CLASS OF 1968 | 2020 | ISSUE 1

After an MA from SUNY-Buffalo, Ted Li joined the English Department of Pingry School where he enjoyed a distinguished 43-year run. He landed at Pingry due to George Moffatt, the two-time world champion in gliding who taught there then, and gliding became Ted’s primary avocation through the early ’80s. But, in 1984, he shifted his focus to fencing. While coaching Pingry’s team, he had the opportunity to manage the U.S. fencing team at the Los Angeles Olympics—and subsequently two other Olympics.

Though retired from the classroom, he is not only involved with Pingry fencing but has also been elected the international body that governs fencing. Gliding and fencing have taken him to all the inhabited continents.

Dave Garrison ’67 retired in 2009 as professor of Spanish and Portugese from Dayton’s Wright State University. He started in the class of 1967 but a year off in Spain happily moved him into 1968. In retirement, he plays tennis and golf and, after a 50-year hiatus, has taken up the trumpet again.

A poet, he has just completed another book which—not surprisingly—looks at things from the point of view of 70-year-old guys. An excerpt:

They take aspirin before playing tennis,
write wills directing their ashes
be mixed into the clay of the courts …
They have a lot to remember,
more than they have to look forward to.
These men put more and more pepper
on their potatoes, jam on their toast.

The Boys in the Boat—Wallace Murfit, Harrison Knight, Bob Svensk, John Lipsky, Nason Hamlin, Will Macoy ’67, and me—held our annual October get-together at Wes. A special treat for me was that Janet and Coach Phil Calhoun ’62, MALS ’69 came in from Lancaster. He was too young and irresponsible to be much of a role model but god we had fun.

With profound sadness, Dick Grimm reported the death of his wife, Annabella Gonzalez, of COPD in NYC on Nov. 24. Born into a prominent Mexican family whose friends included Frida Kahlo and the young Fidel Castro, she, a dancer, ended up in NYC and studied with Martha Graham. In 1976, she founded a modern dance company that is going strong and which performed at many venues internationally, at Wesleyan, and to many underserved audiences. Our heartfelt condolences.

Jan and John Graham report they are now living in a comprehensive retirement community southwest of Asheville, in part to be close to Jan’s 101-year-old mother who is in skilled nursing in the same complex, and in part to assure their daughters they will not burden them. The Osher Lifelong Learning Center at a nearby UNC campus is a big part of their lives. There, a variety of courses taught by retired professors and the like keep their minds fully functioning. Alas, John’s golf game has irreparably deteriorated but he has found other fulfilling ways in which to engage himself.

Locally, I write this in January. We are a mixed marriage and usually celebrate the holidays in a mixed-up way. But circumstances this year were such that I celebrated my first genuine Jewish Christmas—Chinese with friends followed by a movie. Refreshing.

Bob Reisfeld, the retired chief of psychiatry at the Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Redwood City, Calif., is enjoying good health and this phase of life with his wife, Leslie. They’ve two adult daughters: one married; the other in a long-term relationship. One is an incredibly athletic amateur aerial performer with a master’s in management in the nonprofit sector; the other a professional artist. Bob, Brian Frosh, and Tony Rotundo and their wives spent a week together on Maui in November snorkeling, golfing—studying the perfect Mai Tai. Tony and his wife, Kathy, retired from Andover’s faculty five years ago and moved from campus housing to Lexington to be closer to friends, family and “city life.” Their daughter is in computer science at Mount Holyoke, while their son teaches at a bilingual boarding school in Shanghai. In retirement, Tony is working on a book exploring the relationship between white masculinity and conservatism. (Sort of a sequel to an earlier volume he did on 19th-century manhood). He keeps up with a select group of Wesleyan friends: Eric Blumenson, Ray Solomon, Don Fels, and Mark Taylor. “Kathy often comments on what great friends I have from college. I always tell her to be glad she didn’t know us when we were 18.”

Lloyd Buzzell | LBuzz463@aol.com
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