Tag: 1963

Class of 1963 Endowed Wesleyan Scholarship Fund

John Lewis Jr. ’21, Newark, NJ

Ron Tallmanis living in St. Augustine. Way back in the ’80s, he was director of the American Association for Canadian Studies at the University of Maine, the largest center for such studies in the U.S. But more recently, when he retired in 2002 it was as dean of Roosevelt University, Chicago. Noel, his wife, retired from advertising in 2007. They really enjoy taking cruises and have taken so many that he was not even sure how many. Possibly 20, he guessed. They find it much easier to travel that way. No hauling luggage around or changing from hotel to hotel. He and Noel recently bought a wonderful single-family dwelling in a retirement community and moved there after some renovations. He thinks they might be the youngest residents there and they are very pleased with the community. Lots of interesting and friendly fellow residents and a wide range of activities to choose from. He listed a few—monthly van group trips to high-end restaurants (always a sober driver to bring them home), free Uber drivers, golfing (Noel is very good! and he played golf at WESU). They once went to the Open at St. Andrews. “Great fun!” Ron has two daughters from a previous marriage. The eldest, 53, is the United Nation’s deputy high commissioner for refugees in Geneva and has two children. The youngest just turned 50 and is a teacher about to start teaching in Houston, Texas, and has 3 children. Ron’s grandchildren range in age from 12 to 22, but sadly, due to geographical distance, he sometimes only sees them once a year.

While John Coatsworth is in only in his seventh year as provost at Columbia University, he and Patricia are in their 53rd year of marriage.Prior to coming to Columbia, John was the Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs at Harvard where he also founded the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. He was also president of the American Historical Association. Due to his job he travels a lot to both Europe and South America. He and Patricia find so much to do in NYC that they “travel” more around town, especially to the ballet, than abroad. However, they did recently enjoy a brief relaxing and warm “escape” to Punta Canna in the Dominican Republic. John was originally a member of the class of ’62 but during his junior year abroad in Paris with a group of COL students, his mother, “our family bread winner” got sick and he took the year off and returned home to work and support his family. “Wesleyan was wonderfully helpful in allowing me to keep my scholarship and return and graduate a year later.” John has fond memories of being a member of the John Wesley Club. It was a great place to be, filled with wonderful odd balls and radicals. When I asked him about the rumors that inhabitants there might have partaken of substances not yet legalized in Connecticut, he replied, “Not so much so, but we did have some residents who were very accomplished chemists.”

John Bednarik lives with his wife Leslie Woods in Montville, Maine, which he said is located “halfway between Liberty and Freedom, with Hope just down the road.” (Confirmed by Google Maps!) John retired at 55 from the Bath Iron Works in Brunswick, Maine, which now builds Arleigh-Burke class frigates, all stealth and as large as WWII cruisers. He was in their computer department and had worked there for 14 years. From high school in New Mexico, John was recruited by the wide-ranging diversity policy of Victor Butterfield who wanted not only more out-of-state, but also way, way out-of state students. “I was a high school state champion. A very hot wrestling prospect in New Mexico but was lured east. Initially I lived in a small apartment in Butterfield’s house. There, as part of my scholarship pay-back, I waited at many official banquets and met lots of interesting visiting scholars and lecturers, including Paul Horgan. As a freshman, I was New England champ (135 pounds), but found the training and dieting too tiring. Also, I was getting very interested in my studies. So, I retired from sports, eventually joining the COL and got very interested in French literature. I spent the second half of my sophomore year in Paris and translated a History of the Wife of Pontheuwhile there. I majored in French, minored in Russian, with lots of psych courses too. After graduation, I got a letter from the New Mexico draft board inviting me to come and see if I was qualified to defend our country. I flunked the physical, but passed the Army Language school requirement, and was sent first to their language school. Studied Russian, Czech—with the name Bednarik, a piece of cake, that was my family history! And then on to the Army Security Agency.” He met Leslie while out in Monterey at language school. She has a very different family background from his—her family came over on the Fortune, the second English ship after the Mayflower. But that did not prove to be an obstacle. They dated for six weeks and got married. Initially they lived in NYC where John heard of a training program offered by IBM.  He applied, was hired, trained, and took to computers with ease. “Database was just like learning another language and was easy for me.” For a while they lived in New Fairfield, Conn., where he worked for Control Data, but after vacationing in Maine and Canada, they decided they wanted out and bought 135 acres in Waterville, Maine in 1967 and eventually moved up there in 1980. They grow most of their own food, including sheep and vegetables. In retirement John does his own iron work—welding iron animals and fanciful creatures as well as making ceramic candelabras. He has taken numerous adult education classes and now is improving his Spanish. He also speaks German, French, and Czech. That John is enjoying himself in his retirement came across very clearly. He, too, has fond memories of the JWC, having lived there after returning from France.

Daniel Dennett wrote, “I spent just freshman year at Wesleyan in the class of ’63 before transferring to Harvard to work with W.V.O. Quine, who became a life-long hero of mine. The year at Wesleyan was a deep and formative experience for me. Three teachers, Robert Benson, the historian, Louis Mink, the philosopher, and Henry Kyberg, a visiting logician from Princeton, inspired me for years. Two fellow freshmen, Stan Lewis and Spike D’arthenay ’64 showed me that art, music and poetry were even more wonderful than I already thought, while at the same time showing me by their very great talent and insight that there might be other worlds for me to excel in. I shudder to think of some of the obnoxious and narrow-minded things I did back then. I apologize and hope that any whom I might have embarrassed back in ’59-60 will chalk it up to my immaturity and over-eagerness to impress. It was a great year for me and it laid the foundation for what has been a gratifying life of adventure and accomplishment. I am still married to the woman I met later in 1960. We have two children, both married, and five grandchildren. After 40 years, we sold our farm in Blue Hills, Maine, and now spend summers in a house on Little Deer Isle, Maine.”  Dan has a very impressive array of accomplishments—world-wide lectures/workshops, numerous articles and books, and is a recipient of the Netherlands highest honor presented by Queen Beatrix. There is a very interesting article about Dan in the March 27, 2017 issue of the New Yorker, written by Joshua Rothman entitled, “Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul.”

James Ferguson, long been retired from his consulting work, is very active as administrator of the Washington Soccer Club in D.C. It has a youthful membership of under 200 and is very serious about high-level training for young soccer players. It has only travel teams and does not play in any recreational league. They are understandably proud that three of their graduates have made it onto the U.S. national teams. We remember Jim in sports for football or wrestling, but many years ago, as his sons got into soccer, Jim did too. Eventually, he wound up as rules chairman for the National Youth Soccer Association and sat on the Rules Committee of the National Soccer Federation. Jim took up writing when his granddaughter, Nora, was 9 (she’s now 18). He wrote a story for her (“and all children under 70″) called Nora, The Checkerboard Duckling, which he says his friends all like. While book publishers like it too, none has yet been able to decide what age would be its target.  He’s written two screenplays “which no one has bought” and has made board games “which no one wants.” He seems undiscouraged and continues to write. Jim has two sons, 41 and 37, and three grandchildren, with another due prior to your reading this. I was shocked to hear that Jim’s youngest son, Brian spent 11 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. After much effort by a fine, new lawyer who unearthed information either initially ignored, misinterpreted, or deliberately overlooked, a judge released Brian from prison. Brian is rebounding well. He is engaged, attending Georgetown, and will get his degree this spring. After leading a successful “Ban the Box” campaign in D.C., Brian is employed as head of the D.C. mayor’s Office of Returning Citizen’s Affairs, which helps reintegrate D.C. residents who have spent time in jail or prison. Having become a jail house lawyer himself, Brian is seriously considering going to law school after his graduation. During Brian’s incarceration, if asked what he wanted in life, Jim would say, “I want to live to see my son breathe free again.” A last tidbit—when quite young, Jim was told that if he learned cribbage, it would help his math. So, he started playing the game and now plays it nearly everyday. Football, wrestling, cribbage. A natural progression, I guess.

And sad news, John Sommer died Nov. 11 of cancer. Alex Aikman, a classmate of John’s from seventh grade through WESU, has written a wonderfully detailed and lovingly prepared obituary which is available online.

Be advised it’s true—Our 55th Reunion is almost upon us! And I hope a great many of you will plan to come to campus May 25-27. Harvey Bagg, Jim Dooney, Jim Dresser, John Driscoll ’62, Doug Evelyn, Marty Hatch, Dave Landgraf,John Kikoski, RussRichey, Peter Treffers, Don Sexton, and I have been busy planning what we hope will be a wonderful weekend. Join this opportunity for our class to assemble once again. Remember, the older we are, the better we were.

Byron S. Miller | tigr10@optonline.net
5 Clapboard Hill Rd., Westport, CT 06880

Dear Classmates, hope you’re all well and I encourage you to send a note any time on your activities for this column.

I was on campus recently for only the second night football game at Wesleyan (both versus Tufts), and it was an incredible win for the Cardinals, as they scored with six seconds to go in the game and won it in overtime!

Now to the news: Rob Abel remains as productive as ever. His work on eye health is included in a new book featuring articles by experts in both traditional and integrative medicine (David Rakel’s Integrative Medicine, 4th Edition). Rob helped create a statewide free eye exam/eye glass program in Delaware that he will take to Qalqilya, on the West Bank of Palestine, this summer.

Charlie Bassos writes that he has been “retired for 17 years and now majoring in golf where my age curve is dominating my improvement curve resulting in ever higher handicaps. Every swing hurts either my body or my ego. Living in South Carolina, equidistant from Savannah and Hilton Head. We return to Michigan every summer. Son and two daughters married; two grandchildren, ages 6 and 7 months, and another due soon. Life is good, although I find myself spending more and more time each day stretching and working out at the gym to keep this old body from seizing up and coming to a full stop. Zoe and I now working on our 38th year of marriage. We figure we both qualify for sainthood.”

Bill Trapp writes from Dublin that he and Marilyn are “celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary by spending a month touring Ireland and Scotland. Having a great time.”

John Dunton writes from France that he and Carol are enjoying their stay in a chateau owned by a relative of a family—who is staying at the Duntons’ home near Boston. In fact, Carol is singing in a chorus assembled to perform in a wedding there (La Rochelle). All a result of the Duntons’ participation in the “stay-at-our-home-and-we’ll-stay-in-yours” program with families in Europe. He highly recommends it!

Congratulations to Amertat Cohn who had a very successful exhibition (Capturing Life, Insight in Simplicity) of his photographs at the Montserrat Gallery in New York City in September.

Please write—and all the best!

Philip L. Rockwell | prockwell@wesleyan.edu

Russ Richey and Merle are back in Durham, N.C., after 12 years in Atlanta. Their son lives in Durham within walking distance and their daughter lives out in Denver. Merle’s father held numerous public offices in North Carolina, including governor. On a regular basis, they go to a house in Sunshine, N.C., that Merle’s family owns. “It’s a tree farming area and that’s our business there.,” says Russ. When not tree farming, Russ is still researching and writing about American Methodism. Being involved in religion is practically an automatic occupation for Russ’ family.

Laman Gray works in an administrative capacity at the Louisville Cardiovascular Innovation Institute, overseeing financial matters and advising on ongoing research in stem cells aimed at improving heart functioning. He and wife Julie have three daughters and four grandchildren. Laman and Julie like to take one major trip each year and have been to the Arctic, the Antarctic, China, and Cambodia to name some of their trips. Laman has a rather unique and very time-consuming hobby. Working only from plans, not kits, he builds very large Royal Navy 17th- and 18th-century ship models.

George Kozlowski recalls his years at WesU as a “great experience, the second most important experience in my life (the first being my marriage!).” He was a math major, loved the College of Quantitative Studies, and worshipped Professor Bob Rosenbaum, then the head of the math department. George, a professor of math at Auburn, retired in 2007. He is helping two colleagues who are developing a computer program for mathematicians and still writes articles for math journals. George’s wife Yvonne, whom he met at Auburn where she worked as a librarian, retired in 2003. They married in 1962. The aforementioned number-one event in George’s life was life was his marriage. They have two daughters, one living in the suburbs of New Orleans and the other in the suburbs of Atlanta.

Living in Berkeley, Calif., Tom Hoeber spent most of his career publishing the California Journal. He retired in 2005, but still works for the alumni association of Cal State, East Bay, doing administrative work.  He and his wife of 52 years, Maru, take at least one big trip each year, frequently with the Sierra Club. A recent trip was to the Czech Republic, hiking from Vienna to Prague, 200 miles in 10 days, “with lots of bus rides and nice hotels each night.” They have three children and two grandchildren, and another on the way. They have a cabin up in the Sierra Mountains near the Donner Pass. Up there, Tom is president of the homeowners’ association. Tom and his former roommate, Bob Gelbach of Connecticut, see each other when either one visits to the other’s coast.

Sad news and memories: Robert Sloat passed away. After WesU, Robert got an M.Ed. from UConn, eventually becoming a teacher, administrator and chair of the arts faculty of Pomfret School in Connecticut. He’d been sick for two years, but when the doctors said there was nothing further they could do, Robert decided it was time to enter hospice. He died August 17.

Caroline, his wife, offered lots of recollections of her husband.  Robert’s father, Frederick T. Sloat, class of 1927, had been very interested in theater, and their family had gone to the opera when Robert was young. As Robert showed such an interest himself in theater, Jerry Newton, class of 1927 (later to be Robert’s father-in-law), noticing that interest suggested he seek work at Camp Pinnacle in New Hampshire which had a very strong summer theater program. There Robert was put in charge of creating a new production every week. He did a lot of directing and got very involved creating and conducting electronic music.

Upon his retirement from Pomfret in 1976, he continued to be very active in community theater, generously sharing his knowledge of technical matters with other groups in Northeast Connecticut. He directed and conducted productions at the Bradley Playhouse and served as a board member and technical director for P/Arts. After graduating from WesU, he returned a few times to work with Dick Winslow ’40, whom he admired. They worked together to create electronic music for productions at the ’92 Theater. Caroline recalls going to WesU to see the performance of one of their collaborative works.

Our 55th Reunion is coming up on May 24-27, 2018. It’s not at all too early to mark it on your calendar and consider attending, or perhaps even make your attendance plans now! I plan to attend “God willing and the creeks don’t rise” (an expression I learned years ago from the above-mentioned Russ Richey, when we were roommates).

Byron S. Miller | tigr10@optonline.net
5 Clapboard Hill Rd., Westport, CT 06880

Bill Roberts made a point to go and scout out the class of ’62’s Reunion to “get back into the Reunion planning mode” in preparation for our 55th next year, which will be as usual, over Memorial Day Weekend. He said it was both interesting with good class presentations, speakers, and fun. He talked with the class members of ’62 who’d organized their Reunion, as well as with their alumni office co-planners. We are now looking for eager volunteers to assist in planning our Reunion and welcome ideas of activities for the weekend. The game’s afoot! And it is not too early to go directly to your calendars and mark the date.

Fritz Henn wrote: “I am still reordering my life following my wife Suella’s death nearly two years ago. We were married 51 years. I have started a final clinical study on a new target we discovered which appears to play a major role in depression. We are using deep brain stimulation in intractable cases of depression with some, but not uniform, positive results. Nonetheless I decided to turn the study over to a group at Baylor and have retired from Mt. Sinai. My last psychiatric talk will be next week in Berlin” (where he actually was when I initially tried to call him; he could only talk briefly and in a whisper) “where I am on a jury and we will give a single investigator 4 million euros (Frensenius Foundation Award) in the hope of finding a major game changing approach to treating depression. Amazing process of selection international jury, remarkable proposals and a hopeful way to conclude my psychiatric research life.”

When I next talked to Fritz, he was back home and was well-satisfied with the recipient of the prize.  While he still lives in D.C., he’s bought a summer house on the eastern shore of Maryland and is hopeful to turn it into a ”summer camp” for his five grandchildren, ages 8-16.  All of them will gather there in June. Buying that house and fixing it up he says was part of the “reordering” mentioned above. As was his taking the two eldest kids to Africa—Numibia and Botswana—where they went to several game preserves and saw the big five as well as many, many other African animals. The three youngest have already picked the Galapagos when they get older and their turn comes.

One of Fritz’s sons, Steve ’91, and his wife, Emily ’91, both went to WESU. He bragged on Steve’s success with a new app he’s created, “60DB,” with which one can find and play any podcast, anytime, anywhere. Steve lives out in Menlo Park, Calif., and daughter Sarah lives next door in DC. He says her closeness was a great emotional help to him after Suella’s death. He is seriously considering and being urged by friends to write about Suella’s life. I got on that band wagon, too, and I am planning to put him in touch with a successful professional writer who teaches writing in college and helps first time writers (like three friends of mine) write their first book Fritz said he had lectured at WESU two years ago and found the students very mature and interesting to teach. While we were talking, Fritz was pounced on by a large, apricot-colored French poodle that he was babysitting while its usually disinterested owner was off in some kind or treatment. I got the distinct impression that if the owner returned and did not want his dog back, Fritz would be happy to adopt it.

John Coatsworth wrote, “I have been teaching history and serving as Columbia’s provost since 2011. Living in NYC with my wife of 53 years, Pat. Our daughter, Anne, lives with her husband, Jon, and two adorable grandkids (Emma, 10, and Alex, 8) just a few blocks away. My last book was a co-authored world history textbook published by Cambridge.”  Initially John was a member of the class of ’62, and as such, was also a member of the first class of the then-new College of Letters where his interest in history started.  But as his mother got sick, he had to drop out to work and joined our class upon his return. Before spending the last six years at Columbia, he spent 22 years at the University of Chicago, rising from assistant professor to full professor. He then spent 13 years at Harvard teaching Latin American affairs, and also as director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Affairs.

Now his duties as provost require that he travel a lot to South America, and more recently, to Europe as Columbia has a worldwide network of related or cooperative programs. Pat is now retired, but worked as a librarian at the University of Chicago, and was an administrator at Harvard while there. He fondly recalls his time at the John Wesley Club, “a great home for all campus radicals and misfits! We had some unusual speakers—Jack Kerouac, who was boring (not high/too high?) and a communist, Herbert Aptheker. I don’t know how we got him, but he was very interesting. I think the administration was upset by his presence.”

His senior year, John was the dorm monitor for JWC, which in practicality, meant that he felt responsible for letting all members know when an administrator arrived on a weekend and might check that anyone with a date had his door open and one foot on the floor. A rule not always followed anywhere on campus. John says that “NYC is a Disneyland for grown ups—theater, museums, and all those restaurants which we ruthlessly take advantage of!” His final comments: “Boy, has Wesleyan changed over the past half century! Greetings to all!”

John’s junior and senior year JWC roommate was Martin Nicolaus, who also responded to the alumni office’s request for news for this column and is appearing for the very first time in these notes. He wrote from his home in Berkeley, Calif. “My mind must be turning to mush as I’m abandoning my categorical rejection of all alumni connections by answering your appeal for ‘news.’ OK. After a fun career doing this and that, much of which the interested person can look up on nicolaus.com/2011/07about-edden/et, I recently retired from the practice of law in Berkeley.  I also retired from the leadership of a nonprofit I had founded that created a network of recovery meetings for people wanting to get free of alcohol and other drugs via a positive, secular pathway: LifeRing. Much of my energy now goes to celebrating the beauties and combating the uglies of a local park, Cesar Chavez Park, in the Berkeley Marina, the subject of a blog I write fairly regularly. I also write a more occasional blog on a variety of topics ranging from international politics to local events to electric cars at nicolaus.com. I suppose it’s incumbent here to also mention the books I’ve had a hand in writing: Translation of Karl Marx’s “Grundrisse,” Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR; authorship of three books on recovery; translation and editing of Suddenly Jews; editing of ‘Creating the Eastshore St. Park’; authorship of text and photos in ‘From Trash to Treasure: The Splendors of Berkeley’s Cesar Chavez Park’.”  Later when I we talked on the phone he said he’d had a practice in civil law (landlord/tenants—mostly on the tenants’ side) for 29 years in Oakland and Berkeley. He’s been married to his wife Sheila for 10 years. Retired now, she was formerly the superintendent of schools for Alameda County. Martin has two children from a previous marriage who are now in their 30s. He and Sheila enjoy traveling and once spent a month in Ecuador. He enjoys biking, gardening, and DIY stuff around the house. He recalled joining EQV our freshman year and then leaving, eventually joining and living in JWC.

After 53 years, Steve Miller is tired of the West Coast and is determined to move to Chicago, which is his wife Carolyn’s hometown. They have been married 21 years.  When I called, he was actually busy with packing and moving plans, which included finding an apartment just big enough for them and their two big dogs. Let me take a slight digression here: Their two dogs are a large standard poodle and an equally large English setter. He is a great enthusiast of the later breed which he says mostly goes unrecognized on both coasts but is much admired in the Midwest. He’s fairly confident it will not go unrecognized in Chicago.

Back to their move—Most of their furniture will soon be shipped ahead of them and they follow on December 1. Steve has been fully retired for six years. “Not having won the lottery…” said Steve, when talks of retirement began at Cal State (East Bay), where he was a full professor in the department of management. He initially took part-time retirement, meaning he could stay on for five years part-time. During his teaching career, he had also been an adjunct professor at Stanford and Cal Berkeley “for variety.” He is very happy with the education he got at WESU, praising the great teachers and the breadth of courses.  He picked one example—since we were required to take electives, he picked a course on theater, a subject he knew nothing about. But as a result, he developed a lifelong interest in theater and later became a docent for the Berkeley Repertory Theater. And he told how his art appreciation course got him his first job. He was being interviewed for a consulting job at Ernst & Ernst when he noticed and commented on the “nice Monet” on the wall. Well as it turned out, a fellow Monet admirer was exactly what they were looking for! But as he’d gotten his PhD in organizational psychology in ’69 and was teaching part-time in the evenings, he eventually decided that a job with only two weeks off a year was not for him and full-time academia, with its great long summer vacations beckoned. So he took his admiration of Monet and moved on. Showing good sense, he had spent a long time in graduate school from 1963 to 1969 so as to maintain his deferment and stay healthy by avoiding the war.

Steve has two daughters age 34 and 41, from a previous marriage, one in Utah and the other in Minnesota, and two granddaughters, 6 months and 5. He had a last memory of WESU. “Very early in the fall of our freshman, we were lined up in alphabetical order, which meant you and I were standing beside each other. The dean (probably Barlow) said ‘Look at the person standing to you right. He will become very important in your life.’ You didn’t.” Not one to take offense, I have not included here the very subtle hints I got whilst talking to Steve, that he’s moving to Chicago either to escape prosecution of, or is really in the Witness Protection Program.

Please feel free to let me know if you want to hear about a particular classmate or about one who has never appeared in this column.

Byron S. Miller | tigr10@optonline.net
5 Clapboard Hill Rd., Westport, CT 06880

Class of 1963 Endowed Wesleyan Scholarship Fund

Benjamin Goldberg ’17, Sociology, Film Studies

Gordon Berger has been retired from USC where he taught for 38 years. He had visiting appointments at Claremont Graduate School and UCLA, and describes what he got as “time off for good behavior on a Japan foundation fellowship at the Japanese Ministry of Finance and getting a Fulbright Fellowship at Tokyo University.” He taught East Asian studies and was known locally for his cable programs about sumo wresting. The Japanese government awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun, and upon his retirement, USC gave him various awards for scholarship, teaching, and administration.

After 30 years of domestic partnership, he married Lynne Jacobs, a clinical psychologist. They have seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Gordon likes collecting Australian aboriginal paintings, Japanese woodblock prints, books, and American baseball cards.

Red Erda, appearing for the first time, says he and wife Anne live in Madison, Conn., in the summer, and Guilford, Conn., in the winters. They have seven grandchildren and three grown children. They enjoy tennis, sailing, and skiing. After college, Red volunteered for the Coast Guard. They got married the day after he received his commission, and he served from 1964 to 1967, thoroughly enjoying his duty, which was “driving buoy tenders up and down the East Coast.”

After positions at Drew, Duke, and Emory, Russ Richey has retired, burdened with titles: dean emeritus of Chandler School of Theology, William R. Cannon Distinguished Professor of Church History Emeritus, and Research Fellow, Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. He continues to offer tutorials at Duke and to rebuild research and writing efforts. His Methodism in the American Forest was judged “the outstanding book” by the Historical Society of the United Methodist Church. Russ is now co-editor of the new online Methodist Review and has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Southern Religion since its online launch. Wife Merle, whose father is honored with the name of a new park, is an attorney. She takes an active leadership role in their family’s church.

Also receiving recognition for authorship, Robert Gallamore’s book, American Railroads: Decline and Renaissance in the Twentieth Century, won the George W. and Constance M. Hilton Award of the Railroad and Locomotive Historical Society as the best book in railroad history for 2016. Robert is writing another book about how railroads connected nearly all of the state capitals, called Rails to the Domes. He asks anyone who would like to read and comment on his draft of your state to contact him. He and wife Sue “continue to enjoy our retirement at Rehoboth Beach, Del. We try to see our 13 grandchildren annually, but they are spread out among Maryland, Georgia, and California, and it’s nearly impossible to get them all together.”

Stephen Miller writes: “I imagine many of our fellow graduates are going to have knee replacements in the near future. I just had one, and they have made considerable advances that eliminate much of the ‘guesswork’ in the procedure, since the implant can be made individually for your knee.” Steve is a docent for the Berkeley Repertory Theater and gives talks before and after plays. “I take my two dogs to the dog park where, as the dogs play, I schmooze with other Berkeley types. Travel to NYC, Paris, and London every year, and I have a new granddaughter in Utah. I’m not bored the least in spite of the mundane things I’ve listed. As long as you have your health, and a great woman companion, life is good.”

Chris Rich writes: “There was a convivial gathering in Napa hosted by Virginia and Steve Humphrey. Also in attendance were Keith Nave and David Snyder. It was a nostalgic rendezvous lubricated by some of Napa’s best grape juice. We traded telltales, many exaggerations, a few outright lies, and never lost track of the essential truth that we felt very fortunate to be united by our years at Wesleyan, even if our most important learning did not always originate in our classrooms. One surprise was how sparse the gray hair seemed to be on the heads of four so recently departed from WesTech.”

Dean Schooler writes: “Recent months have given me time to appreciate the experiences and opportunities life has given in education, community, family, and philanthropy.” Dean and his wife, Vicki, live in Boulder, Colo. He serves as treasurer, trustee, and oversees investment management for the Schooler Family Foundation. He has written many articles on governing boards, civil dialogue, leadership, public policy, fundraising, and philanthropy. He got his PhD and MA in political science from Ohio State. Prior to that, he studied at the Methodist Theological School and briefly served a Methodist congregation in Ohio. They have five children and travel extensively: Peru, the Galápagos, the Netherlands, and Istanbul, to name a few of their destinations.

It’s my sad duty to report the passing of our classmate, Bill Grossman. There is information about his death in the obituary section of this magazine.

I appreciate it when classmates send in news of themselves. But I would also like to hear suggestions of classmates who, like Red, have never appeared in our column or who have been too long absent from it.

BYRON S. MILLER | tigr10@optonline.net
5 Clapboard Hill Rd., Westport, CT 06880

In response to a plea from the Alumni Office for information, Bill McCollum e-mailed a note: “My wife, Janice, and I live in Kansas City. I retired from the practice of law three years ago. We have three children and three grandchildren.” While admiring his brevity, I thought that there might be more there so I called. He is a Blue Devils fan due to his having gone to law school at Duke and he still goes to at least one basketball game a year. He and Janice were married in 1970. After a career in childcare, she, too, retired, but they both still do volunteer work with needy children. While they have been “all over Europe” their travel now is mostly to visit their children (in Rochester, N.Y., Georgia, and D.C.) and grandchildren (two in high school, one in grade school). Bill is very interested in history and devotes a lot of energy and time in helping with the restoration and maintenance of two nearby historical houses. One is where wounded Civil War soldiers from both sides were cared for, and the other was a way station for people migrating west, way back in the really old days. From 1968 to 1970, BiIl was in the U.S. Navy. After OCS, he was trained, sent west, and served as commander of a small, really fast air-cushion craft in the Delta of South Vietnam. He left the Navy with the rank of first lieutenant.

Samuel “Bo” Grimes writes, “My wife, Sabra, and I have just been accepted for admission to a very nice retirement community called Tel Hai in Honeybrook, Pa. By a set of unexpected circumstances, we have obtained exactly the cottage we had hoped for in the community.

In December, we will move about 70 miles from our present home outside Baltimore to a small town in the Amish and Mennonite farm country halfway between Lancaster and Philadelphia. It will be a considerable change in our lives, but my younger sister has been living in the area for 10 years, which will help us to connect, and it’s close enough that we can be back in Baltimore in less than two hours. The present challenge is to clean out the house before embarking on a new life in a new place. We’ve been accumulating stuff far more than we need for the last 20 years.” Bo retired in 2012 after 49 years of teaching English and computer skills at the Gilman School in Baltimore. After graduating from Wesleyan, he got his teaching degree at Johns Hopkins. Since the draft existed then, I asked him how he’d avoided it. He said the headmaster of the Gilman School wrote a very persuasive letter to his draft board, which “convinced them that I was needed more there than as cannon fodder.” Sabra is also retired. She had worked as a scheduler at Gilman for years until she was replaced by technology. She sings in a local choir, plays the piano, and they both like music. They have two daughters who are 38 and 34. Once they get settled at Tel Hai, they will continue to travel.

Pete Smith wrote: “I think that this is probably my first communication with Wesleyan since, oh, maybe 53 years ago. I became disaffected during the craziness of the late 1960s and have not felt the urge to reconnect, though I did stop by the campus a few years ago in the late summer with nobody around at Alpha Delt. My professional life in brief: I spent 15 years in the foreign service, then moved to NASA, and retired as director of international relations in 1996 at 55. I lived in West Virginia for 22 years, then moved this summer to a smaller stone ranch house in upper Baltimore County. I’ve been married to my wife, Lynn, for 52 years this summer. We have two children, a daughter, 50, and a son, 48. Our daughter lives in Baltimore and has five children. Our son is in Charlotte with two daughters. I am still pursuing ham radio after 62 years and writing for various magazines in the field. Morse is probably my second language by now at probably 35-40 words per minute. The fascination continues to be that it’s just me, the ionosphere, and my station. No Internet, so the challenge continues.” Pete got into ham radio at 13, thanks to a radio club at his middle/high school. “My parents were quietly supportive, although there wasn’t much money for that purpose. I remember buying a second-hand Hallicrafters receiver and a Heathkit transmitter and just kept floundering around. In those days you had to know Morse for even the lowest class license, which is no longer the case for any licensing level.”

Richard Currie reports that he and “my lovely wife, Suzanne” just celebrated their 50th anniversary this year with trips to St. John, Virgin Islands, in January and a riverboat cruise up the Rhine during their anniversary month of April. And now a Trekkie alert! Their son, Tom, is working on visual effects for a new Star Trek series for CBS, while daughter Karen is stage managing for several professional companies in the D.C. area. Both visited Dick and Sue during their year-long anniversary celebration. Sue continues to work as a pastor in the greater Pittsburgh area while Dick volunteers with Meals on Wheels and Food Bank to combat hunger in the Monongahela River Valley. His food pantry received the 2016 Outstanding Agency award from the county bank office.

BYRON S. MILLER | tigr10@optonline.net
5 Clapboard Hill Rd., Westport, CT 06880

“Thanks for the e-mail,” writes Eric “Swede” Wilson, “to ’nudge’ me to recall some items that may be of interest for the class notes. I am still gainfully employed in my second job as in-house counsel for a Tuscaloosa-based holding company, after retiring from the FBI after 26 years in 1989. Margaret and I continue to have good health, and she is very busy painting and volunteering for various organizations in Tuscaloosa. My daughter, Avery, is now back living in Nashville, after moves to Del Mar, Calif., and Atlanta within the last five years. My son, Eric, is still gainfully employed as an attorney in Tuscaloosa. He has one son, who will turn 13 in November. My other son, Martin, is still working in NYC, and will have his second young adult novel published by Harper Collins in 2017. So, everything is good. Looking forward to our 60th in another five years.”

Howie Morgan claims: “Not much new here. Changing home address to Florida, but Betsy and I will still be running up and down the East Coast. Kids and seven grandkids are all well. None are looking at Wesleyan. Looking forward to Reunion in 2017.”

Jack Mitchell proudly proclaims: “My grandson, Lyle Mitchell ’16, just graduated from Wesleyan and granddaughter, Dana ’18, is a junior at Wesleyan!” In addition, Jack relates: “I’m in the process of partnering with a global firm to do workshops re: personalized customer service using my Hug Your Customers book as the centerpiece. We added Mario’s stores in Portland, Ore., and Seattle, Wash. We now have eight men’s and women’s clothing stores. It all started with Mom and Dad when we were sophomores and is led by our third generation of sons and nephews! Still having lots of family fun with Linda—married over 55 years!”

Calvin “Pete” Drayer informs us: “Sandy and I have moved into a retirement home. I am still serving as a senior judge about 10 days a month. I am saddened by the loss of members of our class and my fraternity.”

Soon after receiving Pete’s expression of grief, the loss of another classmate was sent to your class secretary. William N. Schultz, a former Navy man and a graduate of Westtown Quaker School in Pennsylvania prior to his attendance at Wesleyan, died on Aug. 6. Bill worked as an art and antique appraiser in Philadelphia, and was a Philadelphia Eagles and jazz enthusiast.

News from Foster Morrison: “I have a little consulting job editing the maps for a biography of a Liberty Ship captain. Those vessels were mass-produced in WWII to move masses of material to the European theater. Captains and crews were trained PDQ. When the war was over, most of the ships were scrapped and the captains and crews had to find other work. But it all ended the Great Depression by putting much of the foreign competition, specifically Japan and Germany, out of business for a while. So we’re back there again, but with a China converted to capitalism of a sort.”

Foster continues, “I actually worked for two mapping agencies, but know little about making maps; mostly I programmed computers using Fortran, which looks kind of like algebra instead of zeroes and ones (binary numbers). Fortran converts the algebra to the binary numbers, but other computer languages have largely displaced it after all these decades. But with PCs you can now run your computer jobs every few minutes instead of once a day on those huge machines that cost millions of dollars.”

Respectfully submitted,

Jon K. Magendanz, DDS | jon@magendanz.com
902 39th Avenue West, Bradenton, Fl 34205 

David Youngblood of Lexington, Ky., retired last June after 48 years teaching English. David got his MAT at Harvard and then taught at Newton South High School for 20 years, enjoying the New England area. But all that changed in ’87, while grading AP tests in Princeton, N.J., when he noticed another grader, one Ellen Rosenman, then teaching at Dickinson College. After 5 p.m. they adjourned to the Bamboo Lounge. When she took a job at the University of Kentucky, he traveled there to “check the relationship out.” Marriage ensued. He moved to Lexington, got a job at the Thayer School and taught there for 28 years. They have two daughters, one in D.C., the other studying design in Richmond but studying in Copenhagen this summer. They hope to visit her this summer. In retirement David plays a lot of tennis, reads, and watches TV. Ellen loves horses, rides and takes lots of lessons. David said, “The core of my life was teaching high school and I’d still be teaching today but I hated grading papers!”

After graduation Robert Rideout joined the USAF, serving most of his tour as an air police officer at Ellsworth AFB, S.D. Thereafter he joined the CIA, focusing on economic analysis. He earned an MPA at Woodrow Wilson School, then spent 28 years in four different branches of the Bureau of the Budget and OMB as a budget examiner and later a branch chief. “To summarize my career: In 28 years there, we only balanced the budget 28 days!” He continued: “In ’97 I retired so I could spend more time working with the senior high youth group at our church, visiting youth group members who were hospitalized. Thus I discovered the lay chaplaincy visitor program and continued to serve in pediatrics until we moved to Columbus, Ohio, in ’04. There I took 1,600 hours of clinical pastoral education at Children’s Hospital, was ordained a vocational deacon in the Episcopal Church, and served a couple of nights a month as a chaplain.” He and his wife, Marti, are less that 10 minutes from their daughter and her three sons. They also have a son, married with three children, a lieutenant colonel in the USMC. He’s just finishing Naval War College and they often travel to visit his family when he’s not stationed in a war zone. Robert met his wife in ’69. She is now easing herself out of a 25-year career as a parish musician at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Columbus. Robert is proud of her: she’s quite well know for the extent and quality of her church music work throughout the Episcopal Church. For relaxation Robert likes to garden: “plant stuff and see if it grows”.

Larry Shultes, who lives in Doylesown, Pa., retired 20 years ago after 35 years as an actuary with Prudential. He volunteers with Meals On Wheels, but his primary focus is the group his wife, Anne, was working with, which was making recordings for people who are either blind or dyslexic. They record books for schools and he does post recording work. Larry and Anne went to the same high school. Her freshman year of college, she went to Stanford—but cross-country air fares vs. weekend car trips back and forth from Mt. Holyoke? So she transferred there and they saw a lot of each other, both graduating in ’63. They have three grown sons, 49, 51 and 53, and nine grandchildren. Besides volunteer work, Larry plays bridge and golf, which he started at age 10, playing with his parents. His former five-handicap is aging, too.

David Brill, of Chambersburg, Pa., retired four-and-a-half years ago from his practice in radiology and nuclear medicine: “I’m not a doctor anymore.” Throughout all his studies he was totally focused on learning medicine and the “new technical language of 40,000 words that came with it. And I’m finally getting my parents’ money’s worth out of the liberal arts education I missed!” He’s reading classics like The Iliad, The Odyssey and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. “Now I can take online courses in art or calculus. And to understand classical art, which has so many mythological figures, I felt I had to study Greek and Roman mythology.” David is also a Rotarian and goes to the gym a lot. For the first 28 years of his medical practice David worked at the Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pa. The next 12 years he worked with a private radiology group. As he was in nuclear medicine, he became very interested in the safe storage, recycling or re-use of nuclear material. It’s a second marriage for both he and Anne; their children are two dogs and a cat. They don’t travel much, as reliable dog sitters are sometimes not so reliable.

From Greenwich, Conn., Ron Wilson and his wife, Eddie, have two children, a daughter, 48, and a son, 45. Their daughter recently got remarried, bringing three new grandchildren into their lives. Now they have eight grandchildren, ages 27 through twins, age 10. They are do-it-yourself caretakers of their venerable, 113-year-old home. In fact, when we were scheduled to talk, I called but Ron was rushing to take Eddie to the hospital, because she’d just cut herself as they were doing some repair work. Happily, it turned out to be minor and within the coverage of her last tetanus shot. He says that they’ve done so much home maintenance that they could probably hire themselves out for odd-job work. Ron, a constant gardener there for 43 years, now has to start cutting out some overgrown things. They also enjoy visiting museums and old mansions. When young, he and Eddie were neighbors in Brooklyn and their mothers had been good friends. High school sweethearts, they took some time apart but reconnected in college (though she was at the University of Miami. [Ed. note: For a great story of their courtship and marriage, go to classnotes.blogs.wesleyan.edu/.] In ’03, Ron retired from his ophthalmology practice. Eddie also retired the same year, as she had been his office manager in their in-home office.

Sad news: Last May, Wesleyan received an e-mail from Philip J. Miller ’67 that Bruce Miller died Dec. 6, 2014. After graduation Bruce spent the summer in Kenya with Operation Crossroads assisting with health and medical projects. He got his MD in ’67 and specialized in ophthalmology. He then served four years in the USN at Charleston Naval Base, achieving the rank lieutenant commander. Thereafter he spent his entire medical career at the Corpus Christie Clinic in Champaign-Urbana, where he served as president of the medical board at the Christie Clinic and was professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Medical School. Afflicted with cancer for 10 years, he gradually retired to Banner Elk, N.C., where he and his wife, Marinette, became residents. They also spent half their time in Baillé, France, and Bruce became very proficient in French, Marinnete’s native language. They had many mini-reunions with Dave Allen and his wife, Kathy, at the Allen’s home in Pinehurst. Bruce was greatly respected and loved, and is deeply missed.

BYRON S. MILLER | tigr10@optonline.net

5 Clapboard Hill Rd., Westport, CT 06880

Appearing for the first time in these notes, Tom Buxton, who lives on Whidbey Island, Wash., reports that he retired as director of program management at Boeing in 2000 after 32 years there. When he first started, he recalls that Boeing was “coddling along” the new 747 but wasn’t doing it well. Of course, the bugs got worked out and the rest is history. The last plane he worked on was the 777, “Boeing’s last metal plane; the newer 787 is plastic.” He has been married for 36 years to Tara Anderson, who had children from a prior marriage. Just in the last three years, they’ve gotten into grandparenting with the birth of three grandchildren. After Wes U, Tom went to Carnegie Mellon and got a degree in industrial administration. Then after a sojourn at Exxon, it was on to Boeing. Prior to his professional career, Tom easily “chose the Peace Corps over the war in Vietnam.” After training in the U.S. in creating agricultural cooperatives, was sent to Peru, in the Andes, east of Lima. The success of their team’s work depended on the presence of a strong local leader—which they didn’t always have. Tom did charitable work before retirement, which he still continues. He “nurtures” churches—helping with fund-raising to build, then flourish. He says he’d seen lots of good programs that focused on a specific problem but churches focus on the wellbeing of the whole person (and this he calls his “hobby”). Tara, is “big-time gardener” and, as they are both avowed “climate freaks,” they have sworn off travel, seeing it as leaving too big a footprint. So their travel is confined to the Cascadia region.

Living quite a long way from the Cascade Mountains, Bob Siegle in Philadelphia is not going to retire anytime soon. He loves his work as a pediatric radiologist and when I talked to him he was actually taking a 10-minute break. After Wes U he and Dan Hottenstein went through both their initial MD training and then their specialty training in radiology together. After his internship, Bob went into the USAF and served as a general medical officer at a base in Columbia, Mich. His focus was generally on pediatrics. His wife, Rita, is also retired, having worked as professional grant writer. They recently returned from a three-week trip to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Dale Henderson went to the London School of Economics (M.S.Econ.) and then on to Yale (PhD). During his career, he spent 34 years in two stays at the Federal Reserve Board, ending as a senior adviser. In between and afterwards, he was a professor at Georgetown He has also taught at a number of other universities, including Yale and Copenhagen and has been a visiting scholar. His research-support activities include cofounding the International Research Forum on Monetary Policy, which holds regular conferences. He has published widely in the his field and is currently working on what he says may be his “last” research paper, a comparison of alternative methods for analyzing productivity increases, which may be too specialized to be of interest to the general public. However, he has two items which might be more interesting: a public lecture he gave in ’09, “All the Wrong Incentives: A Financial Perfect Storm”; and a monograph coauthored in ’13, “Maintaining Financial Stability in an Open Economy: Sweden in the Global Crisis and Beyond.” (He would provide URLs to where they can be found). Dale is also doing some remodeling to the home where he and his wife Bonny live. They have a son and a daughter and are hopeful that grandchildren will follow.

When a freshman at Wes U, in order to get a good gym grade, Dale tried out for the freshman soccer team. While he did get the good grade, it was a uphill struggle for him, since he’d never played any high school soccer, However, “I did appreciate the chance to participate in sports including soccer, wrestling and lacrosse though I was not much good at any of them and dropped them all by my junior year. Thank goodness I was better at other things.” The summer between his third and fourth year, Dale went to Malawi with Operation Crossroads Africa. His US team, interracial by design, cooperated with a team of African students in building a sports team dressing room adjacent to a school and playing field. The small size of their project was due to the government’s lack of support.

Under the heading of “one thing leads to another,” Dale suggested I contact Bill Roberts, who also went to Africa with Crossroads, to see if he remembered others. Bill, who worked in Gambia while there responded, with the names of Jim Dinsmore, Russ Richey and Dave Holdt and suggested that Dave might recall others. Dave had worked for Crossroads in Somalia during the summer of ’62, but had had a very interesting experience while in Nairobi. He and a couple of Crossroads friends were in a bar and hit it off with a nice African lady whose last name was Kenyatta. She invited them to her house the next day to meet her parents. Quite excited, they reported their forthcoming visit to Crossroads authorities and the next day they visited and spent a wonderful time with Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, who was just out of jail and about to become President of Kenya. Dave reports Mzee was a wonderful host and gentleman, delighted to talk to them and very appreciative of Americans coming to his country to help out. After a few hours there, a bus load of other Crossroads volunteers pulled up in front of the house having been alerted by Operation Crossroads of this wonderful opportunity! Mzee laughed, asking if he was now going to have to spend the next couple of weeks talking to “lots of American volunteers.” Dave recalled another less pleasant experience in Africa. He and two friends decided to hike up Mt. Kilimanjaro to a lodge run by an American priest, spend the night, and return the next day. But they left late and had not gotten to the lodge when it got dark. Suddenly they found themselves surrounded by 12 African men with bows and arrows. Neither group spoke the other’s language and it was not looking good. Suddenly a 10-year-old African boy happened by and heard them talking English, which he spoke quite well. He intervened and then explained to the Africans what these white men were doing and led them to the lodge (followed by the 12 armed men). After knocking on the lodge door, they were greeted by the priest who had a .45 in his outstretched hand. It turned out that about three miles away was an African priest in a similar lodge, who had been robbed by African bandits the night before—which explained why suspicion abounded. The American priest was from Connecticut and was very happy to have been the one who had taught the 10-year-old to speak English. Dave is now leading a memoir writing group under the auspices of UConn. He finds it helpful in his own memoir writing, and he enjoys the participants, who range in age from 70 to 94.

Please feel free to send me the names of classmates you’d like to read about in this column. And I’ll do my best to contact them.

BYRON S. MILLER | tigr10@optonline.net

5 Clapboard Hill Rd., Westport, CT 06880