CLASS OF 1974 | 2016 | ISSUE 2
Reminder: Invitation to all of our classmates to come to Middlebury, Vt., Aug. 25–28 for Lloyd Komesar’s Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival. A large turnout for an unofficial ’74 “Northern Reunion” could be the start of a beautiful tradition!
Lyn Lauffer reports, “It’s been really fun for me to reconnect with Lloyd Komesar, following our last Reunion. We discovered that his wife, Maureen, and my sister, Sara, were tennis partners in the Middlebury Summer League! Also, last October, Bill Burton came to town for a conference, and he and I got together in Burlington for a great visit over a brew and dinner.
“In my own little corner of the world, I’m still happily working as the school librarian at an elementary (K-8) school. My husband, Ferdinand, is semi-retired, though still teaching math at community college. He’s an avid touring cyclist and will be biking in the Himalayas for a month this summer, after the two of us do a (tamer) tour of parts of Bavaria and the Czech Republic in July. We have one daughter in London, Emily, who’s a writer at MAKE Architects. The other daughter, Elisabeth ’07, just had her first book translation (from German) published by New Vessel Press. She works at Middlebury Interactive Languages.”
Jai Imbrey states, “I am personally enjoying the Brooklyn neighborhood renaissance with my work on European art at the Brooklyn Museum, a now hip and happening place spurred on by the new director Anne Pasternak. I often find myself swimming with green turtles when I dip into the waters of St. Thomas to catch a glimpse of my husband, who is starting a new business in Rhum Agricole. Love reading Beard’s SPQR and Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and of course that sexy devil Knausgaard!”
For John Hickenlooper, “This is a really big year. After four years where we had the worst droughts, floods, fires, shootings, when I attended 62 funerals, and went through a separation and divorce, this year is the opposite of woe. Which happens to be the title of my so-called memoirs. I married an amazing woman Jan. 16, took my son to watch the Broncos win the 50th Super Bowl on my birthday, and on May 24th Penguin/Random House released The Opposite of Woe. Oh, my.”
Harold Sogard’s “two bits of news: 1. My wife and I went to Paris last fall to visit our daughter, Lucy ’17, who was there on the Wesleyan/Vassar program. On Friday, Nov. 13th, we flew with her to Berlin for the weekend. That night the terrorist attacks happened. We had eaten twice at one of the restaurants that was shot up. Lucy had tickets for a concert later that month at the Bataclan. We came back to Paris that Sunday. I’ve never seen so many police, troops, and automatic weapons in my life. It was all a very sobering experience. Vive la France!
“And 2. I’m about three-quarters of the way through my first year as a Wesleyan Trustee. I’m still trying to figure out just what it is that we actually do. But at least it’s given me a convenient excuse to get back to campus and visit my daughter there before she graduates.”
Bill Gustus retired from his position as town administrator in Lynnfield, Mass., in January 2015, after 28 years of working in various public sector management positions. He now cuts grass and works the pro shop at Settlers Crossing Golf Course in Lunenburg, Mass., a regulation sized nine-hole course he purchased a couple of years ago to keep him busy after retirement. He would love to play some golf with any Wes golfing alums wandering through north central Massachusetts this summer.
Jim Krantz states he is “very proud of (and trying not to live vicarious through) my wonderful children. Daniel ‘11 is now in his second year at NYU Law and will be at Skadden, Arps this summer. My daughter Sarah has taken a semester off from Barnard, where she studies Anthropology and Art History, to work on the Darwin Manuscripts project at the American Museum of Natural History.”
After four decades in Hollywood and the motion picture business, Blasé Noto is now a full-time Assistant Professor at Barton College in North Carolina in the School of Visual, Performing and Communication Arts. He continues teaching part-time at UNC School of the Arts, School of Filmmaking in the Producing program. Still loving being back on the East Coast and living in Chapel Hill and the Triangle. Also, he gets a chance to see Carol and Charlie Cocores when they’re down in South Carolina.
Randy “R.N.A.” Smith’s fourth collection of golf stories will be published this summer. Titled He Lies Nine, this book features the conclusion to his serialized, futuristic novella Golflandia.
Monique Witt says, “same as always: we dropped two new discs mid-march. The next three projects for the label are interesting. Dev is doing more pro-audio design work along with the customary sound engineering. Ben graduates mid-May and heads down to the Jacksonville Jazz Festival Piano Competition, where he is a finalist. So everything is good.”
Jan Eliasberg “had the pleasure, and the honor”, of speaking at the official launch of the Wesleyan Women’s Network in NYC on Wednesday, April 20th. The program, “Wesleyan Women Then & Now,” focused on Wesleyan women throughout the decades and featured a TED Talk-style speaker from each decade, 1970s to the present. Jan sat on the dais with a “jaw-droppingly brilliant and inspiring group of Wesleyan women”: Majora Carter ’88, urban revitalization strategy consultant and McArthur Genius Grant winner; Shola Olatoye ’96, NYCHA Chair & CEO; and Emily Greenhouse ’08, managing editor of The New Yorker.
The event was hosted by trustee emerita Susan Webster ’77, P’18 at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where she is a partner in Cravath’s Corporate Department and leads the Firm’s General Corporate practice. The event sold out within a week of the invitation going out and the room was filled with kinetic, ambitious, and intelligent women eager to connect and hear about how the gifts of a Wesleyan education help to forge an entrepreneurial path through the “real world.” President Michael Roth made an appearance, single-handedly representing “Men at Wes.”
Back in Middletown, Jan’s daughter, Sariel Friedman ’19, just completed her first semester and is absolutely thriving. With an ambitious plan to double-major in American Studies and Studio Art, and minor in Film Studies, she is crafting a diverse, rich and deeply individualized Wesleyan education.
SHARON PURDIE | spurdie@wesleyan.edu