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One of the advantages of the new digital format now available to class secretaries in the Wesleyan alumnus magazine, is the use of photographs in our submissions. Sadly, two deaths are recorded for this Class Notes’ publication.
Spike Paranya was the first to send notification of Jack Woodbury’s death on May 22, 2024:
“I’m so sorry to report that Jack Woodbury passed away on May 22 from cardiac arrest. He was one of our class’s finest. We shared the same career and training at UMass School of Education. We had great phone conversations over the last years about family and politics!”
Additional information was later provided by Jack’s daughter, Sarah Woodbury ’05 and her wife, Clara Moskowitz ’05:
“Jack greatly admired the friends and faculty he met at Wesleyan, and he often shared fond memories of the friends he made in Clark Hall, in his classes, and on sports teams. His time at Wesleyan helped inspire him to become a history teacher and later a public school administrator. Jack participated in civil rights marches in the 1960s, and racial equality and urban education became his passion. Hearing Martin Luther King Jr. speak at a rally of 25,000 people in Montgomery, Alabama, and again at a small church in Chicago, were unforgettable moments for him. Jack was also thrilled to do his part when he and his wife, Janet, canvassed for Barack Obama’s campaign, and he was so excited to make it back to Wesleyan to hear Obama speak at the 2008 commencement.
“After Wesleyan, Jack earned a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts. He got involved in public education policy as chief of staff for the chancellor of the New York City schools in the 1970s and while serving as New Jersey deputy commissioner of education in the early 1990s. He spent most of his life working as a superintendent of schools in three suburban New Jersey school districts. In retirement, Jack mentored teachers in the school administrative program at SUNY New Paltz.”
Another classmate, Lee D. Simon, died on the May 2, 2024. Lee was the parent of two Wesleyan alumni, Deirdre ’90 and Julia ’02. As described in his obituary:
“After receiving a BA from Wesleyan University in 1961, Lee entered a graduate program in biology at the University of Oregon and received his PhD in biology in 1966 from the University of Rochester. He joined the faculty of the Institute for Cancer Research (now Fox Chase Cancer Center) in Philadelphia as a microbiologist with a focus on the adsorption of T–even phages and breakdown of proteins in bacterial cells. He joined the faculty of the Waxman Institute at Rutgers University in 1976 and was a professor at Rutgers until his retirement in 2010. Lee was an accomplished electron microscopist: his iconic image of a bacteriophage infecting a virus (‘a phage shows its claws’) is still used in biology textbooks.”
Peter Dybwad shares his recent update of activity: “I’m still happily at work heading the Wright Institute, an independent graduate school of professional psychology in Berkeley. I’m also happily living in a multigenerational household with two of my three children, the partner of one, and three grandchildren under four; two from one of my daughters, and one from the other. I’m walking five to six miles a day and can run and catch a bus (if necessary). My father emigrated from Germany in 1934. I fear for the future.”
And now a cryptic blurb from John Rogers.
“Think I replied before
So hope one of many
Still accepting golden aging
And trying to be trendy.”
Bob Hausman writes: “Nothing new. Just grandchildren graduating from college and high school. I am guessing that many of us are aging, as I am turning 85.” [Secretary’s note: Bob, It’s only a number. . .]
Respectfully submitted,
DR. JON K. MAGENDANZ | jon@magendanz.com