Tag: 1964

I was unable to attend our 60th Class Reunion this past May and asked Marty Becker if he would mind giving us a rundown on the weekend. He kindly agreed and sent the following:

“Ten members of the Class of ’64 registered for the reunion. I attended with my wife, Shelley. But we split time between reunion events and the wake and funeral for our classmate, Peter Sipples.

“At the funeral, Pete’s son, Kyle, spoke about his dad and really captured who Pete was. We were able to spend some time talking with both sons, Kyle and Tim, as well as Pete’s widow, Pat.

“Saturday, late afternoon, we spent time with Jerry Hickson and Charles Landraitis and their wives. I learned that during our freshman year, Jerry and Pete Sipples were roommates. Charles was a math professor at Boston College. Jerry worked for IBM and spent years sailing around the world on progressively larger boats.

“At dinner that evening, we sat with Larry Dougherty and his wife, Estelle; Bill Mercer and his wife, Diane; Michael Ehrmann; and Jim Relyea. Fritz Henn ’63 also sat at our table. We had an enjoyable evening talking about Wesleyan memories as well as more current matters.”

[In addition to Marty and the six classmates he mentioned above, Kate Micari, our class rep on the University staff, wrote that these three ’64 classmates also registered to attend the weekend: W. David Hager, Alan Brewster, and Philip Polster.]

Marty was also good enough to give us a rundown on his own life. He wrote the following:

“My wife, Shelley, and I have lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for 30 years. Prior to that we lived in Greenwich Village for about 20 years.

“After Wesleyan, I went to law school at the University of Pennsylvania. I really liked Philadelphia—law school not so much. Having had student deferments during school, I ended up in the army the summer after law school, though I did get to take the bar exam first. Not happily, I spent the summer of 1968 to the summer of 1969 in Vietnam in a signal battalion.

“Once I got out of the army, I moved to Manhattan and went to work for The Legal Aid Society doing indigent criminal defense work, mostly representing kids 16 though 18 in the Bronx. It turned out that I played social worker more than lawyer, getting kids into drug programs or mental health services. Our classmate Michael Smith was a psychiatrist at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. We were able to refer clients for services through him and a colleague of his.

“While working for Legal Aid, one of the other lawyers and I developed a program to provide services to the population we were representing and wrote a proposal to obtain funding for the program. We were not successful in securing funding, and I eventually went to work for a New York City agency that, among other things, provided grants, using federal law enforcement (LEAA) funds, for criminal and juvenile justice projects. When those funds dried up, the agency was absorbed into what was, at times, the Criminal Justice Coordinator’s Office or the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Criminal Justice, which dealt with various criminal justice issues and continued to contract with not-for-profits for various programs.

“Shelley is a retired rabbi. She was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1991. (Anyone who knew me would probably be shocked that I’m married to a rabbi. Shelley was not a rabbi when we got married).

“When Shelley decided to go to rabbinic school, she first got a master’s degree at NYU and then spent five years in rabbinic school. I decided that I needed to do some Judaic learning of my own. So, I’ve spent a lot of time studying over the years.

“After Shelley was ordained, she mostly did part-time work at congregations in New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. I served as her chauffeur (she’s a city kid and does not drive) and also helped her out with various tasks.

“I retired from the city in 2005. In addition to continuing to help Shelley, I eventually went back to playing tennis. (I spent a bunch of years running and had ceased playing tennis). And for over a dozen years, I have been doing volunteer work in Riverside Park. I do maintenance (grunt) work on and around the ball fields.

“The last congregation Shelley served was in Southington, Connecticut. During those years, we visited Wesleyan on a couple of occasions, and I was amazed by all the new buildings I didn’t recognize. We also had the opportunity to visit with Pete Sipples and [wife] Pat Farrell a number of times. Our most recent trip to Middletown was to attend both the 60th Class Reunion and, unfortunately, Pete’s funeral. He passed away just weeks prior to the reunion.”

Bill Medd is happily retired in Norway, Maine, a town about an hour north of Portland, where he practiced medicine for more than four decades and worked to attract physicians to rural western Maine. “Now we’re just enjoying ourselves,” Bill told me in an August phone call. He and Marge have stayed put in the same house they lived in when he was taking care of patients in surrounding southern Oxford County. All three of their children live in Maine: Donald, a physician with an internal medicine practice in Portland; daughter, Cari, a school district superintendent; and Michael, an investor.

Bill grew up in Manhasset on Long Island and after Wesleyan went to medical school at the University of Rochester. He and good Wesleyan ’64 friend Don Ware, who got his medical training at the Albany Medical College and residency at the University of Rochester, joined forces to set up an internal medicine practice in a small community.  “We wanted to be rural but not too rural,” Bill says. After scouting towns in Vermont and New Hampshire, they found just want they were looking for in Norway—a welcoming community, need for docs, and plenty of outdoor recreation. Norway is on Pennesseewassee Lake and near skiing opportunities.

Their internal medical practice at Stephens Hospital in Norway later became part of MaineHealth, an integrated health system based in Portland. The Lewiston Sun Journal profiled Bill’s long, active career in a 2019 article: ‘It’s Been an Incredible Ride’ (https://www.sunjournal.com/2019/03/30/its-been-an-incredible-ride/). 

Don Ware died in Norway in 2022 at age 79. I may be wrong, but I could not find any mention of his death in earlier Class Notes. Here is the link to his obituary: https://www.chandlerfunerals.com/obituaries/Donald-Edward-Ware?obId=25641625. 

It was also good to hear from Rob Rutherford. He wrote:

“My wife, Diane, and I met John Jones and his wife, Maxine, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for three days in July. We visited the local art galleries, Los Alamos and Taos, and spent an evening at the Santa Fe Opera. We reminisced about our days at Commons Club, playing touch football, and party weekends.”

Mike Burack sent an email about his post-Wes life and a major change in it three years ago:

“I’ve not been an active alumnus, and I don’t think I have submitted anything for the class notes more than once or twice in the past 60 years. But time is passing, so I figure I might as well try to catch up now.

“After majoring in physics at Wesleyan, I did graduate work at CalTech and Stanford, but after a couple of years I succumbed to the realization that however much I had enjoyed physics as an undergraduate, I wasn’t serious enough about it to make it a rewarding career path for me. So, I switched to law school at Stanford, then clerked for a federal court of appeals judge in San Francisco for a year, after which I moved to D.C., where I spent my entire legal career at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now Wilmer Hale). During those years I married, raised two daughters, spent many hours on the road between D.C. and Chicago—where both girls went to college—and took annual family vacations in Spain, where my wife Maria is from. 

“Our daughters both settled in Europe. Our older daughter lives in Madrid; she’s married to a Bulgarian–U.S. dual citizen, whom she met in D.C., and they now have two young boys, four and three-quarters and three months. Our younger daughter now lives in Bonn (after periods in Vienna, Berlin, and London, in that order); she’s married to a Frenchman, whom she met in London, and they, too, have a young son, 15 months. We call our three grandsons the three Ls—Leo, Louis, and Luca—and we’re constantly confusing their names. (The alliteration was unintentional as far as I’m aware.)

“Once our daughters had moved to Europe, Maria and I no longer had any close family in the U.S., and all of her remaining family was still in Spain. So, taking the bull by the horns, so to speak, we decided to move full time to Spain ourselves, which we did in November 2021. 

“We live in León, a provincial capital in the northwest where Maria’s family lives. Being on that side of the Atlantic obviously makes it much easier to visit our kids and grandkids and have family get-togethers (both intra- and inter-) than it would be if we were still in the U.S. Moving here was a huge step for me, of course, but also for Maria, because after living in the U.S. for 50 years she thinks and acts more like an American than a Spaniard.

“For me, adjusting to a different culture with a different language and different customs and norms is still sometimes difficult, and getting a Spanish driver’s license was a particular ordeal. Some things continue to drive me up the wall—like Spaniards’ habit of talking at the top of their lungs no matter where they are or who else is around; or constantly interrupting other people during conversations; or standing in the middle of the sidewalk in groups of four or five or six, chatting leisurely as though they’re all alone and forcing other people to work their way around them, even to have to go into the street to get by.

“But then there are also compensations, including the mountains and the sea and the food. All things considered, it’s a pleasant place to live. So, things are good overall. My only real regret is that I won’t live to know my grandsons as adults, but there’s nothing I can do about that. 

“Maria and I continue to follow U.S. politics closely. For longtime Washington residents like us, it’s impossible not to, even though we have to watch many events on CNN replay the following day because of the six-hour time difference. It has been a truly dismaying situation until recently, but things are now beginning to look up. What a strange (or should I say, weird) turn of events!

“My best regards to you and our other classmates. Stay well.”

Dan Davis contributed the following:

“I’m sorry I missed our 60th Reunion, but I had a total knee replacement on May 7.I have recovered very well and am back to tennis and golf.

“I enjoyed a nice career in ob-gyn that included three years in Germany with the U.S. Army Medical Corp and 20 years in practice in western Massachusetts. Male medical school students graduating at that time served at least two years of government service [one of the armed services, Public Health Service, Indian Health Service, etc.].  Like Larry Dougherty, I was inspired at Wesleyan by John Maguire, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and all the Department of Religion teachers; my major was religion with a minor in pre-med.

“I then switched gears and worked for the Food and Drug Administration in Silver Spring, Maryland, 1997–2016, in the division reviewing drugs/products for urology and ob-gyn. It was a wonderful second career and a better pace, with nights, weekends, and federal holidays off. 

“I had the privilege of being the primary medical reviewer for the first transdermal patch, vaginal ring, emergency contraceptive pill, and several other unique drugs for contraception and gynecological indications. I currently do a small amount of consulting with pharmaceutical companies and nonprofit organizations.

“I have three adult children (Sarah ’94, Amy, and Tom) and three grandkids in Madison, Wisconsin, and Steamboat Springs, Colorado. In 2001 I was married—a second marriage—to Suzanne Schmidt, who is an ordained UCC minister and [who works] closely with retired women clergy. We moved to a continuous care retirement center in Frederick, Maryland, in 2022 and have a new patio home with NO stairs, an accident-prevention feature.

“My experience at Wesleyan was a ton of great and challenging courses, many hours in the library, and an admission to the Columbia medical school. The social life was limited, but the overall experience was priceless!”

Great to hear from classmates:

Steve Dunlap: “After three years at law school (Berkeley), three years in the navy (legal officer on the USS Kitty Hawk), and 25 years of hard work in minerals development, I retired to Florida. I rate my life’s successes as:      

• a successful marriage (no children though);
• six holes-in-one at golf; and
• attending all 28 of Verdi’s operas.”

Jon Bagg: “After Wesleyan I joined the Peace Corps and taught math and science in a secondary school in Ghana for two years. On my return I came to the West Coast and have been here ever since. I met my wife, Shelley, at the University of Washington, and we came to the Bay Area for jobs. We have been in the same house here for 48 years because our companies never transferred us.

“Long jump to now: In spring 2022 we took out our grassy front yard and put in dry land plants to help fight our long-term drought. That winter we got 58 inches of rain—a record. This past winter we again received more than 100% of normal. If we ever put in air-conditioning, we’ll warn you of the coming ice age.  

“We slowed down our travel during the height of COVID but have now resumed it. In 2022 we managed to get to Scotland and East Africa. In March 2023 we spent three weeks in Sicily; in July we took our entire family together with another family to southern Africa; and finally in September we went with friends to northern Italy, Switzerland, and southern France. 2024 plans are in the works.  

“We celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary in June 2023. Our grandkids are now in 9th, 8th, and 6th grades. The two oldest have passed 5’11” on their way to greater heights and are taller than I am.  

“Our house is single story so we will not move until wheelchairs are required, and maybe not then. We continue bridge, golf (Shelley), Red Cross volunteering (Jon), and regularly attend performances at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre (whose artistic director is Johanna Pfaelzer ’90).”

Larry Dougherty: “After Wesleyan I received an MAT and EdD from Harvard Graduate School of Education. I worked for 10 years in the Brookline, Massachusetts, public schools as a curriculum director and then as a principal. One highlight was being assistant director of the Brookline Early Education Project, a joint research project of Harvard University, Children’s Hospital in Boston, and the Brookline schools.

“I left Brookline to be assistant superintendent of Schools in Greenwich, Connecticut. There I led a leadership institute for principals and workshops on teacher evaluation. I then became Superintendent of Schools in Fairfield, Connecticut, where I realized I was too far away from schools and too immersed in town politics. After three years in Fairfield, I moved to Denver to be headmaster of Graland Country Day School, an independent K–9 school.

“After six years in Denver, I moved to Rome, Italy, as headmaster of the American Overseas School, where I worked for the next 11 years. I loved working and living in Rome and reviving a school that was close to bankruptcy when I arrived; I left a thriving, vibrant pre-K–12 school with over 600 students. I then moved to Los Angeles for another seven years and led the Buckley School in the San Fernando Valley.  After that—whew—I retired and moved back to Denver. My wife, Estelle, still works part time as a CPA.

 “I married Julie Becker in 1965. We remained married for 17 years and raised three wonderful children. After we divorced, I married Estelle, and we have been together for over 40 years. We have six children—mine, hers, and one together. We were the ‘Brady Bunch!’ All our children graduated from college and received master’s degrees; they live on the East Coast, West Coast, and our youngest here in Denver with us. We have 17 grandchildren, the oldest with a bachelor’s from Bowdoin and currently on a Fulbright in Germany; all are doing well, and we are proud of their accomplishments.

 “Wesleyan had a profound impact on me. There were so many outstanding professors accessible to us. John Maguire was inspirational. I will always remember his lectures on violence in American politics; from our classroom we watched the flags downtown when Kennedy’s death was announced. I was fortunate to sing in the chapel choir and to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and so many other brilliant speakers.  I had a lengthy discussion on totalitarianism with Hannah Arendt, a visiting fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies. I would love to be able to get her perspective on the world today. I arrived at Wesleyan a Goldwater conservative and left a supporter of Eugene McCarthy.”

David Skaggs wrote: “Politics remains a large part of my life, even as things wind down into semi-retirement. Activities include time as vice chair of the board of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). This nonprofit is independent of the U.S. government yet receives almost [all] of its funding from congressional appropriations— some $315 million this year.” NED promotes “democracy and freedom in the parts of the world (way too many) where those values are under threat or worse. . . . I try to do what I can to protect democracy at home, so I’m participating in a couple of organizations working to preserve the integrity of the upcoming election and avoid the potential for third-party candidates to play the spoiler.

 “All our classmates should be grateful as we have entered our ninth decade hopefully in decent health and adequate prosperity. If we have been equipped to accomplish some good things in our lives and enjoy some precious, lasting friendships, may we then raise a glass to Wesleyan.” 

Bill White sent news that he said might be of the “look on the bright side” variety. He wrote, “I have been in and out of the hospital six times in the last four months. First it was anemia, but after many tests, no cause was found. However, while I was in for the fourth or fifth visit, I was diagnosed with heart failure. I put on extra weight, apparently from fluid buildup.

“My son decided I needed better advice and scheduled a second-opinion visit at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, Heart Failure Division. After examining me and my record, they admitted me on the spot and kept me for 10 days. Over that time, they gave me intravenous diuretics, causing me to lose 28 pounds. I am now out and about, happy to have been dragooned into the Penn program. However, I’m told that I will probably be on diuretics for the rest of my life at one strength or another.

 “I don’t think I will be able to manage physically to come to our reunion. I would like to come, but my current physical state may not allow it. That’s the news from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.”

It was great to hear from so many classmates.

Robert Typermass wrote that following Wesleyan he completed the MBA program at Columbia University, and shortly afterward he was drafted by the army and stationed in Germany. Bob wrote:

“I couldn’t honestly say my army service was a particularly enjoyable time, but, in a way, it was a valuable kind of learning experience, and I was always well aware that it could have been a whole lot worse. Europe definitely beat the alternative.”

After the army Bob went to work in the financial sector, first at a commercial bank in New York City, then at another bank nearby. Several years later that bank was swallowed up by Merrill Lynch, and “I spent the rest of my working life at Merrill Lynch, in the institutional side of the firm,” Bob explained.

“Merrill was an interesting and generally decent place to work but not the most stable working environment thanks to a pretty much constant stream of reorganizations, management shake-ups, upsizings, downsizings, rightsizings, and ‘wrongsizings.’ Often chaotic but rarely dull. Most of my time was in New York, but I also had international assignments including a multiyear one in the Middle East and shorter stints in Asia and Europe.

“Around midway between 9/11 and the Great Recession, I quit working; it seemed like the right time to move on. When I let people know I was leaving, a friend there said to me, ‘I’m really ticked at you, Bobby; now I’ll be the oldest guy on the floor.’

“Nowadays I try to keep active and not worry too much about the future or other weighty, depressing issues. Whenever I feel the need for a dose of hopeless despair, I can always just tune in to cable news or watch the New York Jets.”

Fred Karem started off in the class of ’63 but took a year off to work in a Kentucky political campaign and ended up in our class. Fred and I both grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and went to the same high school, but lost touch after Wesleyan.

Fred wrote that he and Suzanne, his wife of almost 60 years and a Smith ’64 graduate, have long had a home in Lexington, Kentucky, but were spending the winter in Mountain Brook, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham. They have a condo there, about a half mile from their daughter and her four children. They also have a son, Fred (with two children), in Franklin, Tennessee, and another, Robert, in Washington, D.C., where he is national security advisor to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

“After many years in state and national politics, law practice, and the apartment development business, I retired about eight or nine years ago. For the past six years, we have spent the winter in Naples, Florida, where, beyond the warmth, I enjoyed outings to Fort Myers to see Red Sox training games. Since growing up in Louisville, I have been a dedicated Boston fan because Louisville was the AAA farm club for the Sox during those years. Our Naples days are now over, and we will spend this winter here.

“More than 40 years ago, I started running for exercise and relaxation (no races). Fortunately, I’m still doing so, although jogging (rather than running) three times a week combined with indoor workouts three times a week.”

Ted Ridout wrote: “I was enamored with ships and sailing as a high school student. I built a Sailfish from a $169 kit in my bedroom. My father and I visited Webb Institute of Naval Architecture in the fall of 1959. Meanwhile, I applied to Wesleyan. They offered a full scholarship, while Webb was free to all accepted, funded by the marine industry. I decided on Wes. 

“Longing for at least a yacht while raising a family, I settled for ‘Ted’s land yacht,’ a hard-sided pop-up trailer easily towed by our minivan. In retirement, Chris and I and our dog drove it happily all over the Lower 48 and much of Canada.

“Now with so much time, adequate vision, and dexterity, I have returned in a major way to building ship models from kits. Doing the rigging on a square-rigged man-of-war must stave off dementia for a while. Typically, a year or more is needed to finish a ship.”

Also, good to hear from:

Robert Maurer: “My wife, Zoelle, and I have just self-published A Travel Adventure in France, a small book with photos, describing our day-by-day trip to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary in 2011 in the country we love. (Last May we celebrated our 47th.) In addition, I recently completed a decade-long project of sending my personal papers to Michigan State University Libraries for two of its special collections: African Activist Archive (digitized) and American Radicalism (hopefully to be digitized).”

Dan Davis: “We moved from Germantown, Maryland, to a continuous care retirement center in Frederick, Maryland, in February 2022. My wife, Suzanne, and I remain active physically and are enjoying church work. I retired from the FDA in 2016 and have enjoyed a limited amount of consulting since then. I play tennis four to five hours a week and nine holes of golf on Wednesdays.”