Tag: 1963

Ron Tallman from Augustine, Fla., said that right now the big excitement is that one of his daughters from his previous marriage, Kelly Clements, has just been appointed Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees for the UN. She started her career in government way back as a presidential intern with Pres. George H. W. Bush and now this. She will be moving to Geneva. He has a second daughter, Jennifer, who teaches elementary school in South Carolina, and between the two he has five grandchildren, ages 8–20. Ron retired at 61 due to health reasons and it was then that he and his wife, Noel, moved from Chicago to St. Augustine. He developed cervical dystonia, which limits his physical activities more and more now. Prior to his retirement he had been dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Roosevelt University, Chicago. Three years ago Noel also retired. She had owned her own ad agency. He’s not sure how they got into it, but they really like going on cruises. They went to Tahiti last year and will go to the Open in the UK this year and then cruise way up the Norwegian coast, perhaps even encountering the newly emboldened Russian navy. And in the fall they will go to Lisbon and then cruise in the Mediterranean. He has fond memories of their exciting encounter with the tail end of a fierce hurricane in the North Atlantic. Ron played #3 on the WesU golf team but due to his physical ailments, now thinks his golfing days may be ended. He also remembers that he “kind of lost track” academically and being young and “seeking adventure,” he and John Burt ’65 left WesU January ’62 for Europe and returned November ’62. Upon hearing of their plans, Dean Barlow told them he was sure they’d never return to WesU. They visited pretty much most of Europe, drank “about 1,000 bottles of wine, hundreds of bottles of beer and there were all those young ladies to befriend.” The last month of their European jaunt they lived on “50 cents a day room and board.” A surprised but pleased Dean Barlow readmitted them and Ron found his lost academic track and actually graduated with the class of ’64. “But I identify with the class of ’63,” he says. Ron then went to the University of Maine, got a PhD in Canadian history and eventually became the director of the Canadian-American Center of the University of Maine, where he created the largest Canadian Studies program in the U.S. (and the world outside of Canada) with up to 1,200 students per year enrolled in various courses. He was also president of the Association for Canadian Studies in the U.S. for two years, as well as a founder and, for many years, a board member of the International Council for Canadian Studies, which allowed him to travel and lecture around the world.

Appearing for the first time in these notes in decades, Skip Short, living in Hamden, Conn., has had a very interesting career or rather, careers. Not at all sure what he wanted to do in life for his first three years at WesU, he took an inventory of his likes and found four areas of interest (1) artistic/scientific problems, (2) construction (“as a kid I was fascinated by construction sites”), (3) analytic challenges and (4) people. So he decided that architecture would include all those interests and hustled to take courses (especially math) that he’d not needed before. After graduation he enrolled in Yale’s architectural program from which he graduated. While there he began to buy and renovate rundown buildings. And along the way met his first wife, who became the property manager for what turned into almost 180 units. Eventually he became very tired of the renovation work, so when he and his wife divorced, he sold her his half of the units, which she owns to this day and which their two children, Matthew, 36, and Sarah, 31, now manage. For the first 20 years after graduation, he worked for an architectural firm in New Haven. He eventually left and opened his own private practice for 15 years. But while he really liked dealing with clients, he did not like hassling with contractors or building inspectors and at age 50 walked way from the field. Wondering what to do, he noticed that his bookcase was filled with body/mind books. He decided to take a course in massage therapy at the Connecticut Center for Massage Therapy. He liked it and learned the Trager method of massage, which he practiced along with some more conventional methods from his early 50s up to three years ago. He now does a lot of volunteer work. With his architectural knowledge, he is very useful to and active on his 120-unit condo board. He is also very involved in a peer-to-peer counseling group in Connecticut and an officer of the Connecticut Butterfly Association. He recalled that he and Ed Fineberg used to relax while at WesU bird­watching in woods up towards Long Lane School. Skip married his wife, Deborah, in ’01. She is an RN and is a unit manager in a dementia unit.

Living in Kaneoha, Hawaii, Richard Armsby retired from his work in 2010, after 42 years as a clinical psychologist. He had worked with seriously ill patients. After graduating from WesU, as he’d been an English major, he was thinking of going to grad school to become an English teacher. But as he was pursuing that, JFK was assassinated and he was so shaken that he decided to try to do something possibly more in response to that terrible crime and so applied to Penn State’s graduate program in psychology. While there getting his PhD, he met Judy, a social work student, and they fell in love. They had two daughters but lost one to a car crash. They now have two granddaughters, 10 and 8, and Richard spends much time ferrying them to and from school and to their various after school activities. When not being a chauffeur, he works out three times a week in the gym. His wife, Judy has also retired. She was a social worker, working with frail elderly people. Due to the long travel entailed, Richard was unable to make the mini-Delta Tau Delta reunion held a few years ago in Mexico at Bill Roberts’s home, but he has heard much about it from DTD brothers who were there. He and his family are traveling to Alaska next summer to take the Inside Passage cruise.

Dean Schooler lives with his wife, Vicky, on the edge of Boulder, Colo. They have five children, one adopted, ranging in age from 25–46. (I neglected to ask how many grandchildren.) A government major at WesU, in ’64 Dean spent one semester at the Methodist Theological School, in Delaware, Ohio, and then briefly served a Methodist congregation in Westminster, Ohio. However, he returned to his college major and got an MA and PhD in governmental political science from Ohio State University During the academic year ’70–’71, Dean was a Fulbright-Hays Advanced Research Scholar in the JFK Institute, Catholic University, Tilburg, The Netherlands. Dean has had a long career in several fields. In higher education he’s taught various courses in government/politics at several institutions—Capital University, University of Arizona, University of Colorado, and for a limited period was a Regents Lecturer at the University of California, Irvine. And in public service: he has served and still serves on numerous boards, helping schools/school boards, community health care organizations, and philanthropic organizations. In ’05 he was awarded the Indiana Univ. Center on Philanthropy’s Henry A. Rosso Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Ethical Fund Raising. When I asked Dean if he had any hobbies, he said his ongoing community service and philanthropic consulting were his “hobbies.” He also mentioned mowing his lawn. Dean actually participated in the DTD reunion in Mexico and had a vivid memory of being part of the very serious confrontation that took place while we were all at WesU with the National Board of DTD when both the Stanford and WesU chapters pledged an African/American. As president of the board of house presidents and a DTD member, Bill Roberts was very much involved in this. The confrontation ended with the national board of DTD capitulating and reversing their stand on refusing to admit an African American!

If you have any suggestions of classmates you’d like read about in this column in the future or think of classmates who have never been written up, please e-mail me with your suggestions.

BYRON S. MILLER | tigr10@optonline.net

5 Clapboard hill rd., westport, ct 06880

Tucker Andersen is semi-retired as an investment consultant. While he and his wife, Karen live in Warren, Conn., he spends two-and-a-half days a week in NYC doing consulting work. Karen was the UConn Master Gardener Coordinator for Litchfield County, Conn., for six years. She is now retired and concentrates on enjoying her garden, their dogs and their rural, 200-acre property. In their woods there is an abundance of wild life—coyote, deer, mountain lions (no tigers) and black bears. (Oh, my!) He’s seen two of the latter. Since mountain lions are solitary animals and it wasn’t breeding season and the two he saw seemed somewhat small, he thinks they were juvenile siblings. Tucker is about to retire from the Wes U Board of Trustees but will stay on the investment committee, which will entail his meeting on campus four times a year, as well as joining monthly conference calls for updates. Living in the “wilds”, he’s become “not a real birder” but is beginning to recognize some birds. The Andersens travel via a destination club—Exclusive Resorts which means they can go to wonderful locations—Newport, Kiawah Island, Tuscany, the Caribbean Islands, to name some they visited—and stay in luxurious accommodations. Tucker has run 40 marathons, including the Boston marathon twice. And while he had an entry for the ’13 Boston Marathon, fortunately due to a medical issue he did not run. He did run in it this year. His best time ever was in the NYC Marathon way back in ’78 when he ran a 3:32.43. And in ’13, two months to the day after a robotic prostatectomy, he very slowly completed the NYC Marathon. Happily his last two PSA tests have shown undetectable levels. He organized a mini KNK reunion at Wes U, which Don Sexton and Dave Buddington attended. A non-KNK attendee was John Kikoski, who just happened to be on campus and joined after walking into the room looking for someone else. Tucker and Karen have two adult daughters. Heather uses their Connecticut and NYC homes when not leading bicycle tours for adventure cycling or traveling, and Kristen (Wes U ’95), who lives in Denver, Colo., is a published author of I Never Intended to be Brave, a memoir of her solo bicycle journey through southern Africa.

After many years in New England, David Youngblood has lived for almost 30 years in Lexington, Ky. When I asked him why he moved south, his reply was simple: “I was chasing a lovely woman who is now my wife.” That lady would be Ellen Rosenman who, unlike David, is not yet retired. She is a professor at the Univ. of Kentucky and is writing a book. Her teaching and writing keep her very busy. David taught English for 20 years at Newton South High School in Newton, Mass., (10 years as department chair), and then, once in Kentucky, for another 29 years (23 as department chair) at Sayre School in Lexington. There he generally taught seniors, always an AP class or two, the other grades in English one time or another, and creative writing now and then. When I talked to David in June he had only been retired for five days and was “quite new at it.” But both being teachers, they’d generally had summers off and liked traveling. For their 25th anniversary, they drove the length of New Zealand, north to south. It’s a long way to go and they were eager to see it all. So while it was endlessly spectacular with lovely view after lovely view, in the end they were pretty worn out in that they had not given themselves much time to just stop and rest. Now they factor that into their travels. The Youngbloods have two daughters, one adopted. Ardilla is at V.C.U. in Richmond, Va., studying interior design, and Lizzie, who went to Vassar, works for a NGO in D.C. Both are 26. David still plays some tennis and stays in touch with John Vinton and wondered what had become of Larry Shultes. (Spoiler alert: I will find out for the next notes.) He recounted a vivid memory of his Wes U days: “I was racing back and forth through the halls having a snowball fight with other freshmen when a very irate student jumped out of his room where he had been trying to study and punched me in the eye.” Naturally, being a psychotherapist, I asked him in an understanding and empathetic manner, what he’d learned from that. And naturally, being a teacher, he responded assertively that he’d learned never to throw snowballs in dormitory hallways again.”

From Chambersburg, Pa., David Brill reports that he has been retired for four years from his medical practice in radiology and nuclear medicine. His wife, Elizabeth, to whom he has been married for 11 years, is also retired from being an editor for a religious book publisher. They do some traveling and had a wonderful cruise on the Danube River to celebrate his retirement. They have also visited Tuscany. But he has a special fondness for the American West, where he loves to bird watch. He has introduced Elizabeth to bird watching, which she enjoys but not with quite the passion he has for it. (As I am a birder, too, we talked birding a lot.) He got into birding when on a trip to the Galápagos Islands, he met J.J. Hickey, a renowned American birder who was on the same cruise. Once he learned of Hickey’s credentials, he approached him and they talked birding. From that talk, David said he learned a lot about identifying birds and became interested in getting into birding. As for being retired, he goes to the gym and some Bible studies but mostly he calls himself “a self employed dilettante,” by which he means that what he likes best is just doing whatever he wants—and that is learning about many things that he could not pursue when he was working. He reads very widely in scientific areas outside of his own, especially in the natural sciences. He also likes history and art. He describes many of his days as involving sleeping, getting up, eating, reading and then reading some more. He says that is a payoff from a liberal education, a desire to keep learning. Also he recalled that he had an intellectual inferiority complex coming to WesU from a public school. He thought that he’d be way behind the prep school guys. Unfortunately he did feel overwhelmed and that lasted for about three years until he was told he was the top guy in the bottom quarter of the class. This seemed to fire him up and he says he began to strive to “catch up” and he had a good senior year. After graduation he kept on “catching up” and continued to do so long after others had gotten to wherever their level of satisfaction was and started resting. He never “rested.” That helped him go far in his career and appears to be continuing.

RON TALLMAN from t. Augustine , FL said that right now the big excitement is that one of his daughters from his previous marriage, Kelly Clements has just been appointed Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees for the UN. She started her career in government way back as a Presidential Intern with Pres. George H. W. Bush and now this. She will be moving to Geneva. He has a second daughter, Jennifer who teaches elementary school in SC and between the two he has 5 grandchildren, ages 8-20. Ron retired at a. 61 due to health reasons and it was then that he and his wife, Noel moved from Chicago to St. Augustine, FL. He developed Cervical Dystonia which limits his physical activities more and more now. Prior to his retirement he had been Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Roosevelt University, Chicago. Three years ago Noel also retired. she had owned her own ad agency. He’s not sure how the got into it, but they really like going on cruises. The went to Tahiti last year and will go to the Open in the UK this year and then cruise way up the Norwegian coast, perhaps even encountering the newly emboldened Russian navy. And in the Fall they will go to Lisbon and then cruise in the in the Mediterranean. He has fond memories of their exciting encounter with the tail end of a fierce hurricane in the N. Atlantic. Ron played #3 on the WESU golf team but due to his physical ailments, now thinks his golfing days may be ended. He also remembers that he “kind of lost track” academically and being young and “seeking adventure”, he and JOHN BURT (initially of ’64 but eventually of ’65) left WESU Jan. ’62 for Europe and returned Nov. ’62. (Dean Barlow told them he was sure they’d never return to WESU.) They visited pretty much most of Europe, drank “a 1000 bottles of wine, hundreds of bottles of beer and there were all those young ladies to befriend”. The last month of their European jaunt they lived on “.50 cents a day room and board”. A surprised but pleased Dean Barlow readmitted them and he found his lost academic track and actually graduated with the class of ’64. “But I identify with the class of ’63” says he. Ron then went to the University of Maine, got a Ph.D. in Canadian history and eventually became the director of the Canadian-American Center of the Univ. of Maine where he created the largest Canadian Studies program in the US (and the world outside of Canada) with up to 1,200 students per year enrolled in various courses. He was also president of the Assoc. for Canadian Studies in the US for two years as well as a founder and for many years, a board member of the International Council for Canadian Studies which allowed him to travel and lecture around the world.

Appearing for the first time in these notes in decades SKIP SHORT, living in Hamden, CT, has had a very interesting career or rather, careers. Not at all sure what he wanted to do for in life for his first three years at WESU, he took an inventory of his likes and found four areas of interest(1) artistic/scientific problems, (2)construction [“as a kid I was fascinated by construcion sites”], (3)analytic challenges and (4)people. So he decided that architecture would include all those interests and hustled to take courses (especially math) that he’d not needed before and after graduation, enrolled in Yale’s architectural program from which he graduated. While there he began to buy and renovate rundown buildings. And along the way met his first wife who became the property manager for what turned into almost 180 units. Eventually he became very tired of the renovation work so when he and his wife divorced he sold her his half of the units which she owns to this day and which their two children, Matthew, a 36 and Sarah, a. 31 now manage. For the first 20 years after graduation he worked for an architectural firm in New Haven. he eventually left and opened his own private practice for 15 years. But while he really liked dealing with clients, he did not like hassling with contractors or building inspectors and at age 50, walked way from the field. Wondering what to do, he noticed that his bookcase was filled with body/mind books. He decided to take a course in massage therapy at the CT Center for Massage Therapy. He liked it and learned the Trager method of massage which he practiced along with some more conventional methods from his early 50s up to three years ago. He now does a lot of volunteer work. With his architectural knowledge, he is very useful to and active on his 120 unit condo board. He is also very involved in a peer to peer counseling group in CT and an officer of the CT Butterfly Assoc. He recalled that he and ED FINEBERG used to relax while at WESU birdwatching in woods up towards Long Lane School. Skip married his wife Deborah in “01. She is an RN and is a Unit Manager in a Dementia unit.

Error Message: Last issue, when I outed the Hon. Leonard Edwards as one who sneaks in at night and works secretly on a jigsaw puzzle, thus violating his marital vow (“We shall work on this together, not in secret, alone, whilst the other is asleep!”), I called Mrs. Edwards “Marcia,” when in fact she is the E.M.H. (Ever More Honorable) Margaret (or Margie) Edwards. My bad—or mea maxima culpa. Now that’s out of the way…

Not having any family members still living in the East, January of last year, Virginia and Steve Humphrey moved west to Napa, Calif., to be closer to their children. Their daughter and two children live there and their son, also with two children, lives in Denver. Their grandchildren are between 10–13 years old. Steve still plays a lot of golf but now plays more of the golf course than when was younger. Only one of his grandchildren, a 10-year-old, shows any interest in the game. He retired at the end of ’13 but still does some consulting with some of his former clients. When I talked to him he was relaxing in the sun down in Cabo San Lucas, having been there for several weeks. Along with golf he finds that Western wines, especially Cabernets, enhance his retirement. He and all the rest of his family are enjoying good health and most of the year, the weather in Napa is wonderful.

Richard Currie, retired in ’03, still enjoys volunteering as a driver for Meal on Wheels and coordinates the food bank for the area around Belle Vernon, Pa., where he and his wife of 49-plus years live. Both he and Sue have always been active in their church and both were certified lay preachers. But several years ago, Sue felt called to become a Presbyterian minister and after three years in seminary has become one and now heads a congregation of 150 people, so Richard now calls himself a househusband/chief-cook-and-bottle-washer. He has become quite good at both, especially the former, as he uses the Internet to get all sorts of recipes. He does not need the Internet for the latter. Due to the needs of her congregation, their ability to travel is much curtailed but Richard has long been interested in singing, which he does a lot—both in choirs and with the Westmoreland Choral Society. They have two children: a daughter, 45, who is a professional stage manager in D.C., and a son who recently moved out to Burbank, Calif., where he’s quite excited doing his work in computer animation. He and Sue are working on how to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, which is coming up soon.

Lee Hunt, who spent only his freshman year with us, is semi-retired but still does some consulting work with a number of construction companies. He recalled several friends at WesU, Jim Dooney, and two others who are now deceased, and while he’d expected to return, never did. He and his wife, Evelyn, married for 25 years, live near Richmond, Va. Lee learned woodworking from his dad and does a lot of restoration work—furniture, grandfather clocks, but mostly antique motor boats. His most recent restoration was of a ’55 Chris Craft Capri runabout, one of only 43 ever made. With a fellow restorer, he has just started working on another wooden boat, a 20′ Ancarrow “with a monster Chrysler engine” which was capable of going 90 mph when first built. The Ancarrows were well known for their great speed but he doubts that they will even try to get it up to that speed when they’re finished. He and Evelyn are planning to take a Viking cruse this coming September to Sardinia and the Mediterranean.

Also retired, Dick Ort and his wife, Mary Catherine, are living in Williamsburg, Va. They’ve been married either 36 or 37 years. (Depends on who I talked to and I talked to each separately. I suspect this paragraph will help get that question resolved.) But be that as it may…like the rest of us, Dick is getting older and his knees often curtail his running, which he enjoyed and would like to return to as soon and as much as possible. They also interfere with his playing softball, which he had enjoyed for much of his life. Dick, when with Chubb, had much to do with their initial sponsorship of Antiques Roadshow, a concept initially transplanted from its UK origins. Besides becoming a show much enjoyed by viewers (of which I am one!), he was often told by very grateful antique dealers that it helped drive the prices of antiques way up. However, they complained that it also made their job of buying so much harder, as now bidding at auctions is much more competitive with way more amateurs getting in with hopes of finding great, unrecognized treasure. Dick has always been interested in history, especially military history. He focuses on WWI and the Civil War. He defied me to mention a Civil War battle the location of which he had not visited. (Panicked, I could only come up with Gettysburg which he’s visited more than 40 times.) He has also visited WWI battlefields in France and Belgium, though not to the same extent. But over there he says the food is much better after hiking the terrain. He says he learns a great deal about military strategy—what went on and why—by looking over the actual sites.

Fritz Henn is “slipping more and more into retirement.” Though he has closed his lab in Cold Spring Harbor, some of his ongoing drug trials continue, trials of what he hopes will be a more effective antidepressant. One such trial is of a drug class he patented for which he won the Colvin Prize, the largest prize for work in mood disorder research in the world! (Check it out on YouTube.) Fritz and his wife, Suella, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary by meeting up in Heidelberg, Germany, with their children—son Steve ’94 (married to Emily ’94) and their three girls; and their daughter, Sarah, her husband, and their son and daughter. As Fritz and Suella had spent 12 years living there, they wanted to show their family some of their favorite old haunts. The Henns now live in DC, near their daughter and her family. The grandchildren keep them busy.

From Lake Oswego, Ore., Mike Marble retired “slowly”—from ’95 on he gave up his private practice as an orthopedic surgeon, but continued to come in to assist in operations. There were two particular plusses in this: of course, the continued income. But it was also especially nice that if something came up later that needed more attention, he was not the MD called back in. He did other kinds of part-time work too. He would review matters involving accidents resulting in medical-legal arguments over surgery/payments. Mike has been married to Debra for 47 years and they have two daughters. Like Lee, Mike also likes woodworking and makes “simple, useful things, like tables or bookcases.” He enjoyed sailing and has a 20’ day sailer and did a lot of riding on a recumbent bike. However he fell last July and has spine issues and at the moment, partially limited mobility, which he hopes will be resolved in time with PT. Debra, a watercolor artist, has gotten a job in Federal Courts as a court room artist. She is employed by newspapers to do this. Due to the economy, such work is becoming scarcer. If the case does not involve a jury, some judges will let her sit in the jury box. But if there is a jury and it’s a “hot” case, she has to get there early and find a seat for herself. And no, she has not yet worked a case involving a particularly notorious villain.

Sad news: John E. Peterson, of Santa Cruz, Calif., died Jan. 30, 2014, of a rare brain disease. A well-written and extensive obituary can be found on Google. He is survived by his wife Mary, his daughter. Ingrid, and sons, Wylie, Price, and Webster. He and Mary have three grandchildren.

He was a member of DKE, very active athletically and also took up paragliding, which was not an athletic option at WesU in the ’60s. He also served in the Peace Corps in Ghana. If you would like to share condolences or good memories of John, you can do so at pacificgardenschapel.com.

BYRON S. MILLER | tigr10@optonline.net
5 Clapboard hill rd., westport, ct 06880

Dave Holdt is now fully retired, having stopped teaching freshman writing at the University of Hartford in December 2013. He says he’s now a house husband, in charge of all things domestic as his partner, Karen Chase, is still at the University of Hartford, where she heads the Education Department, teaching both PhD students as well as undergrads. He says he’s doing pretty well with the domestic chores except that Karen says he “cannot see spiders.” He is in a memoir writing class at UConn and as they live near several large forests, he takes one of his three dogs for daily hour-long walks and is now in much better shape than when he stood all day in front of classes. He has seen all sorts of wildlife during the walks and has become a bird watcher. They hear lots of owls calling at night. Recently a nearby sheep farmer reported that some “very big animal” was killing his sheep. There are some thoughts of America’s largest cat nearby. He and Karen enjoy going to CT Tigers, a Detroit single “A” farm team’s home baseball games in nearby Norwich. Go, CT Tigers!

Having retired in the summer of ’12 after 49 years as middle school department head of language arts at the Gilman School, an independent school for boys in Baltimore, Samuel “Bo” Grimes is now much involved with a group of parishioners working to draw up their profile for a new rector for a nearby Episcopal church in north Baltimore. Bo and his wife, Sabra, were married in ’75. They have two daughters. One is getting married next April. “Big expense,” chuckled a resigned but pleased Bo. He and Sabra live in Cockeysville, Md. The met at work, as she was in charge of schedules for the Gilman Middle School. She, too, is retired. They travel a little, last October to Montana to visit Glacier National Park. Sadly, that turned out to be just when Congress closed all national parks. One day before they were to leave, parks were opened again so at least they got in one day. Bo likes gardening and they both like reading, especially “quality” mysteries. Their next trip will be to Quebec. This is because they are particularly fond of a Canadian mystery writer, Louise Penny, winner of Canada’s highest civilian award, the Order of Canada, for her writing. Many of her mysteries take place in Quebec very close to the Vermont line and her descriptions of the scenery and characters are so pleasant that they’d like to visit the areas she’s described in her mystery series. Recalling times at Wes U, Bo spoke fondly of the John Wesley Club and his interesting friends there. Unlike the fraternities, it did not have a kitchen so JWC members ate at Downey House or at different fraternities. He particularly favored EQV, both for the friends and food there.

Also living in Maryland (Trappe, Md., on the eastern shore) but appearing for the first time in our class column, Ted Passyn has retired from a career in real estate development. He specialized in building moderate-cost housing, first in Pennsylvania and for the last 33 years in Maryland. Ted met his wife Julia (Smith ’63) on a blind date at a party at Wes U on Valentine’s Day weekend 1960. They were introduced by Bruce Meinke ’62 and got married in February 1964. The rest is history. Included in that history are 10 children, ages 28–50 (23 degrees among them!) and 20 grandchildren. Ted told me that number was to change on his birthday, the day after we talked, as a 21st grandchild was to be induced. So then their ages then would stretch from 1 day–24 years. When the Passyns travel, it is generally to see their children and grandchildren who stretch across the South from St. Louis to New Orleans. While he does not know all their favorite colors, he can pretty well recognize them all. One year he went to 43 football games! (Go, CT Tigers and everyone else!) Ted served in the Army as a finance officer after he was married, rising to the rank of first lieutenant, while on active duty and making captain later in the reserves. At one point shortly after the Gulf of Tonkin, his unit was on alert to go to Vietnam for five months. In the end they never went, but he found that his time in the army was very broadening and a valuable addition to his education. He is a serious cook with a 10-burner commercial range and a serious wine cellar. He is also somewhat of a gardener and has had a wonderful sounding conservatory built with many beautiful flowers and palm trees, all of which opens onto a very large, lovely enclosed pond with a waterfall.

It is possible that Jon Hopkins has had a unique experience among our classmates. And that is, that in the summer of ’68, primarily due to the immediate threat of his being drafted, he left the country and moved to Canada and applied for permanent residency. The day after Canada accepted his application, in ’69, he got a letter from the US Attorney General indicting him as a draft dodger. He said his father backed his move but his mother was worried that their friends might “think he was a deserter.”Canadians had no such problems and were very accepting of him as in general they opposed the war. In ’77, one of the first things President Carter did was to pardon all draft dodgers. After graduating from Wes U, Jon was ABD in the University of Delaware graduate program in chemistry. Once in Canada, he enrolled in McGill in a master of science program but when money ran out, got a job teaching at the Herzing Institute (now Herzing College) in Montreal, where he lived since moving north. There he taught junior college level students right out of high school along with older students/workers returning to college to grow professionally. For much of his life in Montreal Jon also free-lanced as a computer programmer though he says while he was never a particularly good businessman, at least he was never broke. At Wes U he was a chemistry major and he’s retained an interest in science and enjoys following some websites like Science Daily and Slashdot, on which he finds interesting comments on computer matters. He also likes to read ancient history, really ancient history. A couple of recent reads were Thucydides’ History of the Peleponnesian War (431 BC) and an early 20th century book on the Middle Ages, which proved difficult, not for the subject matter but for the text, which was all in small print and worse, the voluminous footnotes in ever smaller print. Jon lives in an apartment in downtown Montreal and wonders in what other city could someone live so well and inexpensively? He subscribes to Montreal’s Sept.–May annual 12-concert series, and enjoys walking to the concert hall, stopping along the way for dinner at a delicious Chinese restaurant. He finds the Canadian comprehensive health and drug care programs “a godsend!” and scoffs at Canada being called “socialistic” due to its health care system. Even before enrolling at WesU as a freshman, he had heard of the John Wesley Club and intended to join it, which he did. In high school John had been one of the very best students. At WesU he found what many of us also found: pretty much everyone fell into that category. He played clarinet in our not-quite-world-famous football marching band and found the JWC experience “fantastic—we had great guys, very liberal, and got outside speakers to come for discussions at the JWC. Many, like Hanna Arendt, John Cage, and C.W. Snow were there in residence, but came for smaller discussions at JWC. However, I think Pete Seeger came just to JWC.” He recalled one incident when two guys who may not have been JWC members but were just rooming there would boil peyote and then partake of the resulting concoction and collapse in great mirth and laughter. So, someone substituted spinach for their peyote stash. They boiled it, partook and collapsed in great mirth and laughter, which just goes to show—those were the times, my friends…

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

The Hon. Judge Leonard Edwards, now retired, writes: “I had lunch with Bill Needham recently. Very interesting. He is involved in a gold-digging project in Colombia. We had a great time. He is a bundle of energy and very jolly, hugging everyone in sight. He says he’ll be a billionaire when the project gets going!” (Alumni Office take note!) But further info on Len, somewhat disquieting: As a somewhat belated wedding gift, I gave Len and his wife Marcia a fine, Liberty jigsaw puzzle depicting their home state, California. I had found that they were fellow jigsaw puzzlers. They were delighted and apparently agreed to only work on it together. Well, it was with shock that one morning Marcia discovered that someone had slyly snuck in and had been working on the puzzle during the night! Hell to pay! Accusations! Flimsy denials! All leading to total caving. Decision: as it was not a felony, only a misdemeanor, Marcia was granted equal, solo catch-up puzzle time. Peace restored. I must add that it pains me to drop a dime on a fellow classmate like this.

From the L.A. area, Lew Whitney says that he has “nothing exciting to report.” Of course, at our age, that’s probably a good thing. He was sorry to miss our 50th but a pre-existing one month trip to France got in the way. His missing the 50th was somewhat made up for, as he attended the Pre-Reunion gathering down at Bill Roberts’ place in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Lew is semi-retired now and will fully retire in March. He will probably continue as he is now doing, with some consulting and design work on the side, which he says he does “for wine money.” Lew got into sailing at 7 with his dad. In ’84 he got this first boat and has had many since, most in the 40-foot range. In his current 40-footer, Ventana, he and his wife of 20 years, Toby (“a wonderful sailing partner!”) frequently sail the 20 miles out to Santa Catalina. Last year they spent 36 nights aboard Ventana, generally moored off Santa Catalina. You might recall Lew’s picture of himself in our Reunion Book, paddle boarding, something he had taken up relatively recently. After getting over the falling-off part of the learning process, he now goes for long paddles up and down the coast. He says that in the past it was very common to see lots of sharks along the coast and on the way out to and around Santa Catalina. But the Asian love of shark fins has led to the shark population being decimated, which has led to an ecological crisis as unchecked seal populations are now overrunning the shores, taking over docks as haul-out spots and climbing onto any moored boats they can get up onto. He says for a long time now he hasn’t seen a shark large enough to eat him on any of his frequent paddle board trips. Lew and Toby have four children between them (he was divorced and she was widowed) and five grandchildren aged 1–15 years. While he does not race himself, he used to do a lot of exciting crewing on a friend’s steel-hulled, 54-foot race boat, working as a grinder opposite one of the bigger and stronger youngsters, thereby making Lew’s job easier. He vividly recalls the frantic start of one fleet race when they lost their steering and rammed the Committee boat.

Robert Gallamore writes: “My book co-authored with my Harvard mentor, American Railroads: Decline and Renaissance the 20th Century, will be released by Harvard U. Press 6/2/14!” (You can read more about it at HUP or Amazon websites under his name.) “This was a 15-year project, the roots of which were in my study of economics and government regulations of industry under Prof. Joseph Palamountain and Prof. Richard Miller at WesU. It brings together material from my academic studies and teaching, a first career in government, and a second with Union Pacific in NYC and Omaha.”

A tidbit of info on the son of a former stalwart of Chi Psi, Jim Reynolds. His son, James IV, has been a Major League baseball umpire since ’99. He graduated from the Jim Vans Umpire Academy in ’92, taught there for three years, and then worked his way up through several levels of minor leagues to the big leagues in ’99. Since then he has umped four Divisional series, two ALCS series, and an All-Star game. Not bad for a kid who didn’t follow his father to Wes, though he did at least go to another college in Connecticut, UConn. The elder Jim now lives with his wife, Nancy, in Gilbert, Ariz.

Walt Donaghy sent in some sad news: “Jim Mattson passed away quietly in his sleep 7/22/13. He was with his family (children and grandchildren) on a family vacation in N.C., when he died. Jim and I were roommates all four years, members of Sigma Nu/Kappa Nu Kappa, and lived on the top floor of our fraternity house our last three years. We’ve been friends ever since the fall of ’59, our freshman year, when we were assigned to a double room in Andrus Hall on Foss Hill. Jim ‘Matt’ played football (halfback and punter) freshman through senior year. A few years ago he was told that he’d held the punting record at Wes until very recently. Of course we had to have some serious losing games then to establish a punting record—too many ‘3 and outs.’ Matt wrote a very nice, brief and modest bio for our 50th Reunion Book. He couldn’t make it to the Reunion because his grandson was playing in a very important baseball tournament that weekend. As always Matt had his priorities right. Family comes first. He will be missed.”

BYRON S. MILLER | tigr10@optonline.net
5 Clapboard hill rd., westport, ct 06880