CLASS OF 1953 | 2021 | ISSUE 1

Jerry Zachin, having received the Wesleyan alumni magazine the last week of February, felt compelled to announce the birth of his second great-grandson, Alden Michael Roose, just a week earlier in Portland, Oregon. Proud Wesleyan family are parents Katie ’10 and Robbie Roose ’05 and grandparents Michael and Mary (Nastuk) Zackin, both ’80. This past year has limited Jerry and his wife, Sandy, to Sarasota, Florida and Yarmouth, Cape Cod, as trips to the Danube and Mississippi Rivers and a voyage from Singapore to Sydney were cancelled. Australia was to have been his last continent. They hope for a trip to Japan in the fall. They keep busy with golf and online bridge.

     By landline telephone George Anderson requested contact information for Warren Oscar Eastman. (George states that this is the extent of his communication skills.) Warren passed away February 17, 2021 at 90, just six days before George’s request. Warren was born in Middletown, lived in Cromwell, was a member of Sigma Chi, and a chemistry major. He spent his career with General Electric at several locations in research and corporate planning activities ending up at headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut. After retirement he and Patty became snowbirds living in Osprey, Florida and Frye Island, Maine. As a member of St. Andrews UCC church in Sarasota, he was active in the local community. Warren is remembered as our aggressive class agent for many years following graduation. He is survived by a daughter and a son, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

     Warren’s fraternity brother and lifelong friend Basil Gideon Anex, 88, died August 12, 2019, in Seattle, his birthplace and retirement home. As high school valedictorian, he hitchhiked across the country to join our class. Basil was a Sigma Chi and chemistry major. After a PhD at the University of Washington and a postdoc at Indiana University, Basil held positions at Yale, at New Mexico State University, and at the University of New Orleans, where he remained until retirement in 1995. As an avid jogger and recycler he was featured in Runner’s World for collecting 400 pounds of refuse during neighborhood runs. He is survived by his wife, Gretchen, of 60 years, a son, two daughters, and five grandchildren.

   Samuel Graham Macfarlane, 88, Pittsburgh, a Sigma Nu and a government major, passed away April 21, 2020 in Baltimore of multiple myeloma. Following graduation he served in the Army’s security agency as a code transcriber for three years, before joining Travelers Insurance in the underwriting department. In 1959 he was persuaded to join Waverly Press, owned by his father-in-law. Studying accounting nights at Johns Hopkins University, he became a CPA and eventually CFO of the Press until retirement in 1998. He was a vestryman of the Emmanuel Episcopal Church. He served as president of Maryland’s American Lung and Mental Health Associations. As empty-nesters, he and his wife Susan invited Peabody Institute graduate students to live with them and also sponsored up-and-coming opera singers (opera was Sam’s passion). They visited opera houses around the world and took time to play golf at St. Andrews Old Course in Scotland. He was a Pittsburgh Pirates fan until the Baltimore Orioles defeated them in the 1979 World Series. After 20 years he had become a true Baltimorean. Sam and Susan had a daughter and two sons.

Condolences of the class to all three of these families.