CLASS OF 1989 | 2020 | ISSUE 1

Kevin Heffernan lives in Boston, where he practices landlord/tenant and family law as a solo practitioner. He is looking forward to judging a high school moot court competition, which is probably as close to wearing the black robes as he expects to get. His two wonderful boys (8 and 11) make him laugh almost every day. He hopes to get back into geezer jock baseball after a five-year layoff due to coaching and old age.

In August 2018, Mark Mullen welcomed into the world his son, Archie, who has just started walking and talking, in addition to his normal hobbies of shaking lamps and putting shoes on his forearms and waving them around. Mark and his wife, Julie, are in San Francisco, where she is doing an MBA at Hult. He is also working hard on a national voter turnout effort. In addition, Luka Mullen ’23 is at Wesleyan and loving it.

Pam Greenspon is a general pediatrician in Las Vegas, where she has lived for nearly 16 years, growing to love the beauty in the desert, particularly the amazing winters. She married Jeff Ng, a family doctor, and has a son at the University of Arizona and a daughter who will graduate from high school this spring. In her free time, she is active in the Nevada chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, where she is the president and involved with advocacy, education, and community events for children and pediatricians. She also finds time for an improvisation ensemble called Judg(e)ment City. She hasn’t been back for Reunion in some time, but if anyone is visiting Las Vegas, she would be happy to provide insider tips.

Marc Brotman and Sabrina Zook are married with two sons. Their younger son Alex ’23 just finished his first semester at Wesleyan. He is living in the same dorm as Sabrina did freshman year and is happy there. Their family just came back from the Galapagos and highly recommends it for anyone looking to see unique wildlife.

Holly Adams does arts-in-ed projects, narrating audiobooks, and performing circus/stage combat. Also, spending time with her wonderful family.

After being a “seriously amateur” photographer for 40 years, Dave Eichler finally gave in to the encouragement of everyone in his life and took the plunge in 2019 to share his work with the world. He culled through 160,000 images in his database, built an e-commerce site (eichlerphotos.com), and has been invited to exhibit by galleries in nine states. He’s also been accepted as an artist-in-residence at the Burren College of Art in Ireland later this year. This doesn’t replace his work running his PR agency, Decibel Blue, that turns 15 years old this year, but it sure is a fulfilling activity.

Seth Kaplan has shifted from doing policy work for a renewable energy company to working on the development of one big offshore wind farm off Massachusetts. He and his (“law professor and smarter than me”) wife Liz and have achieved one particular type of parenting success, as their eldest Juliana graduated from college (Barnard at Columbia) and is now employed as an associate editor (taking freelance pitches) at Business Insider and living in NYC. Their middle child, Daniella, is enjoying Dean College in Franklin, Mass., and the youngest (Ben) is attending and complaining about Brookline High School. During the rare moments when he is not working or with the family, he can usually be found walking the dog or listening to the Promised Podcast featuring his sister, Allison ’86, or biking to and from work.

Peter Badalament is doing swell, as he is now living in Portland, Maine, and serving as the proud principal of Falmouth High School. He sees some ol’ Wes friends on occasion, but since he’d need permission to mention them here, and that’s a hassle, they will go nameless . . .

Phineas Baxandall’s daughter is starting University of Vermont next year and his son is at UC Berkeley, where he especially enjoys playing Ultimate Frisbee. Phineas is playing in an over-40 league that he once would have snickered at. He still works at a think tank on Massachusetts policies to improve the lives of low- and moderate-income people, spending a lot of time geeking out on transportation and tax policy. He and his partner spent a lot of time in Cape Cod over the summer and recently put a kiln in their basement for ceramics.

Nancy Curran moved out to Portland, Ore., after vet school and lives there with her wife. She feels somewhat bi-coastal because she returns to Long Island frequently to visit friends and family and to manage her mom’s care. She’s also close to finishing a master’s in mental health counseling, which she undertook to be a resource to helping professionals and caregivers struggling with grief, compassion fatigue, and burnout. She’s still a practicing veterinarian so it’s been a busy time, but she is loving Portlandia with its amazing restaurants and the great outdoors of the Pacific Northwest.

Stephanie Dolgoff is planning to spend her next 52 years unlearning everything she thought she knew in her last 52. Turns out she was wrong about some stuff. In all seriousness, she is enjoying the hell out of her kids (who are starting the college application craziness themselves), also good books, and people who get it. Fortunately, she has many, many who do.

Melissa Herman and her family are going to spend a sabbatical year in Berlin, Germany, for the 2020-2021 school year. Anyone passing through should give her a ring and she will show you around Berlin, which is full of great cultural and historical sites, plus fun restaurants and bars.

Co-class secretary Michele Barnwell gave a TEDx talk on “Scripting Your Own Reality”—that shares the crazy outrageous personal story of exactly HOW she ended up at Wesleyan as our classmate. It’s a troubling story that she revealed the secrets of on the TEDxUStreetWomen stage. Search for it on YouTube!

Lastly, shout out to our Dallas, Texas, based classmate, Kelem Butts, who answered our crazy question about how you all might splurge with $25K that you could only spend on travel! He says he’d snag two business class airline tickets and: “Lori and I would go to Buenos Aires in July.” He notes that “it has everything that we love about travel; great walkability, fantastic shopping for both of us, excellent food, good friends to visit, and probably the best wine you’ll find in the world.” He’s thinking six or seven days and might even sneak over to Montevideo, Uruguay; since it’s just a short ferry ride away!

Hoping this is a year full of a lot of goodness for each of you. Write soon

Jonathan Fried | jonathan.l.fried@gmail.com 

Michele Barnwell | fishtank_michele@yahoo.com