Categories Obituaries | 1940-1949Posted on

SEYMOUR I. KUMMER ’46, M.D.

SEYMOUR I. KUMMER, M.D., a family physician in Rockville, Conn., for more than 50 years, died Apr. 2, 2014. He was 87. After receiving his degree with honors, he received his medical degree from Hahnemann Medical College. In addition to his medical practice, he had been active in professional organizations. His first wife, Ruth Lavitt Kummer, died. Among those who survive are his wife of 30 years, Joan Hyde Kummer; three children, including Bart A. Kummer ’75, M.D., and Merle E. Kummer ’76; and a nephew, Daniel M. Kummer ’81. His brother, Howard K. Kummer ’53, predeceased him.

Categories Obituaries | 1940-1949Posted on

JOHN A. YOUNG ’40

JOHN A. YOUNG, 94, a retired professor of chemistry, died Feb. 17, 2014. A member of Alpha Delta Phi, he received his degree with high distinction in chemistry and was elected to Sigma Xi. He received a master’s degree from Wesleyan and a PhD from the University of Florida. After working for General Electric Labs he pursued his true calling as a professor of chemistry. He first taught at the University of Florida, later at the University of Denver, and finally at the Universidad Autonóma de Guadalajara. He was an accomplished classical pianist until a chemical explosion destroyed the thumb and index finger of his right hand, but he continued to play tennis and to hike. His wife, Helen Chamberlain Young, and his son, Roger A. Young ’65, predeceased him. Survivors include two daughters, four grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Categories Obituaries | 1940-1949Posted on

RAYNOR L. DUNCOMBE ’40

RAYNOR L. DUNCOMBE, professor emeritus of aerospace science at the University of Texas at Austin, and an astronomer and former director of the National Almanac Office, died July 12, 2013. He was 96. A member of Sigma Nu, he was elected to Sigma Xi. He received a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Iowa and later a PhD in astronomy from Yale University. He was a member of the NASA space science steering committee, having worked on the Vanguard, Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects, and was instrumental in determining the orbit of Sputnik when it was launched. A member of the Hubble Space Telescope Astrometry team, he was the past executive editor of Celestial Mechanics. He was a fellow of various astronomy associations and received numerous awards. He was as comfortable reciting poetry as he was discussing the universe. Also a singer and musician, he was skilled at plumbing, carpentry, and electrical work, and had learned to fly a plane. He was predeceased by his first wife, Avis Bailey Duncombe and by his second wife, Julena Steinheider Duncombe. He is survived by one son, two grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Categories Obituaries | 1930-1939Posted on

JOHN H. WEITZ ’38

JOHN H. WEITZ, 97, a geologist and the former president and co-owner of the Independent Explosive Company, died Oct. 28, 2013. A member of Delta Kappa Epsilon, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He received a master’s degree from Lehigh University and a PhD from Pennsylvania State University. Intending to become an actuary, he became interested in geology after being inspired by Wesleyan geology professor Joe Webb Peoples. After graduate work, he joined the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Mines, mapping strategic metal ore deposits needed for the war effort during World War II. He then joined the Lehigh University geology faculty for five years and then moved back to Ohio, where he became the geologist and later vice president at the family business, Independent Explosive Company. Later, he became president and co-owner. An avid reader and a community volunteer, he used his geology knowledge to help his community. His wife, Anne Moore Weitz survives, as do three children, seven grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and his brother, Joseph J. Weitz ’44. One granddaughter predeceased him.

Categories Obituaries | 1930-1939Posted on

WILLIAM H. HEISLER III ’38

WILLIAM H. HEISLER III, the former CEO of Citizens Bank and an active community leader, died Jan. 9, 2013, at age 97. He was a member of Delta Tau Delta and served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. As a result of his service to the Rhode Island community as a volunteer leader of most of the prominent non-profits in the state during his long tenure as a resident and with Citizens Bank, The Rhode Island Foundation established the Heisler Leadership Fund in his memory. Among other accomplishments, long before it was a federal law, he initiated his own version of a Community Reinvestment Act in order to give access to diverse populations. Two wives predeceased him; two children are among those who survive.

Categories Class Notes, Class Notes | 1930sPosted on

Class of 1938 | 2014 | ISSUE 2

While the number of fellows I have the honor of calling for the notes has definitely, how shall I say it, changed, those remaining are wonderful conversationalists! It is springtime and the guys are glad the winter has tucked itself away for a rest. While three of the four I reach out to now live in Florida, that doesn’t always mean getting out is the sunniest experience, especially after this wet winter! But in late March and early April it does.

Bob Porter kicked that pneumonia we mentioned in the last notes but he is still dealing with some shoulder pain. PT seems to be helping it. He reports Doris is well. Bob said it was a very wet winter in Naples and he is very glad to have that behind them. The sun and fresh air is so good for one’s morale. In February Bob and Doris welcomed another great-grandchild, the first girl of this generation! Bob says his “mind is sharp but the body is getting weak.” I can attest to the mind’s quickness as he broke out in song bringing up the words to Amicus Usque Ad Aras. Bob said it might even have been a Yale song but he remembers singing it with fellow freshmen when they went on a trip with an English professor to Mory’s! Perhaps the Whiffenpoofs were performing, and perhaps this professor had a connection to Yale? If the Olla Podrida from ’38 is correct, then there is a certain professor of English who had connections to Yale! What a fun adventure for Bob to share.

Heading north from Naples is Venice, Fla. Art Kingsbury has lived in Venice for 34 years. We figured out this was over a third of his life. Back in the day, most students attending Wesleyan came from the Northeast, or Midwest regions. No one in the class of ’38 came from Florida. But many did retire there. So the thought that one can retire for over a third of one’s life anywhere is another way of saying they are doing something right! Art celebrated his 96th birthday on April 13th. I still can’t imagine entering a university and experiencing almost a full first year as a 16-year-old! Art and Diane are doing very well and are in “fine health.” Their new pet of last year, the cat, entertains them daily. Art’s sons and their families were coming to celebrate his birthday. Visits with family are always enjoyable. He wishes his fellow classmates the best.

I left a few messages for Leonard Weinstein, the class’s other Florida resident, but didn’t actually speak with him. Better luck next time.

The next fellow I caught up with was Curt Smith. It was a very long winter in Rhode Island. While it was spring there, Curt commented on how it didn’t really feel like it, since the color of things was so delayed. He took a trip to northern New Hampshire and he learned from the sugar makers that the sap is also delayed. Oh dear, there goes the price of maple syrup! Curt had a visit from one daughter in February. They had a packed visit, including catching the old classic Arsenic and Old Lace at Rhode Island College. In late April his other daughter will be visiting. Every week he sees his son. He is very grateful for his time with his children. He attended a Jewish Film Festival at a local synagogue and highly recommends the film The Other Brother. Curt says they are trying to revive the singing group at his community. He is staying active, even if it means enduring stares from fellow residents of his community. Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet keep him inside! I received a lovely card from Emily Cowan ’86 who now lives in Lancaster, N.H., Curt’s old stomping ground. When she moved there in 2000, Emily said Curt came and paid her a welcome visit. Recently she attended a fundraiser for a local ski area and sat with Curt and his son Philip. She had a wonderful visit with them, discussing which articles they enjoyed in the current alum magazine. “Curtis is the dearest man. And he is so active it just takes my breath away.” Thank you, Emily, for your wonderful card.

Something else that Curt shared with me was an article in the Providence Journal. In January Bill Heisler died. While I haven’t seen an official obituary, the newspaper clipping Curt sent was an amazing tribute to Bill’s time in Providence. “Bill served the Rhode Island community in a multitude of ways as a volunteer leader of most of the prominent nonprofits in our state during his long tenure as a resident, while also serving as CEO of Citizens Bank throughout the 1960s and ’70s.”

I also learned from this article that before the government had passed the Community Reinvestment Act, “Bill had initiated his own version of CRA at Citizens, as an outreach effort to give access to diverse populations.” The Heisler Leadership Fund at The Rhode Island Foundation has been established in his memory. I so enjoyed my conversations with Bill. His last decade was spent at Medford Leas, a Quaker-based senior living and continuing care community. He always had something to share about the importance of community. He also had wonderful stories about his trips that he took well into his late 90s. My condolences go out to his family, and also to the class of ’38. This past year has been a challenging one with the loss of four classmates.

On that note, I have cross-referenced a program from last year’s Reunion’s Memorial Service, with my father’s copy of the Olla Podrida, and I have 15 names on a list. I’ll see if I can find any news from them. I think I’ve got my work cut out for me. Here’s hoping next issue will be full of news from long lost fellows of’38! Until then, enjoy the colors of spring, whenever they decide to peek out, and the warmth of summer.

GRACE BENNETT
daughter of the late Walter Bennett ’38
8104 39th Avenue, S.W., Seattle, WA 98136

Categories Class Notes | 2010sPosted on

CLASS OF 2014 | 2014 | ISSUE 2

Congrats, class of 2014!!! I still cannot believe how fast these amazing four years flew by. Do not be afraid, though! This space will serve as a place where you will find your class notes in upcoming issues and you will thus be updated on what the class of 2014 is up to. I will be in touch when it is time to request your submissions. Until then, have a rocking summer and GO WES!

Love,

Mary diaz | mdiaz@wesleyan.edu

Categories Class Notes | 2010sPosted on

CLASS OF 2013 | 2014 | ISSUE 2

With the arrival of spring (after what seemed like a perpetual winter) comes the epiphany that it has been almost a year since my fellow classmates and I graduated from Wesleyan. It’s hard to believe how quickly time has flown by! While some of us are settling into the daily routines of corporate life, others are embracing the return to graduate school, transitioning jobs from one field to another, or simply embarking on new adventures around the world.

Ex-Wesleying editor Zach Schonfeld recently left his fellowship at The Wire to take a job at Newsweek, where he reports on many topics, some of which include Wesleyan. In March, one of his tweets was linked in a post on Gawker. He is enjoying Brooklyn, but occasionally misses Olin 3A. Danielle Craig writes in from Manhattan, where she is working as a paralegal at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. She lives with fellow Wes ’13er, Lily Kaplan, in an apartment that is only moderately decked out in red and black. She is learning an enormous amount about the criminal justice system and federal prosecution, and law school or a master’s in public policy is (somewhere) on the horizon. In her free time she plays squash in an adult league with college teammate Grace Zimmerman and has started to volunteer at an animal shelter in Chinatown. She still hasn’t eaten at every restaurant in New York City, but she’s certainly trying. Also in NYC is Miriam Kwietniewska who works in child welfare crisis management at a foster care agency in Queens called Forestdale Inc. While it is mentally and emotionally challenging, the life and work experience has been invaluable. When she is not working, Miriam is combining her passion for dance and social change. She started movement workshops at the agency for birth parents and their children in order to help them through the trauma of being in the foster care system. They are partnering with the Gibney Dance Company to start the workshops this July.

Singing sensation Emma Daniels writes in from the nation’s capital, and is currently working in the Latin American and Caribbean division of an NGO that promotes democracy and international governance. She also moonlights as a wedding singer—those hoping to crash a wedding in the DC area, please contact her! Roomies Evan Baum, Barbaralynn Moseman, and Hannah Reuman are living together happily in New Haven. Barbaralynn is doing clinical research in Alzheimer’s disease, Hannah is doing clinical research in autism spectrum disorders, and Evan is working for a private material sciences company. After work, they make sure to cuddle and reminisce about Wesleyan memories. Kelsey Muller moved to Bozeman, Mont., last summer to enjoy a year off from school. There, she works in a lab, skis as much as possible, and loves training her new border collie puppy. She is deciding which grad school to attend next year to get her master’s in biomedical engineering—possibly USC where she could hang out with her good friend and fellow ’13 grad Becca Koppel. Suat Kilic writes in with big news of tying the knot with Sarah Moustafa ’11! He is in his first year at Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School and Sarah will be starting at the same school in the fall.

In January, Evan Okun performed a solo show at the NYC Bowery Poetry Club alongside other Wesleyan students and alumni (Lily Myers ’15, Mel Hsu ’13, Sam Friedman, Nate Mondschein ’12, and more). The event was such a success that the venue offered him a follow-up show in June. These performances build on his work with Circles & Ciphers, a restorative justice organization in Chicago that uses hip-hop to engage young men (court-and-gang- involved) in critical discourse. Budding author Kristen Salustro just published her sci-fi novel, Chasing Shadows, on amazon.com in February. This has been a huge project for her for several years now, and it is both terrifying and exhilarating to finally have made the book live. She is already working on the sequel to Chasing Shadows, which was the first installment of a trilogy. In her spare time, Kelsey participates as a writer in a project called Story Shift, where readers get to vote on a choice presented at the end of each story’s installment and then the writer develops the next chapter from there. Evan Carmi also just published a new e-book on internships. Since graduating, he has moved to Portland, Ore., where he works remotely as a software engineer for Brewster, a NYC tech startup.

On the other side of the world, Alex Lough is teaching English and music in Thailand. One of his pieces was selected by the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States to be featured on the album SEAMUS Electro-Acoustic Miniatures 2013: Negative Space. The title of the piece is “What’s Left Behind” and the album is available on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, etc. Alex plans to move to Miami in August to begin his master’s in music technology at Florida International University. Janet Cushey moved to Seoul, South Korea, after graduation, where she teaches ESL at an after-school academy called Chungdahm Institute. She has also been volunteering with Liberty in North Korea’s English tutor and culture exchange program, working with a North Korean refugee in one-on-one sessions on a weekly basis. Tom Lee is leaving his job in London and moving back across the pond to oversee the mid-season harvest of both organic wildflower honey and of course artisanal-grade beeswax at Wakefield Apiaries in Deer River, N.Y. By the sound of things it should be a big year, as forecasts show that harvests should be up by about 3 to 5 percent.

Anwar Batte notes that postgrad life has been filled with viral content aggregation, streamlined integrated deliverables, and maximizing shareable content. Here’s to synergistic, agile disruptions and Total Information Awareness in 2014!

As always, thanks for writing and best wishes to all my fellow 2013ers! Anyone who is around the San Francisco area, please get in touch!

Laura Yim | Lyim@wesleyan.edu

Categories Class Notes | 2010sPosted on

CLASS OF 2012 | 2014 | ISSUE 2

I have been fortunate to run into many of you over the past year and always can count on Facebook and Instagram (thanks, Zuckerberg) for even more updates. After connecting with a few folks, I can happily report it is certainly an exciting time! For many of you, your careers are taking off and you are thriving with new responsibilities. Moving up in your respective companies, you are destined to succeed in your positions. Others have taken the time to finally figure out what they want to do (I throw myself into this category). While it may have been a bumpy road, it has been an incredible adventure. I hope you also feel this way.

Continuing on their adventure, Alexa Narzikul and Raghu Appasani will begin medical school this fall. Raghu has been working full-time on The MINDS Foundation both in Boston and in India. Alexa has been doing research and is excited to stay in Philadelphia at Jefferson Medical College.

Cella Jones has moved her adventure back to the East Coast. She has just completed her two years in Mumbai and will be continuing to improve the lives of others by working with an alternative energy company in Troy, N.Y.

Rebecca Snelling left her job in Hartford last November and moved to Boston to continue her work in environmental consulting with a new Boston-based company. She hopes to jumpstart G&T (EES slang for Gin & Tectonics) Nights. Rebecca wants to let all Beantown natives, other EES alums, local rock-lovers, or beer-loving individuals from near or far know that they are cordially welcomed to join in the festivities!

Marjorie Romeyn-Sanabria is in DC interning at The American Conservative. She just covered CPAC alongside Mytheos Holt ’10. Marjorie said, “I really love it here; it’s full of great Wes peeps but is also a wonderful way to meet new people.” In June Marjorie is starting a master’s program in international studies at Concordia University in Irvine. After a summer semester, she is hoping to go to Kunming, China, where she’ll be teaching college-level English and working on a thesis. Marjorie sends love to all her Wes classmates!

As for me, I have just completed my second, and final, year in Teach for America. In June I will have completed my master’s and I plan on continuing my adventure in New York, for now.

Wishing all the class of 2012 the very best in all their adventures this year and always.

Daisey Perez | deperez@wesleyan.edu

Categories Class Notes | 2010sPosted on

CLASS OF 2011 | 2014 | ISSUE 2

Thanks for the updates this round. Take a look at what our class is up to!

Terrance Agbi, who is pursuing a master’s degree at the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, just got featured in NYU’s student spotlight. Check out the article at engineering.nyu.edu/news/2014/02/06/student-spotlight.

Also in New York is Josh Smith. Josh is living in Brooklyn and making a massive amount of music with an all-star team of friends and collaborators. For the past two years, he has also been secretly posing as Michael Rosen in order to write silly updates on his own behavior for the Wesleyan magazine. He has been having a great time doing this and he sincerely hopes no one finds out.

Alex Bean recently relocated from working in the advancement office at the Windward School in Los Angeles to the Dublin School, a small private school deep in the boonies of New Hampshire near the Keene area. She is serving as the director of annual giving, an advisor, and a dorm parent! Alex is hoping to make it to campus this spring at some point while in the Conn. area.

Both currently abroad are Jared Gimbel and Benjamin Petrie LaFirst. Jared recently authored his master’s thesis: “From Helsinki to Hania: Jewish Media Narratives About Europe, and Why They Matter Today,” and will spend fall 2014 and the subsequent academic year in JTS’s Modern Jewish Studies graduate program. Benjamin reports, “I am living and working abroad in Austria as an English teacher, and will be moving to Frankfurt am Main this summer to live with my fiancé, Christopher Ulrich Jürgensen, who I met in Regensburg while studying abroad from Wesleyan! We will be getting married in New York this summer, if all goes as planned.”

Kim Prosise adds, “I’m working as a traveling freelance writer and circus performer based out of Boston, Mass. I’m delighted to have the opportunity to visit Wesleyan family around the country and spent two weeks celebrating the New Year with Joey Heller and Gabriel Urbina ’13 in L.A.

Last but not least is Danielle St. Pierre, who has been working as an associate editor at AOL/The Huffington Post Media Company. She has been there since November 2013 and is working on the MarloThomas.com women’s lifestyle vertical.

Thanks for the updates!

Allie Southam | asoutham@wesleyan.edu