Hello fellow ’98ers,
I don’t know if you all are like me, but I have a feeling some burnout is going around . . . or maybe everyone is just out living life! No updates to report this time, so let’s all send out some warm thoughts to each other and the world.
And you can email me anytime with your updates, Wes sightings, ideas for changing the world, or anything else you want to share!
Here’s our latest round of updates!
Santi White (Santigold) released her new album, Spirituals, on September 9, 2022 (which is on repeat in our stream—truly, highly recommended!). To follow this release, she launched a new line of herbal teas, aptly called Spirituals. The first collection consists of three teas: Brand New Tea, I Heart Tea, and No Stress Zone Tea, available on Santigold.com.
Santigold also started her new seasonal podcast. Noble Champions is a modern-day salon, created and hosted by her and distributed by Talkhouse. In each weekly episode, she sits down with some of today’s leading artists, authors, activists, and progressive thinkers who stand up, stick up, and speak up for important causes.
Lauren Porosoff and her spouse and co-author Jonathan have a new book, published in December 2022: EMPOWER Moves for Social-Emotional Learning: Tools and Strategies to Evoke Student Values. “It’s an identity-affirming, process-oriented approach to social-emotional learning that (as the name implies) empowers students to bring their own values to their actions and relationships. . . . I’m really excited for this book to be out in the world.” Congratulations, Lauren and Jonathan, and thank you for your contributions to the field of education!
Jess got to hang out with Amy Goorin Fogelman and Matt Fogelman in mid-October in Boston when she and her husband Greg (Middlebury ’95.5) and two of their kids (ages 10 and 16) traveled to New England for fall break. She says, “It was so much fun to catch up with Amy and Matt over dim sum in Chinatown, and I wish we could have all spent more time together! We spent a week in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York, visiting friends and family and touring colleges. Our 11th grader really liked the vibe at Wesleyan . . . we were there on a Friday and he got to go hang out on campus all afternoon with a sophomore he knew from home after the official admissions tour and info session. Our fall break trip ended with a day in Manhattan, which included a lovely lunch with Sasha and our kids in the West Village.”
We are, as always, humbled and impressed and awed and inspired by our classmates. We wish you all a wonderful New Year, full of good health, good ideas, good people, and a chance to do good when you can. And we cannot wait for spring around the corner!
Please send your updates to us!
Hello, fellow ’96ers! Hope this issue of the magazine finds you well.
Shereem Herndon-Brown has co-authored the book The Black Family’s Guide to College Admissions: A Conversation about Education, Parenting and Race (https://understandingthechoices.com/book/). He lives outside D.C. with his wife and children. He wrote: “I’ve had lots of great support from ’96 Wesleyan alums (thanks, Shola Olatoye and Dacque Tirado) and can use more!”
Speaking of Shola, she is looking forward to hosting Shereem in February at her kids’ school to feature his new book. Shola and Matthew Strozier live in the East Bay with their “newly licensed 16-year-old driver, a soon to be driving 15-year-old, and a pirouette-and-gymnastics obsessed 7-year-old.” They manage to see friends Susan Yee, Jake Ward, and Diana Ip ’95 frequently. Shola made it back to NYC in September and saw her sorors Tracey Gardner and Aisha Cook. She also did a drive by Donna Temple’s ’95 place in Harlem. The biggest news is that Shola recently left the public sector and joined an affordable housing developer as their chief operating officer. Before she left the City of Oakland, she had the good sense to hire Emily Weinstein ’97 as deputy director for community development.
Chris Meredith wrote: “COVID brought a lot of changes to my world in medicine. What do people do when changes happen? Seek out new changes! I’ll be finishing up law school in May, though I’m still practicing neurosurgery in Kansas City. My boys are 8 and 10 now and loving school.”
Bill Macomber shared: “Tracie Broom and her travel companion Mariah McLaughlin came to Los Angeles and got a minireunion going on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Annie and I threw the first, flat-out rager that I can remember, since all of that paused in 2020, right as we finished a house that was designed for this kind of shenanigans. . . . In attendance were Emma Jacobson-Sive, Liam McNiff ’97, Tony Schloss ’97 and Juno Shay ’98 and their three kids, Diego Gutierrez ’97 and Kim Diaz ’97 with their two kids, Katie Wright ’95 and Jason Agard ’94, Pam and Jason Walchli and their two teenagers, Sam Laybourne ’97, Billy Kheel and his wife Marina, Ed Lee ’95 (who just announced his engagement), Bill Wolkoff ’95, Koyalee Chanda and Neal Brandenburg, Ben Stout and his wife Masha and their two girls, Jason Blalock ’94 and his adorable daughter, Morgan Fahey ’95, Anuj Desai, and Jake Ward with his wife Julie and their kids.”
Another gathering happened in September in NYC. Sam Effron wrote: “This past summer I received a note from Barrett Feldman and Sabrina McCormick, lamenting the fact that we did not have a 25th Reunion. They came up with the great idea to host an unofficial reunion (30th anniversary of our frosh year) for anyone who was near, or could travel to, NYC, and another great idea to get me to organize it. And so . . . I did. On September 17, Barrett, Sabrina, Elijah Hawkes ’97, Glennis Matthews, Brad Roberts, Remy Auberjonois, Dara Federman, Adam Peltzman, Elizabeth Seuling, Anne Swan, Mia Lee, Ben Meyers, Dana Holohan, Ingrid Wong, Omar Rahim, Lee Beresford, Thom Loubet, Debbie Marcus, Jeremy Owens, and I (along with some partners and children) all gathered in Central Park for a beautiful afternoon of lazing, snacking, people watching, reminiscing, catching up, and making new memories.”
A smaller gathering to report: Cora Jeyadame, Nina Erlich-Williams, Hilary Hoeber, Darrah Carr, and I (Dara) spent a weekend in October at an Airbnb. The house was in Vegas, but we did not go to any shows or even spend any time on the strip. It was the first time we had all been together since our reunion in 2016—so we spent the weekend laughing, talking, and comparing notes on how we are different and the same as we were in our senior year, when we all shared a house together.
Hope 2023 is a good year for all, filled with adventures (that you share with the Wes notes)!
Katy writes for this issue: Hope your 2023 is going well thus far. We have a full range of news—sad losses, pictures of everyday life, and encounters with many other alumni. This round features many first-time contributors—we’re so excited to hear from you and it’s never too late to get in touch!
First some very sad news of the death last year of one of our classmates, Alyson Tischler. Longtime friend and roommate Alice Moore writes: “My college roommate of four years, Alyson Tischler, passed away in April of 2021. You can read a lot about and by her online. But you can’t hear her, that awesome laugh, all in as she told the student hairdresser to just shave my head already, as we manipulated her little wooden man in our room in the Bayit, as we danced—at Wesleyan, in Germany, in Paris, in Poland. Alyson took me to my first Broadway show and we cried together in front of the mound of spectacles at Auschwitz. When I visit Wes, I can still see and hear us, careening down the hill on Church Street, pointing bananas at each other and screaming ‘It’s been so long!’—an inside joke that will never be funny to anyone else, shaped by a shared college experience.” You can read Alyson’s obituary at: https://www.tributearchive.com/obituaries/20717196/Alyson-Tischler.
Andrew Hindman writes: “I was selected to be on a team of 25 riders (out of 500 applicants!) who will be riding the Tour De France 2023 (one week ahead of the professional cyclists). Literally we are riding the whole course of TDF 2023 (starting in Bilbao, Spain, and ending in Paris). 2,200 MILES. The purpose is to raise >$1.5M for leukemia/cancer research and patient care. More can be found out on www.TheTour21.co.uk—it’s a great charity organization where all funds go directly to patient care and research to cure leukemia/cancer. I am riding in memory of not one but two family members (mother and brother) who died of cancer in 2022.” Let’s all wish Andrew a meaningful experience and keep him in our thoughts June 23–July 16, 2023!
Andrew Dickson writes: “Still holding it down in Portland, Oregon. Working as a copywriter by day for companies like Apple, Adidas, and Absci. Performing, auctioneering ,and hosting storytelling shows for The Moth by night. Hanging with my teen, tween, and wife Susan, who is a craft book author, by evening. We often see Ryan (Myers) Tinsel and family, and I keep in close touch with Bill Tsitsos who is teaching sociology at Towson University. Shouts-out to Wells Tower ’96, Vanessa Grigoriadis, and Henry Myers for looking me up when they’ve been in town over the years.”
Alison North writes: “I live in Seattle where my fabulous grown kids, their partners, and their kiddos bring me freaking daily joy!! I work a lot because, well, the city I love is expensive. I’m a nurse midwife primarily providing abortions, transgender care, and, well, anything that others feel judgmental about. I dance a lot to keep my sanity.” Cheers to Alison!
Suzanne Snider writes: “Hello from the Hudson Valley. I have been living and working in both Hudson and New York City for the last decade plus, more fully upstate since 2019 with my nine-year-old daughter. I continue my work as an oral historian and writer, moving into my 11th year of directing Oral History Summer School (which now runs yearlong) to train documentarians/folks of all stripes in principles of ethical documentation, collecting trauma-centered narratives and recording stories to radicalize the dominant record. I also teach at the New School and currently engage with Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies as visiting faculty. I have the pleasure of collaborating, this year, with Wes alum and podcast wizard/executive producer Mia Lobel ‘97 on a project for Johns Hopkins University and Pushkin Industries, centered on the subject of bioethics. I newly discovered that I love to play tennis with Wes alum Ed Morris ’94 who relocated to Hudson with his partner Susannah Sayler ’93; they run, together, an amazing organization called Toolshed out of Hudson, New York. Adrienne Truscott ’94 claims she will join us on the tennis court when she finds her racket. In the meantime, Adrienne continues to create incredible performances and also to manage Bard’s Center for Human Rights and the Arts. Last summer, I visited Elsie Kagan’s (’99) amazing art residency, Interlude, upstate and was happy to learn that Elsie and her partner are also Wes alums. Holler if you’d like to connect with more Wes friends in the Hudson Valley!” Great to hear about all of the Wes activity in this great region (but being from the Hudson Valley myself, I should declare a bias . . . ).
Ben Lee writes: “I live in Cheviot Hills (Los Angeles) with my wife and our three sons. After graduating Wes, I worked in the music industry before heading to law school and then worked as a lawyer for a few years before pursuing a career in residential real estate. I’ve been with Coldwell Banker Beverly Hills for many years now, focusing on Los Angeles’ westside. When I’m not buying and selling houses, I spend as much time surfing as I can, even got the opportunity to surf in Indonesia for a few weeks, which was a dream come true. I try to stay connected to my Wesleyan roots—in fact we host an annual reception for Los Angeles families with high schoolers applying to Wes. We look forward to hosting this party every year—the best part is meeting so many people interested in attending our fabulous school!”
Eric Meyerson writes, “It’s been an exciting year getting back to post-pandemic life and travel. I just marked 20 years in San Francisco and 22 in the Bay Area. Back when we were in school, I never figured myself to become a Californian, but here I am raising a family in this amazing region. My daughter is a junior in one of the Bay Area’s largest public high schools, and she’s now looking at colleges. (I know one school in central Connecticut that might actually be a pretty good fit for her interests.) We took a quick family trip to D.C. this past summer, where we had a big night out in Capitol Hill with Seth Kaufman and Bill Goldberg ’94. Bill also had a big birthday in Vegas back in February with a lot of ’94 Cardinals, and included a super-cool Red Rocks hike in a snowfall. I recently took another hike through the Oakland Hills with old buddy Ben Foss, who, like me, has spent the last few years in the climate tech industry. I’m always excited to hear from more Wes alumni in the Bay Area.”
In early 2022, after 20-plus years of being an editor at Ugly Duckling Press, Matvei Yankelevich left the Brooklyn nonprofit publisher, which grew out of his Wesleyan-era zine The Ugly Duckling. He is now editor-in-chief of World Poetry Books, a nonprofit press that publishes a diverse range of poetry from around the globe for English-language readers and brings attention to literary translators. It’s based in New York City and affiliated with the UConn’s Humanities Institute and Translation Program. After a yearlong grant for translation and research from the National Endowment of Humanities, Matvei is back to teaching literary translation for the writing MFA at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. Meanwhile, his most recent chapbook of poems—Dead Winter (Fonograf Editions, 2022)—has been reviewed in Tablet, Zyzzyva, and other journals, and his translations of Osip Mandelstam have appeared in the New Yorker, Harpers, and elsewhere. In May, he visited his cousin Katya Semyonova ’98 and her two boys in D.C.”
As for my own alumni encounters, in early December I saw Stacy (Theberge) Taylor in Portland, Maine. I was there with my eldest, who has a passion for animation; as you’ll recall, Stacy and her husband run an animation firm (Little Zoo Studio), and graciously talked to us about the field. So lucky to have such an engaging alumni network!
Keep sending us your news and updates—we love to hear from you!
Hello everyone! As we draw near to closing out another year, I (Caissa) pray that everyone is doing well; that all are hopeful, encouraged, and looking for reasons to be joyful. I am happy to report that my family and I are well. As we enter the holiday season, I am trying out some new dessert recipes; carving out time to write and paint; all while I juggle my work responsibilities and the many doors that the Lord is opening to me. Having recently celebrated Thanksgiving, I am especially thankful for my family and friends and the opportunity to connect, reflect, and recharge. Also, I’d like to send a shout-out the Miriam Suazo, who continues to minister through dance. Perhaps we can get her to share a video link to add to the digital edition of the Class Notes. My thoughts and prayers continue to go out to the entire Wesleyan community.
Ethan Hollander writes, that his 24-lecture series called Democracy and Its Alternatives was just published on Wondrium, formerly known as The Great Courses. Ethan states that the course is very timely, and addresses questions like: “Does democracy have a future? What’s causing it to falter? And is there anything we can do about it?” You can stream it at Wondrium.com; buy it at TheGreatCourses.com; or get it wherever great audiobooks are sold.
Josh Thomases writes, “I have never gotten around to sending in news, but here goes . . . .” He writes that he and his wife have been living in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, for the last 20 years with their two sons, who are now teenagers. Josh notes that the past decade has seen a lot of change and interesting projects for him. He sat on NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott’s cabinet, leading the instructional work and overseeing the city’s college and career-ready agenda. Since then, he has led in higher education and the charter sector. Most recently he decided to launch his own educational consulting business: IPsquared (at the intersection of program and potential). He writes, “It’s been fantastic so far, allowing me to work closely with extraordinary leaders in schools, districts, museums, and ed-tech toward goals that will impact the lives of children. Plus, it gives me a great excuse to spend time reconnecting with old friends and colleagues, from Ben Pappas, Terry Johnson, Reed Cundiff, and Mike Goodman to Sondy Youdelman and Debbie Marcus ’96. The last few years have certainly had their ups and downs, but I find myself feeling very blessed. I have loved hanging with my family, coaching my son’s baseball teams, going hiking outside the city, and playing with our scruffy dog.”
Hi, Wes friends. We have exciting news—overseas trips, career updates, and a wedding held at the Boston Public Library. We hope 2023 brings you holiday cheer and the chance to attend your 30th Reunion on campus during the weekend of May 25–28, 2023.
Anne Beaven writes, “I just got back from a business trip to Italy. It was my first time there, so I took some days to go to Florence, eat gelato, eat pizza, eat pasta, see the David statue, and learn I am scared of heights when I climbed the dome of the Duomo.”
Noel Lawrence emails, “I moved overseas to Portugal where I am currently writing a U.S. remake of Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Star Maker (Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film). If any alumni are traveling through Porto, look me up and let’s enjoy a glass of Port. In case you didn’t know already, ‘Port’ is named after Porto. The outdoor cafes on my street have a lovely view of the Douro River as well.”
Andy Nordvall lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two kids. He teaches, writes children’s books and spends entirely too much time on the internet.
Karen Powell writes, “I recently became an Australian citizen, and will be between Melbourne, Australia, and Helena, Montana, for the foreseeable future. I’ve been appointed to the International Federation of Sport Climbing Governance Commission, so if anyone is interested in connecting about sport, sport law, governance, Olympics, or climbing, I’d love to hear from people. With that project I get to do a bit of traveling (Singapore and Switzerland in 2023), so also happy to connect with other global Wes alum. I’m still teaching law in Melbourne if there are other academics out there too. Cheers from Down Under.”
Jodi Samuels emails, “In September, I was promoted to senior director, Strategic Support for Colleges and Scholars, at the Foundation for California Community Colleges, where I’ll be marking my three-year anniversary on November 12th. Evan and I recently had to bid farewell to our beloved fur baby girl feline, Calypso, who graced us with nearly 15 years of wonderful companionship. We’ve now welcomed a new kitty from the local shelter to our household, a three-month-old orange tabby boy whom we named Louis XIV. (Say the Roman numeral in French, like the original Sun King, and it sort of sounds like “cat”orze 🙂.) We’re planning some international travel for January and have continued our frequent domestic travel to see family and friends and college football in Austin, Denver, Chicago, and Madison, and also a couple of trips to Hawai’i for vacation. I had two in-person work conferences this fall for the first time in nearly three years (!), including co-presenting a session at the Strengthening Student Success Conference in Orange County in early October.”
Antonia Townsend writes, “I’m living in dark but delightful London with my son and husband. We were recently thrilled to have Chris Mulhauser ’92 and his wife stay with us, and even had a too-brief visit from Erica Terry Derryck ’95. Please, let me know if you are in town, as I’m always up for tea and crumpets with a Wes friend.”
Diego von Vacano emails, “I am back in Texas as a professor of political science at Texas A&M University after some time in Europe. I have been advising the Bolivian government on its lithium resource for climate change policies in the last three years. I am working on a book about this experience for Oxford University Press to come out next year. I am also doing semiprofessional soccer photography, something I started at Wes in 1990, as I covered the EURO 2020 Final, the Finalissima in London, and the most recent Champions League Final in Paris for Bolivian outlets. Looking forward to the Qatar World Cup and also attracting more foreign investment to Bolivia’s lithium sector to work with the Movement Towards Socialism ruling party to help Bolivia develop, using all my CSS skills!”
Sadie Van Buren (maiden name Johnson while at Wes) married Michael Gilronan at the Boston Public Library on September 26, 2022. She will be Sadie Gilronan going forward.
Hi all: So great to see so many of you at Reunion this last May! Hope to catch up with more of you soon. In the meantime, here’s the news.
Susannah Fox and Eric Halperin report that they dropped their child Rain off at Butterfield this fall as a frosh at Wesleyan. Also joining the ranks of Wesleyan parents is Karen Earl whose daughter started at Wes this year. Karen is an endocrinologist in San Francisco. Her oldest will graduate from the University of Chicago next June and she also has a middle schooler.
Brennen Keefe was sad to miss our 30th Reunion but was able to meet up with his old teammate Jonathan Soros this summer when Jonathan was in Chicago, managing operations of his Athletes Unlimited softball league.
Chris Chesak made the trip back to Wes for Homecoming where the Cardinals secured another Little Three Championship by beating Williams. Chris reports that it was great to reconnect with old teammates (Jason DeGeorge ’94 and Mike Flynn ’93), classmates (Karen Cacace), and meet others who had played football at Wes before (and after) him.
In other sports news, Tony Brita reports that the 1991 men’s soccer team was inducted into the Wesleyan Athletics Hall of Fame at the “swanky and opulent” Courtyard Marriott in Cromwell, Connecticut, on Saturday, October 1. The class of ’92 was represented by Tony as well as Odi Kuiper and Pete Doolittle. Another teammate, Vizir Ajro ’93 was also in attendance.
Ruthbea Yesner continues her job leading a team of researchers and advisors around implementing meaningful tech innovations in the public sector, with her specialization being urban areas. Most recently she spoke on a panel at the World Smart Cities Expo in Barcelona and collaborated with the World Economic Forum on a paper on developing public/private partnerships in smart cities. She reports that family life is good, too, with one stepdaughter in nursing at UMass, and three more teens in the process of finishing high school. Ruthbea managed to see a whole mess of ’92ers this fall. She met up with Karen Cacace and her husband Mike Flynn ’93 to see her whole extended family for a high school football game. She also had a great time over cocktails with Jonathan Soros in NYC, where she learned about how he is working to change the entire women’s sports industry; bumped into Katherine Petrecca at the airport as she headed to a conference for women leaders in the sports industry; and recently kept Dave Kane company while he drove to his newish home in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, after relocating from NYC.
Brian Cheek has started a new career as a golf professional. He was in Hilton Head, Bandon Dunes, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, last year but just moved to the Atlanta area to be the player development professional at Planterra Club.
Amy Larson is still living in Portland, Oregon, practicing law with a medium-size firm, and doing her best to keep up with her dynamic eight-year-old and three-year-old sons. She’d love to reconnect long-lost Wes classmates including Foss 7 dorm mates so reach out to her!
Also out west in Ty Jagerson, who joined GM last year to run the V2X team, which is the part of GM’s EV group building out new businesses around smart charging and VGI.
Maria Truglio is at Penn State, where she is a professor of Italian and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her son Thomas graduated from Drexel Medical School in the midst of the pandemic and is now a second-year resident in medicine at Dartmouth. Her son Anthony has been teaching with the linguistics program at Penn State. And Maria and her partner Greg Fox got married in July 2021 up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Several of Maria’s Wesleyan pals were able to join to make the day extra special!
Chris Arndt is still living in Telluride, Colorado. His sons Alden (13) and Graham (11) seem to enjoy school, and love playing lacrosse and basketball, and skiing. Chris continues to work to accelerate clean-energy politics and policy. His wife Patty is also well and has just started an as-of-yet unnamed interior design firm. Chris also continues to write and record music, inspired by his experience recording Baggage Claim songs from his college years as the Lost Bags album—check it out under the under Doc Project.
Grant Brenner remains in the East Village in New York City. On the professional front, the company he co-founded, Neighborhood Psychiatry and Wellness, merged with another group and Grant is now chief medical officer of The Collective—Integrated Behavioral Health. Also in New York, Kevin Day continues to live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and is telecommuting to his new job as VP of Portfolio Management at Conifer Realty, an affordable housing developer based in Rochester New York.
Chadwick Canedy welcomed a new baby girl on November 10th, Arden Haneul Canedy. She is currently doted over by brothers Easton (five) and Declan (seven).
Jeff Kipnis has released his third Lightning Squirrel novel and ninth overall publication this past July, titled the Legend of Lightning Squirrel and is book 1 of The Bolt Saga. Jeff also reports the sad news that his wife Nancy passed away on August 7, after a 20-month battle with cancer. She leaves behind their son Jack, who is 22 and is studying meteorology and psychology at Rutgers University, and their daughter Jenna, who is 19 and is studying health and exercise science at Middlesex College.
That’s all for now. Please send me your news—I would especially love to hear from you if it’s been a while since you last checked in. Your classmates want to know what you are up to!
Please write to your class secretary.
Hi all. It was pretty quiet this time around. Here’s what we have:
In September, Lawrence Jackson’s sixth book, Hold It Real Still: Clint Eastwood, Race, and the Cinema of the American West, was published, and he welcomed Andy McGadney ’92, president of Knox College, to the advisory board of the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts at Johns Hopkins. “In September we hosted our fourth annual free jazz concert in Lafayette Square in Baltimore’s historic jazz district, and featured Ian Friday ’87 on the turntables. With Andy’s help, I am looking forward to opening a stand-alone, community-owned, Holiday Center in West Baltimore by 2025, specializing in historical preservation, Black history, and the arts. Bob O’Meally, who was my first professor at Wes, is giving my spring 2023 Donald Bentley Address at the Baltimore Museum of Art, where I am also curating an exhibit of rare Billie Holiday materials. Best of all, my roommate, classmate, and line brother, Alan Smith, co-hosted a reception with me in Baltimore to raise money for a book scholarship in my dad’s (and oldest son’s) name for African Americans at Loyola-Blakefield High School. I encourage my classmates, many of whom met my father, to give generously to the Nathaniel Jackson Jr. Memorial Book Scholarship by emailing Loyola’s director of giving Lisa Kenney, lkenney@loyolablakefield.org. I hope everyone already has a copy of Shelter: A Black Tale of Homeland Baltimore, which also came out this year.”
Sue Rodrigue McFarland writes that the best part of her autumn “was a leadership conference in San Diego that allowed me to pop up to the Bay Area to spend a couple of days with Julia Erwin-Weiner, Carolyn Gencarella, and Maria Poveromo. It was great to see them and spend some time in the City by the Bay. The weather was gorgeous and Carolyn was a fantastic tour guide!”
Joshua Israel enjoyed family weekend at Wesleyan this fall where his oldest son is a first-year student. He is a physician in Washington, D.C. This past summer he enjoyed a visit with Douglas Remillard ’91 at his home in Mauritius.
We were saddened to learn that our classmate Andrew Borsanyi passed away on May 30, 2022. We extend sincere condolences to his friends and family. Please feel free to share any memories of Andrew for upcoming class notes.
Wishing you all good health and happiness. Hope to hear from you in 2023.
I asked the Wes ’80 alums to tell us about their latest milestones, challenges, and insights into life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. And by the way, this isn’t a thankless job—I love hearing from fellow Wes grads because we all are doing notable things with our lives after having been launched by an amazing educational institution, and even sharing the everyday is comforting because we’re all going through some similar experiences. Wishing my fellow alums all the best for 2023, Jacquie Shanberge McKenna, Class Secretary.
This year, Paul Edwards has found his life dominated by his ongoing struggle with hairy cell leukemia, a rare disease. He noted, “I’m almost done with my second clinical trial at the National Institutes of Health. The first one bought me 12 years. This one has already eradicated the leukemia —levels are undetectable by any test, though that doesn’t mean it’s entirely gone. I am REALLY looking forward to a return to quasi-normal life in January when the treatment cycle is finally done.” Paul is the director of the Program in Science, Technology & Society at Stanford, also co-director of the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative. Gabrielle Hecht, his wife and colleague at Stanford, is a professor of history and nuclear security studies. She studies mining around the world, and issues of waste and discards more generally as well. She finished one book, Residual Governance, and got halfway into another, Inside-Out Earth, during the pandemic and is now back to traveling the world for research. She’s about to become president of the Society for the History of Technology for 2023–25. Their son Luka went to college in August, at Sarah Lawrence, where he is ecstatic to be done living at home but also super excited about the really innovative coursework in experimental animation, travel literature, and French colonial and post-colonial literature. Sarah Lawrence almost seems a Wesleyan by a different name! He’ll be a writer or an artist—already is one, really.
Jenny Boylan has had a whirlwind year. Her novel, Mad Honey, co-authored with Jodi Picoult, peaked at number three on The New York Times Best Sellers list, and stayed on that list for months. Jenny’s book tour took her from Seattle to Orlando, from Portland, Maine, to Houston, from Edinburgh, Scotland to London and many places in between. She saw many old Wesleyan friends during the tour—Steve Mooney and Virginia Pye ’82 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and David Block ’81 in New York City. Jenny spent academic 2022–23 as a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, where she is hard at work on a new book, and spending time with the cohort of scientists, historians, musicians, and writers there. She gave the commencement speech at Sarah Lawrence College as well as the College of the Atlantic in the spring of 2022 and received honorary degrees from both institutions—a PhD from SLC and an MPhil from CoA. She says that after 35 years coasting along on her MFA it meant a lot to finally receive the doctorate, even if honoris causa is actually Latin for “not for reals.”
Walter Calhoun wrote in at the end of July from Highland Park, Illinois, “which just weathered another madman’s tyranny over an innocent public with an assault weapon on a rooftop over our Fourth of July parade. I am presently co-lay leader and stewardship chairman in the North Shore Methodist Church in Glencoe, Illinois. Last Saturday, we handled a funeral for a longtime resident, Peggy Bird, who had recently settled in Hanover, New Hampshire, after a lifetime in Winnetka, Illinois. Peggy was survived by her three children: Tom, Andrew, and Nancy who all spoke most lovingly and openly about Lew Gitlin ’79, about the bonds of community and hospitality they were able to form in their formative years across Jewish and Methodist lines. Such positive and glowing comments about Lew Gitlin did not surprise me since I learned much about Lew’s outstanding character and empathy when we met at Wesleyan. Lew, wherever you are, please know how much you were missed at Peggy’s funeral, but how high you were held in esteem, in your absence, by Tom, Andrew, and Nancy Bird. One month earlier I was able to arrange a small dinner party at a mutual friend’s house in Kenilworth, Illinois, which was attended by Andrew Parkinson ’80 and Elizabeth Parkinson, who were both so supportive and gracious to me when I came out of my one-month coma and six-month hospitalization after being hit by a car as a pedestrian on May 2, 2002; and after my 32-year-old son Daniel committed suicide while a first-year law student at University of Michigan Law school on November 5, 2019. Andrew and Elizabeth are the epitome of the empathetic couple who always looks out for their neighbors with a well-developed sense of community. It is easy to see why Lew and Andrew were such well-rounded fraternity brothers at Psi U when we were at Wesleyan.”
Ellen Haller: “Hi from San Francisco where I continue to love retirement! My days are spent playing pickleball (a new obsession!), riding bikes, and playing women’s ice hockey in a local league. (Plus, I do all the errands as my wife still works . . . ) Our son lives in NYC now and supports himself completely as a self-employed magician. He does sophisticated close-up card magic and has a ticketed show in the city. danielroymagic.com.”
Over 34 years ago, Tammy Sachs founded Sachs Insights, a strategic research consultancy that drives innovation in product and web development. She is currently the CEO of Sachs Insights and is an instructor at Rutgers University, teaching UX Research—from Co-Creation Focus Groups & Ethnography through User Experience Testing for the Mini-Masters and Advanced UXD Course.Tammy says her Wesleyan heroes are long retired—Jeanine Basinger and Karl Scheibe. Tammy has hired and trained hundreds of alumni.
Retirement in 2018, after over 30 years as a teacher librarian in Connecticut, has not meant slowing down for Cathy Andronik. She’s found her dream job: presenter for the Bureau of Education and Research, conducting both live and online seminars on young adult literature (one of the company’s flagship programs, What’s New in Young Adult Literature, Grades 6–12?) for teachers and librarians around the U.S. She is also an adjunct lecturer in the School of Library and Information Studies at North Carolina Central University, where her favorite course to teach is called Ethnic Materials for Children and Adolescents, exploring the wonderful recent growth of diversity in books for young people. That focus is also present in her application to enter the PhD program at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia; she intends to compare diversity, in particular indigenous authors, and characters, in recent young adult literature from Australia versus the U.S. When she’s not doing any of the above, she is enjoying her two Morgan horses, Reny and Gentry; her flock of companion parrots; and her getaway cottage in Midcoastal Maine.
Cheryl and Jim Green P’22 were thrilled to attend their son Mitchell’s graduation from Wesleyan in May. Mitchell was a double major in chemistry and earth and environmental science (chem tract). “Wesleyan does a wonderful job with graduation festivities and the ceremony. From the welcome lunch (where Jim and I were interviewed as Wes alums who met the first day of freshman orientation), to the after-graduation celebration, there is nothing like a Wesleyan graduation weekend (including the heat)! It was a great end to a unique four years on campus. We are so thankful to the faculty, staff, and administration for all of their efforts in keeping everyone safe during COVID and giving the students in the Class of ‘22 the best possible college experience they could have had. It was also very bittersweet for us since we really reconnected with campus during Mitchell’s time there. We are looking forward to going to Homecoming celebrations with Mitchell in the future.”
Cindy Ryan: It’s been a year of changes, living in my own little house next to a lovely watershed pond in Concord, Massachusetts. I am learning beekeeping, loving the challenges and rewards (honey!). Also starting up my third business entity (when many of you are retiring) as a licensed mental health counselor (LMHC) specializing in expressive arts therapy. Hopeful to balance part-time counseling with painting and dusting off music skills on my new guitar.
Mark Zitter: I started Zooming with old friends during the pandemic and haven’t stopped yet. Scott Hecker, Paul Singarella, and I have a monthly Zoom call that we’ve come to cherish. We decided to take a cruise to Mexico together and are planning another trip in the spring. Scott is chief scientist for a biotech company and Paul, a retired lawyer, is doing exiting work helping the world deal with water problems and other environmental challenges. Paul Oxholm and I also have been Zooming regularly. He is interim executive director for a museum in his town of Reading, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, I just had dinner with Irene Chu, who lives in her hometown of Lincoln, Massachusetts. She continues to do freelance design work. Last summer my family rented a house in the Berkshires. We invited for dinner our classmates Daryl Messenger and Matt Penn. Along with my daughter, Tessa Zitter ’21, Wesleyan was well represented. I’m in the process of concluding the Zetema Project, the nonprofit health-care organization I started six years ago. Its graduate fellowship program will live on with another management team. I’m now creating a new nonprofit organization aimed at improving the capabilities of social sector leaders.”
Irene Chu lives in Lincoln, Massachusetts, with her wife Cindy and continues to work on her own as a graphic designer. Her youngest just started his first year at Bowdoin and her elder is a junior at Barnard. Irene is in touch with a handful of classmates, including Page Starzinger, who had a poem recently published in the New Yorker.
Page Hill Starzinger: “I’m rubbing words together hoping for fire—and gathering kindling for others: the Starzinger Writing Center is now open at Emma Willard School (Troy, New York), a high school for girls. The kids just attended the Dodge Poetry Festival and chose poets they’d like to invite back to campus. I’ve endowed three creative writing scholarships/awards named for poet and English professor David Baker at Denison University. One scholarship is for recruitment—because why not recruit writers (not just athletes or science stars), one honors professors, one offers student experiences (mentorships, internships, etc). Remember the William Carlos Williams quote, ‘It is difficult to get the news from poetry but men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there’? (I actually disagree about the news–there is documentary poetry—but agree with ‘lack of what is found there.’) With the government giving $25 billion a year to universities for STEM, 2,532 books being banned just from June 2021–2022, and teachers being underpaid and undervalued (only 17% tenured now), I am doing what I can.”
Helianthus (Published in the June 27, 2022, New Yorker issue)
The farmers’ market has sunflowers again. It’s another
July, and bees scramble over the sticky chocolate
centers. My mother says, Hi, sweets,
but she died two years ago. I see her clearly—
wearing a drip-dry striped boys’ shirt, looking straight
at me. There’s something she’s waiting for. I
can’t figure out what it is—never could. Young
sunflowers track the sun until they mature,
then they are stuck facing east. I wonder when
memory is not a haunting, when disappointment is
not unlearned. The florets spiral, a Fibonacci sequence:
each number the sum of the two
preceding. A generation is supposed to be better
than the last, but my father once wondered, staring at
a portrait of his father if sons always disappoint. I
can’t remember what I said next, but it wasn’t true.
Anne Chamberlain: “At the end of the summer, I completed an EdM in educational policy, organization and leadership at the University of Illinois. This was entirely online and it was most exciting to learn with classmates of all ages and backgrounds from throughout the world. It was interesting to receive a diploma and Medicare card in the same week, but it’s been important to put aside preconceptions about aging, education, and work. After a long first career in management consulting, it’s hard to believe I am slowly moving toward the end of my second career, working on employment equity at a large university. I am also working with cross-industry organizations on the effective and inclusive use of technology to better match job seekers and employers. And I am still loving my life in New York.”
Dr. Andrew J. Kirkendall published his latest book, Hemispheric Alliances: Liberal Democrats and Cold War Latin America, with the University of North Carolina Press. Check out the book at the UNC Press website here https://uncpress.org/book/9781469668017/hemispheric-alliances/.
In Hemispheric Alliances, Kirkendall explores how liberal Democrats sought to create new models for U.S.–Latin American relations that went beyond containing communism. In an age of decolonization and in response to the ideological challenge of the Cuban Revolution, the Kennedy administration introduced the Alliance for Progress, which promised large-scale socioeconomic reform and democracy promotion in Latin America—moral leadership over mere militarism. During the tumult of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s, liberal Democrats, in particular, embraced human rights. Both the Alliance for Progress and human rights assumed a special U.S. responsibility for Latin America and significantly complicated foreign policy making. Kirkendall finds that the Alliance for Progress and human rights emphasis left mixed legacies. This Latin American focus of liberal Democrats was dissolved by the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush administrations who favored a more militant containment of communism. Andy continues to teach Latin American and World History at Texas A&M University.
