Class Notes | 1980s

If last issue’s theme was emptying nests, this time it was finding our bliss and making a bit more time for our graying selves, Class of ’82.

Brian Fahey writes that “after spending my whole life in the Boston area, I’ve moved to Scarborough, Maine, where I’ve always had a second home. With my youngest child off to Brown this fall, we decided to make the move to beautiful Maine. I would love to connect with fellow Wesleyan alums in the Portland area.”

Jim Sullivan, who practices emergency medicine in Massachusetts, wrote: “I will be running in my first Boston Marathon this spring.” He mentions that his son Owen, a high school senior, is looking at Wesleyan.

Sara Lennon, also known as Say White, writes from Portland of big changes now that her children are “basically fluttering from the nest. Any brilliant ideas on how to weather this latest transition?” she asks. “So far my coping strategy is digging in—more work, more gym, more shoveling snow. Anyone out there try something else, like exotic travel, adoption, that first novel, career change, early retirement, spiritual enlightenment? Pray tell if it’s working well.”

Sara’s current distractions include “Homeland, House of Cards, reading, politics, friends, freezing at Sugarloaf, warming up when summer finally arrives around mid-June. Stop by if you find yourself in Portland, I’d advise July or August.”

I got a long, lovely post from Vincent Bonazzoli: “My wife, Paula, and I are getting adjusted to being empty nesters here in Swampscott, Mass. Although we miss the kids, we are actually enjoying ourselves. The house is a heck of a lot cleaner and the refrigerator actually has food in it for more than a day.”

He adds, “I have my own my estate planning and elder law practice in Lynnfield. It’s going quite well and I am coaching and training attorneys in practice development and client maintenance programs. I’m also an instructor at the Boston University certified financial planner program.

His daughter, Danielle, is an artist at Mass College of Art and Design in Boston, after spending a year and a half at St. Andrews in Scotland. Son Matthew is a freshman at Macalester College “in balmy St. Paul, Minn., and is playing football. Very exciting time for all, as Paula and I got to go to almost all of the games,” Vinnie said.

He recently has been in touch with other empty nesters from our class, including Lyndon Tretter, who lives in NYC with his wife Ilyse. “Lyndon has just become a partner at Schlam Stone & Dolan LLP, and is looking to reconnect with Wes alumni in NYC. Also heard from Fran Hack who is living in Northampton, Mass., with her husband, Bob, and has a daughter graduating from Brandeis this year and a son attending NYU.”

Big changes for Virginia Pye, who has a new novel coming out this fall: She’s moving from Richmond, Va., to Cambridge, Mass., as her husband, John Ravenal ’81, is now director of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln “Looking forward to connecting with Wesleyan friends in the Boston area!” she says.

David Shopper writes that he has moved his advertising photography studio to Ipswich, Mass. You can follow his work at davidshopper.com.

Kevin Meacham sends along his new e-mail address: kevmeach@verizon.net.

The news from Paula Anthony: She just completed her PhD in organizational development and change from the College of Business and Technology at The University of Texas at Tyler.

Sophia Brubaker has been married to her husband, Bill, since 1980. (“Yes, I married in the middle of college when he graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn.”) They’ll celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary this May.

“I Iive in Niantic, Conn., where I direct the Barn for Artistic Youth (a teaching studio for emerging artists of all ages). I designed this community arts program after returning to Rhode Island School of Design in 2001 as an art teacher on sabbatical, and returning to the East Coast from Juneau, Alaska, where I taught middle school art in the public school.” Her website is barn4art@gmail.com, she says, adding that watching children “grow up in art” from finger painting to art college and beyond, is immensely rewarding. “It keeps me young!”

Bill and Sophia have raised four kids, and now are on to grandchildren—two little boys, ages 2 and newborn.

“We keep in touch with my best friend from Foss Hill: Mireille Reichgelt Neumann ’82 and husband Chip Neumann ’82, living in Simsbury, Conn.,” she writes.

Nancy Logue writes that she and Julie Abrams Faude were planning to meet in Philadelphia for the “Love Train” event put on by the city’s mural arts program. The guided tour of 50 rooftop murals also celebrates marriage equality in Pennsylvania. “We live 30 minutes outside the same wonderful city in different directions, and enjoy getting together whenever we can,” she says.

What else is there to say except more, more, more! Write early and often!

Stephanie Griffith | stephaniedgriffith@gmail.com

Greetings once again from Brooklyn. There is ice and snow on the ground as I write this. I hope you are reading this on the beach with at least spf 30 slathered all over you….

I ran into Seth Kaufman ’70 recently, as it turns out that our wives work together for a Manhattan not-for-profit. We compared stories of takeovers of North and South College in our activist youth, eight years apart, and he told me, as head of the student body, how he convinced President Etherington not to call the State Police, and thereby prevented a riot.

“Etherington asked, ‘So what do I do?’

“I told him, ‘You do nothing. They’ll take over the building, they’ll stay for a while, and then they’ll leave!’”

And that’s pretty much what happened. Brilliant.

John Ravenal, formerly the curator for modern and contemporary art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, is the new executive director of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. He brings to deCordova extensive administrative and curatorial experience, having served as president of the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC), and having held curatorial positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and at the Wadsworth Atheneum, where he worked on the museum’s first showing of the Sol LeWitt collection.

Shelley Berson writes: “I still marvel every time I turn right onto the Wes campus to visit our daughter, Elizabeth Weinstein ’16, that my Wesleyan is as uniquely perfect for her as it was for me all those years ago.”

Shelley adds, “I’ve been busy growing my Zzenter—a wellness center in Bergen County, N.J., that merges my board certifications in ENT, sleep medicine, and allergy to answer the question ‘What’s going on in your bedroom?’ Using individualized form and function data, we create customized treatment plans to provide ‘CPR for your dreams’ (zzenter.com).” Her husband, Jack Weinstein, is a consultant who shares her pride in the accomplishments of Liz and their son, Aaron, (UPenn ’17). They look forward to a future joint a cappella concert of Liz’s “Notably Sharp” with Aaron’s “PennyLoafer” groups.

Stephen M. Misarski is serving as the English Pastor at the Chinese Gospel Church of Massachusetts in Southborough. He is in his 23rd year serving as an Massachusetts Air National Guard chaplain (Lt. Col.). He is also working on his doctor of ministry at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Matthew King was selected to receive the Secretary of Homeland Security Exceptional Service Award (Gold Medal). This is the highest award for service granted by the Secretary. The award honors exceptional leadership or service that is distinguished by achievements of unique national or international significance, reflecting genuinely exceptional service rendered to the Department by markedly improving the security of our homeland.

Matt sent me part of the citation, which I assume is declassified! It reads like the plot of a spy novel, involving Panama, Cuba, North Korea, and “the seizure of sophisticated weapons and materials aboard a North Korean-flagged merchant vessel.” It concludes: “Your work is an example to your colleagues across the Office of Policy, and a great service to our Nation. The story of this operation will be retold across our Department as a model of all that we strive to accomplish.” Bravo, and, well… thanks!

Delcy Ziac Fox is pleased to announce the opening of her business, FoxCommunications. FoxComs provides marketing and communications planning; media relations; copywriting, editing, and proofing; and development communications. Those of you who are parents or professors, please spread the word that FoxComs offers student transition services, including an interviewing workshop. Check out FoxComs.com.

Finally, comes the sad news that our classmate Dorothy Christine Ames passed away on Sept. 22, 2014, at her home in Lambertville, N.J. She leaves behind four children, three sisters, her beloved Jack Russell terrier, and the memories that those of us who knew her will cherish.

David I. Block | david.I.block@gmail.com

JOANNE godin audretsch | Berlinjo@aol.com

Welcome to the expanded version of Wes ’80 Class Notes where the more complete version of our classmates’ entries are here for you to enjoy.

John Snook writes: I have been volunteering at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York for 22 and one half years.  I had previously volunteered for over sixteen years at Lenox Hill Hospital (also in New York).  I have not kept in touch with too many classmates except Jim Burnett (also class of 1980).

Michael Shulman writes: I live in Ann Arbor, unexpected boom-town of the rust belt, with my wife and our two daughters. My wife is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, as I am. We’ve been in Ann Arbor since our meeting in grad school, except for an 8 year sojourn in Boca Raton, where we lived quite differently, grew mangoes and grapefruit, but ended up longing to return to a place where the intellect stood a better chance of growing. Since leaving Wes, I’ve stayed in touch with Becky Hayden, Todd Martin, Randy Baron, Christian Herold and Amanda Hardy. I would love to hear from Karen Murgolo, Claudia Lewis, Leda Hartman, Bradley Hess, or my COL mates from ’80 or ’81.  Paul Schwaber and I, both psychoanalysts, have been in frequent touch in the past decade, despite having lost touch for the 2 before. A most wonderful recent reunion was sitting down with Henry Abelove in NYC, where we were presenting at the same conference. Maybe pleasantest of all was hearing Henry’s account of his post-Wesleyan stints at ivy-covered schools whose students, however brilliant, preferred silent to vocal engagement.

Susan Kravit writes: I have been living in Olympia, WA since 1985.  I work as a Mental Health Counselor in my private practice specializing in treating trauma related problems, primarily with EMDR therapy.  In 2012 I married my then partner of 18 years, Kathryn. We have a 14 year old daughter.  I also raise Flat-Coated Retrievers and use them as therapy dogs in my practice.  I get together with Elizabeth Sanders (’78?) in Seattle from time to time, in fact we recently attended a Sweet Honey in the Rock concert together and were discussing our days at Wesleyan over dinner. The man at the next table came over and introduced himself and let us know he had been in Elizabeth’s class at Wesleyan!

Wendy Davis Beard writes: While still based in Sydney with our year12 daughter we travelled to New York last June to enroll Eliza in a three week summer program at Columbia University whilst in America during the summer for the first time in many years, we took the opportunity to visit family in Cape Cod and Pam Mitchell(nee Wheeler’80) in Maine which was a real treat as her husband Mark, a volunteer fireman, was able to carry me up and down the steep stairs to their beautiful sea front home. While able to climb a few steps with my quad stick, a whole flight is still a very big challenge. This past December whilst visiting my husbands’ family in London, including two older daughters and two little granddaughters, we had a lovely lunch with Peter Eisenhardt ’80 who has been based in London with his family for over thirty years! I continue to write my memoir of recovery from cancer (now complete) and from my disabling stroke, a recovery which is ongoing-and am also writing fiction. Meanwhile, Peter has written an award winning screen play.

David Hafter writes: Like many of us at this age, I am dealing with aging parents and all that goes along with it.  No reason to go into details; those of you sharing these challenges have your own stories and I have mine.  The great joy in my life is playing with my band, Wealth of Nations.  Some of you may remember the original line up at Wesleyan: James Marcus, Kathy Bergeron, Vic Tredwell and myself. I have resurrected the name and Wealth now plays shows in and around the Davis/Sacramento area.  This is tremendous fun for me and serves as a tonic to the stresses of daily life. We play my originals, favorite covers and a fair amount of Grateful Dead.  For a Deadhead like myself, the fun in playing this music and watching people dance joyously to it cannot be overstated…

Andrew McKenna writes: Jacquie and I continue to raise two very bright and talented girls who are now in middle school and bringing home new challenges daily.  Over the past 2 years, Jacquie had taken advantage of some of the contacts we made while living in South Africa for 7 months in 2012, and has now started importing and selling some of the beaded animals and other African artwork we found so appealing while we were over there.  See www.zimbu.us  Jacquie is also consulting with GFA in Hamburg on a project in India supporting the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency in their efforts to put a German provided line of credit facility to work in the Indian markets for renewable energy.  I’m still running Bella Energy as well in our efforts to developing, financing, and installing commercial and utility scale Photovoltaic projects, mostly for third party owners who sell the energy to non-profit entities.  Our current projects are located in California, Colorado, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York State, and Maryland, so it would seem we’ve become a nationwide business.  www.bellaenergy.com I’m also scheduled this coming June to return to Nikumaroro in the Phoenix Islands as a team member of the TIGHAR Amelia Earhart Expedition, continuing our investigation into the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan.  This time we intend to deploy a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) down to 620 ft to examine an anomaly in the sonar survey that was completed in 2012, as well as survey by SCUBA parts of the reef downhill from an object photographed on the reef flat in 1937.  Should be a great adventure!  Keep your fingers crossed, if we find what we’re looking for, it will be big news.  see  www.tighar.org

Gary Gilyard writes:

I was so sorry to hear about Julia Wu. I will always remember her smiling, and full of energy…..so sad. My wife Linda and I just returned from taking our youngest Shelby W16 back to school yesterday. She is a Biology major and plays Lacrosse for Wesleyan. So far she has lived exactly where I lived when I was a student. This year is William Street. I always love to be back at Wes. She is our youngest, the middle daughter just got married 6 months ago and lives in Phoenix (hopefully temporarily), and the oldest is in Chicago. I can’t believe this will be our 35th reunion it really doesn’t feel like that long, but neither did my 30th wedding anniversary this past May. We will be back for homecoming as well as the reunion! My practice is going well. I am an Orthopedic Surgeon at the Detroit Medical Center specializing in Sports Medicine. I love what I do and am not even beginning to think about slowing down. My wife is a NICU nurse at the University of Michigan.  I’m really looking forward to seeing as many classmates as possible this May.

Pam Keon writes:

Thanks for sharing the very sad news about Tag.  She touched so many lives in too short a time.  My life is full.  Although I’ve not had many opportunities to see Wes friends over the years, I was very lucky to reconnect recently with wonderful Lisa Kaufman, who I’d not seen since graduation day.  Over an all too brief lunch here in Mill Valley, sitting by the water in the company of her lovely husband Peter, we attempted to catch up on the past 34 years.  It was an impossible but delightful task.

I am in the throes of trying to batten down the hatches as I head off in a few days for our first family vacation in 13 years!  My son Will and my daughter Mollie and I are meeting in Ecuador to visit the Galapagos – a trip of a lifetime for us.  Mollie just earned her undergraduate degree from Emerson, and Will just earned his graduate degree from Harvard, so it’s an unusual moment in time when everyone is in transition and not fully tied down by vocational obligations.

In order to keep my “day job” from being all-consuming, I spend my time doing a range of other things that gratify me.  I sing in a women’s chorus, which is going to Rome in March to sing a mass at the Vatican.  Inspired by the photo documentation of Scott Phillips’s exploits I have committed to take golf lessons for the first time – other than that one-quarter PE class I took at WES for an easy credit.  (What made it particularly “easy” is that I think I only attended twice but still passed!)  I’m on the board of the local historical society, working with the City to develop a historical preservation ordinance.  As a volunteer at the library, I have been developing a database of local historical structures, and also coordinate donations and acquisitions for the history room.  When I can, I volunteer as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for children who are dependents of the court.  I feel very lucky to live in such a beautiful area, and my two Australian Shepherds are eager hiking companions.

I am definitely experiencing the “sandwich generation,” as I am responsible for my demented father while sending encouragement to my children as they take wing.  I also spend a great deal of time helping one of my sisters who just became the single parent of twins, and thoroughly enjoy being able to indulge in holding babies without all the responsibilities that accompany parenting young children.

Having recently had my 56th birthday, I’m beginning to suspect that there are certain things that may not actually happen in my life.  There’s a strong possibility that I will not become a fighter pilot, a premiere ballerina, or a US ambassador.  As I look around however, I’m content with what I have done and feel blessed by each day that comes.

Alan Jacobs writes:

Recently, I did the math and realized that I would have two kids in college for seven consecutive years. Apparently, we forgot to do that math when we were starting a family. Gil is graduating this year from Brandeis, Ron is a junior at Wesleyan, Avia is a senior in high school, being recruited/pushed by her dad to play soccer somewhere in the northeast next fall, and Guy is a freshman in high school.   I’m having a great time in the entertainment business here in Los Angeles. I’ve had the good fortune to work with many talented and inspiring people and though my heart will always be in New York, it’s been a great place to raise kids and make movies.  Along the way, my company has provided summer internships to over a dozen Wesleyan students, most recently Ming Zhu ’15, Zoe Broad ’14 and Jenna Robbins ’13.

Scott Hecker writes:

Greetings from San Diego, which has now been home for over 10 years for me and my family (wife Gail, daughter Claire (13) and son Niall (11).  Twenty years after leaving my cushy job at Pfizer to join the crazy world of biotech start-ups, and after twice experiencing the high of going public only to be dashed by seeing the stock price go through the floor, I finally have a modicum of success to report.  My latest company, Rempex Pharmaceuticals, was acquired in December 2013 by The Medicines Company (headquartered in New Jersey).  We have discovered and are developing a new antibiotic to deal with those nasty bacteria in hospitals that you keep hearing about.  And, unlike most biotech acquisitions, we all still have our jobs! We spent a few days in New York this summer, and one of the highlights was seeing The Lion King on Broadway, with Robert Levin (’82 I think) performing one of the feature drum parts.  Hoping that Wesleyan will invite Urban Renewal back to play at reunion/commencement in 2015 or 2016!

Al Spohn writes:

I’m into year 24 of doing IT at the Mayo Clinic.  Married with kids aged 2,6 and 8… I’ve essentially become the grandfather that can’t run away. Not much else to report.  Oh, I also accepted an adjunct faculty position at the Minnesota College of Art and Design this fall.

Jenny Anne Horst-Martz writes:

I am living and working in Philadelphia, where I am a project manager at a law firm.  My husband of more than twenty years is a teacher at a Friends school, and we have two kids.  My daughter, Emma, is off to Connecticut College, where Katherine Bergeron ’80 – a fellow Catholic feminist of the Fr. Charlie Gonzalez era – is the new college president.  It was great to see Katherine again at move-in day, and to hear that Brad Moss ’80 is also sending his son to Connecticut College this year. Some of you may not be aware that Connecticut College for Women was founded in 1911 when Wes kicked the women out.  Now, both schools are coed with similar missions, but I’ll tell you, the campus at Connecticut College is even more beautiful than Wesleyan, and it retains a good deal of spunk from its origins, embracing the dromedary as its mascot.  Go Camels! I remain in touch with the French House gang, including Ina Shea, Ken MacElwain, Tak Tamagawa, Sarah (Shull) Peterson, and Doron Henkin, and with Marty Saggese.  I live around the corner from Deb Lipschutz.  My primary care doctor attended Wes, too, and Chris Satullo and Jane Eisner have been fixtures in Philadelphia journalism and nonprofits for years.  I always say that it might be six degrees of separation in New York, but in Philadelphia, it’s one.

Susan Tietjen writes:

As I think this is the first and only time I have submitted notes, I will provide a brief timeline of my past 35 years. (Boy, was that scary to write!)

After graduation, one year in NYC as paralegal with Davis, Polk & Wardwell. Then, one year studying in Marburg, Germany on a Rotary Scholarship. Then, University of Michigan Law School, J.D. ’85. One year of studies in Hamburg, Germany. Six years practicing corporate law with Shearman & Sterling in NYC. Moved to Prague, Czech Republic in 1992 and lived there until 2003. Practiced law there with Altheimer & Gray for five years, then with Weil, Gotshal & Manges for five years. Met my husband, Bob Votel, a fellow American, there and married in 2001. In 2003, we adopted identical infant twin boys, Nikolas and Gabriel. They are of Roma descent and are now 12. At the end of 2003, we moved to Minneapolis, where I have been a SAHM (stay-at-home mom) ever since, except for 2007-2010, when I was a SAHM in Hong Kong. Now, back in Minneapolis and managing hockey practice, baseball practice, soccer practice, music lessons, Boy Scouts and various therapies for my boys.

KIMBERLY OFRIA SELBY | kim_selby@yahoo.com

Jonathan reports on the 25th Reunion:

We kick off the 25th Reunion report with a big thank you to Phoebe Boyer, our class representative, and our entire Reunion committee, without whom this weekend would not have been the great success it was. It was great to see her and her husband, Todd Snyder ’84, at all the events and making sure everyone was well-outfitted with their drawstring bags.

Like many others, my weekend started sitting in traffic along I-95. Poor David Milch had to spend 90 minutes in the Stamford train station waiting for me, but after I picked him up, the next 90 minutes of traffic was an opportunity to hear about his delicious daughter and his work as program coordinator for Wesleyan’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance.

Thankfully, the traffic was a distant memory by the time we made it to WesWings, with 100 or so classmates, for a gathering graciously hosted by Ed Thorndike. Thank you, Ed; I can’t wait to get my family up there to sample the tasty-looking menu.

Some observations from that event include: Dina Goldman is working in film in New York, and raising her son with her longtime boyfriend. David Williams brought the entire family along—wife and three children—all of them seemed to be enjoying themselves almost as much as David, who had a big smile on his face all weekend. Andy Nakahata and I reminisced about the importance of family and how the memory of a small event can be enduring. Norm Beaulieu shared with me the truly inspiring economic and community development work he is doing in Africa through his organization, Villagecorps. Norm also extolled the beauty of the Maine coast, a sentiment shared by Cecilia Johnson Guecia, who recently moved there. Indy Neidell had come with his lovely girlfriend from Sweden, where he has been living for many years now. He also clued me in on an upcoming album he’s releasing with his band, the Southside Stalkers. I also learned that night that Jennifer Levine continues to make LA her home base while she “traffics in storytelling.”

After things wound down, a good crowd made its way over to the ’92 Theater to enjoy a concert headlined by our very own Dave Keller. Later, back at the bucolic Rocky Hill Sheraton, Hellura Lyle and I closed the hotel bar (outlasting a raucous wedding party) by waxing nostalgic about living and growing up in New York City. I also want to thank Hellura for introducing to me to Allison Downer—how did we not meet earlier?

Saturday started with the requisite pilgrimage to O’Rourkes. Julia Randall Brock joined us after a brisk four-hour drive from her new home near her old home in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. She recently relocated there from Vermont with her husband, son, and daughter, and is now providing OB/GYN services to medically underserved communities.

After we wrapped up our high-calorie meal, we turned our table over to Stephanie Dolgoff, Michele Chase, Susan Paley, and Jennifer Levine. Stephanie is navigating raising twin girls in New York City; Michele recently moved from Seattle back to the Bay Area; and Sue has been very involved in building Beats Audio to be the hot brand it is today.

Making our way over to Foss Hill, we found the 1989 contingent to be in full force.

Katy Storms regaled Kelem Butts and me with her tales of gum smuggling in Singapore, where she lived for two years with her husband (in the US Navy) and their three sons. They are now in the DC area, where Katy also teaches writing instruction in the military. Kellem is in Dallas, Texas, with his girlfriend of 19 years, and recently started a new job with a foundation that funds drop-out prevention programs nationwide. Jason Weinberg and I reminisced at length about the number of Stuyvesant HS folks who also went to Wesleyan. He’s back in the City now after many years in LA, so I’m looking forward to meeting his beau and their twin sons. Oona Metz was down from Cambridge, Mass., where she’s living with her wife and their daughters. Alex Aron was up from Brooklyn, N.Y., where she lives only blocks away with her husband and their three kids. She drove up with my old housemate Arthur Halpern, who was sharing photos of his son that he is raising with his partner in Brooklyn. Kate True and I also swapped stories about being parents of daughters who are rising seniors considering Wesleyan.

No sunny afternoon on Foss Hill is complete without tossing a Frisbee. For this, I was fortunate that former Nietzsche Factor buddies Phineas Baxandall, Rob Featherstone, and Chris Zurn were present. Rob is a cinematographer in Beacon, N.Y., where he lives with his wife and their 8-year-old daughter, who already knows she wants to be a veterinarian. Phineas Baxandall is in Cambridge, Mass., with his son and daughter, who, coincidentally, also wants to be a veterinarian. Chris is also in Cambridge, raising his son. Not sure about his future career plans.

As the shadows lengthened across Andrus Field, there were moments when it felt like the day would just last forever. But eventually, like our time at Wes, it was time to move on.

The next stop was Beckham Hall (née Fayerweather) for our class dinner. Ethan Vesley-Flad led us in a beautiful moment of silence to remember our fellow classmates who have passed away. Then David Milch and Michele Barnwell were recognized for their service to our class over the years. Extra shout out to Michele who, as senior class secretary, has been a pillar of support and a fountain of energy helping this rookie get up to secretarial speed.

Formalities having been dispensed with, our class got down to some serious chatter, drinking, and eating. Well, it would have been serious if Leeeza Robbins’ daughter had not been keeping everyone entertained working the room with her knock-knock jokes, and generally charming the crowd. Her primary instigators for this activity were Josh Sirefman and Natalie Dorset. Leeeza, with these two guiding your daughter, her fortune is assured. Garry Schumacher was fresh from a concert earlier in the day that featured, among other pieces, a woman rubbing a balloon against her arm to create sound—er, music. Ah, Wesleyan. Around this time, I finally got to thank Dar Williams in person for raising my cool level significantly in my adolescent daughter’s eyes. I also spotted Matt Coan, Jim Lukowski, Mike Charlton, and others, chatting with their old football coach, Mike Whalen ’83.

When the dinner finally ended—read: “free bar closed”—the troops made their way to the large tent for the all-campus “end of the world as we know it” party. Oh, those poor graduates, if they only knew how true that statement is….

Words fail me here—best google “Class of ’89 Dance Moves” on YouTube instead.

For me, the evening wrapped up with a visit to the falafel truck alongside Alpha Delt, where David Milch, Adam Long, Sandeep Wadhwa, and John Hlinko waxed incoherent and giddily about the weekend.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten more people and conversations than I’ve listed here. My apologies for the oversights and inaccuracies. At least, you got me on the south side of 50—by our next Reunion you’ll be lucky if I remember anything at all.

See you at the 30th, everyone. Book now.—JF

Michele adds: So glad Jonathan wrote everything down as it was happening around him. I, on the other hand, remember nothing and should be chewing on ginkgo biloba like it’s a pack of Skittles. No.Memory.What.So.Ever. It’s getting bad y’all. Good news is I do remember some things. Like feeling that everyone looked so doggone great and I had so much fun! So awesome to see sir George Cabrera! Nice to chat up Clarence Williams at WesWings. Nice to grab photo ops here and there ,too—especially with a good handful of my beautiful and accomplished frosh hallmates including Lynn Alberding. Got to see Reggie Jenkins (and his adorable offspring)—he’s still good ole Reg’! It was fun to catch up and break bread with my former fellow Intown inmate, Laura Flaxman. Laura and I were roomies for the weekend. She is doing very well back in Cali. Had great conversation with the ever-so-lovely Amy Randall. Got to see Stu Berman at Reunion and post-reunion in LA for dinner. Nice to catch up with my fellow Foss Hill-er. There were so many more faces and it was great seeing every last one. P.S. A warm loving but real side-eye to Melinda Weekes, Jacqueline Wheeler Lee, Denise Hill, and Marilyn Selena Davis, too! My girls, whom I missed seeing.

There is no perfect segue here…On a sad note, our classmate Anthony “Tony” Stephenson passed away and we received a most moving e-mail from our classmate Kevin Majewski about him: “Tony became a close friend during college. Although it became less frequent as the years passed, I always looked forward to hearing from him since graduation. Tony was a skilled writer, and it was through his writing that I was able to enjoy the sharp wit and self-deprecating humor which he was known for at Wesleyan. He was a talented athlete, competing for both the Wesleyan football and baseball teams. He could often be found shooting baskets in the gym when he was not at a formal team practice. Tony was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity, and an accomplished history major. He always carried with him a unique perspective and sly grin which I will miss dearly. We can all be appreciative of the experiences we shared with Tony, and never forget our classmate who brought joy to many of us.” Well said, Kevin.

And again, there’s no perfect segue here… Sincerely hope to hear from those not mentioned here already. It would be great to send us a shout and let us know you’re doing all right. Be well, y’all—MB

jonathan fried | jonathan.l.fried@gmail.com 

MICHELE BARNWELL | fishtank_michele@yahoo.com

Peter writes for this issue.

Kellina (Kelli) Craig-Henderson reports: “I am currently representing the U.S. National Science Foundation in Asia, specifically Japan. I will be here for the next year or two, and I would welcome hearing from any classmates or Wesleyan alum traveling through or residing in Japan.”

Steve Almond shares: “We are now a family of five, having welcomed Rosalie Almond to the world last June. Older sis Josie (8) and brother Judah (5) are thrilled. Wife Erin ’99 is tired but heroic. We’re living in a shoe outside Boston and welcome all visitors brave enough to enter. This fall, just in time for the NFL opener, my new book, Against Football, will come out. It’s a short, sharp manifesto about the medical, economic, and moral dangers of America’s favorite sport. And it pretty much guarantees that I’ll be slaughtered by the world’s hard-core jocks, perhaps live on ESPN.”

Matthew Palmer advises: “My first novel, The American Mission, was published by Putnam/Random House at the end of June. The reviews have been pretty good, but publishing is a brutal business. I think I’ll keep my day job. Speaking of which, we will soon be moving back to DC from Belgrade after (another) three years in the Balkans. I’ll be taking over the Multilateral Affairs office in the State Department’s East Asia bureau. That includes responsibility for the South China Sea, which is pretty hot right now. Look forward to seeing all of our Wes friends in DC and New York.”

Daniel Rosenberg and Mai-Lin Cheng welcomed their second child, Beatrice, on Feb. 8, 2014. Daniel is on leave from the University of Oregon for a residential fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin in the fall.

Ben Junge continues to teach anthropology at SUNY–New Paltz, doing research on citizenship and urban life in Brazil and HIV/AIDS here in the U.S. He stays in touch with Schuyler Frautschi, who’s busy being a daddy to a sweet newborn boy and with Laura Thomas, who is basically the mayor of San Francisco as far as he can tell.

Jenifer McKim started a new job as assistant managing editor and senior reporter at the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news center based out of WGBH TV/radio and Boston University. She is teaching, writing, and editing and loving the new venture into nonprofit journalism.

Carol Gray shares: “I just finished a Fulbright Scholarship at Concordia University’s Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability in Montreal, Canada. I loved living in Montreal with my husband, Jeff ,and my son, Cameron, age 9, who was in a French school for the year and came away from the experience speaking French. My Fulbright project is based on an oral history I did of an Egyptian human rights organization when I was living in Cairo in 2010-2011, having moved to Cairo with my family as Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar. While in Montreal, I ran an internship program for 50+ students. My family and I have now moved back to our home in Amherst, Mass., and I’m writing a book about the Egyptian human rights organization. The tentative title is Human Rights from the Courts to the Square: A History of Egypt’s Hisham Mubarak Law Center.”

Majora Carter has launched a new social enterprise called: StartUp Box #SouthBronx (sbsq.org). The purpose is to locate jobs and economic activity related to NYC’s tech boom within under-performing communities—starting with entry-level jobs in software testing in the Games Industry, jobs that are often off-shored. Majora is urban on-shoring, generating revenue, and expanding the talent pool for one of America’s fastest growing economic sectors. “The project is incubated under a nonprofit called Hometown Security Labs, and we welcome your contributions at sbsq.org.”

Dave Silverberg writes in from Ohio: “I’m now director of the Telego Center for Educational Improvement, which is based out of Ashland University, Ohio, and provides outreach to K–12 schools across the country and abroad. I currently have a book out, called 10 Models of Teacher Evaluation and have begun work on a follow-up book called 10 International Models of Teacher Evaluation (it’s due out 2015). Stephanie and I live in Cleveland and we have two kids, Cal (7) and Tessa (5).”

Amy Tai advises: “I have recently become an abolitionist in the stop-porn-culture movement which has everything to do with modern day slavery and a multibillion dollar porn industry that is using the Internet as the selling block for millions of women and children, and some men and boys as well. I am currently educating myself on the issues. When I am not doing this work, I am ‘raising’ my 8-year-old son (although sometimes I think I am learning far more than he!), homeschooling him and teaching Suzuki violin at the Suzuki School of Newton, and teaching and leading in the Re-evaluation Counseling Community, an international peer counseling community that is committed to reclaiming our intelligence through the healing of past hurts.”

Meanwhile, my wife, Zahra, and I (PVSB) have relocated from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Providence, R.I., where I am now developing loyalty and personalization strategies at CVS/Caremark with the Extra Care program. While walking the campus at Providence College, where my wife is working, we ran into Greg Waldron, who is the SVP of institutional advancement. Jim Maynard reached out to me during our first week in Rhode Island to suggest a mini ’88ers reunion. We are looking forward to reconnecting with our New England family and friends.

PETER v.s. BOND | 007@pvsb.org 

Hillary Ross | hrossdance@yahoo.com

Let’s begin with happy news from Ira Skolnik. “In April my wife and I attended the wedding of Steven Meyer ’86, where I was the best man.  Steve is an attorney in Boca Raton, Florida, where the wedding was held at the Polo Club.  Steve married Julia Maskivker, who is a professor of government at Rollins College in Florida.  She has both brains and beauty and has finally made an “honest man” out of our boy Steve!  Also at the wedding was Chris Pearson ’86 and his entire family, who flew in all the way from California to celebrate with Steve and Julia.  The weather was perfect, as was the celebration.”

Nancy (Dobrow) Bean has “Wes on the mind as some of my daughter’s friends and my niece (Sarah Dobrow-class of 2018) head off to Middletown this Fall!   Her dad, Marty Dobrow, was class of 83!  Crazy to watch my 19-year-old daughter Maddi going off to her sophomore year in college (Simmons), how long ago was it that I was packing up for my Sophomore year at Wes – a long time ago. We are ending a long and eventful summer on Nantucket.  I commuted to my Boston office mid-week and worked remotely as much as possible.  My husband Mike was out on weekends. Summer was filled with kayaking, biking, adventures and Jules (16) and I competed in our first triathlon. We are still alive and we FINISHED – that was the goal!  I am loving work – producing the Nantucket Wine Festival and The James Beard Foundation Taste America Tour along with some other fun food and wine events – very fulfilling, learning new things always!  I am heading to Paris and Bordeaux for work this September – someday I will live there halftime.  So family is great, work is great – and I am surrounded by a lot of people who are very passionate about what they do!

Alisa Kwitney is writing freelance for DC entertainment and starting a new job teaching part time at Kildonan, a middle and high school for students with dyslexia. I’m also going to be teaching McDaniel’s online romance writing certificate program, starting in January.

Kelly Washburn started a job in Development and Membership at Romemu, a synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “I’m back in the city after a year living in Woodstock, and would love to be in touch with local Wes alums.”

Kim Sargent-Wishart is “full-steam-ahead trying to finish my PhD by the end of the year. Then in January we’re moving a few hours west of Melbourne to Warrnambool, a smaller city on the coast (known for the annual spawning migration of the Southern Right Whales, among other things). It will be hard in many ways to leave the bright lights of the city but I think the fresh ocean air will more than make up for it, plus space for growing boys to run around – and for old friends to come and visit!”

David Abramson is “in my 13th year at the State Department, my 9th working as a Central Asia analyst (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan), keeping my Russian skills alive.  I try to keep one foot in the academic world, publishing and teaching the occasional anthropology course at Georgetown University.  I recently returned from a vacation in Maine with my family.  En route I visited Skip Lockhart and Jessica Miller in Needham, MA.  In June, John Gould ’86 and Becky Riccio ’87 and their two boys visited us in DC.  My wife, Kelly Hand published a novel, “Au Pair Report,” last year, which is available via Amazon, etc.”

After 17 years teaching in the Drama Department in the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, Cobina Gillitt has accepted a new position as Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance in the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Purchase College, SUNY starting fall 2014. Cobina is also currently the dramaturg for a chilling new original horror opera by Elizabeth Swados about a Golem created by Rabbi Loew in 16th century Prague to protect the inhabitants of the Jewish ghetto during the “blood libel” when Jews were being accused of using the blood of Christian children to bake their Passover matzos. The opera will premiere in NYC in February 2015.

Stafford Smith received tenure as a professor of photography at Grand Valley State University this spring. He’s also writing a paper about how photographs really do steal our souls.

Ian Rosen and his wife, Sagra, continue to thrive “completing our 18th year in London, with our daughters Isabel (13) and Olivia (6).  We spent a wonderful summer holiday in Spain and are planning more travels in the coming months. I continue to work in the sustainability sector, overseeing investments in renewable energy projects. Of our classmates, I remain in closest contact with Vitaly Fiks who lives in Connecticut with his wife and daughter.

Wendy Blum wrote in to report that Debby Hamilton (a holistic pediatrician in CO) published a book, Preventing Autism and ADHD. Wendy “sees Dave Cole when he comes to Brooklyn in the spring to compete in the NYTimes Crossword Puzzle conference (6 of em in 2 days!). He now lives in Chicago.”

Scott Pryce has moved back to the US after 20 years in Europe and South America.  He and his family, living in the US for the first time, are in the DC area enjoying American culture and family.  Scott has moved back to found and head a US real estate business.

Amy Stahl met her husband, Bill Hulley, in graduate school at Naropa University in Boulder. “Finally escaping Boulder in 2010, we are thrilled to have landed in magically green Portland (OR), right across the street from Dana Buhl ’88.   I serve as the director and teacher for Dharma Ocean Portland, and was ordained this summer as a Chaplain in that Tibetan Buddhist lineage.  My Dharma Ocean siblings include Andrew Merz ’99 and Douglas Goetsch ’85 — we just spent three weeks together in Crestone, Colorado at The Blazing Mountain Retreat Center.  I provided the (almost 30) flower arrangements for the duration of the retreat, since I have studied Sogetsu Ikebana (Japanese floral arrangement) for about four years.  I had the pleasure of spending yesterday with Pierre Hecker ’88 and his wife, Julianne, who were in town from Northfield, Minnesota.  We celebrated our 30th anniversary as friends, having met at the orientation square dance on Andrus field in 1984!

Muzzy Rosenblatt “was in M’town briefly for 25th reunion of my RA hall. Dinner with Alex McClennan Dohan  and David Dohan, Jim Levine, Claire and Scott Burns; great fun. None have strayed from Wes, physically or spiritually. Sunday was chucking the disk on Foss Hill with Ethan Flad and Alan Cohen (and Alan’s N-Factor to be son), joined at brunch by Laura Flaxman. And then a truly inspiring, must-read speech by Ted Shaw on civil rights, freedom and equality, and the critical role of liberal education and Wes. My life is good and work rewarding, and it helps to have Wes well represented on my board, with Julia Hodgson the newest member, joining Andrew Goffe, Todd Snyder and Richard Swanson. And speaking of Boards, I am truly honored and thrilled that so many of you elected me to serve as alumni trustee. I’m cramming for my first meeting, and have to say it kind of feels like being a freshman all over again. Wonder if our orientation will include a lap-sit of all the trustees on Andrus Field.”

This year Robert Norden received the National Historic Preservation award from The National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, a citation from the Bergen County historical society for 25 years of living history, and the Rockland County Historical Society’s award for preservation and stewardship of a national landmark. “I can’t believe it has been 25 years since I restored Americas oldest tavern…. come visit!”

Clarinda Mac Low just completed a Master of Fine Arts in Digital and Interdisciplinary Art Practice from The City College of New York-CUNY. “Yes, after 25 years as a professional art-maker, in several fields, I finally got an advanced degree! I am also getting married, to Peter Stankiewicz, whom I met through two of my best Wes friends, Chris Lotspeich ‘88 and Dan Sharp ‘88. After a few decades of dancing around each other, Peter and I became an item in 2006, and now we’re making it official. Chris is raising two great girls with his wife, Amy Dunn, and doing excellent work on micro-grids with Celtic Energy.  Dan has a successful practice as a psychiatrist, in Manhattan and White Plains. I was lucky enough to see Evelyn Shapiro and her beautiful son recently and briefly in NYC, and I’ve been skyping every once in a while with Kim Sargent-Wishart. I also had a nice long chat with Mark Sussman ’86 recently while we trekked across Brooklyn. He lives, teaches, and performs in Montreal and Brooklyn with his wife and two rambunctious sons. My organization, Culture Push (which I started with Aki Sasamoto ‘04 and Arturo Vidich ‘03, has been doing well. Our mission of cross-sector conversation and civically engaged art practice is very Wes, I’d say, and I continue to have contact with recent Wes grads through our internship program. I also see a lot of Lydia Bell ‘07, and other Wes folk scattered across the graduating decades. The Wes mafia is alive and well in my life, thank goodness.

Liza Smith is “on sabbatical and will be road tripping from California to Maine to visit family and friends, eat lobster, see the leaves turn, and acquire a puppy. After crossing the country again, I will be moving to Portland, OR for 9 months–because I can! (My sabbatical project has to do with online teaching.)”

Eric Lotke has a new novel out, Making-Manna. Read all about it (and him) at www.making-manna.com.

Kevin Pratt is living in Corte Madera, Ca with my Brazilian wife of 10 years, our 5-year-old daughter, Gabriella, and our 3-month-old foster baby!  We live about 10 minutes away from Catherine Schram ’89. I was in New York in April and stayed with Shawn Cuddy ’86 and James Hallett ’86, saw Cobina Gillet and Maureen McSherry ’87, and my dear friends Vashti Dubois ’92, Ian Friday ’87, and Tim Raphael ’84. I work in the family real estate business by day, and write screenplays and play music at night.  My fantasy is that I’ll return to the stage as Daddy Warbucks with my daughter playing Annie…Wes folks always welcome here in Marin!

Amanda Jacobs Wolf |wolfabj@gmail.com

From the Secretary: Congratulations to all who are now 50. My end-of-summer e-mail request for class updates included a prompt: What are you doing in the arts? Here are some updates.

Arts aren’t only found in NYC. Emily Cowan is in northern New Hampshire, where she “has to work a little harder to enjoy the arts, but they are there … I’ve attended poetry classes at The Frost Place, gone to poetry readings by state and national laureates and performances of Klezmer, Scottish, Acadian and Celtic music.” Last winter was a dinner soirée focused on a book by the late Wes ethics professor Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, which is about a small town in France whose Protestant residents sheltered hundreds of Jews during WWII.

Hallie also influenced Dana Goldstein. Her new play, Daughters of the Sexual Revolution, is dedicated to him and will be performed this fall in NYC. Dealing with ethics and sexual politics in the 1970s, a fair amount of the play takes place at “a small, liberal arts college in Connecticut.” There’s also her musical, Liberty, which opens in October. It imagines that the Statue of Liberty herself was an unwanted immigrant who arrived at a time of recession and anti-immigrant sentiment, and was almost deported by the conservatives of the time—which is all true.

Julia Lee Barclay-Morton swerved into writing prose after many years creating theater. This summer she wrote a book about her grandmothers and the Stockholm Review of Literature published her short story “The God Thing.” She is also involved with works associated with the Indie Theater Now’s reading series, featuring Wes classmate Shawn Cuddy. Julia had updates about Spencer Reece ’85 (saw him read his amazing new book of poetry, The Road to Emmaus), Cobina Gillitt ’87 (who just got a professorship at SUNY–Purchase, hooray!), and saw Mark Sussman ’85 in Montreal (when her husband was getting his green card!), and Glenn Mitchell ’84 (a neighbor in Inwood who was her frosh hallmate). “All together, my life is forever and always enhanced by the friendships made at Wes. Grateful beyond measure for that.”

Speaking of frosh hallmates and NYC, Lucy Malatesta and Sarah Tilly and their Foss-2 hallmate Ellen Limburg Santistevan walked The High Line Park this summer when Ellen was visiting them from New Mexico. Lucy joined a community chorus, Concord Singers, in 1995; it’s a non-auditioning women’s chorus that tackles great music at a high level. Ellen’s news is that a piece of her art is in the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe through May 2015. “It is a really overwhelming experience to see one of my paintings, which I fully expected to be on the wall in someone’s living room, instead lovingly curated and installed in an international museum.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus says her involvement in the arts has been a bit surreal. “My daughter, Bex, was just cast as a lead in MTV’s adaptation of Scream. My role is to manage the ‘team’ of experts who are representing Bex—and let’s just say this Southern mama managing Hollywood is never dull. Special thanks goes to David Kohan for talking me off the ledge the first year!”

Dan Seltzer writes, “I miss playing music and am trying to get back to it, including jamming with Peter Durwood recently and feeling a bit of the old magic… mostly I just appreciate the opportunity to wake up and seize what the day offers, orient to the love in the people around me, and try to keep my body in one piece while biking around the city.”

Dana Walcott’s creative impulses have been building: houses, custom cabinetry, recording studios, and electronic equipment for audio recording. “Everything I build involves art. Many people can build things. But can they also make it look good? Well, I can. That’s what makes it art. Science is science. But making science look good is an art. So I may not be involved in the formal arts, but everything I do involves art because I create beautiful things. You should see my new kitchen.”

Ever since Wesleyan “seduced” him into a career in the arts, John Jordan has been involved with dance. He teaches dance history, dance philosophy, and introduction to dance at Cal State Fresno, and serves on the board of directors for the Rogue Festival. “I have trouble imagining what my life would have been like without WesDance and the encouragement to ‘follow my bliss’ (except that I’d probably be making more money).”

Some Short Blurbs: Sarah Flanders: “I took art classes and studied art history at Wesleyan but dropped it for many years. In recent years I have taken some ceramics classes and started drawing and painting again.” Steven Cohen: “In terms of the arts, I do photography and just got back from my first trip to Korea where I took a bunch of photos. I’m still living in my hometown of NYC and still at the same job for over 23 years.”

Debbie Alter-Starr: “For the last several years I’ve been coordinating a bilingual community network called Somos Napa and co-coordinating the Napa Valley Latino Heritage Month.” In nearby San Francisco, Bill Greene, as part of his “midlife crisis,” accepted a board seat at the Museum of Performance and Design. Edie Cherkas Ellin says, “Kristen Hoyt and I took a class in hand quilting in the mid-1990s and I have been at it ever since. Just an enjoyable hobby with lots of baby quilts, chuppahs, and a few large bed quilts resulting over the years.” George Justice: “I have found myself working much more closely with the arts than in the past, having taken on the role of associate vice president for humanities and arts at Arizona State University… I’ve enjoyed getting to know brilliant visual arts, performing artists, and designers.” Eric Heinze: “I’ve been involved in the arts in the sense of writing (and teaching) about problems of law and justice in drama from the late 16th through to the 18th centuries (Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, Schiller…).” Ayelet Waldman: “For the past 20 years or so I’ve earned my living as a writer, primarily of fiction. My new novel, Love & Treasure, was published this past spring.”

Scott Michaud: “I’m now managing the strategic and executive communications for the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center. ECBC is the organization that has just completed the historic shipboard destruction of the Syrian chemical weapons that’s been in the news all summer, so it’s an exciting time to be here managing our story. Twenty-seven years of speechwriting and it’s still something that I love!” Andrea Wojnar-Diagne was appointed in March to be the UNFPA Resident Representative for Senegal. “I am thrilled to be working for a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, and every young person’s potential is reached —such exciting issues to be working on given the demographics of most of the world’s developing countries—rapid population growth and enormous youth bulges of under 25s. Happy 50th!”

With us turning 50, many classmates have aging parents, and this update from Helen Miller Tarleton was special: “I spent time this summer with my father who has, during the past five years, acquired Parkensonian features. He expressed that this has robbed him of his sense of creativity. So, we spent a week in a pottery studio together hand-throwing and working on the wheel. It was a new experience for me, too. In the afternoons, we played his hammer dulcimer together. He hadn’t played in years and is currently able to remember the sequencing for the first six notes of the song we played. In spite of those limitations, just playing the six notes was perfect. Thanks to my experiences in the West African drumming classes at Wesleyan, I was perfectly happy using a call and response. And, in part, thanks to my experiences in West College, I was perfectly happy repeating those notes over and over again, hypnotized by the sound of the dulcimer strings. Getting to do this with my dad was the best way I can imagine being involved in the arts this year.”

Eric Howard | ehoward86@gmail.com

Mary Beth writing this time:

With profound sadness I share the news that our brilliant and accomplished classmate Seth Teller passed away on July 1, 2014. Seth was a faculty member in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and led the Robotics, Vision, and Sensor Networks group in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Seth’s PhD was earned at University of California, Berkeley, and he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Computer Science Institute of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Princeton University’s Computer Science Department. He is survived by his wife, Rachel Zimmerman, and two daughters, Sophia and Julia. I have a wonderful memory of Seth when he greeted me on Foss Hill at our 25th Reunion; his warm, sweet smile made me feel 20 years old again. Even in the rush of the 25-year-catch-up-convo, he listened deeply, and encouraged my support of my oldest child’s music study, sharing the observation that his best students at MIT were musicians; he also warmly invited us to visit his lab. That quick little conversation on Foss Hill had a big impact, and I know there are many in our era at Wesleyan who feel profoundly effected by Seth’s friendship, and share a deep loss with his family.

Nancy Velez, who was a Better Chance Scholar via The Spence School, currently lives in the Bronx. She taught fifth-grade bilingual classes at a South Bronx public school for five years. Nancy then joined Thirteen/WNET, PBS’s flagship station, for six years, where she managed their tri-state area and national PBS technology/teacher training conferences. After Thirteen/WNET, Nancy worked at ThinkQuest/Advanced Network & Services, an internet company, where she was assistant director of national and international partnerships. She has presented at many technology conferences within the U.S. and abroad. At Prep for Prep, as director of leadership development projects, she managed their largest educational initiative called Aspects of Leadership. Nancy worked at Sarah Lawrence College in their fund-raising department. She currently is the senior director of major gifts at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Nancy began singing in high school and was a gospel soloist at Wesleyan. She is a two-time Apollo amateur night winner and has performed in two Spanish operas in New York City. Nancy has performed throughout the New York area in musical theatre productions, shows, and as a background vocalist for different composers. She has also studied and lived in Colombia and Madrid, Spain.

John B. Clutterbuck, a partner at Andrews Kurth, LLP, in Houston, writes, “Got married, had two kids, now have just finished emptying the nest: Denison Univ. and Wash. U. in St. Louis are the lucky colleges. Next updates will be kid marriages and grandkids, likely in that order but you never know.”

Mark Sussman writes “My wife, MJ Thompson, and I both teach at Concordia University (in Montréal, QC), where I’ve shifted from the department of theatre to working as associate dean, academic affairs, in the faculty of fine arts. Concordia has a very strong art school, and I’ve become interested in how we balance practice and theory in the teaching of art across the disciplines. (I’ve even started spelling theatre with -re.) Our kids, Sam (11) and Finn (8), are growing up in two countries and languages, with friends in Brooklyn and Montréal. Our newest addition to the family is Shadow, a Cairn terrier needing a new home that we found living on 24th street in Manhattan. I still work with Great Small Works, the company I co-founded 20 years ago now, based in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Lately I’ve also been working with the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, based at NYU. Most recently, I published a chapter, “Notes on New Model Theaters,” in the 2014 Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance.

CAROLINE WILKINS | mbkeds@yahoo.com

MARY BETH KILKELLY | cwilkins85@yahoo.com

Roger was at the Reunion, and gives this report:

Our class had a strong and lively turnout for our 30th Reunion on Memorial Day weekend, with the numbers picking up substantially by Saturday night, just in time for the open bar reception in Usdan’s west dining wing. A surprise performance by the Wesleyan Cardinals, joined by founding member Mark Randles, was one highlight that evening. Classmates figured prominently in the weekend’s programming, with Karen Donfried receiving a Distinguished Alumna Award and speaking at the Phi Beta Kappa initiation, ESPN executive Rob King appearing on the WESeminar panel “The Changing Face of Sports,” and marine biologist and author Ellen Prager giving a WESeminar talk entitled “Dive into the Story: Ocean Science and Storytelling, Fun for All.” He reports that everyone enjoyed catching up with one another and, in some instances, meeting classmates’ spouses and children. He noted an especially impressive contingent from the 1980–81 Foss 9 freshman dorm, including David Booker, Liz (Buffy) Martin Brouckman, Jim Glickman, Ina Jacobs, Lee Markowski, Cindy Schultze Newell, the aforementioned Mr. Randles, and Heidi Ravis.

Stefan Selig was confirmed as Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade in June. According to the Commerce Department press release, he will “help lead our recently launched NEI/NEXT initiative—a program to build on export achievements under President Obama’s National Export Initiative to help even more businesses reach the 95 percent of customers who live outside our borders.”

Mike Lewyn reports that he is spending the 2014–15 academic year in Kansas City as a visiting professor at the University of Missouri–Kansas City.

Arya Francesca Jenkins gives us an interesting update: “I am living in McDonald, Ohio, a remote region of this state and the world, where I have the opportunity to write to my heart’s content. I write jazz fiction for an online quarterly, Jerry Jazz Musician, and regularly publish nonfiction, fiction, and poetry in literary journals and magazines. A few months back, I was elected a director of Dongyu Gatsal Ling Initiatives, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the living conditions of female Tibetan Buddhist monastics. Our programs benefit young and aging nuns and orphanages in Tibet and India. As I have long been a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism and a friend of Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, whose work has inspired DGLI, I am thrilled to be part of this endeavor. A New York tour is planned for December 2014 and January 2015 that will include stops at the Rubin Museum and The Tibet House in New York City, so perhaps some Wesleyanites will join us there.”

Vicky Fish sends in a short and sweet update to say she and her husband, Hugh Huizenga, are sending their twins off to college. Noah is going to Hamilton and Andrew to Wesleyan, where he has been assigned to Butterfield, just like she was as a freshman! Her first book of short stories, A Brief Moment of Weightlessness, was published in June by Mayapple Press.

Margaret (Marmie) Bowman is still working at the Walton Family Foundation as deputy director of their environment program. She is focused primarily on addressing the problems of water scarcity in the Colorado River basin. She lives in Tacoma Park, Md., with her husband and two kids, both of whom are in high school, so most of her life is spent at sporting events and other parenting adventures.

David Blauer recently gained Series A venture capital for his third software start-up, called Bjönd. Based in Boston, Bjönd makes novel workflow automation, decision support, and behavior change software that applies to most industries. Their first application, called BjöndHealth, invents and automates hyper-personalized workflows that clinicians, social workers and family members execute collaboratively to intervene with patients suffering complex diseases and conditions. The Bjönd staff includes other Wesleyan alumni—CTO and co-founder, Ben Flynn ’03, and engineer, George Bennum ’09.

Michael Steven Schultz | mschultz84@wesleyan.edu

Roger PincuS | rpincus84@wesleyan.edu

Summer is over and I’m not sure where it went. Sending sophomores off to college is so much easier and less dramatic than last year. Phew! (Can’t wait till they come home for Thanksgiving.) In the meantime, I just moved to a new home in a quaint little town complete with a river and waterfall and no franchised businesses. I am ready for new beginnings and the new year. I’m not sure why the calendar dictates the new year begins in January. For me, it’s always been September. Seems like there are many changes for our classmates as well… 

Ruth L. Schwartz married her longtime partner, Michelle Murrain, in a small, unconventional riverfront ceremony on September 13th. Ruth is a writer, healer, teacher, and visionary. Check out her new project at hearforareason.org. Suzanne Smith is job hunting for the first time in years and in the middle of a divorce. Suzanne, I am going through one, too. It’s overwhelming, scary, and liberating at the same time. Thanks to Facebook, Suzanne stays in touch with Mike Steinberg, Susanna Sharpe, David Hill ’86, and hometown friends Staci Caplanson and Claudia Florian. She’d love to hear from Tricia Reilly. 

Ben Binswanger and wife Karen just moved to Fairfield, Conn., and look forward to more frequent visits to Middletown for dinners with Katie Binswanger ’15, Tim Israel ’16, Kiley Kennedy ’16, and Gabriel Weinreb ’18. Steve Sorkin and his wife, Aida, live in Lincoln, R.I., since 1997, also in close proximity to Wes. They enjoy visiting son Mathew ’15, who plays on Wes’s baseball team, which won both the Little 3 and the NESCAC Championship for the first time. Their daughter, Melissa, attends Boston College. Cat Maquire and David Campanelli’s son begins his collegiate journey at Brown University. Stephanie Oddleifson lives in Natick, Mass., and enjoys her job at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care as a data analyst in the Medical Informatics area. One of her daughters attends Colby College and the other is a senior in high school. Stephanie, remember when you introduced me to force blooming bulbs in the winter? Much thanks; I continue the practice. Other nature oriented news…

Naturalist classmate Timothy Brockett lives in Montana where “we arm ourselves for protection from bears and other large predators. Hunting season is a wonderful family time where everyone gets to enjoy the vast outdoors. Many families use the abundant deer and elk to supplement their diet. A few hunt bear but that is a fatty meat. Others hunt wolves and foxes just for fun. The gun laws are progressive so we carry weapons in our vehicles and on our person, and we shoot just about anywhere without a permit or violating the laws. Interestingly, Montana tends to be a very polite society with little crime.” After a long cold winter where the temperature dropped below 30 degrees for several days, and everything freezes within minutes, Tim spent a rejuvenating two weeks in Grand Cayman fishing, hiking, and swimming. And, after the fires that swept through Emigrant Gulch, just north of Yellowstone Park, he spent the summer mining for gold and recovered almost three pounds. Additional summer fun included… 

Susan Kelly, Barb Bailey Beckwitt, Sue Stallone Kelly, Karen Adair Miller, Gretchen Millspaugh Cooney, and Christine Tam Rosengarten Darcas met up in Maine in celebration of their friendship that began 35 years ago at field hockey practice. Barbara Miller Legate reports that while in Las Vegas she saw Chris Wink’s Blue Man Group at the Monte Carlo. Jonathan Chatinover spent the summer broadcasting home games for the Martha’s Vineyard Sharks (summer collegiate baseball) with son, Keith, assisting. While there, they crossed paths with Guy Davidson ’16 (current Wes student), son of Guy Davidson (our classmate).

Kenneth Schneyer and Janice Okoomian dropped their daughter off at Marlboro College in Vermont, and their son just started high school and is interested in architectural drafting. Ken didn’t actually win the Nebula or Sturgeon Award this year, but “it’s nice just to be nominated.” He just released his first science fiction collection, The Law and the Heart, and his earlier fantasy stories have been translated into Russian, Chinese, and Czech. Spanish and Italian translations are in the works. Tim Backer just finished a new disc, Platform for Dreams, in which he develops a branch of classical music founded by The Beatles and writes, “It is a great leap beyond my first rock classical album, The Subtle Dawn.” Other professional news…

Janet Milkman works on green building in Philadelphia and enjoys biking, kayaking, and being an empty nester. Cori Adler bike commutes to her faculty position at Antioch University in Seattle and the Cornish College of the Arts. Proud of her neighborhood, which was recently mentioned on NPR, Cori lives with her husband and “brilliant teenage daughter.” Other Wes folk in Seattle include Cliff Meyer ’82, Chris Meyer Wilsdon, and for an all too brief period, Dan Bergman ’85. All, according to Cori, “have a spouse and at least one child, are in good health, and are every bit as scintillating as [she] remembers.”

Lori Kipnes received her master of arts in teaching with a concentration in Hebrew and Judaic Studies from Brandeis. She is the Judaic coordinator at the Frances Jacobson Early Childhood Center at Temple Israel in Boston. Prior to living in Sharon, Mass., Lori had lived in Chicago and Israel. At the time of our correspondence, all three of her daughters were in Israel and under rocket fire. Hopefully, by the time these notes appear in print, a peace settlement will have been achieved. Son Erez, who has Asperger’s and “more than a handful of learning challenges,” is participating in a therapeutic transition program and working part time. 

Mary Freeman lives in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., is director of workforce development for Southwest Solutions in Detroit, and is in the thick of Detroit renewal efforts, particularly with regard to adult education and training. Mary, let’s talk sometime…I, too, am involved in urban renewal in Newark, N.J. I’m writing a grant to open a community center with wrap-around services including healthcare, education, and job training and workforce development, in one of the city’s poorest sections. Perhaps we will meet at the next Urban Affairs conference.

Finally, many classmates expressed their sincere best wishes to Mike Whalen and his winning team. Until next time…Namaste.

LAURIE COHEN | lauriec@rci.rutgers.edu