CLASS OF 1961 | 2016 | ISSUE 3
“Thanks for the e-mail,” writes Eric “Swede” Wilson, “to ’nudge’ me to recall some items that may be of interest for the class notes. I am still gainfully employed in my second job as in-house counsel for a Tuscaloosa-based holding company, after retiring from the FBI after 26 years in 1989. Margaret and I continue to have good health, and she is very busy painting and volunteering for various organizations in Tuscaloosa. My daughter, Avery, is now back living in Nashville, after moves to Del Mar, Calif., and Atlanta within the last five years. My son, Eric, is still gainfully employed as an attorney in Tuscaloosa. He has one son, who will turn 13 in November. My other son, Martin, is still working in NYC, and will have his second young adult novel published by Harper Collins in 2017. So, everything is good. Looking forward to our 60th in another five years.”
Howie Morgan claims: “Not much new here. Changing home address to Florida, but Betsy and I will still be running up and down the East Coast. Kids and seven grandkids are all well. None are looking at Wesleyan. Looking forward to Reunion in 2017.”
Jack Mitchell proudly proclaims: “My grandson, Lyle Mitchell ’16, just graduated from Wesleyan and granddaughter, Dana ’18, is a junior at Wesleyan!” In addition, Jack relates: “I’m in the process of partnering with a global firm to do workshops re: personalized customer service using my Hug Your Customers book as the centerpiece. We added Mario’s stores in Portland, Ore., and Seattle, Wash. We now have eight men’s and women’s clothing stores. It all started with Mom and Dad when we were sophomores and is led by our third generation of sons and nephews! Still having lots of family fun with Linda—married over 55 years!”
Calvin “Pete” Drayer informs us: “Sandy and I have moved into a retirement home. I am still serving as a senior judge about 10 days a month. I am saddened by the loss of members of our class and my fraternity.”
Soon after receiving Pete’s expression of grief, the loss of another classmate was sent to your class secretary. William N. Schultz, a former Navy man and a graduate of Westtown Quaker School in Pennsylvania prior to his attendance at Wesleyan, died on Aug. 6. Bill worked as an art and antique appraiser in Philadelphia, and was a Philadelphia Eagles and jazz enthusiast.
News from Foster Morrison: “I have a little consulting job editing the maps for a biography of a Liberty Ship captain. Those vessels were mass-produced in WWII to move masses of material to the European theater. Captains and crews were trained PDQ. When the war was over, most of the ships were scrapped and the captains and crews had to find other work. But it all ended the Great Depression by putting much of the foreign competition, specifically Japan and Germany, out of business for a while. So we’re back there again, but with a China converted to capitalism of a sort.”
Foster continues, “I actually worked for two mapping agencies, but know little about making maps; mostly I programmed computers using Fortran, which looks kind of like algebra instead of zeroes and ones (binary numbers). Fortran converts the algebra to the binary numbers, but other computer languages have largely displaced it after all these decades. But with PCs you can now run your computer jobs every few minutes instead of once a day on those huge machines that cost millions of dollars.”
Respectfully submitted,
Jon K. Magendanz, DDS | jon@magendanz.com
902 39th Avenue West, Bradenton, Fl 34205