CLASS OF 1967 | 2018 | ISSUE 2
Classmates, thanks for the many thoughtful e-mails in response to my group missive to you about athletics at Wesleyan (“notes from the underground”). I “might could” (as we say down south) send you another group e-mail sharing these many, and varied, perspectives. Stay tuned.
As for the more traditional class notes news from classmates, I have a bit to share. In characteristic fashion, I did not hear from Mike Cronan about his having been honored by the bar association in Kentucky, but fortunately his longtime law partner, friend, and fellow Eclectic, Fred Joseph ’65 sent me an e-mail with a clipping about one Charles J. (Mike) Cronan IV. It turns out that the Louisville Bar Association honored Mike by naming him the recipient of the 2017 Judge Benjamin F. Shobe Civility and Professionalism Award. The award is given to “an attorney who demonstrates the highest standards of civility, honesty, and courtesy when dealing with clients, opposing parties and counsel, the courts, and the public.” That indeed is the Mike Cronan I remember.
Other news? Jim Kates keeps on keepin’ on, with a new translation of a book (I Have Invented Nothing, the selected poems of Jean-Pierre Rosnay). Jim also won a $1,000 prize, the Kapyla Translation Prize, for his translation of Paper-Thin Skin by Aigerim Tazhi, a Kazakhstani woman poet who writes in Russian. The judge for this prize had the following nice comment about Jim’s work: “J. Kates manages to skillfully translate the depth of Aigerim Tazhi’s poetry along with the words, a rare achievement; one hears the resonance of the original in the nuances of the translation.”
Tony Caprio is president of Western New England University, and has been in that position since 1996 (a real accomplishment, I can tell you—the average tenure for college presidents these days is six-and-a-half years, down from eight-and-a-half years a decade ago; since 1996, there have been four presidents at the college where I teach).
Steve Sellers, my old roomie, and his wife, Martha Julia, have made the move from most of the time in Boston and some of the time in Guatemala to most of the time in Guatemala with visits to Boston. They rented out their place in Lexington, Mass., and their primary residence is now the house they built in Antigua, Guatemala. Both their daughter (Sylvia) and their son (Oliver) still live in the Boston area, so they come back to visit. They didn’t exactly leave the country because of Trump’s election, but Steve does tell me that “the bellowing and blathering of the current administration is a little more bearable from a distance.”
Jim McEnteer lives in Quito, Ecuador, with his wife, Cristina, who teaches sociology at Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (the Latin American Social Sciences Institute), a graduate university, and their two sons. He continues to write. For those of you who don’t remember the late 1960s, his recent article in Salon might jostle a few brain cells. It is titled “My Long Strange Winter Trip with John Perry Barlow [‘69]” and published online on June 2, 2018, at salon.com.
I heard from Charlie Green, who caught me up with the following e-mail: “I am still practicing law at the firm I helped start in 1980. I am not working as hard, but still showing up. Nancy and I will have been married 50 years this August. One of our two sons graduated from Wes, as well as his wife. We have four grandchildren, three girls and a boy. We have lived in Fort Lauderdale for over 45 years.”
In addition to some thoughtful comments about athletics at Wesleyan, Steve Duck shared some information about his life since our 50th Reunion: “Since that wonderful weekend, I have retired. I enjoyed the suggestions of my classmates to ‘wait six to 12 months’ before deciding on a new direction. I am not there yet, but I know that ‘decide’ I will. I have completed an app [Apple Store] that focuses for persons with diabetes, how the state of medicine suggests they need more insulin if they consume a hearty amount of protein and fat in their diet. That felt good. I am believing that the best way to avoid despair regarding the current political environment is to get active in working for a progressive candidate for Illinois governor. I am also still growing and learning how to parent my 16-year-old daughter while at the same time enjoying my two grandchildren! I am grateful for my life and its journey. Hope to see you soon.”
Seems like good sentiments to end with (“grateful for my life and its journey”).
Richie Zweigenhaft | rzweigen@guilford.edu