CLASS OF 1980 | 2025 | SPRING ISSUE
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Steve Mooney: “In some ways, I’d love to have my college experience back. Love to have the opportunity to apply myself and explore my creativity. And while I have no regrets about my four and a half years in Middletown, there’s just so much Wesleyan offered that I was too young and immature to embrace. I studied things that ended up having nothing to do with my future interests, and maybe that’s what college is all about. As for now, Mary and I are happily retired, living in Boston, and proud parents of Ben and Nicole, who are now in their mid-twenties and doing well. I spend my mornings reading and writing personal essays, having discovered my passion for storytelling only recently. If you’re bored and want a night out, come join me and Mary for a Moth StorySLAM in Brookline or Somerville sometime. The host, Steve Almond ’88, author and comedian, is also a Wes grad. Fun for all!”
Jennifer Boylan: “My new book, Cleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us, was published by Celadon/Macmillan in February 2025. It’s about the difference between men and women, as I have lived it, as well as a look at the contrast between coming out as trans in 2000 and coming out now. I was helped in the titling of this book by one Steve Mooney, who, when I asked whether Cleavage was a good title or not, laughed so hard he fell out of his actual chair. I thought, ‘Okay, that works.’”
Lisa Olsson (originally ’78): “I am playing cello with the Yonkers Philharmonic, Westchester Chamber Soloists, and Kort Quartet. I will also have a chapbook of poems published by Finishing Line Press in spring of 2025. Both children are out of the house and all pets, too, so focus will be on long-delayed travel to see friends and relatives. My husband and I enjoy spending time at a family home on the north fork of Long Island.”
Walter Calhoun: “I wouldn’t be the man I am today without Wesleyan. I will bring up old history and family connections to reinforce my family’s significant connections to Wesleyan all these years, which I am not sure Wesleyan put together. But let me start at the beginning. My introduction to Wesleyan came from a postcard sent by Wesleyan in 1975 asking me to apply while I was a junior at New Trier East High School based on my SAT scores. I do not think Wesleyan knew that my cousin-in-law, Terry J. Hatter ’54, was a prior Wesleyan graduate who was then a member of the Wesleyan Board of Trustees.
“During this time in the late 1970s, Terry Hatter was married to my first cousin, Trudy Martin Hatter, whose father, Louis E. Martin, was the liaison to the Black community under United States president Jimmy Carter, a position he also occupied under previous democratic presidents Kennedy and Johnson and later President Clinton. I had always enjoyed a great relationship with ‘Uncle Louie’ and absolutely loved how he was often referred to as ‘the godfather of Black politics’ since he was such a well-mannered, positive, and discreet man who loved to compliment people ‘as a great American.’ While attending the 1980 Wesleyan graduation, Louis E. Martin received a Wesleyan honorary degree, which was given by son-in-law, Terry Hatter.
Finally, Scott Hatter ’92 is a son of Trudy and Terry Hatter, and he, too, attended Wesleyan during the 1990s, while also playing exceptionally well on Wesleyan’s football team.
“Personally, my history was significantly formed on Chicago’s North Shore where my father, Harold William Calhoun (a light-skinned, second-generation ‘Negro’ lawyer from Kimball, West Virginia) and my mother, Lillian Scott Calhoun (a light-skinned ‘Negro’ and daughter of Savannah, Georgia, insurance executive Walter Scott), and their four children were the first ‘African American’ family to ever move in and live in Kenilworth, Illinois, [from] 1965 through 1976. I was their third child. My family had a not always positive unique upbringing in Kenilworth; mine was uniformly positive. In short, I greatly, greatly enjoyed it; my younger sister hated it, and my parents and older brother and sister were more or less neutral. As a light- skinned, first grader at Joseph School Sears in Kenilworth, I enjoyed a tremendous advantage versus my other siblings in my grade-school experience. While there, where I was able to play seven sports,[I] threw a no-hitter for the ultimate, 1972 Kenilworth baseball champion, Kenilworth Cubs, managed by Charlie Castino with son, Bill, brother of eventual Major League Baseball Rookie of the Year, John Castino; won John Dorrer Rebel Award in football in 1972, with quarterback Bill Castino; and was elected 1972 student council president at Joseph Sears School, despite being the only African American in the school. I became an excellent dancer with the Gus Giordano Dance Studio and eventually became intimately devoted to Jesus Christ from becoming an altar boy at the Kenilworth Episcopal Holy Comforter Church. Growing up as the only Black family in Kenilworth impacted me greatly, especially since my four years at Wesleyan were the first years I lived outside of Kenilworth. This changed me significantly, and I loved it after all my individual success at Joseph Sears and New Trier East High School.
“I attended Wesleyan [from 1976 to 1980]. After Wesleyan, I graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1983 [and then] relocated to Chicago, Illinois, where I began an insurance defense practice at Jacobs, Williams & Montgomery, Ltd. and stayed until 1997 when I started my own firm, the Law Offices of Walter S. Calhoun.
“On May 2, 2002, while a partner in Myers, Miller, Standa & Krauskopf, my life was irrevocably changed when I was struck by a car as a pedestrian on lower Wacker Drive in Chicago, Illinois, sent 30 feet in the air and landed on my face and head where I was knocked unconscious and remained in a coma for 27 days while being hospitalized for another six months. I suffered a significant traumatic brain injury in this accident and still suffer from ‘executive function deficits,’ which complicates thinking and doing two things at once. I have not set foot in a courtroom since the accident and cannot ever see being a trial lawyer ever today.
“All was not lost as I am still here to tell about it.
“For the past 12 years, I have been stewardship chairman and now lay leader at the North Shore United Methodist Church, 213 Hazel Avenue, Glencoe, Illinois, where I helped raise my family as a divorced father between 1988 and 2014.
“I first became enamored helping people unable to help themselves at Wesleyan and seeing how the effect of negative realities often disproportionately affected the outcome of people through no fault of their own. As a member of the Wesleyan Argus, the Wesleyan Student Assembly, the Skull and Serpent Senior Honor Society, the Wesleyan rugby team, and Chi Psi Fraternity, I always tried to be a helpful and a friendly member of our Class of 1980. I still find that friendliness, politeness, good and proper manners important.
“In 1988, I joined the Evanston Auxiliary Board of Family Focus Evanston, an all-Black board, which was started by a [wealthy, Jewish,] Evanston woman primarily to help African American women in the maternal health areas. After becoming vice president in 1990, I served three terms as president of the board; [they] needed to change the bylaws for me to serve the third term.
“When I first joined the FF Board in 1988, I was so depressed and saddened by the conditions the Black community had to work through to obtain academic success, I called a childhood friend from Kenilworth who worked at an international paper company, who sent truckloads of every type of school supply they made until I developed other supply lines to help level the ‘educational playing field.’
“For years, I have been one of, if not the leading, fundraiser for [this group] and now also help our parent company, Family Focus Evanston, [which has] expanded to 11 Family Focus centers all over Chicago but primarily in under-resourced areas like Englewood, Holman, Aurora, and the like.
“More importantly, I led the charge to change the bylaws and broaden and integrate the board while I have continued to raise many hundreds of thousands of dollars while disabled since 2002 and without having held a regular job at any time since then.
“I have pledged to give Wesleyan $25 a month until November 6, 2027, because of the gratitude I have for the Wesleyan experiences and education and what Wesleyan can accomplish for other ‘once black’ now ‘mixed race’ students.”
Ellen Haller: “I remain deliriously happy in retirement from academic psychiatry at UCSF and spend my days cycling, doing strength and mat Pilates classes, and playing both pickleball, and yes, still true, ice hockey! Oh, and I also do all the household chores because my wife is still working in academic medicine. Additionally, I spend time with my 94-year-old mother and love traveling with my wife and 28-year-old son! Sorry to miss the reunion, but I’ll be playing in a hockey tournament that weekend. Best to all!”
JACQUIE SHANEBERGE MCKENNA | jmckenna@indra.com