CLASS OF 1980 | 2026 | SPRING ISSUE
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Positive news and happy antidotes from the Class of 1980.
Joel Tillinghast: “I climbed Mt. Fuji last summer.” Here are some photos taken during Joel’s descent:
Wendy Davis Beard: “I visited my daughter in Florence at the end of 2025.”
Dan Connors:“I did enjoy going to the last No Kings protest with my fellow Missourians, and I keep waiting for the tide to turn. Highlights [from 2025] were vacations in the Ozarks, a trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and my first venture to Universal Orlando in over a decade. Now tax season is calling me, and it’s time to put my CPA license to good use. . .”
Mark Zitter: “With two daughters living in NYC—Tessa ’21 in Brooklyn and Sasha at med school in Westchester—my wife, Jessica, and I will get an apartment on the Upper West Side and split our time between there and the Bay Area. But we’ll mostly be on the road this spring while we’re on a 25-city theatrical tour for Jessica’s new documentary, The Chaplain and the Doctor. Meanwhile I’m spearheading a national initiative with multiple funders to accelerate AI adoption among nonprofits and launching a blog and video channel on leadership in the business and social sectors. More on both at markzitter.com.”
Marty Saggese: “In March I will step down, after 24 years, as executive director of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN). I don’t use the word ‘retire,’ so I’m looking for suggestions on a new word to describe what you do after ‘graduation’ from working? I have been spending a lot of time in Venice, Italy, where I bought an apartment, and I hope to be there and travel even more this year. I’d love to see any classmates there, so I will agree to host an ongoing Wesleyan soirée in my garden (with wine or Aperol) as any of you pass through Venice.”
Melissa Stern: After traveling to museums throughout the States for 13 years, my interactive mixed media project is coming home to NYC. The Talking Cure (highlighted in the Wesleyan University Magazine in 2013 and shown at Real Art Ways in Hartford) will open on March 5, 2026, at A Hug From The Art World, 112 Tenth Avenue, NYC. The show will run through mid-April 2026. I’ll be doing some public events during the run of the show. Stay tuned! https://www.ahugfromtheartworld.com/
Debbie Lipshutz: “I am actively volunteering with ctc4progress.org in Pennsylvania. This highly focused and effective work is encouraging infrequent voters to vote in the midterm elections, to help recover our democracy.”
John Singer: “As classmates with whom I’ve stayed in closer touch know, about 12 years ago, after multiple back surgeries, I have idiopathic bilateral denervation below my knees. This is a fancy way of saying the muscles in my calves, ankles, and feet don’t really work. About four years ago, my son’s now mother-in-law (who is a physical therapist) offered to take me to the person who she thinks (and I now agree) is the best orthotist in Maryland. It was a life-changing experience as I was fitted with ankle-foot orthotics (AFOs)—think of them as lower leg braces—that permit me to lead a pretty normal life again. Among other things, I can walk without the risk of tripping and stand without wobbling. I could walk my son down the aisle without assistance when he got married two years ago (the Honorable Brad Moss officiated).
“In the four years that I’ve been using AFOs, each of them, separately, have snapped and broken (they are made of carbon fiber). I discovered that most insurers will only pay for a new orthotic every five years, including replacement ones when an orthotic breaks, as I found out is not uncommon. Using my AFOs as an example, an AFO can cost around $1,100 each (I wear two) so many if not most people—even those with insurance—are out of luck for potentially years if their orthotic breaks and they cannot pay for a new one out of pocket. Another barrier, even for those with insurance, are significant co-pays even when there is coverage.
“The life-changing nature of AFOs that I’ve experienced and the seemingly insurmountable barriers that some people face in obtaining these medically necessary devices has made working toward making orthotics more readily available a passionate cause for me. I’ve taken two concrete steps toward this goal so far. I am working toward the passage of a law in Maryland that will require insurers to pay for replacement orthotics whenever they break, absent abusive use. I will be testifying before the Maryland Senate, invited in support of the bill next week. Though it is cold in Maryland, so the legislators can see my AFOs, I will be wearing what could charitably be called ‘Bermuda wear,’ shorts along with a sport coat, dress shirt, and tie. On a more personal note, Karen and I are working toward sharing our good fortune by creating an endowment at the Johns Hopkins Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Department (where I’ve been treated) to provide financial assistance to people who cannot otherwise afford to obtain orthotics. After working with the Hopkins bureaucracy since last July, the endowment (AFOs for All) should be up and running in the next month or so. Our goal is to raise at least $250,000 and Karen and I will match the first $125,000 in donations. If you’d like to learn more, you can email me at regnisj@gmail.com.
“There is an overabundance of issues that our world faces. I hope through my efforts I can help to address one. The availability of orthotics certainly is not one of the more visible problems, but I can assure you that it is critically important to those individuals who would benefit from them. My hope is that there will come a day when no one ever is told by their physician, physical therapist, or orthotist that there is a medical device out there that that can make you safer and improve the quality of your life but, unfortunately, your insurance will not pay for it or you cannot afford to pay for it out of pocket so you will have do without it.
“On another subject, I swam freshman and sophomore years. Though I no longer compete, I started back up with masters swimming probably about 25 years ago and swim about three to four times per week. I mention this because the water is my happy place and aqua therapy really helped me with rehab after my back surgeries. At age 59, just before I retired, I got recertified as a lifeguard so that I could help out with aqua therapy one day a week at a spinal cord injury center in Baltimore until COVID. While I like to think I provided some help to therapists and the patients, I can say with certainty that whatever I gave I more than got back in inspiration from the patients, many of whom were paraplegics. Sometimes I did CrossFit with the patients, and Karen would ask if I was the only one not in a wheelchair. While this was often the case, on a good day I could do two pull-ups. Some of the patients could do multiple pull-ups while strapped to their wheelchairs. The experience really showed how with hard work and adaptive athletic equipment you can overcome most anything. On a very minor level, because of safety issues mounting and dismounting, I switched from a traditional bike to a self-powered recumbent tricycle. When I ride here outside of Charleston, where we have our winter beach home, when asked about the trike, I tell people I have the fastest beach chair on the island. I sometimes ride with Lew Gitlin ’79. Lew had a stroke about five years ago and he and his wife now live on Kiawah Island. Lew needs an upright motorized trike, but the important thing is that he’s still getting out and riding.”
Will Rowe:“A group of us mostly ’80 graduates touch base on Zoom calls a couple times a year—me, Jonathan Selzer, Jonathan Nimer, Ken Freeman, Joel Tillinghast, Andy Boname, Richard Levine, Dan Connors,David Engstrom, Leszek Pawlowicz ’79, Dave Loucky ’82, and Teresa Kosciuk-Rowe ’81 (my wife). Really wonderful to be together!
“I’m grateful for many volunteer opportunities to lift communities, especially in these chaotic and uncertain times. Thankful for a racial unity group that I’ve been co-leading for some seven years, with [the] mission to build and sustain a beloved community through education, service, policy, and prayer that fosters repair, healing, and unity. Were young, old, black, white, brown, single, married, city, suburban, and country raised, and raised in other lands. We are members of different faith communities and come together weekly for connection and engage in many projects and initiatives.
“Enjoy spending time as a volunteer on several boards that support the quality of life of military families (e.g., Blue Star Families, the Foreign Born Miliary Spouse Network), needs of local communities in Washington, D.C. (e.g., Strategies to Elevate People DC), and serve as a volunteer with the Northern Virginia Regional Commission in areas of community resilience, workforce transition, and military-community infrastructure and quality of life partnerships. The common denominator is collaboration, relationships, and community action. Still live in Annandale, Virginia, and expecting second grandchild in March!”
Carolyn Sullivan: “As I write this, I am camped out in a hotel, eagerly awaiting the news that my power has been restored after five days without—thank you, Winter Storm Fern! Nashville has been hit bad. So far I’ve been struck by the following: (1) Nashville Electric Service needs big-time help with their disaster messaging; (2) When something like this happens, being in the present and solving problems as they arise is the only way to survive with one’s sanity intact; and (3) a sense of humor is a critical survival tool!
“I had already determined I wanted to let things play out this year and not do quite so much planning and goal setting, and these events have cemented that approach. The beginning of the year had its own challenges I won’t even enumerate here! Suffice it to say 2026 has come in with a ‘Let’s see what you’re made of!’ It’s somewhat liberating to strip things down to the bare bones and live one day at a time, to be honest. Now that I have a long hotel stay in my future and my laptop and functioning WIFI, I hope to catch up on my neglected Substack, “An Accidental Admin.” It’s been a fun creative outlet (no current plans to monetize). Tentatively plan a trip to the UK with my sister later this year, depending on how stable/unstable our country/the world seems to be. In these trying times, it’s the little things. Hope everyone is keeping keeping on!”
Art Feltman: Dale Wallington ’82 and I, who met at Wesleyan in 1979 and have been together since, just retired from our practices and will spend our winters at an outdoor recreational community in Sarasota, Florida. We will enjoy the other seasons at our longtime Berkshires cabin on Center Pond.
Dale is a psychiatrist and Art transitioned two decades ago from practicing law to vocational and literacy work with immigrants. “We recently marched in an anti-ICE demonstration in downtown Sarasota and will continue to be active in both places to include and support immigrants and refugees in our community.”
Mike O’Brien: “My youngest son, Walter (who is named after my late friend Walter Chmielewski) is a freshman at Savannah College of Art & Design, studying animation. My daughter Dana, who lives in Australia now (and whose mother is Ann Carlson), visited the U.S. in October. I got to see her, and my grandchildren Max and Alice—it was my first time meeting Alice! We met up in Brooklyn and took the kids to the Prospect Park Zoo and to many of the same playgrounds in Prospect Park to which I took my own kids, Dana and Jack, when they were little, decades ago.
“I played music at a Bob Dylan–themed open-mic fundraiser organized and emceed by Dave Stern, in November, in Northampton, Massachusetts.”
Michael Zackin: “It is still hard for me to believe that our class is so close to the beginning page of the class notes. Mary (Nastuk) and I have continued to be very busy. Mary just retired from her job as a medical editor at The New England Journal of Medicine after almost 20 years and now hopes to spend more time volunteering, knitting, and kayaking. I am still working as a pediatrician, but after over 30 years I have cut back to two days a week. Not ready to pull the plug just yet. I always get excited when I have a patient attending Wesleyan.
“We are enjoying a bit more time at our house in the Berkshires and spend time hiking, kayaking, running, and biking, but just also enjoying nature. In September, I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with a group from Zero Prostate Cancer. Definitely an awe-inspiring trip.
“Our daughter, Katie Roose ’10, and husband, Robbie Roose ’04, and our two grandchildren (Willian and Alden) came east from Oregon to attend our son’s wedding. Also in attendance was my father, Jerry Zackin ’53. Oregon is too far from Massachusetts, and we wish we could see them more.”
Andrew and Jacquie McKenna:“We are excited to celebrate the graduation of our younger daughter, Juliana, this spring from Eckerd College in Florida. She majored in environmental studies with a concentration in marine biology and hopes to work with sharks after she graduates. Our older daughter, Xan, just began a full-time job with the High Mountain Institute in Leadville, Colorado—an outdoor semester school for high school and gap students (https://hminet.org—check it out for high schoolers you know) and continues creating and selling her paintings (https://xanmckenna.com).
“Andrew continues his work running the services at the Boulder Airport (including powered flight and glider schools) and is flying his Bonanza and searching for Amelia Earhart. Jacquie is on staff for the Boulder International Film Festival as the co-lead for the Call2Action series; is on the board for the African Conservation Centre-U.S. (https://accafrica-us.org), which includes hosting a Tanzanian safari in 2027 to raise funds for the organization; is a wildfire mitigation ambassador for her neighborhood, working to reduce the risk of wildfire in her community; is in a course on constructive conversations to encourage better listening and less divisiveness; and plans to return to the workforce to work internationally to protect wild animals.”
JACQUIE SHANEBERGE MCKENNA | jmckenna@indra.com