CLASS OF 1960 | 2019 | ISSUE 1

Charles W. Smith Class of 1960 Scholarship
Joseph Ellis ’19, Government, Film Studies

Richard H. Huddleston ’60, P’90 Wesleyan Scholarship
Glenn Smith III ’21, Roxbury, MA

Nici and John Dobson are having a small home built in Trilogy Ocala Preserve, Fla. They look forward to enjoying some warm weather in that location. In early January, John underwent lumbar spinal fusion surgery and is doing well while complying with requirements for very restricted activity. Our best wishes to him for continued recovery.

We are fortunate to have Dave Hohl as our new class agent, since he has always been a strong advocate of Wesleyan. Dave continues to teach two classes in the Baruch College (SUNY system) Great Works Program as an adjunct associate professor. He would like to retire, but recent losses in the stock market and maintenance on his six-bedroom beachfront house in the Hamptons are straining his budget, so he will wait at least another year. Wife Anne continues as director of the French program at Seton Hall University.

Harvey Hull passed away peacefully at Connecticut Hospice on Dec. 17 at the age of 81. He retired after 35 years from the Lillian Goldman Rare Book Library at Yale University School of Law. After retirement he assisted the staff of the Guilford Keeping Society in cataloging their library collection and volunteered at the Guilford Free Library book sales. He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Sara, four children, as well as 10 grandchildren.

Mimi and Rob Mortimer arrived in Hanoi on Rob’s 80th birthday last October to begin a visit of Vietnam and Cambodia. Rob commented as follows: “The U.S. war in Vietnam was one of the great issues along with civil rights facing our class in the decade after our graduation. In some sense the trip was a vindication of my opposition to that war. The good news is that Vietnam is today a dynamic society with a growing economy and beautiful landscapes. Traveling north to south from Hanoi and the lovely Bay of Halong to the pre-colonial capital of Hué and on to Ho Chi Minh City (ex-Saigon) and the Mekong Delta, the names of battle places became the sites of a grand culture. Then we flew on to the longlost Khmer kingdom of Angkor Wat, surely one of the wonders of the world. We crossed paths with Buddhist bonzes, remembering their sacrifices in protest of the war. We returned assured that our activism against the war was the right thing to do in that first decade beyond Wesleyan.”

Ira Sharkansky recently celebrated his 80th birthday. All four of his children and most grandchildren came to Jerusalem from their homes in the States and elsewhere in Israel to join Ira and Varda. It was a time of memories, pictures, and looking forward.

In June 2018 Janet and Bill Walker moved from New York, where they had spent the past 40 years, to Cape Cod. They are both very active and have a large ground-floor apartment that suits them. It is not really retirement, as Bill is actively tracking projects in the Middle East. Janet and Bill will celebrate their 58th wedding anniversary in June 2019. He encourages us to “savor the gifted life we’ve all been privileged to experience since that long ago welcoming address by Vic Butterfield in the chapel in September 1956.”

The big trip of the year for Ann and Bob Williams came in August, when they joined their Russian surrogate family, Elina, Sasha, and two children, at the seaside town of Murter on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. Their relationship started at Davidson, where they were Elina’s host family in ’94, and they have remained very close. Despite the heat and humidity, it was a marvelous look at another culture where the eastern half of Europe likes to play in summer.

Back in the States, Bob had a scary car accident on Sept. 1, in Maine, when he somehow drove off Route 1 into a signpost, which resulted in a bruised sternum and ribs, and a totaled car. Despite that they managed to have two weeks in Lovell on Kezar Lake at their family camp, Birch Lodge, where they honeymooned in 1960. Time does fly by.

Bob has written a timely book, Useful Assets: The Trump Family, the Russians, and Eurasian Organized Crime (Dorrance Publishers), which will soon be available at Amazon.com.

My deceased wife left an IRA that has been used to fund the Sal and Judy Russo Biochemistry Research Endowment at Western Washington University. It honors my contributions to the early development of the biochemistry program. In addition, it honors the memory of Judy and her devotion to family. The endowment funds will be used for the education of future biochemistry students.

SAL RUSSO | salandjudy@hotmail.com
2700 Kentucky St., Bellingham, WA 98229