CLASS OF 1969 | 2018 | ISSUE 3
Jack Meier, Essex, remembers “wonderful Septembers when we arrived back in Middletown—the friendly smiles, feeling happy, and a little nervous. Claudia and I are contemplating warmer places. Our Reunion should have some good music and a counting of our blessings.”
Jim Adkins “is moving from the family home we built. Big, emotional task. Med school reunion, skiing, and diving in future.”
Darius Brubeck’s quartet is “performing in Poland, 60 years after my dad was the first jazz group to go behind the Iron Curtain. I was on the 1958 tour and debuted in Szczecin, so it’s quite personal.”
Andy Cohen is a “nephrologist at the Providence VA and teaches at Brown’s Alpert Medical School. Partially retired, I write op-eds for the Washington Post. Rich Kremer, Orrin Baird, and Andy Burka are friends, and I hope to see everyone at Reunion.”
Jim Weinstein “lives in Hollin Hills, Alexandria. Glass galore on half an acre. Left the heart of big cities for a more bucolic lifestyle. Still maintain a Dupont Circle office, ugh, to commute.”
Steve Knox “found Barlow’s Mother America Night enjoyable and interesting. Wish I had known him better.”
Al Cover is “now in Rockville, Md., to be closer to three grandkids.”
Alex Knopp “visited WWII museums and sites with son Andrew, who’s completing a D-Day screenplay. I serve on the Connecticut Retirement Security Board, which protects workers not covered by a savings’ plan. Still lecture at Yale Law and preside at Norwalk Public Library.”
Charlie Morgan’s “grandson, Jordan Chaussepied, and 414 other young men and women graduated Aug. 24 at Parris Island. Our country is in good hands.”
John Mihalec directs the class “to New York Times article about Gordy Crawford’s Olympics memorabilia collection. Search: private collector donates.”
Harold Davis is “alive and kicking. Do some board work to help inner-city youth. Hang out with grandson Julian. Life remains a blast.”
Barry Checkoway is “the Arthur Dunham Collegiate Professor of Social Work and Urban Planning at University of Michigan, where I direct programs addressing segregation and diversity in Detroit.”
Bill Sketchley “still enjoys West Palm Beach life. Health good. Still have my hair. Probably won’t make the 50th but best wishes to everybody, whether they attend or not.”
Jim Drummond is “back in private law practice and working on a novel with unprecedented momentum. I augment Austin’s fabled weirdness and support progressive causes. I’m in touch with Cliff Saxton ’68, my predecessor as Argus editor, as well as Jeff Richards and Bruce Hartman. I hope to make my first Reunion in 2019.”
Bob Watson “has retired from Columbia but keeps a private psychology practice. Super busy Jane promises to cut back. Daughter Joann is a psychology postdoc in Seattle. Son Mark is in business in Cartagena and getting married in January.”
Mac Thornton “transferred to Stanford the middle of our junior year. Still working, as I have a junior and senior in high school.” Mac and I share a Sept. 6, 1947 birthday.
Bruce Hartman has retired from law and published several novels, one, The Devil’s Chaplain.
John Bach believes “one major benefit of a liberal education is preparing people for lifelong partnerships and sustaining love.”
Mike Fink wrote, “Susan and I sold the family home and moved to a townhouse in Philly. Excited but so much stuff. The city is fun. Katey graduated cum laude from University of South Carolina, passed the boards, and is now a certified athletic trainer. We are dismayed by the tone of political discourse on all sides. This is not how a Republic should be.”
Jay Edelberg wrote, “After graduating from Wesleyan, I attended UConn dental and medical schools, getting both a DMD degree and an MD degree. I then did a residency in emergency medicine in Jacksonville, Fla., which I completed in 1978. I practiced in Jacksonville and St. Augustine for 29 years. We moved to Baton Rouge, La., in 2007 where I took a job as a medical officer for The Schumacher Group, providing leadership training, setting up trauma centers, and practicing emergency medicine. I practiced full-time as an emergency physician for nearly 40 years until November 2017 when illness forced me to stop. We moved back to Jacksonville, so I could receive care from Mayo Clinic there.
“Personally, I remarried in 1981 to Caral, and we have been married 38 years. Between us we have three kids. Erik ’91 is from my first marriage, 48, living with wife Amy and two grandchildren in Portland, Ore. He’s a PhD chemical engineer. Michael, 50, lives outside of Atlanta with wife Vicky and two grandkids and is CEO of a healthcare company. Tracey, 47, lives in Baton Rouge with a grandchild. We raised Tracey’s first two sons. Tyler is a rapper and musician. Josh is a senior at Southern University in Baton Rouge. Caral and I have been so blessed to have had the opportunity to raise them and attend Tyler’s performances and cheer on Josh as an all-star basketball and baseball player.
“On a personal note, I was diagnosed in 2014 with multiple myeloma, a type of bone cancer. After four rounds of chemotherapy, then a stem cell transplant, I was in full remission. But my disease is aggressive and has relapsed twice. But the oncologists at Ochsner (in Louisiana) and now Mayo in Jacksonville have enrolled me in clinical trials that seem to be working. I am lucky to be getting great medical care. I feel very blessed. I hope to attend our reunion in 2019, but that will depend on my health.”
Gail and Jim Martello “enjoy winters in Sarasota with daughter Jenny. See Patty and Paul Nimchek. Hi to all.”
Peter Pfeiffer wrote in after my deadline: “. . . an old friend gave Nick Browning and me tickets to seats right behind home plate in Fenway park last September. (Too bad I don’t follow baseball . . . and I was nominated for Logger of the Year which is quite an honor for a Maine woodcutter. We’ll find out in December if I won. Nick and I are both thinking of coming to Reunion. I’m sure there will be some interesting conversations there.”
Rainy, cold, fall morning. Pants and turtleneck for the first time in months. Carol and Maurice Hakim ’70 stop on their return from West Palm. We plan Thanksgiving at their historic manse in Clinton. Professor Buel has returned from a U.K. walking tour. A get-together with him, Phil Dundas ’70, and Rich Frost ’70 looms.
Finally, praise to Joe Reed, I open As I Lay Dying. Then Katy Butler ’71 for Knocking on Heaven’s Door, a memoir/polemic about her parents, Jeffery and Valerie Butler’s, final years. “Knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door. Knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door.”
Love always,
Charlie Farrow | charlesfarrow@comcast.net
11 Coulter Street, #16, Old Saybrook, CT 06475