CLASS OF 1981 | 2017 | ISSUE 3

NEWSMAKERS | 1980s NEWSMAKER ANTONIE KLINE ’81 Antonie Kline ’81, MD, is the recipient of Global Gene’s RARE Champion of Hope award, which recognizes individuals and organizations for their notable efforts in rare disease advocacy, science, collaborative sciences, and medical care and treatment. Kline has been the medical director of the Cornelia de Lange Syndrome Foundation since 2001, and has worked with families with this condition since 1993. Kline is the director of pediatric genetics at the Harvey Institute for Human Genetics at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center. At Wesleyan University she majored in math, and earned her Doctor of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College.

Greetings from Brooklyn! My daughter, Emma, had her bat mitzvah on September 9. She made it relevant and profound, and her parents are very proud! Now, your news…

Mid-September, Alvin Peters wrote that he is “dodging hurricanes in Florida’s panhandle. Water and gas sold out. Climate change deniers wandering around like zombies.”

Lisa Jo Rudy is living on Cape Cod with her husband and two children, where she freelances while writing and directing plays in Falmouth and Woods Hole. She discovered her inner iPhone photographer, and became a juried artist at the Cape Cod Art Association. She was thrilled to connect with Cori Adler ’82, whose daughter Mitzi ’21 is a freshman.

Judith Newman is having fun with her new book “about raising an ‘average’ kid on the spectrum—To Siri With Love. The New York Times called it ‘uncommonly riotous and moving’ and the Washington Post compared me to Nora Ephron so you gotta love that, right? It’s on a few best-seller lists, though the way they construct these lists—well, they have many categories, and for all I know there are a total of three books in the categories I’m number one in. But, let’s just go with ‘best-seller’ shall we?”

Greg Murphy is now a private banker with U.S. Trust. Son James will graduate from Annapolis in 2018, and daughter Kathleen will likely enter the U.S. Naval Academy in June. Daughter Bridget is a varsity rower at UConn.

Stephen P. White was in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1981-1987, and then the Army Reserve from 1992-2011, with deployment to Korea, Bosnia, two years in Iraq and Afghanistan, and three years at the Pentagon. Retired now from both the military and Verizon, Stephen is working with his wife, Gayle, in real estate investments. He volunteers in the Holyoke, Mass., Veterans Treatment Court, mentoring veterans involved in the legal system. He returns to campus with Pete Congleton and Andy Parsons ’84 to Homecoming/Parents Weekends.

Miriam Stern Sturgis and Gary Sturgis ’77 announce with great joy the nuptials of daughter Ari to Dan Paulsen in July on the grounds of their beautiful 10-acre home in Essex Junction, Vt. In attendance were their newest grandchild Aiden (son of daughter Talia), and Dan Vogt and Delcy Ziac Fox. Gary Shapiro is now a calculus teacher at the Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences.

Charlie Spiegel received an award in April from ourfamily.org, recognizing his work cofounding that organization for LGBT parents in the Bay Area over 15 years. “I’m still active supporting the organization, and that community, acting as a consensual dispute resolution attorney and mediator for gay and straight relationships from start to finish: prenuptial planning, adoption and surrogacy, and mediated divorce.  I imagine, in common with many classmates, this phase of my professional endeavors has involved moving my working space to the bedroom in my house that my daughter used before college (seeing clients elsewhere). And since others announce their relationships, I’ve been dating a wonderful new man since summer 2016, and we celebrate monthly anniversaries because otherwise we’ll never get to the number of annual anniversaries others celebrate!”

Brenda Zlamany had an art exhibit at the Derfner Judaica Museum, which featured 100 watercolor portraits of the residents of the Hebrew Home at Riverdale, as part of her Itinerant Portraitist project. Previous efforts include 888: Creating a Portrait of Taiwanese Aboriginals, which was funded by a Fulbright Grant. “In each project, I choose a specific demographic and discover something new. With the Tibetan nomads and monks, I was interested in the interior gaze. With 100/100, I am interested in aging: What is important at the end of life? In the face of loss: loss of loved ones, mobility, senses, taste, hearing, sight….  Is there still the possibility of joy? The role of memory. What experiences from the past fuel happiness?”

Paul Harris worked with The Carbon Underground, “a nonprofit focused on reversing climate change through regenerative agriculture. I’m learning about soil carbon sequestration, cover crops and holistic grazing; what it will take to certify food and fiber as regenerative; and what kinds of help farmers will need to transition from conventional to regenerative.  After decades of working on industrial energy plants I’m now visiting grass-fed dairies. My wife and I live in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., and our daughters are well launched, one in San Francisco, finishing med school, the other in Tanzania, working on preventing violent extremism.”

Mark Saba had two books published this summer: Calling the Names (poetry, David Robert Books) and Ghost Tracks: Stories of Pittsburgh Past (short stories, Big Table Publishing). Both available on Amazon.

Peter Gryska reports from Houston: “Flooded as a result of Hurricane Harvey with 14 inches in the house. We will tear down and build a new house five feet higher. The interesting part was finding boxes full of 35-year-old notes from Andy Szegedy-Maszak’s Greek history lectures.”

David I. Block | david.I.block@gmail.com

Joanne Godin Audretsch | Berlinjo@aol.com