CLASS OF 1971 | 2024 |FALL ISSUE

1971 ARCHIVES | HOME
← 1970 | 1972 →

Greetings and aloha, 1971 classmates,

Here are the transitions I received:

Don Schellhardt was wondering if transitions meant “passing on.” Emphatically, NO, but those will be duly noted. We decided at our 50th to address in the class notes changes in our lives as we progress through our eighth and ninth decades and beyond (if we make it that far). So, inform us all on what transitions you are making in this life.

Don also writes, “After living in Northern California for five years, I grew weary of high rents and missed the gentle beauty of the East. Now I live five miles south of the Mason-Dixon Line. . . .  I am also seeking opportunities to speak in public about mental health issues.” (Don Schellhardt, new contact information: 90 Manor Drive Apartment #103 Hagerstown, MD 21740; holyokerange1124@gmail.com; 203/312-3921.)

George Lehner (galehner@gmail.com) received the President’s Award at the White House Correspondents’ Association. George served as the association’s counsel for 18 years. You can read more here: WHCA award.

John Hester and wife, Elaine, visited Warren White in Richmond, Virginia, in July, in between tours of Japan and the Dalmatian Coast. Warren is a volunteer prep cook for Feed More, a 34-county/city community feeding program, and volunteers for the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. The late Rick Ketterer ’69 was remembered as John’s Delta Tau Delta brother and the articulate tour guide who introduced Warren to WesU in fall 1966. (Warren L. White, 1025 W. Grace St., Apt. 515, Richmond, VA 23220–3634; 615–678–9146; warrenwhite1949@gmail.com.)

For the second year in a row, Bob Yaro sailed his wooden Herreshoff sloop to Martha’s Vineyard where he rendezvoused with Blake Allison at his home on Chappaquiddick Island. Blake took the helm for a sail on Nantucket Sound and also led a guided tour around Chappy. And Blake’s wife, Lindsay, served dinner on the deck overlooking Edgartown Harbor.

Dick Scoggins “here in Glendale, California, since 2020, after 16 years in England working with a mission agency that focuses on the Muslim world. Before that I was a pastor (believe it or not) at a church in Warwick, Rhode Island. I went to graduate school at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and ended up surprisingly finding Jesus. While I was in England, my two children moved out here to Los Angeles to get in the movie/TV industry.  So, once we were done in England, we moved to Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles. My son, Nathan ’99, is also a Wesleyan grad. Quite a journey and still evolving as I became convinced in England that we needed to have a multigenerational family model. So, our daughter and her husband live with us with their three kids, and my son and his family live 10 miles up the road from us. Quite a journey!”

Joe Summa asks if this is transition news. YES!  “I’m still practicing labor and employment law in Connecticut and [am] still heavily involved with inner-city basketball programs for youth.  In terms of Wesleyan news, however, I have just been informed by the athletic department that I will be inducted into the Wesleyan Hall of Fame on November 1, 2024. [Here is the link: 2024 Hall of Fame class] It has been great hearing from former teammates and friends and hopefully will reconnect with more over the next few months. Thanks.” (Joseph B Summa, Summa & Ryan P.C., 228 Meadow Street, Suite 303, Waterbury, CT 06702; office: 203–755–0390; cell/text: 203– 597–7440.)

Dave Lindorff says: “About to begin an exciting adventure. My wife of 54 years (we married in a tree on Foss Hill at sunrise in June 1970 with friends on other branches) [and I] are about to head off to Cambridge University for Joyce’s nine-month sabbatical as a fellow at Clare Hall (where we’ll be living) and a visiting professor of early keyboard music in the music department. While she is performing and doing work on a book, I will be free to pour through six newly discovered file drawers of materials belonging to Ted Hall, the teen atomic spy at Los Alamos who gave the Soviets the entire schematics for making the plutonium bomb used on Nagasaki. I am hoping over that period to receive newly re-declassified FBI files on both Ted and his older brother, which should be worth a new update chapter in the paperback edition [of Spy for No Country]. There should also be lots to write about from the UK, which is moving left while most of the rest of Europe—and possibly the U.S.—moves right.”

C.B. “Kip” Anderson writes: “It’s been a long time, especially due to the fact that I was unable to attend our 50th. Transitions can suck and be beautiful at the same time.  A little about mine:

“My semi-retirement from the business of gardening has allowed me to spend a lot more time on reading and writing poetry. But, dammit, my most compelling preoccupation is associating with my three grandchildren. There you have it. If you would like to read some cutting-edge formal poetry, then just send me your land address and you shall have it.” (cbanderson49@gmail.com)

My transitions: Bought a townhouse in La Jolla, California, across from UCSD. Still living in Kauai. So, I guess I have a new definition for bicoastal. Working for a biotech company developing a new drug for HPV+ induced cancers (head and neck, cervix, vaginal, vulvar, penile, and anal). A surprising increasing number of these cancers despite the vaccine for HPV, especially in 50-year-olds and older (partially related to sexual practices and can take 20 years to develop). It fits in with my previous work in new cancer drug discovery and also development of antiviral drugs. Now a project putting the two into one drug. It’s fun and keeping me occupied.

This week as I write this, I have experienced the transition of the other kind. Two friends in one week passed on beyond the rainbow. It seems peculiar that our brains stay young and make us, or maybe just me, think I am 50 but the body says no, much older. But I am dealing with that. Good exercise, an Oprah diet, travel and friends in many places, that’s the stuff of life. We should enjoy it while we can because when it stops, as Tim Walz says, “then we can sleep.”

Until the next Wesleyan alum magazine time, aloha all, and keep the news of transitions coming.

NEIL J. CLENDENINN | cybermad@msn.com
PO Box 1005, Hanalei, HI 96714