CLASS OF 1964 | 2024 | FALL ISSUE

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I was unable to attend our 60th Class Reunion this past May and asked Marty Becker if he would mind giving us a rundown on the weekend. He kindly agreed and sent the following:

“Ten members of the Class of ’64 registered for the reunion. I attended with my wife, Shelley. But we split time between reunion events and the wake and funeral for our classmate, Peter Sipples.

“At the funeral, Pete’s son, Kyle, spoke about his dad and really captured who Pete was. We were able to spend some time talking with both sons, Kyle and Tim, as well as Pete’s widow, Pat.

“Saturday, late afternoon, we spent time with Jerry Hickson and Charles Landraitis and their wives. I learned that during our freshman year, Jerry and Pete Sipples were roommates. Charles was a math professor at Boston College. Jerry worked for IBM and spent years sailing around the world on progressively larger boats.

“At dinner that evening, we sat with Larry Dougherty and his wife, Estelle; Bill Mercer and his wife, Diane; Michael Ehrmann; and Jim Relyea. Fritz Henn ’63 also sat at our table. We had an enjoyable evening talking about Wesleyan memories as well as more current matters.”

[In addition to Marty and the six classmates he mentioned above, Kate Micari, our class rep on the University staff, wrote that these three ’64 classmates also registered to attend the weekend: W. David Hager, Alan Brewster, and Philip Polster.]

Marty was also good enough to give us a rundown on his own life. He wrote the following:

“My wife, Shelley, and I have lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for 30 years. Prior to that we lived in Greenwich Village for about 20 years.

“After Wesleyan, I went to law school at the University of Pennsylvania. I really liked Philadelphia—law school not so much. Having had student deferments during school, I ended up in the army the summer after law school, though I did get to take the bar exam first. Not happily, I spent the summer of 1968 to the summer of 1969 in Vietnam in a signal battalion.

“Once I got out of the army, I moved to Manhattan and went to work for The Legal Aid Society doing indigent criminal defense work, mostly representing kids 16 though 18 in the Bronx. It turned out that I played social worker more than lawyer, getting kids into drug programs or mental health services. Our classmate Michael Smith was a psychiatrist at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. We were able to refer clients for services through him and a colleague of his.

“While working for Legal Aid, one of the other lawyers and I developed a program to provide services to the population we were representing and wrote a proposal to obtain funding for the program. We were not successful in securing funding, and I eventually went to work for a New York City agency that, among other things, provided grants, using federal law enforcement (LEAA) funds, for criminal and juvenile justice projects. When those funds dried up, the agency was absorbed into what was, at times, the Criminal Justice Coordinator’s Office or the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Criminal Justice, which dealt with various criminal justice issues and continued to contract with not-for-profits for various programs.

“Shelley is a retired rabbi. She was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1991. (Anyone who knew me would probably be shocked that I’m married to a rabbi. Shelley was not a rabbi when we got married).

“When Shelley decided to go to rabbinic school, she first got a master’s degree at NYU and then spent five years in rabbinic school. I decided that I needed to do some Judaic learning of my own. So, I’ve spent a lot of time studying over the years.

“After Shelley was ordained, she mostly did part-time work at congregations in New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. I served as her chauffeur (she’s a city kid and does not drive) and also helped her out with various tasks.

“I retired from the city in 2005. In addition to continuing to help Shelley, I eventually went back to playing tennis. (I spent a bunch of years running and had ceased playing tennis). And for over a dozen years, I have been doing volunteer work in Riverside Park. I do maintenance (grunt) work on and around the ball fields.

“The last congregation Shelley served was in Southington, Connecticut. During those years, we visited Wesleyan on a couple of occasions, and I was amazed by all the new buildings I didn’t recognize. We also had the opportunity to visit with Pete Sipples and [wife] Pat Farrell a number of times. Our most recent trip to Middletown was to attend both the 60th Class Reunion and, unfortunately, Pete’s funeral. He passed away just weeks prior to the reunion.”

Bill Medd is happily retired in Norway, Maine, a town about an hour north of Portland, where he practiced medicine for more than four decades and worked to attract physicians to rural western Maine. “Now we’re just enjoying ourselves,” Bill told me in an August phone call. He and Marge have stayed put in the same house they lived in when he was taking care of patients in surrounding southern Oxford County. All three of their children live in Maine: Donald, a physician with an internal medicine practice in Portland; daughter, Cari, a school district superintendent; and Michael, an investor.

Bill grew up in Manhasset on Long Island and after Wesleyan went to medical school at the University of Rochester. He and good Wesleyan ’64 friend Don Ware, who got his medical training at the Albany Medical College and residency at the University of Rochester, joined forces to set up an internal medicine practice in a small community.  “We wanted to be rural but not too rural,” Bill says. After scouting towns in Vermont and New Hampshire, they found just want they were looking for in Norway—a welcoming community, need for docs, and plenty of outdoor recreation. Norway is on Pennesseewassee Lake and near skiing opportunities.

Their internal medical practice at Stephens Hospital in Norway later became part of MaineHealth, an integrated health system based in Portland. The Lewiston Sun Journal profiled Bill’s long, active career in a 2019 article: ‘It’s Been an Incredible Ride’ (https://www.sunjournal.com/2019/03/30/its-been-an-incredible-ride/). 

Don Ware died in Norway in 2022 at age 79. I may be wrong, but I could not find any mention of his death in earlier Class Notes. Here is the link to his obituary: https://www.chandlerfunerals.com/obituaries/Donald-Edward-Ware?obId=25641625. 

It was also good to hear from Rob Rutherford. He wrote:

“My wife, Diane, and I met John Jones and his wife, Maxine, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for three days in July. We visited the local art galleries, Los Alamos and Taos, and spent an evening at the Santa Fe Opera. We reminisced about our days at Commons Club, playing touch football, and party weekends.”

Mike Burack sent an email about his post-Wes life and a major change in it three years ago:

“I’ve not been an active alumnus, and I don’t think I have submitted anything for the class notes more than once or twice in the past 60 years. But time is passing, so I figure I might as well try to catch up now.

“After majoring in physics at Wesleyan, I did graduate work at CalTech and Stanford, but after a couple of years I succumbed to the realization that however much I had enjoyed physics as an undergraduate, I wasn’t serious enough about it to make it a rewarding career path for me. So, I switched to law school at Stanford, then clerked for a federal court of appeals judge in San Francisco for a year, after which I moved to D.C., where I spent my entire legal career at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now Wilmer Hale). During those years I married, raised two daughters, spent many hours on the road between D.C. and Chicago—where both girls went to college—and took annual family vacations in Spain, where my wife Maria is from. 

“Our daughters both settled in Europe. Our older daughter lives in Madrid; she’s married to a Bulgarian–U.S. dual citizen, whom she met in D.C., and they now have two young boys, four and three-quarters and three months. Our younger daughter now lives in Bonn (after periods in Vienna, Berlin, and London, in that order); she’s married to a Frenchman, whom she met in London, and they, too, have a young son, 15 months. We call our three grandsons the three Ls—Leo, Louis, and Luca—and we’re constantly confusing their names. (The alliteration was unintentional as far as I’m aware.)

“Once our daughters had moved to Europe, Maria and I no longer had any close family in the U.S., and all of her remaining family was still in Spain. So, taking the bull by the horns, so to speak, we decided to move full time to Spain ourselves, which we did in November 2021. 

“We live in León, a provincial capital in the northwest where Maria’s family lives. Being on that side of the Atlantic obviously makes it much easier to visit our kids and grandkids and have family get-togethers (both intra- and inter-) than it would be if we were still in the U.S. Moving here was a huge step for me, of course, but also for Maria, because after living in the U.S. for 50 years she thinks and acts more like an American than a Spaniard.

“For me, adjusting to a different culture with a different language and different customs and norms is still sometimes difficult, and getting a Spanish driver’s license was a particular ordeal. Some things continue to drive me up the wall—like Spaniards’ habit of talking at the top of their lungs no matter where they are or who else is around; or constantly interrupting other people during conversations; or standing in the middle of the sidewalk in groups of four or five or six, chatting leisurely as though they’re all alone and forcing other people to work their way around them, even to have to go into the street to get by.

“But then there are also compensations, including the mountains and the sea and the food. All things considered, it’s a pleasant place to live. So, things are good overall. My only real regret is that I won’t live to know my grandsons as adults, but there’s nothing I can do about that. 

“Maria and I continue to follow U.S. politics closely. For longtime Washington residents like us, it’s impossible not to, even though we have to watch many events on CNN replay the following day because of the six-hour time difference. It has been a truly dismaying situation until recently, but things are now beginning to look up. What a strange (or should I say, weird) turn of events!

“My best regards to you and our other classmates. Stay well.”

Dan Davis contributed the following:

“I’m sorry I missed our 60th Reunion, but I had a total knee replacement on May 7.I have recovered very well and am back to tennis and golf.

“I enjoyed a nice career in ob-gyn that included three years in Germany with the U.S. Army Medical Corp and 20 years in practice in western Massachusetts. Male medical school students graduating at that time served at least two years of government service [one of the armed services, Public Health Service, Indian Health Service, etc.].  Like Larry Dougherty, I was inspired at Wesleyan by John Maguire, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and all the Department of Religion teachers; my major was religion with a minor in pre-med.

“I then switched gears and worked for the Food and Drug Administration in Silver Spring, Maryland, 1997–2016, in the division reviewing drugs/products for urology and ob-gyn. It was a wonderful second career and a better pace, with nights, weekends, and federal holidays off. 

“I had the privilege of being the primary medical reviewer for the first transdermal patch, vaginal ring, emergency contraceptive pill, and several other unique drugs for contraception and gynecological indications. I currently do a small amount of consulting with pharmaceutical companies and nonprofit organizations.

“I have three adult children (Sarah ’94, Amy, and Tom) and three grandkids in Madison, Wisconsin, and Steamboat Springs, Colorado. In 2001 I was married—a second marriage—to Suzanne Schmidt, who is an ordained UCC minister and [who works] closely with retired women clergy. We moved to a continuous care retirement center in Frederick, Maryland, in 2022 and have a new patio home with NO stairs, an accident-prevention feature.

“My experience at Wesleyan was a ton of great and challenging courses, many hours in the library, and an admission to the Columbia medical school. The social life was limited, but the overall experience was priceless!”

MIKE BROWN | michaelhbrown@verizon.net

802 N. Jackson St., Arlington, VA 2201 | (703) 489–6808