connects the New York real estate and design communities to energy and lighting efficiency solutions through education, exhibitions, technology demonstrations, and research, at their resource center in downtown Manhattan’s Surrogate Courthouse. He and his wife, Inger Staggs Yancey, have three sons and live in Brooklyn. Inger is a New York and Washington State-registered LEED accredited architect and the founder of Brooklyn Greenroof; she designs and builds systems for supporting live plants on rooftops, and has numerous projects on display at brooklyngreenroof.com. Rich and Inger are proponents of passive house design and I always love learning from them about the latest in quiet, cost- and energy-efficient buildings.
Jon Roemer (jonroemer.com) continues to amaze and delight with gorgeous photography and now, a specialty in architectural video. We missed Grace Farrell Roemer at the Sons and Daughters weekend, but Grace attended a few years ago with daughter number one, so this was Jon’s turn. Grace stays busy as associate director of survey research at Mathematica Policy Research in Princeton, where she specializes in federal data.
Everybody’s busy! What’s next? Until next time, be well!
CAROLINE WILKINS | mbkeds@yahoo.com
MARY BETH KILKELLY | cwilkins85@yahoo.com