CLASS OF 1963 | 2016 | ISSUE 3

In response to a plea from the Alumni Office for information, Bill McCollum e-mailed a note: “My wife, Janice, and I live in Kansas City. I retired from the practice of law three years ago. We have three children and three grandchildren.” While admiring his brevity, I thought that there might be more there so I called. He is a Blue Devils fan due to his having gone to law school at Duke and he still goes to at least one basketball game a year. He and Janice were married in 1970. After a career in childcare, she, too, retired, but they both still do volunteer work with needy children. While they have been “all over Europe” their travel now is mostly to visit their children (in Rochester, N.Y., Georgia, and D.C.) and grandchildren (two in high school, one in grade school). Bill is very interested in history and devotes a lot of energy and time in helping with the restoration and maintenance of two nearby historical houses. One is where wounded Civil War soldiers from both sides were cared for, and the other was a way station for people migrating west, way back in the really old days. From 1968 to 1970, BiIl was in the U.S. Navy. After OCS, he was trained, sent west, and served as commander of a small, really fast air-cushion craft in the Delta of South Vietnam. He left the Navy with the rank of first lieutenant.

Samuel “Bo” Grimes writes, “My wife, Sabra, and I have just been accepted for admission to a very nice retirement community called Tel Hai in Honeybrook, Pa. By a set of unexpected circumstances, we have obtained exactly the cottage we had hoped for in the community.

In December, we will move about 70 miles from our present home outside Baltimore to a small town in the Amish and Mennonite farm country halfway between Lancaster and Philadelphia. It will be a considerable change in our lives, but my younger sister has been living in the area for 10 years, which will help us to connect, and it’s close enough that we can be back in Baltimore in less than two hours. The present challenge is to clean out the house before embarking on a new life in a new place. We’ve been accumulating stuff far more than we need for the last 20 years.” Bo retired in 2012 after 49 years of teaching English and computer skills at the Gilman School in Baltimore. After graduating from Wesleyan, he got his teaching degree at Johns Hopkins. Since the draft existed then, I asked him how he’d avoided it. He said the headmaster of the Gilman School wrote a very persuasive letter to his draft board, which “convinced them that I was needed more there than as cannon fodder.” Sabra is also retired. She had worked as a scheduler at Gilman for years until she was replaced by technology. She sings in a local choir, plays the piano, and they both like music. They have two daughters who are 38 and 34. Once they get settled at Tel Hai, they will continue to travel.

Pete Smith wrote: “I think that this is probably my first communication with Wesleyan since, oh, maybe 53 years ago. I became disaffected during the craziness of the late 1960s and have not felt the urge to reconnect, though I did stop by the campus a few years ago in the late summer with nobody around at Alpha Delt. My professional life in brief: I spent 15 years in the foreign service, then moved to NASA, and retired as director of international relations in 1996 at 55. I lived in West Virginia for 22 years, then moved this summer to a smaller stone ranch house in upper Baltimore County. I’ve been married to my wife, Lynn, for 52 years this summer. We have two children, a daughter, 50, and a son, 48. Our daughter lives in Baltimore and has five children. Our son is in Charlotte with two daughters. I am still pursuing ham radio after 62 years and writing for various magazines in the field. Morse is probably my second language by now at probably 35-40 words per minute. The fascination continues to be that it’s just me, the ionosphere, and my station. No Internet, so the challenge continues.” Pete got into ham radio at 13, thanks to a radio club at his middle/high school. “My parents were quietly supportive, although there wasn’t much money for that purpose. I remember buying a second-hand Hallicrafters receiver and a Heathkit transmitter and just kept floundering around. In those days you had to know Morse for even the lowest class license, which is no longer the case for any licensing level.”

Richard Currie reports that he and “my lovely wife, Suzanne” just celebrated their 50th anniversary this year with trips to St. John, Virgin Islands, in January and a riverboat cruise up the Rhine during their anniversary month of April. And now a Trekkie alert! Their son, Tom, is working on visual effects for a new Star Trek series for CBS, while daughter Karen is stage managing for several professional companies in the D.C. area. Both visited Dick and Sue during their year-long anniversary celebration. Sue continues to work as a pastor in the greater Pittsburgh area while Dick volunteers with Meals on Wheels and Food Bank to combat hunger in the Monongahela River Valley. His food pantry received the 2016 Outstanding Agency award from the county bank office.

BYRON S. MILLER | tigr10@optonline.net
5 Clapboard Hill Rd., Westport, CT 06880