CLASS OF 1972 | 2023 | SPRING ISSUE
Rumors of Jim Hoxie’s retirement have been greatly exaggerated. Hox has been named co-director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for RNA Innovation. Jim has conducted NIH-funded research on the Penn campus for nearly four decades. As a professor of medicine in the Hematology-Oncology Division, he became an emeritus professor in 2020 and will rejoin the faculty as an adjunct professor of medicine in the Hematology-Oncology Division at Penn Medicine. Since the beginning of the AIDS pandemic, Jim has been recognized internationally for his research accomplishments into basic mechanisms of HIV and SIV entry and interactions with CD4 and cellular co-receptors and understanding how the viral envelope glycoprotein contributes to immunodeficiency and evasion from host immune responses in viral pathogenesis. Jim has and continues to serve on and chair advisory committees in many academic institutions across the country and at NIH and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Jim is currently the chair of international Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), which will be held in February 2023. In his role as an oncologist at Penn, Jim has had long-standing interests in interdisciplinary approaches to address the growing public health burden of HIV-associated malignancies. He also served as an attending physician on the HUP Oncology Unit since the early 1980s, specializing in leukemia and bone marrow transplantation. Jim is perhaps best known at Penn for being the founding director of the Penn Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), and he directed this center for 17 years. The Penn CFAR, which brings together HIV/AIDS researchers across Penn, CHOP, and Wistar, continues to be a national leader in basic, clinical, behavioral, and social sciences related to the ongoing AIDS pandemic.
Blake Allison crossed the border from New Hampshire to attend the Wesleyan-Middlebury football game along with Steve Goldschmidt, Mike McKenna ’73, Lloyd Komesar ’74, and respective spouses. As Blake reports:
“The outcome was not in our favor, Middlebury prevailed 24-10, but Lloyd made a noteworthy score off the field. As we of our particular Wesleyan era know, more recent grads refer to their alma mater as ‘Wezleyan.’ We pronounce it ‘Wessleyan.’ After all, the great Methodist theologian, and our college’s namesake is John Wesley, not John ‘Wezley.’ Not surprisingly, Middlebury’s announcer used the ‘modern’ pronunciation. It annoyed Lloyd enough that at half time he went up the announcer’s booth and schooled him on the correct way to annunciate our beloved college’s name. Imagine our delight when, five minutes into the second half, the announcer referred to Wessleyan! He was inconsistent thereafter, backsliding into Wezleyan but clearly Lloyd’s intervention had an impact as Wessleyan was heard numbers of times. Now, if that would just take hold on campus in Middletown.”
Below is a view of the game in its idyllic surroundings. The Cards are wearing white.
Jocko Burns was honored at Homecoming weekend by being inducted into the Wesleyan Athletics Hall of Fame. Well deserved!
Mark Gelber came home to Wesleyan to give a lecture on Kafka at the Chabad House. Mike Busman was there and said it was wonderful. I, unfortunately, had to preside at a homeowners’ association meeting, so the fact remains that I have not seen my good friend Herr Doktor Gelber since graduation.
Bonnie Krueger was blessed with two weddings in her family within four months. Daughter Maude ’07, was married in southwest France during a historic heatwave to Benoit Alegre, the charming father of their three-year-old son, Oren. A wedding that was delayed for three years because of COVID, which Bonnie contracted as soon as she arrived in France, so she missed the civil ceremony at the town hall but attended the dinner party and personal vows the next day. Four months later, son Julian married Simeon Grazivoda, his partner of seven years, in Vienna, where they both live and work. Bonnie et al. attended the town hall ceremony in the 16th District with about 50 family and friends from all over Eastern Europe. No COVID, but exuberant Balkan-style celebrations followed, lasting till dawn.
She said, “This means that two of our kids will live in Europe, for whose survival under democratic conditions we pray (same as for the U.S.). There must be some long German word for missing your kids who live too far away. Whatever it is, I have it! (Austin, where Tristan ’15 lives is not much closer by flight time.) Otherwise, what a beautiful mild fall on Cape Cod! I am fully retired but writing two books.”
Geoff Rips has begun working with his old friend Ernesto Cortes Jr., to help him write a book about community organizing in the U.S. Ernie has been the founding organizer of 30 community organizations across the South and Southwest. Geoff first met him when he was starting to organize San Antonio’s Communities Organized for Public Service in 1974. He’s a MacArthur genius and the most well-read person Geoff knows. And that includes all the rest of us.
We are not sure if he is the one of us to claim the honor, but Bob Wahl is now a great-grandfather! Deklan Robert Burgener was born in July.
Jack Walkenhorst, a veterinarian near Cincinnati, died suddenly in November.
Paul Edelberg has been very active in the American Bar Association’s International Law Section’s efforts to gather resources to protect Afghani lawyers and judges in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal. This project was discussed quite often at the August meeting of the House of Delegates, which I attended.
And continuing in the category Famous Pauls, Paul Vidich’s sixth novel, Beirut Station, was purchased by his long-time U.K. and U.S. publishers for release in November 2023. (So given the familiar Wesleyan publication timetable, you should be ready to buy it real soon now.)
In September, Matthew Palmer ’88, deputy chief of mission in the U,S, Embassy in London, hosted a dinner for Paul and his wife Linda at Wychwood House, his official residence in South Kensington. He used it as an opportunity to bring some Brit writers together, so there were several well-regarded English spy novelists at the dinner: Ken Follett, Alan Judd, Henry Porter, and Adam LeBor, in addition to Baroness Cathy Ashton. Palmer himself is the author of four highly acclaimed novels. His father, Michael Palmer ’64, was a doctor and also a well-regarded Wesleyan novelist. The Vidichs had their fourth grandchild, Remy, on September 4.
Please be sure to check out our unaffiliated class website, A Virtual Downey House, at www.wesclass72.com. You can keep up with classmates without having to wait for the magazine to come out and share your own news.