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Richard Orentzel ’73 retired from his FAA job a year ago, which included writing/editing material for government testing standards and aviation handbooks. Some serious safety-conscious people hammer out these publications, but their names never appear in print. He is currently spending more time writing poetry. Here are some samples:

how to feel good in the USA

a presidential helicopter

(Richard’s poems also include illustrations, but they couldn’t be transferred to this online note.)

Arthur Fierman received the Dr. Benard Dreyer Advocate for All Children Award presented by the Board of Directors of Children of Bellevue. This award was created in memory of Dr. Benard Dreyer, who dedicated his life to fighting for the well-being of children. Dr. Fierman worked closely with Benard for four decades and has deeply embodied the essential values that the award recognizes: kindness, equity, mentorship, and excellence in care.

The presenters of the award summarized Arthur’s work as follows: “Dr. Arthur Fierman is a distinguished pediatrician with more than 40 years of experience in general pediatrics at NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue and NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Throughout his career, he has served in various roles as clinical leader, educator, and researcher, always dedicated to improving care for children and families living in poverty. His roles have included director of Pediatric Ambulatory Care and co-chair of the H+H Pediatric Council, where he championed innovative health care delivery models to enhance child health and development.

            “As director emeritus, Dr. Fierman continues to engage in scholarly activities, mentors the next generation of pediatricians, and advocates for asylum-seeking families, furthering his mission to improve pediatric health care in New York City and beyond. He recently returned from the American Academy of Pediatric annual meeting where he presented the 2025 plenary session Support for Asylum-Seeking Children and Families: A New York City Perspective, highlighting the work of pediatricians and other health care clinicians at Bellevue and NYC H+H in caring for these children and families.”

Fred Kessler reports, “After 47 years practicing law at the same law firm, Nossaman LLP, I am retiring at the end of this year. My work has predominantly been for public agencies, assisting them with innovative procurements and contracting for major infrastructure projects. This has made my career meaningful, helping to enable projects that broadly benefit the public.

            “My family home is in Pacific Palisades and, needless to say, was affected by the wildfire that devastated our wonderful community in January. Our home, built in 1929, is one of the few to have survived the flames, although it is currently uninhabitable, contaminated with soot, ash, and dust with elevated levels of lead and mercury. And our separate garage that served as my wife’s art studio burned down and with it years and years of her artwork, the saddest part of this experience for us. We are living through the plodding, difficult process of decontaminating the house, rebuilding the studio, arm wrestling with the insurer, and finding and dealing with consultants, architects, and contractors. We have lived in five different places since fleeing the fire, literally wandering Jews, currently nestled in Culver City. But we have our home to go back to someday, unlike many friends and neighbors who lost all. To put it mildly, Pacific Palisades is a surreal landscape, and we are living a surreal experience.

            Wishing all my classmates beautiful days ahead, with fire only in your fireplaces”. 

Charisse Lillie was honored by the Committee of Seventy in Philadelphia on May 14, 2025, at their fourth annual Women in Public Leadership event, with a Civic Leadership Award, focused on The Power of Mentorship: Celebrating Women Who Carry as They Climb. C70 is a nonpartisan organization founded in 1904 to combat corruption in Philadelphia, which is currently focused on work designed to improve democracy and government in Philadelphia.

Charisse’s family is doing well, and she is enjoying quality time with her grandchildren. She is still enjoying her work as a board member on several corporate boards, a couple of nonprofit boards, along with some consulting work.

Bob Baum was in the process of uploading a grant application to the National Endowment for the Humanities, when the grant window disappeared. They will no longer fund overseas research. Bob continues, “However, I was delighted to give the keynote address (in French) for a conference in Senegal marking the 80th anniversary of the death of a woman prophet named Alinesitoue, who was arrested by the French [and] detained in a prison camp at Timbuctou, where she was the only woman, and died within a year of scurvy.  I wrote a book about her. It was exciting to speak about her in a country that regards her as a national heroine.”

After 35 years in San Diego (interrupted by 10 years at various stints in D.C.), Rick Kronick and his wife, Amy, have relocated to Berkeley to be closer to their older daughter and her delicious seven-and-one-half and four-year-old sons. Leaving La Jolla and close friends was hard, but the move, especially because Amy has both MS and relatively advanced dementia, feels like a good decision. A side benefit is being marginally closer to their younger daughter and her scrumptious seven and three-and-one-half-year-old daughters in Seattle. Rick continues to do research and policy work on Medicare Advantage payment policy, is a member of the board of the California Office of Health Care Affordability, and fantasizes about writing about how the U.S. might implement and govern a less dysfunctional health-care financing system after he retires from UC San Diego in the not-too-distant future. He has largely recovered from a couple of bad bicycle accidents and other medical misadventures, is greatly enjoying exploring Berkeley and environs, and is working at making new friends and figuring out how to make life work without his partner of 44 years, especially challenging because he is still living with and caring for her (with the help of a spectacularly talented and loving caregiver). 

Monique Witt reports, “It’s been an unusually busy time. We hosted an event for Wesleyan alums in February on Park—an evening of jazz and conversation about improvisation with Roger Grant, from Wes’s integrated arts program, and my son, Ben, at his Steinway B (video and recording included in case anyone wants to view).  We had a dozen alums and spouses, through recent young musicians to members of our own class. Bill and Jane Pearson joined us, and it went long. In the months following, Jane and Bill joined Steven and me for a number of jazz nights round Manhattan, and Ben caught up with their son, Howe (also a musician), at the New Orleans Jazz festival, where Howe was playing with his regular big band and Ben was playing with Rickie Lee Jones (the hometown girl). Dev has been in an intense product- development phase and ExMachina is buzzing in preparation for NAM. 

            “I am still doing board work, and the changing regulatory climate has increased the time demands. I’m gardening a lot to compensate for the wet, cold, and compressed spring and entertaining more for Steven’s work. Steven is still working hard, but is traveling more to Ben’s events, not as far as he did to the Azores last summer, but in the U.S.” 

Michel de Konkoly Thege updates, “I had the great pleasure of recently reconnecting with our classmate Don Reid, who is a professor of modern French history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Don and I drove up together to Middletown in April, where I attended Don’s history Homecoming lecture on French conscripts in the 1960s. At this lecture, we also reunited with our mutual mentor, Professor Nathanael Greene, who was one of the hosts of the lecture. My wife, Harriette, and I subsequently hosted Don at a dinner at our New York City residence. This time with Don was the resumption of a valued friendship that has spanned much time and many mutual interests.”

Patricia Mulcahy shares, “I want to give a shout-out to Ellen Driscoll for organizing two protests on the steps of the New York Public Library. She was inspired by a March 7, 2025, piece in The New York Times that listed over 60 words and phrases that are now ‘disappearing in the Trump administration.’ On federal websites, no longer will you see the following: ‘environmental justice,’ ‘gender,’ ‘bias,’ ‘entitlement,’ ‘vaccines,’ ‘trauma,’ ‘peanut allergies,’ and ‘pronouns.’ Among so many others. 

“Ellen gathered a group of volunteers in her Brooklyn studio to paint these on placards that were then held up on the steps of the library. I didn’t paint, but I participated in both events at NYPL, along with Ellen and her husband, Steven, and members of a group called Rise and Resist. Claudia Catania joined us for the second one, a challenging session in a steady rain right before the No Kings march, punctuated by the chants of a passing parade of Hare Krishna adherents.  

            “Even in bad weather, we engaged the attention of passing tourists and others. And for the first one, some passersby even came up to join in. 

            “Ellen’s dedication to activism is consistent and unwavering. And that’s what gets results. 

            “Finally, I want to say that I’ve never been prouder to be a Wes grad than I am today. Michael Roth’s defense of intellectual liberty, free speech, and the values of democracy has been a complete inspiration.”

During Reunion 2025, we dedicated the bench and plaque celebrating our class of women who led Wesleyan’s return to co-education. The plaque reads, “In honor of the women of the Class of 1974 who led Wesleyan’s return to co-education. Given by the Class of 1974.” There were 20 to 25 at the event—women and men from our class, alums from other classes, and Wes staff. After I spoke, Phoebe Boyer ’89, chair of the Wesleyan Board of Trustees, spoke for a few minutes, thanking us for paving the way for women who came after us.

I attended the memorial service honoring Colin Campbell. It was an uplifting event held in the Campbell Reference Center in Olin Library. Speakers included Phoebe as well as Karl Scheibe and two of Colin’s daughters, Blair and Betsy.  Nancy Campbell and Chip Campbell also attended. Colin is buried in the cemetery next to West College.

SHARON PURDIE | spurdie@wesleyan.edu