Class Notes

Had someone asked me in my youth what a 60 (plus)-year-old would look and act like, I would never have imagined it to be any of the group assembled for our attendance-record-smashing 40th Reunion. It pleases me to be among folks who were happy to just be present in order to connect with fellow alumni. Gone are the days when we felt the need to impress with our professional and personal accomplishments. We all enjoyed hearing about the twists and turns in our individual histories. It was affirming to speak with those folks in our lives with whom we shared another pivotal developmental time in our lives: starting our college days in our late teens.

For most of us, Reunion began Friday evening with a reception that would soften the blow of a nasty commute to Middletown from just about everywhere. Driving into our Reunion class hotel lot, I was greeted by Felice Burstein and John Roxby, a perfect start to the weekend. Both are smitten with their granddaughters, and like most of us, are considering the next move after retirement. At hotel reception, I came across Arlene Lappen and Sue Rappaport Guiney. If meeting up with these two doesn’t put a smile on your face, I don’t know what does. Next I rode with Iddy Olson, soon to be the mother of the groom (my godson), to campus to formally check in. We attended President Michael Roth ’78’s reception and met up with Vanessa Burgess, Jerry Caplin, Sean McKeown, Bob Glasspiegel, Kathy Mintz ’78, and Steve Beauchamp. We then headed over to meet arrivals at the Reunion class reception. Wendy Brown Giardina and Laraine Balk Hope immediately greeted us. Enjoyed seeing Jim Lyons, Jim Melloan, and Mim Wolf at the reception. It was fun hearing Jim’s German inflection and was really impressed by his, as well as Wendy Giardina’s and other alums efforts, in making their way back to campus from far away. I celebrated a mini Newton High School reunion with Richard Parad, Sarah Kendall, and Paul Sheridan. Other notables at the party were Mike Coffey, Jane Goldenring, Claude Greengard, Betsy Hecker, Mary Jo Wade, Ron Bloom, Dave Levy, Jim Dowling, and expert t-shirt designer and graphic designer, Bonnie Katz. Also on hand were Lee Arnold, Lisa Brummel with son Noah, Cindee Howard, Helen Taenzer Lott, Earl Phillips, Lenny Stamm whose music I missed, Miki Saraf, and the first person I met my freshman year, Richard Swanson.

Saturday got rolling with seminars on campus led by many in our class. Sue Rappaport Guiney, Jane Kurz Klemmer, Michele Roberts (our well-deserved class Distinguished Alumni recipient), and Alan Steele held a panel discussion on mid-life and mid-career changes. Following this was a seminar on “Fake News and Real News: Journalism Today” led by Jane Eisner and Alex Kotlowitz, among others. This well-attended offering featured many classmates including: Doug Green, Susan Berger, and Rachel (Helfer) and Mike Balf. Heading over to the lunch tent I got to catch up with Janet Malkemes and Sharon Adler. A few folks arrived solely for lunch, needing to honor conflicting family weddings and such: Danny Ruberman and world-traveling educators Louise Hazebrouck and Steve Rome, who shared stories from their time in Asia. Photographer extraordinaire, Rick Dennett, was busy capturing shots of the assembled gang throughout the afternoon and evening. Kate Seeger and I got to share a fine walk through the art center. It is quite the head-scratcher that I need to return to Middletown to catch up with so many of the Boston-based alumni.

A short while later, a visit with the fine gentlemen of DKE took place at their house on High Street. The usual suspects there included: Jim LaLiberty, Steve Imbriglia, Don Citak, Jeff Gray, Ted Stevens, and Mike Coffey and Iddy. This led to our class dinner at Usdan, which was a great venue to celebrate the 100 participants who turned out. New folks with whom I got to visit included: Wes trustee Jeff Shames, Mark Beamis, Don Spencer (who survived his new house construction), Jerry Stouck, Dave Thomas, Tom Roberts, Liz and Will Sillin, Jim Udelson, and Dave Zabar. We all enjoyed Vanessa Burgess MC’ing the evening’s salute to our class that included a well-deserved Wesleyan Service Award to a very modest Don Ryan. Though regretting not chatting much with some, I saw from across the crowded room John Fink and his wife from Hawaii, John Gaebe, Jonathan Kliger, Don Lowrey, Marx Brothers aficionado, Hank Rosenfeld, Brad Burnham, Susan Shaw, Bob Rees, and Steve McNutt.

As expected, this was a memorable gathering which nourished the soul as we got to celebrate Friendship in its truest form: old and new. As I have recounted the weekend from memory after almost a week, I am sure that I may have left out other important names who attended. Please let me know that you were present so that I may give a proper shout-out in the next issue. In advance accept my sincerest apologies. To those classmates unable to join in for part of the weekend, we hope that you’ll find a way to meet up five years from now. If this Reunion was any indication, we all just keep getting better and better.

Gerry Frank | Gfrank@bfearc.com

For this issue, I asked about retirement plans and got varied and often non-committal answers.  To vary the line-up, the last shall be first.

Jody Binswanger Snider works in media, representing a creative branding and production company, and a small animation studio and filmmaker in NYC.  She serves on a family foundation concerned with homelessness and criminal justice reform. Her husband is a teacher and coach at Harvard Business School and Northeastern, and her two sons are working in NYC real estate.

Steve Smith and his wife moved to western North Carolina 31 years ago and that’s where they plan to retire in about two years. Their daughter just had her 10th Wes Reunion, and they plan to visit friends in Mexico later this year.

Joe Reiff won the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Nonfiction Award for 2016 with his book Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi’s Closed Society. Joe figures he has three more years before he hangs up his frock.

Jack O’Donnell has a daughter at Wes who plans to go to law school afterwards. Jack loves working as a criminal defense lawyer, and between that and the tuition bills, no retirement is in sight.

Connie Bodine McCann attended an all-day meeting of Wes emeriti trustees and watched Donna Morea do an excellent job as chair. Connie has a son at Wes, a daughter working in tech in San Francisco, and another son at a private investment firm in NYC. Connie has been elected to the Spencer Stuart worldwide board of directors and, after 24 years, is still enjoying her senior search work in financial services.

Jimmy Johnson reports that his bike touring business (BikeTours.com) is going strong and that he will be leading tours through Austria, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, and Montenegro in the next five months. Electrically assisted bikes help it all work. (I tried one in California and our nonathletic group drew looks of disbelief as we sped up the hills.)

Leslie Gabel-Brett ended her 10-year tenure at Lambda Legal in NYC and now works as a consultant with Open Communities Alliance, an affordable housing group in Connecticut led by Erin Boggs ’93. In spring 2018, Leslie will be a visiting assistant professor of public policy at Wes teaching a course about social justice movements under the auspices of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life.

Joellyn Gray went to L.A. over Memorial Day weekend and visited her sons, Malcolm and Duncan ’09, who work for the Russo Brothers and Hulu respectively. She had dinner with my CSS classmate, Bob Craft, and his wife, Julie. Joellyn has considered retirement, but prefers working.

Jon Cleworth, who is fighting a nearly 40-year battle with MS, is still going strong and is grateful for his time at Wesleyan and the inspiration he gained there.

Karen Caplan says retirement is a nice idea, but she is not ready to give up her full-time hospital job as a clinical social worker on a palliative care consult team. Karen finds her work with people at the end of life wonderfully rich, meaningful, and rewarding.

Barbara Birney continues to enjoy the company of her 92-year-old father, Robert Birney ’50, as well as that of her brother Bob Birney ’81. Bob has just given up “Old Man’s Soccer” and is focused on getting the last of his kids through college.

Tom Kovar says he thinks about retirement but, with a 14-year-old still at home, he does not plan on it anytime soon.

Cheryl Alpert just started a new career as a full-time real estate agent focusing on Boston and MetroWest and is very active in national and local politics. Her older son, Eben, is working as a business analyst and her younger son, Chason, is graduating from Washington and Lee, and will be working in D.C. for Booz Allen.

As for me, my oldest daughter graduated with a master’s and my younger two from college this month, so tuition bills are no longer a driver. But I still like working and need to stay busy if I am going to stay in sync with my wife, who loves her job. Outlook: staying the course.

There are a lot of you folks who do not write in—especially, for some odd reason, those whose last names are in the second half of the alphabet. I wish you would.

Mitchell Marinello | mlmarinello@comcast.net

I love leftovers, and what follows are some “leftover” notes from late 2016 and early 2017 that did not make in to our in-print columns. I apologize to those of you who took the time to write. Please continue to do so early and often—it will give you a better shot at being in the first serving of notes, rather than the dessert course or later. Note that some of the ages and references to time may be off after all this time, and a few children may have changed jobs or cities, but the big concepts should still be right.

Ed Van Voorhees is gratified to work part-time with The Bootstraps Foundation that gives scholarships to young people who have “pulled themselves up by the…” Despite familial substance or physical abuse, mentally ill parents, or life-threatening disease or injury, each excels in school and expresses optimism. Ed also runs a little franchise. He and his wife, Linda, are reducing work commitments, playing tennis, and traveling a bit (to visit grandchildren, among other destinations). The kids are married and scattered: Ellen in charge of women’s ministries at a Neighborhood Christian Fellowship in LA, Matt in finance in Denver, Jessica is an internist in Nashville, and Ben is running a start-up in D.C.

Ben, the son of Pam Swing and Marty Plotkin ’76, would either graduate last spring or will this spring (they knew, I don’t). Pam is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center. This is a wonderful center—very supportive and stimulating—with about 85 scholars engaged in a broad spectrum of research, art and activism. Pam wrote, “My current project is research on my militant suffragist grandmother, Betty Gram Swing, who worked closely with suffrage leader Alice Paul (one of five women considered for placement on the back of the 10-dollar bill.) My grandmother was jailed for picketing the White House and went on an eight-day hunger strike—all in all, she was jailed five times. She also burned President Wilson’s words and various other escapades. With the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment coming in 2020, I am writing a book, probably aimed at young adults, which will bring the suffrage movement to life through following my grandmother’s story.”

Pat McQuillan connected with Pam and Marty at Reunion last year. He got a kick out of discovering that her son and daughter both went to Sudbury Valley School, a very student-centered institution in Framingham, Mass., that Pat always presents to a curriculum theories class he teaches at Boston College. Pam came as a parent, to Pat’s class to recount how well her two children had done at the school and that her son, in fact, received a PhD in physics from U of Washington, even though he never took a math class at SVS. Pat may organize an entire day focused on student-centered learning and would invite Pam back to speak.

David Drake claims to have the best job in the world. After Wesleyan, he earned graduate degrees from UCLA and Harvard Graduate School of Education. In 1990, he started White Oak School in Westfield, Mass. White Oak is a state-approved nonprofit school serving great kids with dyslexia and related language-based learning disabilities. “It’s incredibly rewarding work,” Dave says, “and we’ve helped many hundreds of kids to read, spell, write, and generally come to believe in their potential to succeed and thrive.”

Larry Greenberg, reported from Martha’s Vineyard that he and his therapist wife, Debbie, were once again gearing up for the busy summer season in their physical therapy clinic there. Their oldest son, Dan who works as a VP at BlackRock in Manhattan, was getting married in Allentown, N.J., in September, while his daughter, Sarah, a corporate event manager in Waltham, Mass., got married in September 2014. His youngest son, Stephen, works as an associate producer for NBC Sports in hockey and football and was scheduled to cover volleyball at the Brazil Olympic Games with his girlfriend, who is also an associate producer for NBC Sports. They hope for a third September wedding in the coming years and anticipate cutting back their work schedule as retirement years approach.

Nancy (Robinson) Neff wrote, “My son, Sam, 24, works for SunPower in Richmond, Calif., as a mechanical engineer, mentors a high school robotics team, and loves blues dancing. My son, Jeremy, 22, graduated from George Washington University where he loves the ultimate frisbee team. He has directed some great student theater and will be interning with a theater company. My husband Robert is an electrical engineer with Keysight Technologies and loves bicycling. I am a regional volunteer coordinator with California Clean Money Campaign.” They were working to clean up money in politics, trying to pass the California DISCLOSE Act, which would require the strictest disclosure on political ads in the country.

David Lipton let us know he was excited that his third child, Gabriel ’16, was from Wesleyan with a government degree, joining Dave’s oldest, Anna ’08. Meanwhile, Dave had signed on for another five-year term as number two at the International Monetary Fund. When he started in 2011, he followed John Lipsky ’68, so Wesleyan has been having a long run at the IMF!

Russ Munson talked about a not-so-recent-anymore great day he spent in NYC at Karen Freedman and Roger Weisberg‘s place, catching up after way too many years with Tom Fox (who was traveling throughout the Northeast visiting engineering schools with his high school junior son). Tom is a German professor at U of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Russ’s son and daughter joined the NYC party with their respective spouses.  Russ is married to Deb Quinn-Munson ’82, who is hard at work with pastel, watercolor, and oil painting. Russ spends his workdays in Wallingford, Conn., as chief medical officer for HealthyCT, one of the few remaining co-op health plans created by the ACA.

Tom Fox also saw Bob McNamara on that same New York trip. Bob added a few items to the previously reported details about Tom. Not only is Tom on the U of A faculty, but he is former chairman of the modern language department, and his daughter is attending school there. Last fall, Bob and his wife, Irene, had a nice brunch with Dave Quinn, who continues to run a marketing and communications business in New London. Bob said, “Dave’s relationships in the Connecticut marketplace built up over many years make him the go-to guy for all kinds of companies in the area. He seems to be adapting well to the digital age.” As for his own news, Bob writes, “Although I missed Reunion last year with an ailing father, I managed to get to a Wesleyan football game for a post-Reunion reunion with former roommate Bruce Weinraub. Irene and I are doing well and expecting our first grandchild in July. I am now managing partner at Mooreland Partners, a boutique investment bank advising technology companies on mergers and acquisitions.” Bob and I ran into each other at Wesleyan’s parent/child weekend in 2012. My eldest chose Stanford, and Bob’s third son wound up going to Williams, so Bob has split loyalties in the Little Three, and I just extended the grad school relationship I started with Stanford.

Dave Rosenthal spent a grueling, exciting year helping to lead The Baltimore Sun’s coverage of the death of Freddie Gray and the Baltimore riots, and then took a buyout from the company. “It was tough to leave my job as investigations editor, especially after being involved in coverage that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and had exposed police brutality in the city. But I felt the time was right.” He moved to a new job in a new place, leading a group of journalists at public radio stations in Buffalo, Cleveland, Rochester, and other cities in reporting on the Great Lakes. The regional initiative is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, so when you’re listening to NPR and hear a report on the lakes, think of Dave. He’ll be working from WBFO in Buffalo, so he and Suzy relocated and hoped to meet some fellow Wes alumni up north.

Randy Steer reinvented himself a couple of years ago as a cybersecurity expert after spending most of his career in policy and budgets for energy and climate-change R&D. (A Monty Python “And now for something completely different” career shift.) He wrote that he was on an assignment to the Under Secretary of Energy to coordinate cyber initiatives across DOE science and energy offices—with a side-benefit of exposure to R&D policy again. Not sure whether he is still there, with all the changes in D.C.

Brad Kosiba keeps himself busy with “a messy blend of beekeeping, veggie gardening, church maintenance, Boy Scout leader training, and some vaccine and biotech manufacturing consulting that is somehow keeping me off the streets. Dorothy recently started part-time at the local office of The Livestock Conservancy (heirloom farm animals) and their sons continue to labor in math, engineering, and theater tech. We have a cool ‘grand-dog’ sharing arrangement with our middle son who travels most weeks, lets us have a dog and leave it, too!”

Cynthia M. Ulman | cmu.home@cmugroup.com
860 Marin Drive, Mill Valley, CA 94941-3955

Peter Hayward reports the sad news that our friend and classmate, Robert Mankin, died in Paris, France on January 28, 2017, after a long illness. Robert was buried at the Cimetière Parisien d’Ivry.

Robert, who had lived in France since the 1980s, had a distinguished academic career there. At the time of his death, he was a professor of British history at the University of Paris, with particular expertise on the English historian and writer, Edward Gibbon (the subject of Robert’s doctoral thesis), and Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, David Hume, among many other interests.  From 2009 to 2013, he directed and breathed life into the University’s Research Laboratory on Anglophone Cultures, which became a university department as a result of his efforts.  Robert had also been serving for several years in Paris’s Cité Universitaire director of the Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe, a graduate student residence and cultural center, which flourished under his leadership.

At Wesleyan, Robert was a College of Letters major (Peter believes his lifelong attachment to France began in his COL semester in Paris in the spring of 1972). He subsequently took additional time to travel and study abroad and graduated Wes in 1975. Robert was a member of Alpha Delta Phi and, in addition to his academic pursuits, he was an avid runner and club rugby player. Robert is survived by his wife, Danielle Torren, their son, Emile, and his mother, sister and brother in the United States.

Jerri Stroud and her husband, Mike Saville, will relocate to Seattle, Wash., later this summer, where they expect to have more chances to see 10 other Wesleyan ’74 alumni, including Charley Blaine and his wife, Chardel. “We’ve enjoyed seeing them on our trips there over the last dozen years.” Their son, Stephen Saville, is with Amazon, and they’ll be about 10 minutes’ drive from him and their granddaughter, Emily.

Monique Witt reports, “We are weathering a few serious family illnesses, but the music is going well. Two albums came home from press in May and three went to press soon after. We are excited about two particularly. My older son’s Grammy nomination has produced a great deal of work for the audio labs, so he’s very busy, having just returned from a late honeymoon in Paris and Nice.

“My younger son, Ben, has received exceptionally strong reviews for his first album Instead, including one from DownBeat Magazine, numerous U.S. reviews, as well as strong European reviews. He’s up on radio round the world, and has played jazz at Lincoln Center, The Blue Note, Mezzrow, Smalls, and played Carnegie Hall in late May, in addition to the summer festival season and his weekly gigs.  So he’s pretty busy as well.

“I’m keeping the label running and playing doubles with a woman who plays with the Canadian National Team, so she carries us. Steven is still lawyering. So all good, I guess, except that I find it hard to read the news (something I used to do religiously).”

Jaf Chiang provided the following update. “A little less than three years ago my wife, Jeanne Demko ’75, passed away very suddenly. We married shortly after I graduated—so a total of 40 years. We did our share of wandering and meandering, but unlike Moses, it was a blissful period for us. She did get to see the ‘promised land’ as she saw both our children grow up to be independent, productive and full of compassion, as she was.

“I am still finding it hard to adjust to this.  I still live in the same house in Avon (‘Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, Shaped to the comfort of the last to go, As if to win them back.’–Philip Larkin) and still teaching gifted students in math. My daughter will finish her residency in Maine Medical this year and move to Kentucky to begin her fellowship in infertility. My son just finished the PhD phase of his MD-PhD program at Washington University in St. Louis and will begin his last two years of medical school later in June. And I will soldier on as well.”

Jan Eliasberg states, “I have moved into a three story brownstone in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, and discovered a passion for interior design. I’ve been restoring fine details of the original architecture (ceiling medallions, floor to ceiling shuttered windows, five original marble fireplaces), as well as mixing in more contemporary influences: mid-century modern furniture; vintage rugs from Morocco, and art acquired during my world travels. There’s a fantastic garden with climbing roses, hydrangea bushes, honeysuckle, and wild raspberries ripe for the picking. A wonderful place to call home. There are three bedrooms so let me know if you need a place to stay while visiting NYC.

“This year I was lucky enough to direct several episodes of the new CBS hit show, Bull, with Michael Weatherly. The show shoots on stages in Brooklyn so I was, literally, 10 minutes from work. Great fun and a great privilege to work on a show in its first season, helping to shape and define the style and tone of the series.

“In June and July, I’m off to Pittsburgh to direct two episodes of another new show, NBC’s Gone, with ‘Mr. Big’ himself, Chris Noth. I’m looking forward to exploring Pittsburgh, which is apparently a really hip, up and coming city—lots of young artists, foodies, cafes and places to hear cool music.

My daughter, Sariel Friedman ’18, just finished her junior year at Wesleyan, with a double major in American studies and film. She’s spending the summer in Germany taking a class at the Frei University. She then has a paid internship working with Steidl Publishing. Wesleyan has proven to be as ideal an experience for her as it was for me.”

Harold Sogard, Marion Stoj, Linda Rappaport, and Sharon Purdie attended the Donors’ Reception during Reunion Weekend—good turn-out for our class! It’s always fun to catch up.

Sharon Purdie | spurdie@wesleyan.edu

From Williamsburg, Va., we have an update from one of my East College roommates from senior year, John Spike. John is still assistant director and chief curator for the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William & Mary, where, over the past five years, he’s curated four major loan exhibitions from the Uffizi, Palazzo Pitti, Casa Buonarroti, and other important Italian museums. The exhibitions have been devoted to original works by Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Leonardo da Vinci, and this year, Botticelli. All four exhibitions, after originating under his curatorship at the Muscarelle, have gone on to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. His wife, Michèle, teaches at the William & Mary Law School, where she has been promoted to visiting professor. He says last year his son Nicholas, now 34, and his wife, Marcela, gave John and Michele their first grandchild, a boy, Santiago Spike.

From Vermont, our intrepid, indefatigable, and ever-faithful correspondent David Feldman, AKA David Harp, just did three “speaking gigs” in three consecutive days in three somewhat widely separated places (after not having done too many lately)—Chicago, Springfield, Ill., and Burlington, Vt. He reports that the speaking component (two large events of about 70 minutes each with 300-plus attendees on harmonica-based mindfulness as it applies to people working in the mental health field, and one smaller event for CPAs) “felt fine.” He adds, “It’s a bit hubristic to say, but I felt pretty much at the top of my form, corporate speaker-wise. But the traveling felt awful. The airports and traffic in the cities bugged me more than usual—is road and air traffic getting busier and less enjoyable, or is it just me? Or both? Or perhaps it is just a function of living most of the time in rural Vermont.”

Sheryl Auerbach says Jerry Richter, her husband of 35 years, passed away almost five years ago. On December 13 of last year, she married Evan Feist, a widower, whom she met through JDate. Evan is a retired veterinarian, and they share a lot of interests, including golf (although she says she’s a mid 30s handicap and he’s single digit), bridge, and birthdays. Sheryl notes that her birthday is July 20, Jerry’s was July 23, and Evan’s is July 22.

From New York City, another one of my very colorful East College roommates from senior year, Edward “Eddie” Nathan, sends us a second note saying that “44 years feels about right to collect sufficient experience to sustain a brief note to my quondam classmates.” He has had two careers: first as an academic, then as a creative director in advertising, most of it in health and wellness. “It’s a living,” he says. He and his wife reside in Brooklyn, though his work is in Pennsylvania. “Two fine grown daughters, one of them in Finland.” He says his beautiful wife is also New York’s “most decorated dog groomer” (see her website, Soniaspetgrooming.com). For the record, he says he would like to note his “one enduring contribution to Wesleyan. No one will recall, except me, that I was the first to use the ‘Wes’ prefix in identifying our athletic teams for the Argus, e.g., Wescrew, Weslax.” He says he had the occasion a number of years ago to write a “Wescheck” in support of his daughter’s application to Wesleyan. “I claim credit as having inspired the name of this tariff, and fully expect to be telling this story, inflated with ever greater significance, as I continue to slide comfortably into senility,” he says. He sends “All the best to my Wesbros.”

Peter D’Oench | Pgdo10@aol.com

Our 45th Reunion is now history, and those who attended will concur that it was great fun. The campus was beautiful, and it was great to see old friends, even if we all seem to be getting older and kvetchier. Considering the alternative, that’s not such a bad thing. So here are my random recollections, with apologies in advance to any attendees I may have omitted.

I arrived at Wesleyan on Friday, and camped out by registration to see who was checking in. Thus, I got some time with Jim Shepherd, Steve Goldschmidt, Steve Lewis, Dennis Kesden, Mike Busman, Bruce Throne, and others. At our class welcoming reception at the Stew Reid House we had our only weekend visits with some true notables—Wesleyan President Emeritus Colin Hon.’89 and Nancy Campbell MALS’80 (who have nothing but wonderful memories of us—or so they say), and Chip Goodrich.

Friday dinner was an extraordinary event, thanks to the labors of Andy Feinstein.  We took over O’Rourke’s Diner for the occasion, and Brian O’Rourke prepared an elaborate tasting menu for us. Only one dish vaguely resembled a steamed cheeseburger, and the “BYOB” policy led to some fine pairings. My table sipped a marvelous Walt Wines pinot noir, and there were various other wines and single malt scotches passed around. Leon Vinci presented Brian with a copy of Brian’s cookbook, autographed by us.

So it’s fitting to mention two who were unfortunately NOT in attendance. Mike Carlson, 45 minutes before his cab was due to arrive to take him to the airport in London, realized that he had forgotten to renew his passport. (Further comment from me would be superfluous—not that it has stopped me in the past.) Hank Shelton’s plane (after his original flight was cancelled) hit a bird one hour out of Memphis, whereupon that flight, too, was cancelled, thereby making it impossible for Hank to get to Wes in time. We truly missed them.

Most of us managed to be there for the alumni parade, noting that we are getting that much closer to the front. There followed an afternoon of hanging around on Foss Hill and attending seminars and film presentations. Our class seminar, entitled “Sustainability, Climate Change, and Energy in an Era of Alternative Facts” (title credit to Bruce Throne) featured Bruce Throne, Bonnie Blair, Stew Reid, and yours truly. We all laid out a mixed message of innovation vying with aggressive administration retrogression. What can we do about this, many asked, and the best response was that individual and grassroots actions still count for a great deal. Thanks, I guess, to Peter Hicks for posing a question about the ban of fracking in New York State, my honest answer to which earned me the opprobrium of most of the crowd. And the record will show that Stew was the only one of us explicitly to call for removal of the president.

From there to our class dinner, which was a raging success, thanks to the efforts of Mike Kaloyanides, Blake Allison, Steve Blum, and Mike Kishbauch, a.k.a. Blackwall Hitch, who performed the 19 top songs of our college years, from “Time Has Come Today” to “Honky Tonk Women.” Word got around campus that the ’72 party was the place to be, and by evening’s end we had quite a crowd. We cannot thank the four of them enough for their efforts—they were fabulous, and we’ll all have wonderful memories of their performance for a long time.

Bonnie Blair was an admirable MC. And thanks to those who joined with me in expressing brief tributes to recently departed classmates. Some found it mawkish, but it’s important. Thanks to Steve Goldschmidt, Blake Allison, Rich Easton, Bob White, Steve Berman, and Marjorie Melnick.

Richard Kolotkin filled me in on the past 45 years, although he was not able to come for Reunion. He got his PhD in psychology from the University of Minnesota, and spent the bulk of his career at Moorhead, both teaching at Minnesota State University and in the private practice of psychology.

He wrote, “Over the years, I have published a marriage self-help book and a number of research-based articles. One of these was a study that compared relationship satisfaction as it emerged in committed relationships in real life to the satisfaction experienced in online amorous relationships between two “committed” avatars on a massive online game called Second Life. This generated a bit of a buzz when the data showed that significantly more women were more satisfied with their virtual lover than they were with the man with whom they had a committed, real life relationship.”

Now fully retired, Rich and Deidre, his wife of almost 40 years, plan to reinvent themselves “in a warmer part of the world in new ways that nurture both spirit and soul.”

Next Reunion is our 50th. Be there. Renew your passports now. No excuses will be accepted. For those of you who keep saying you’ll be there “next time,” this is it.

Seth A. Davis | sethdavis@post.harvard.edu
213 Copper Square Drive, Bethel, CT 06801

Here are notes I received this time. Forgive the harsh editing to get the notes to fit.

Chase Van Gorder had open heart surgery and is doing well. He has relocated to Minneapolis. Keeps in regular contact with Jed Marshall, High Heermans, Phil Rauch, and Bruce Fergusson ’73. Blake Allison relates, “Missed Reunion because I was on a two-month coast-to-coast road trip.” He had a great stay in Oakland with Kathryn and Morgan Muir ’73. Also joining the party were Peter Stern ’72 and Mitch Grashin ’70.

Bill Bruner says, “We had our first grandchild a year ago. He’s the son of my son Andrew Bruner ’04. Daughter Amanda ’02 was married recently. I’m still working doing medical ophthalmology in my private practice. I retired from the VA here after 35 years of teaching, research, and clinical work there.”

Jim RePass continues to work in conservation/alternative energy/alternative transportation, as I have since the 1970s. His current project is called Transit X, a technology that actually is pretty exciting, and is designed to make automobile use unnecessary in cities and suburbs.

Ed Swanson says, “In April I got together with Jim Redwood, a member of our freshman class who later transferred. Jim teaches securities law at Albany Law School. He and I spoke on the phone with Chuck Lucier ’70.” While his primary focus is corporate and securities law, Ed is now managing director of SMI Group LLC, and president of its broker-dealer subsidiary, SMI Capital Markets.

Steve Voorhies became Facebook friends with Mark Merlis, who has published several novels. Dave Lindorff says daughter Ariel ’05 is having her graduation (called supplication!) in July from Oxford with a PhD in education. She’s already publishing a lot and hoping to land a job at the same school as her partner, a Brit named James. Filmmaker son Jed is living in Baltimore with his girlfriend. Steve is writing for High Times and Salon, plus his own collectively-run news site Thiscantbehappening.net.

Vic Pfeiffer is retired and is involved with four organizations in Chestertown, Md. Daughter Alex ’06, along with his son-in-law and two granddaughters (ages 9 months and 2-1/2 years) live in San Diego. He gets together with five other Wesleyan friends—brother Steve ’69, Rick Ketterer ’69, John Stinchfield ’69, Jerry Parker ’69, and Marc Pickard ’70.

Fran Pawlowski encourages all to make the 50th Reunion in 2021.

Robert Beardslee writes, “This is my first contribution to the class notes. I am a bit out of the way here in a small country town north of Sydney, where I live with my Australian wife, Margaret. Taught kids with learning difficulties (I had one at Wes!) for years, and now concentrate on athletes with disabilities. My running career is over now due to osteoarthritis. However, I have kept physically active restoring antique cars and riding my mountain bike.”

From Andrew Glantz: “Since finishing my term as the president of the board of trustees of The Furniture Society, I have been concentrating on work in my shop. I had a hip replaced in March and hope that this and a few other tweaks allow me to be a bit more active this year than last.”

Katy Butler and Brian Donohue are set to be married on June 11 in their backyard in Mill Valley, Calif. “We’ve been living together for 17 years, so it’s not only a wedding, but a celebration of our continuing and deepening bond. We are continually amazed and grateful for our lives together.” Brian is a former hospital equipment salesman who now has a lot more fun working as a professional musician, leading singalongs in nursing home and retirement centers. Katy is writing her second book—about navigating medicine through old age, sickness, and death.

From Bill Boulware: “I am a ‘trophy husband’ now that I’ve pretty much retired. I cheer my wife on in her many endeavors and take care of the household. I try to convince myself that working out is fun, but I know I’m lying. And I’ve reached the ‘maintenance’ stage where multiple doctors are keeping an eye on things, waiting for the final breakdown I suppose. If I were a car I would have traded this body in a long time ago. But given what happens to many our age, I’m very grateful for many things.”

Joe Keller is living on Cape Cod and has a condo in Florida. Still active in commercial real estate company. Two grandchildren in Malibu, Calif. Just won a Massachusetts super senior golf tournament.

Alvin and Cynthia James are living in Cedar Hill, just south of Dallas. Cynthia serves as executive director of education for the Potter’s House of Dallas. Alvin is semi-retired, but serves as executive director of the Metropolitan Economic Development Corporation. At the beginning of 2017, Alvin oversaw the successful completion of a new 142,000-square-foot youth empowerment center building in southwest Dallas. “

That’s it for this time. Aloha.

Neil J. Clendeninn | Cybermad@msn.com
PO Box 1005, Hanalei, HI 96714

Aloha, all. First, my apologies for the late request for news. As far as I can determine, it was attributable to some technical glitch that prevented my receiving the reminder a week or so before a second reminder, which somehow did reach my inbox.

Nonetheless, I had e-mails from a few of our classmates, so here goes.

Charlie Holbrook is starting his 14th year teaching history at Beaufort High School in Beaufort, S.C. “Leslie and I spend June and July at our cottage in South Lyme, Conn., and I am auditing a history course at Wesleyan by Professor Nathanael Greene. He is still teaching and hasn’t missed a step! When the issue of retirement comes up, Leslie reminds me that Professor Greene is still teaching! Once a teacher always a teacher. Also, Gene Legg is teaching at Rock Ridge High School in Ashburn, Va.”

John Sheffield wrote, “Almost 48 years of a great marriage, two happy grown-up daughters, one excellent 4-year-old grandson, recent crewing opportunities on sailing vessels—Honolulu-Vancouver and Houston-New Orleans-Key West-Bahamas—make life worth living.” I have to say I’m a bit envious, John, having wanted to sail like that, but never having done it.

Jim Pickering posted the following on Facebook: “This will sound silly, and I may well have suggested it before, but as quickly as classmates are passing on, and in honor of the fact that our senior year was never completed, why not have our 50th WesTech Reunion a year or two early? Having reconnected with a number of classmates through this medium I think it would be cool to hang out in person, tell lies, and maybe pound a few Budweisers all these years later.” I put it out to you, classmates. What do you think?

Lawrence Madlock wrote: “I retired from the University of Tennessee on February 1. I am going to Ghana for two months to help build a clinic and classroom in a village with Crossroads Africa, the same organization that got me started doing these trips 50 years ago at Wesleyan. My wife, Yvonne MAT’72, just got back from a graduation at Wellesley where we had dinner and pictures with Hillary. My middle daughter got her PhD in clinical psychology from George Washington University. Edwin Sanders ’69 and I visited Thurman Northcross ’71. He’s hanging tough.” Thanks for that update. Our thoughts are with you, Thurman.

Just returned from a semi-annual trip to Maryland to visit with my incredible mom, still active at 94. On the way back, I had some time in Seattle, so I jumped on the light rail to downtown and then walked uphill to visit REI, armed with my 35-year-old REI camera bag purchased at that wonderful old warehouse store. While browsing through what seems to be very upscale stuff for outdoor activities, I was approached by a gentleman who, noticing my Red Sox cap, the team jacket over my arm, and my Wesleyan shirt, asked if I was lost. Turned out to be Silas Wild ’69, one of the incredible group of runners during our Wes years. Silas remembers Bill Rodgers very fondly, mentioned Bill Tam and the other Punahou boys, and spoke well of Dave Davis ’93 and his TV work. He couldn’t shed any light on the whereabouts of his Beta brother Pete Weber, my freshman-year roommate. Moral: Wear your Wesleyan shirt while traveling.

Was unable to see Bill Rodgers in Boston on the way home from the visit in Maryland, he needing to rest after having just run two races, one in Green Bay, Wis., and one in Rutland, Vt. He mentioned that another Wes runner, Bart Wendell, lives nearby. One of these days, I expect Bill to show up for the Kaua’i Marathon.

The trip to see Mom and family began to turn into a baseball odyssey of sorts: Had tickets for a game in Baltimore (versus the Red Sox) a few hours after flying in, then we went to another game a few days later. I already had decided that I needed to address an item that’s long been on my bucket list—get to Fenway Park—so I had booked a flight from Baltimore to Boston as part of my return trip from Maryland. Got to Fenway after a long flight delay. Detroit won that one, so I decided to go to a game the next night, despite my early-morning return flight the following morning. It was a good game, with exactly the same RHE stats well into the game, and it went to the bottom of the 11th inning before Pedroia hit a run-scoring single that brought with it an incredible slide into home plate. Anyway, the lesson learned is two-fold: Follow that dream, even if it means starting a 20-hour travel day on three hours’ sleep, and all the time I spent chasing young women in Boston in our college years was wasted. I’d have been better off going to Fenway for ballgames.

Send news anytime and be well in the meantime.

Russ Josephson | russ_josephson@yahoo.com
P.O. Box 1151, Kilauea, HI 96754