CLASS OF 1983 | 2018 | ISSUE 1

Hi, everyone. I hope these notes find you well. Our 35th Reunion is almost here! I hope you plan on coming back to Middletown May 25 to 27. Cori Adler, Carlton Barnswell, Ben Binswanger, Jeffrey Burack, Michelle Deatrick, Richard Eaddy, Yates Exley, Peter Gilhuly, Eve Hall, Paul Halliday, Darrick Harris, Lewis Ingall, Ruth Jaffe, Lisa Mould Kennedy, Tom McKibbin-Vaughan, Megan Norris, Orin Snyder, Kim Beede Soule, Paul Spivey, Adam Usdan, Mike Whalen, Michael White and Ellen Zucker have all been working hard to plan a wonderful weekend of activities. Get more information and register at wesleyan.edu/rc2018.

Eileen Kelly-Aguirre left her position at The Gunnery after almost two decades to take a job as executive director of School Year Abroad (SYA), with schools in France, Spain, Italy, and China. She has been running SYA’s school in Zaragoza, Spain, as interim resident director, and will return to the U.S. in the summer to a new position, her home, and her partner, Jack, in Washington, Conn. She is almost five years out from a colon cancer diagnosis, surgery, and chemo, and is feeling great. She urges all her Wesleyan friends to stay on top of those preventative screenings!

Andrea Smith is busy tending farm animals (goats, chickens, mini horses) plus dogs and cat with son Nathaniel and husband Patrick in New Jersey, while heading the department of anthropology and sociology at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., where she has worked since 1999. She is deep into settler colonial studies, and busily working on a book about the commemoration locally of the Revolutionary War.

David Steinhardt has edited the bestseller The Elegant and his fully credited name and editorial brand, Massive Publishing Enterprise, are now in two new books, Deviant Desires: A Tour of the Erotic Edge, and a history of Eurasia from Rowman & Littlefield by Dartmouth professor P. K. Crossley.

Karen Adair’s baby just turned 21 and is a junior at St. Lawrence University. Another offspring just turned 25 and the other three are slogging through their daily routines in the work world. Karen and husband and enjoyed the month of August in their place in Lake Placid and weirdly didn’t feel guilty with down time!

Heather Rae is pursuing a new career in genetic nutrition and wellness coaching. She launched The Wellness Spot in Maine in April and is very excited about the venture. She writes, “I finally found my calling in life. It certainly took a while!”

Nancy Rommelmann’s newest book is To the Bridge, a seven-year investigation into why a mother would drop her two young children from a Portland, Oregon, bridge. As the promo copy goes, “The case was closed, but for journalist Nancy Rommelmann, the mystery remained: What made a mother want to murder her own children?” It’s up for pre-sale now on Amazon.

Charlie Brenner writes from Iowa City that his metabolism research has taken off. He spent time with George Russell in New York last summer and will be in Hong Kong for a product launch. See aboutnr.com and truniagen.com for more information on Charlie’s work.

Ruth Jaffe is sending her youngest child off to college this year and is happy to be retiring from logistics management. Her middle son is a senior at Wesleyan.

Michelle Regalado Deatrick writes: “Daughter Elizabeth Deatrick ’14, after completing a master’s in science writing at Boston U, is a science writer/editor for the National Institutes of Health. Son Alexander is in his second year at Amherst. My husband, Steven Przybylski and I live near Ann Arbor, Mich., on an 80-acre farm. He’s a technical consultant. I write poetry, farm, and continue environmental and small farm rights activism. In a major life shift, I’ve become involved in party and electoral politics over the last three years as Michigan special projects director for the Bernie 2016 campaign, an elected DNC member, and vice chair of the County Board of Commissioners. I’m now running for State Senate.” Go Michelle!

Timothy Brockett writes, “The town I live in, Emigrant, Mont., is undergoing a gold rush. Places where I once panned for ’color’ are now taken over by commercial operators. So, I have traveled to the southern Rockies in search of better pickings. Last year, I found several promising silver and gold deposits in Nevada and Arizona. This spring I will explore those deposits further on my way to Mexico to study the lava fields in the Sonora desert that borders Arizona.”

I look forward to seeing many of you at the Reunion in May. Thanks to the committee for all their hard work. I started to read the Great Books series that Mortimer Adler created in the 1950s. They are a chronicle of Western civilization and absolutely fascinating. They remind me of my humanities and English studies at Wesleyan. A full set of 60 books costs less than a one-semester course back in the 1980s at Wesleyan so they are quite a bargain, too.

Laurie Hills | lauriec@rci.rutgers.edu