CLASS OF 1977 | 2022 | SPRING ISSUE
I hope everyone who was able to attend our 45th Reunion had a great, be it in-person or virtually, time. The following notes were assembled earlier this year. A complete recap of notes from our gathering will appear in the next issue.
Francis Rath is the chief public health coordinator for the city of Manassas Park. As one can imagine COVID has occupied a major amount of his energy. He is living in Great Falls, Virginia, and is an active volunteer paramedic.
After receiving her doctorate in Jungian and archetypal psychology, Dr. Carol Cooper was appointed to the Board of Trustees at the Kristine Mann Library in Manhattan. In addition, Carol is teaching writing, history, and engaged media classes at NYU as an adjunct professor for the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.
Andy Darpino wrote about upcoming retirement in addition to an epic trip with Will Sillin, Buddy Taft, John Gaebe, and Jim LaLiberty to Lake Powell, Arizona. They rented a 60-foot houseboat and cruised around the lake for a week . . . truly a “bucket list” adventure.
Don Ryan is planning to attend reunion as well as muster up some of the usual suspects for the event. John Roxby and Felice Burstein are happily settled at home in New Hampshire near their kinfolk. Jeff Gray and wife JoAnne have settled in Rye, New Hampshire, 3/4 of a mile from Jenness Beach, loving the seacoast. Guinness, their 110-pound Bernese Mountain dog, is already the star of the beach.
Jerry Stouck has a nice sounding life living between Park City, Utah, and Bethesda, Maryland. His daughters are on the East Coast and son in Hong Kong. Jerry is working on a biography of Janet Benshoof, a pioneering women’s rights lawyer. Otherwise goofing off when he’s not skiing, biking, hiking, or golfing. Jonathan Gertler works hard running two businesses and chairing a couple of start-ups in the life sciences: exciting along with the inevitable headaches that come from the early stages. Music is a huge part of his life: third album No Fear was released by Rock Ridge Music in Nashville to strong reviews. An avid fly-fisher, Jonathan is in touch with Bob Krakower, Susan Davis, Ellen Gendler, and Tom Kovar ’76.
Rather than retire, David Schreff is applying many years of corporate executive and board director knowledge to lead a high-growth adtech and marketing tech software provider, ACTV8me.com, that serves the media, entertainment, and sports industry. Most importantly he is fully enjoying being a granddad. Jim Dowling is an organizer for the dance and music community, including a decades-long association with the Children’s Aid Society and other nonprofits. In this vein, he has written a bit for the Village Voice, Dance Magazine, and served as advisor to Contact Quarterly magazine.
Mark Ellison was anointed to IEEE (Electrical and Electronics Engineering) Life Senior Member status and strives to accommodate inevitable senior life moments. Cindee Howard is enjoying retirement and very busy doing improv on Zoom, tutoring several folks in English also via Zoom, dancing tap, ballroom, and Latin, and playing mah-jongg.
Mark Beamis reports that in addition to good health and sanity, and a powerful snowblower, he managed a business trip to Seattle in early November, pre-omicron surge, to see old friends and work colleagues in person. During the fall, he was in Moody Beach, Maine, at the old family cottage. There is much to be said for working remotely at an oceanfront setting. For Thanksgiving he and the wife went to Delaware and spent the first family holiday in two years with in-laws, the first gathering since his mother-in-law passed. No fights, no arrests. Christmas was very quiet. He returned to Maine, Boothbay Harbor this time, to see a wonderful drive-through Christmas light show at the Maine Botanical Gardens.
Post bouts with COVID, Jane Eisner is back on campus at Columbia Journalism School, where they have established a new normal allowing people to converse with colleagues and students in person. Jane is also writing regular book reviews for The Washington Post and is working on a biography of Carole King for Yale University Press. Finally, Dean Holmes’s son, Dylan, wrote that his dad passed away in December from complications of frontotemporal dementia. The link to his obituary, can be found at https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/brunswick-ga/dean-holmes-10492817. Dylan expressed how appreciative he was of the opportunities provided to him along with the many lifelong friendships at Wesleyan.
This sentiment sums up the reasons for returning for reunions: to celebrate one another at and with the University that played such an important role in our lives.
I hope everyone has a fine summer, and is able to continue meeting folks live and in 3D.