CLASS OF 1984 | 2025 | SPRING ISSUE

1984 ARCHIVES | HOME
← 1983 | 1985 →

Hello, classmates, and welcome to 2025. As one of this month’s correspondents signed off, “Hold onto your hats.”

David Boyd Booker left French bank Credit Agricole CIB after 15 years to take the position of head of legal and compliance at CastleOak Securities, a New York–based broker-dealer and boutique investment bank. He still lives in Manhattan (on the Upper East Side) with his wife, Lisa, and son, Conrad (currently a frosh at Northwestern; no, he did not consider Wes).    

Robert Leland is still that “crazy Californian dude you met back in 1980.” His life has taken him everywhere else, even spending five years in China, but in 2000 he ended back in his hometown with his wife. His two children are finished with college, and Robert is considering Europe for retirement. He has enjoyed being an independent financial planner much more than the 20 years he spent doing it with a corporate firm. You can look up Robert in San Francisco.

Murrey Nelson is enjoying retirement and doing lots of volunteer work. She wrote to tell us about her travels to the East Coast in October. She met up with Maureen McSherry ’87 for lunch and a stroll on the High Line in NYC, and with her old friend, Lea Barth, whose youngest just graduated from college. In Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, she and a high school friend met up with Robert Smythe ’82 and Susan (Dinsmore) Smythe ’82 at Robert’s “phenomenal” bakery, Pastry Pants. Robert and Murrey knew each other in high school. Robert, you may remember, started Mum Puppet Theatre at Wes, and he branched out locally into acting before starting the bakery during the pandemic.

Murrey also visited last year (in May) with Stephanie Grant, her NYC roommate following graduation. Stephanie continues to write and teach, while also launching her twin daughters into adulthood.

David Knudsen was issued two patents last fall as part of the intellectual property created at his company, Everything Set. He thanks the firm academic foundation he got at Wesleyan for his success. David’s company focuses on cybersecurity, especially in terms of “smart” home devices. If you’d like to read more about David’s patents, you can find more information on the U.S. Patent Office site: https://www.uspto.gov/. The patent numbers are US-12149543-B1 and US-12081518-B1.

Stephanie Fleischmann continues a successful career as an opera librettist and has several premieres and workshops coming up: In a Grove, music by Christopher Cerrone, will be done at the Prototype Festival at La Mama; The Pigeon Keeper (music by David Hanlon) will be in San Francisco at the Opera Paralèllle in March; Remedios Varios, with music by Carlos Carrillo, will be in concert at Chicago Opera Theater in April; and Claude and Marcel, with music by Alyssa Weinberg and commissioned by West Edge Opera, receives its first workshop in the fall.

MICHAEL STEVEN SCHULTZ | classnotes84@zmulls.com