Tag: 1966

Our classmate, Robin M. Burns, died on February 5, 2015. Recently his wife, Rena Grossfield, wrote: “February 2025 marks the10th anniversary of Robin’s passing. I thought this would be an apt moment to pass on information that has come to light in the years since he died. It turns out that Robin’s cancer and death resulted from his many months working at Ground Zero after 9/11. He was one of four on-site project managers of the cleanup for the NYC Department of Design and Construction. (For details, see his page in the 9/11 Memorial and Museum Registry: https://registries.911memorial.org/#/workers/list/term=Robin%20Burns). He was one of many ‘second responders’ who were active at the site until it was officially closed in May 2002. Since learning of the full extent of his work there, I applied for and received a settlement from the Victims Compensation Fund, which will be used for our two grandsons’ college educations. It would have made Robin happy to know that despite not being here to watch the boys (now 17 and 15) grow up, he is still caring for them. I am writing this so his friends at Wesleyan—and not just our grandsons—know that their ‘Pop’ was a hero.” If you wish to reach out to Rena, here is her email: rgrossfield@gmail.com.

Barry Thomas writes: “The work in Burundi continues. Going on seven years. Does not seem that long ago that we sent a few hundred dollars to a young man with a mission of service and a big vision to accomplish change in his country after decades of conflict, violence, and reinforced poverty. The purpose was to help buy porridge materials, cups and spoons, so that he could provide a nutritious meal to malnourished children in a really poor, rural community. He expected 50 children to come with their mothers. About 250 appeared. The work of accomplishing change toward a better life for these very poor people has been steadily growing and rewarding, but yet an unfinished journey. As programming has expanded, buildings have been added, and the numbers of children and women both receiving help and helping themselves, the caring and generosity of people in our home community in the mountains of North Carolina, as well as from old and new friends around the country, has been heartwarming. I cannot express enough appreciation for the support provided by members of our Wesleyan class community.”

Barry goes on to write: “We have progressed from the start-up phase and have emerged during the past year into more of a growth-and-development phase. The health and nutrition programs have progressed from the simple provision of nutritious porridge to longer-term focus on family nutrition and income generation using more modern methods of agriculture and family nutrition. The school program is now composed of a preschool and a growing primary school through grade 3. A tutoring program has been of great importance for the high school girls whom we are helping to stay in school. They are now performing quite well on the national exams in comparison with the city girls. The women’s vocational training and microfinance programs have over 600 participants. The organization is well-established and results are being witnessed.

“I will add that there are now 178 children in the community school program; the women’s vocational training and microfinance programming has participants approaching 1,000. Complementing the porridge and kitchen garden programs, D4C has initiated a first community farm program. Land has been acquired and 25 women who originally came to D4C with their malnourished children for a cup of porridge are now cultivating the land for the first of three growing seasons in the year. A friend and farmer from our local community in the mountains of North Carolina has provided funding for the start-up and is providing guidance. A group of North Carolina medical professionals have come together to support the organization and training of a team of community health care workers. This team will be reaching into the homes in the D4C rural community with the implementation of a ‘Where There Is No Doctor’ type of program. Finally, two young women, who originally joined the D4C program to help high school girls stay in school, passed the required national exams, and are now in the first year of university. Juliet is studying accounting and Ann Marie expects to become a nurse/midwife. They are the first young women from this rural community to attend university. Really exciting! Our original purpose was to find ways to help these really poor children overcome their malnutrition and get a head start on their education so they could gain access to possibilities for a better life. Making progress!” I’ll say!

John Neff has a new grandchild: Remy!

Sad news from Jon Clark: “Lost Andrea, my wife of 47 years, to ALS in August,” a disease that haunts our class. And good news: “Thanks to our new ‘work remotely’ culture, our three kids, all Wes grads, were able to spend considerable time with us, especially during the final year. My granddaughter, Isabel Levine-Clark ’23 [was] the sixth generation Clark to [graduate from Wesleyan]. Adjusting to living alone and have begun traveling again. Still living in Branford, Connecticut. Wish good health to all as we enter our 80s.”

As for those 80s, David Luft asks, “Is it possible that people in their 80s are less active and out and about in the world? I’m leaning toward swearing off trips to Europe and conferences. I don’t even visit my mother-in-law in Palo Alto.” David is, nevertheless, keeping active. “I am writing three books, and I think my writing keeps getting better.” 

On the theme of books:

Mine on the work of John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester (1647–1680), Rochester and the Pursuit of Pleasure, was published in June. The London Review of Books just reviewed it:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n24/clare-bucknell/the-readyest-way-to-hell.

We end with a great book story. Many of you no doubt took a course with Professor Nathanael Greene. Jack Knapp went further, “taking every course that Professor Greene offered . . . marveling at his preparation and style. . . . What impressed me most . . . was that he wanted you to disagree with him, provided you had evidence to support your point of view.” How many of you know that Professor Greene is alive and well and still teaching at Wesleyan? Jack does, having kept up a “60-plus-year friendship.” Jack’s book, Carpetbagger in Reverse, has just been published. “It’s a biography of Arthur Mitchell, the first Black democratic congressman and a most interesting fellow. Possessed of an almost photographic mind and able to quote stoic philosophers from memory, he was also politically incorrect in many aspects of his behavior. Born in Alabama, where he spent the first 40 years of his life, he later moved to Chicago because he saw that the Windy City’s First Congressional District was the only place that could elect a Black Democrat to Congress in 1934. But he only represented his Chicago constituents to the extent that he followed the machine’s orders, largely serving as a funnel for patronage. His real purpose was to represent the interests of the disenfranchised Blacks of the South. Hence the title. The book details the ups and downs of his career, which culminated in his being the first Black to argue successfully before the Supreme Court when that body found unanimously in his favor in Mitchell v. United States (1941), the case that began the long undoing of the Jim Crow transportation system in the South.”

In November Jack wrote to Professor Greene:

“Hi Nat. Happy Thanksgiving. The book is coming out December 3–10, but I’ll need your address to send it to the dear friend to whom it is dedicated.”

Professor Greene responded:

“Hi Jack, Wonderful news! And Happy Thanksgiving to you as well. This is an undeserved honor, but I will cherish it. . . . Hope you are well. My seminar this fall went very well, with really outstanding students. I am scheduled for two courses in the spring. . . . The new PAC is working very well for all. Best, Nat.”

Carpetbagger in Reverse is dedicated “to Nathanael Greene and all the Wesleyan students who benefited from his teaching.” As Jack puts it so well: “My exchange with Nat Greene. A 60-plus-year friendship. That’s what Wesleyan was all about.” I hope still is.

We celebrate the life of Irvin E. Richter who died on June 22, 2024. His son, David Richter, writes that before Irv retired in 2016, “he was the chairman and CEO of Hill International, Inc., a global construction management firm. Irv started Hill as a one-man consulting firm in 1976, and when he retired, it had nearly 5,000 employees,100 offices around the world, and was a publicly traded company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Irv was named a Distinguished Alumnus by Wesleyan as well as by Rutgers University School of Law, from which he received his law degree in 1980.” Irv served as our class secretary for a number of years, and as Rick Crootof memorably puts it in a note to David: “Irv was a BMOC in our class, seemingly running everything and known and respected by all. Like the James Garner character in The Great Escape, the Scrounger, he could get you anything! Most memorably he was the agent for our class rings. I was so glad to see him at our 50th, a real lovefest, and he looked enormously contented. I hope the last eight years continued that way. All of ’66 share in your loss.”

The Wesleyan Class of 1966 held its 58th Reunion on Zoom, May 24, 2024. Rick Crootof, Sandy Van Kennen, and Will Rhys were in Middletown, attending the Wesleyan Commencement and our reunion in person. Tom Broker, Larry Carver, Bill Dietz, Bill Fehring, Jack Knapp, David Luft, David McNally, John Neff, Barry Reder, and Sandy Shilepsky attended on Zoom. Rick prepared a perfect Zoom setting for our gathering, his nighttime photograph of the back of an illuminated Olin Library. 

Each of us spoke, Sandy Shilepsky starting us off. Sandy and his wife, Carol, live in a cottage in Bishop Gadsden Episcopal Retirement Community, Charleston, South Carolina. Their daughters, Lisa and Beth, live close by. Sandy took up pickleball a few years ago, enjoying that and water volleyball too. A retired professor of mathematics, Sandy continues to follow higher education, reading The Chronicle of Higher Education and lamenting the troubles and challenges confronting college campuses. Wells College, where Sandy taught for 35 years, is closing, which I don’t think any of us knew.

David McNally recalled his 25-year career with what is now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He and his wife, Michelle, still live outside of Alexandria, Virginia. David talked, with good humor, about his coming down with ALS five years ago and what living with that vicious disease has been like, its deleterious effect on all parts of the body, save for the mind and eyes. David’s mind is as sharp as ever, his eyes keen and bright. Through it all, he remains remarkably active, grateful for all that his wife Michelle does. He meets on Zoom regularly with a group of former graduate students, and Rick Crootof has organized a Friends of Dave group—Rick, John Neff, Sandy Van Kennen, Alberto Ibargüen, Will Rhys, Andrew Kleinfeld, Paul Gilbert, and me—who gather once a month with David on Zoom. David, an inspiration to all, closed by telling us how much he is enjoying life.

Dr. Dietz chimed in next. Following his distinguished career as a physician and administrator focusing on treating childhood obesity, Bill and his wife, Nancy, are back in Washington, D.C., where he serves as director of the STOP Obesity Alliance and is working to make the world better through the power of food. He pointed out how reducing the consumption of meat would contribute to mitigating climate change. I kept thinking how I wish Bill were a candidate for the presidency of the United States and called attention to his speech upon receiving an honorary degree from McGill University, June 6, 2022. If you have not heard the speech, do so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V-LR9VxBy4

“Doing well for a man of my age,” opined David Luft. I’ll say, David looking like he just came from teaching one of his classes 40 years ago. I had a hard time believing David, given his publication record, when he told us that he finds retirement more intellectually engaging. But that seems to be the case. He has two books on the boil and is teaching himself Czech. His wife, Jennifer, breeds dogs, one making an appearance.

Bill Fehring, who has a PhD in behavioral biology, continues to do in retirement what he did while working: educating people about environmental issues. His latest endeavors include getting more minorities involved in the environment, including blind students. Bill hikes and bikes and is doing a good deal of wildlife photography, going out occasionally with Rick Crootof, another avid photographer.

Tom Broker and his wife, Louise, now professors emeriti at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, continue their pioneering work on HPV, the goal being to eliminate cervical cancer. They are also peripatetic, visiting Europe once or twice a year, venturing to Africa twice last year, Ghana for work, birding in Costa Rica, and traveling to New Mexico, where they visited among many places, Ghost Ranch, communing with Georgia O’Keefe. The Brokers have an astonishing collection of old master prints, some 6,000 to date, which they loan out for exhibitions. They are also engaged in environmental issues, and Tom and Louise power walk. Whew!

There was much joy and laughter in this reunion, none more so than when Sandy Van Kennentook the stage, wanting us to know two things. First, that he has now acquired two new knees, which are doing so well that he can work once again on cars. Second, Sandy’s long history of growing marijuana and his interest in medical uses of cannabis may have a bright future. It involves what he calls “bubble hash,” the marijuana buds being sent through a washing machine numerous times, the result being a product with 50% THC. Buy stock now.

Will Rhys reminded us that there are 43 4,000-foot mountains in Maine, and he continues to climb them. Though he cannot run anymore (he has a 2:47 marathon to his credit), he bikes. Central to his retirement is public service. He serves on the board of the library in Bridgton, Maine, which is a center for internet users. In keeping up with his lifelong love for, and work in, the theater, he continues to do a one-man show every Christmas.

Having worked six days and six nights a week for 43 years, Barry Reder, who all those years was a lawyer in San Francisco, is trying hard to do nothing. Well, not quite. He has become fascinated on how human beings learn words, how these words come to have meaning. But this once workaholic, runner (Barry has run the Bay to Breakers 35 times), and avid golfer has been slowed down by two ruptured discs in his back. As he drolly put it, he spends time on physical therapy and on making and canceling doctors’ appointments. Rick asked Barry about the reports of the deteriorating life in San Francisco. Barry said that the news is overblown.

Jack Knappbegan with a great story. Turns out he and Rick were roommates at Wesleyan. When COVID broke out, Rick invited Jack and his wife, Carla, longtime citizens of Chicago, to stay in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. The Knapps have fallen in love with small town, rural life, and now have a home in Wolfeboro; the Crootofs recently hosting a celebration for Jack’s 80th birthday. Jack has a new book coming out: A Carpetbagger in Reverse: Arthur W. Mitchell, America’s First Black Democratic Congressman. Movingly, he dedicates the book to Professor Nathanael Greene and to the Wesleyan students who benefited from his teaching.

First grandson just graduated from the University of Virginia, and it has been 50 years since that grandson’s grandfather, John Neff, received his PhD from Harvard. And what is he doing now? Listening to music, being intensely interested in poetry. He attributes being a perpetual student who loves research to his Wesleyan education. Rick asked John about that haunting thought he made in his biographical sketch for our 50th Reunion book: “Still think I’ve not done what I’m here to do.” John continues to think he has not yet done what he is here to do.

Rick Crootof and his wife, Linda, split their year between Sarasota, Florida, and Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and Rick, with gratitude of all of us, continues to be our class leader, organizing reunions, Zoom meetings, keeping us up to date on all things Wesleyan through email. He reported that he had to give up his lifelong love of playing tennis (and he was very good at it) because of a heart condition. The report is premature: Rick recently won a Wolfeboro tennis tournament. He continues to take great joy in photography and is looking forward to meeting James Sugar ’67. John Neff thinks the photograph that Rick took of the chapel at this last Commencement is a gem. It is (see below).

Tom Pulliam writes that “his granddaughter, Madeline, entering junior year at University of Hawaii has, with Hardy Spoehr’s assistance, landed a job as lifeguard at a Honolulu- area pool managed or owned by Hardy’s daughter.” Tom and his wife, Alice, spent “three weeks in Italy (Tuscany, Florence, Venice, Amalfi Coast) . . . lots of wonderful sights, but too many tourists . . . Stanford women’s rugby team, which I have been helping with for 13 years, surpassed all expectations. Without a player who had played rugby before coming to Stanford, they won the national championship in Houston on May 5. In that final game, they played nine players who had never played rugby until this year, and two key players played that game with, respectively, a broken wrist and a broken foot. I consider myself the team grandpa and absolutely love helping these young women learn the sport that has been a very large part of my life, starting at Wesleyan . . .  Madeline’s brothers, Evan (17) and Jay (14), continue their MLSNext soccer. We were in Nashville 10 days in June for one of their tournaments, and both played exceptionally well. Jay had [a] badly sprained ankle (and it was also broken) in training 15 days before. I was commiserating with him as he was on crutches and in a boot a day or two after the injury. He told me he was still planning to play. I thought he was badly mistaken. Turned out, I was the one who was badly mistaken. On a heavily taped ankle, he played every game. In the final game he scored two goals to win the game. Both Evan and Jay will play rugby for their high school team, which will provide more spectating fun for us. In sum, life is good. One day at a time.”

Bud Smith has been fishing!

I thought Daniel Lang had retired, but read this: “Clare Warner (Mount Holyoke, 1974) attended her 50th class reunion with her husband, Tim [Warner ’73]. Our daughter, Kate, is director of Student Financial Services at Mount Holyoke. Result: Tim and I spent a long weekend together in May recounting the time that he and I were close friends while I was associate dean of admissions, and he was a student. We both left Wesleyan at about the same time, Tim for an MBA at Stanford and I for a PhD at Toronto. We both ended up in nearly identical careers: Tim as vice provost, Budget and Auxiliaries Management at Stanford and I as vice provost, Planning and Budget at Toronto. (That alone might be a factoid for Wesleyan alumni news: two Wes alumni, same job, same time, at two top 20 world class universities.) We kept in touch professionally and personally. When our son was born, we named him Timothy. When the Warner’s son was born, they named him Daniel. Talk about coincidence after coincidence! Everyone had a grand time at our personal reunion. . . . Other news, I finished teaching two graduate public economics courses in a row, finishing in June. Most of the students were top-notch, so there was as much stimulation as work. There is a lot of interest in Canada in the connections between immigration policy and fiscal policy in relation to higher education. So, plenty to talk about. Three papers that I had been working on for months finally went off for publication. 

“Being a member of the board at King’s University College has taken up more time than I expected, some of it controversial but all rewarding and worth the effort. My work on the board of Saint Augustine’s Seminary lately involves mainly finance and endowment management, sometimes complicated. If you think university politics are full of intrigue, try three-way negotiation between the Vatican, an archdiocese, and a seminary. Most recently we spent a few days deep in the Adirondacks at the same time as Hurricane Debby blew through. Roads and trails washed-out, tall trees blown down, obviously no power, no internet, and no cell phones. A genuine and welcome getaway from daily life.”

“I wonder,” David Luft recently wrote, “if the admissions office could have predicted that we would be professors at major universities.” I replied: “You touch on a topic dear to me. As class secretary and well before then, I came to realize how talented, accomplished, and public-spirited members—an overwhelming number—of the Wesleyan Class of 1966 are. As you probably know, many would not have dreamed of such as assessment at the time, our class being maligned, as many put it: the class of Robert Norwine’s revenge. Norwine was the director of admissions from 1953 to 1964. Apparently, our class was his attempt to recruit and accept students that Wesleyan had not courted, such as the blacksmith’s son from Colorado Springs and, yes, even some African Americans, Jimmy Johnson and Thomas Shaw. Some saw this as a dumbing down of Wesleyan, our class being particularly cited. Some dumbing down, some revenge. I know of fourteen of us who became professors, one of whom, Tom Broker, should have won a Nobel Prize. I no doubt have missed some. Sam Carrier, who taught at Oberlin for many years, did a paper on where the professoriate comes from. It’s not from the UT Austins of the world, but small, liberal arts schools. I rather imagine Wesleyan is continuing to graduate students who came to love research, fell in love with a field, and went on to graduate school to become professors.” 

I close with comment that David Griffith made about our class, a sentiment that I share: “I really like the class notes . . . within the tight confines of our class in terms of ethnicity and background, it is surprising to see the diversity. A great place at a great time.”

As our 80th birthdays arrive, humor is called for—Jeff Nilson providing some, writing: “As part of my aging, I have been writing limericks lately. Like earworms, they occupy more and more of my consciousness. Oh well! Soon I will be turning 80, which has given rise to this verse:

Soon I will be turning 80,

An age when the world less weighty.

I have lost all my glam,

But I’ve learned who I am.

(Oh I forgot.) .  .  .  I’ve had a lot of gas lately.”

Jeff apologized for sharing this “bit of doggerel” with an English professor, and I replied that “Edward Lear is a favorite of mine,” while pointing out that “Samuel Johnson defines ‘doggerel’ as an adjective: ‘Loosed from the measures of regular poetry; vile; despicable; mean.’ And as a noun: ‘Mean, despicable, worthless verses.’ Yours hardly falls under these definitions, and I rather imagine that Johnson admired a good deal of what at the time was thought of as being doggerel, quoting as an illustration of the word in use a passage from Addison’s Spectator: ‘It is a dispute among the criticks, whether burlesque poetry runs best in heroic verse, like that of the Dispensary; or in doggerel, like that of Hudibras.’ I say if age brings one to writing limericks, bring it on. I hope you won’t mind me including this in our next class notes. Your classmates, as I am, will be delighted.” I trust you are.

Jeff went on to write: “I haven’t thought much about Johnson or Addison over the past 50 years. It is most wonderful to think of these two giants tickling your brain. I vaguely remember Johnson’s definition of a fishing rod as a stick with a hook on one end and a fool on the other. Here on Cape Cod, one would never utter such a definition. There is a huge amount of money spent to transport fishing rods and their men into the waters around the Cape, so that they might catch a fish or two. Our granddaughter, Sarah, works at the Allen Harbor boatyard detailing and occasionally repairing boats costing between $20,000 and $100,000. During the summer, most sit idly waiting for their owners to take them out into Nantucket Sound.”

Jeff gives this update on the family: “Grandson Isaac will soon finish his second year at Wesleyan. Grandson William is exploring colleges with strong music programs. He told his mother, Elizabeth ’88, he didn’t see any point in finishing high school as all he wants to do with his life is to play music. He plays bass guitar, piano, and stand-up bass. Unlike his grandfather, he has a beautiful singing voice. Granddaughter Sarah has been accepted at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Marietta and our children are healthy.”

On March 7 Harold Potter wrote from Logan Airport that he and his wife, Lee, were “on our way to Lisbon tonight. The last time we were there was 1980. Bill Machen, a fellow classmate, was with us then. We are traveling with Lee’s roommate from Swarthmore this time.” Below is a photograph of Lee and Harold in the village of Carmona, Spain. “We are now in Ronda, which is in the mountains. Pretty spectacular. Granada and then Madrid next.”

Harold “enjoyed the recent comments from classmates about MLK” and went on to spark a conversation by writing that he “remember[s] James Baldwin’s visit too.” Others have as well, Thomas Hawley writing “remembrance of James Baldwin . . . was one of the highlights of my too brief Wesleyan experience.”

David Luft chimes in that “I might never have known who Baldwin was if he hadn’t come to chapel. I learned a lot from him, especially about the experience of being Black. Interestingly, Ta-Nehisi Coates said roughly the opposite on some matters when he visited Oregon State, but he meant the same thing. Baldwin wanted me to be able to acknowledge his Blackness, while Coates didn’t want me to think I was white. My parents actually never told me I was white. But you didn’t meet a lot of Black guys in Allentown in those days.”David goes on to add: “I’m working on a Czech intellectual history and on a collection of my essays called Toward a Central European Intellectual History.”

David Griffith,who also had an “impromptu lunch with Martin Luther King . . . just the two of us, in the CSS dining hall,” gives us this gem: “I remember drinking with Mr. Baldwin, late in the evening in our dining room at what had been EQV. I’m taxing my memory to recall the conversation with him, Franklin Balch, and Willie Kerr, who were often visitors at or after dinner . . . . While Dr. King looked into my whole being with what seemed a benevolent interest in my family and Colorado Springs and the high mountains, during my unexpected lunch with him, Baldwin was the literate cognoscente, offhand, lubricated, smoking (I believe), and I felt regarded me with the regard that any civilized person would have for a guy in blue jeans from the Wild West.”

Peter Monro had a dazzling encounter with “James Baldwin not at Wesleyan, but rather at the American Protestant Church in Paris, where he was living in 1965. In that church’s crypt, I also sat across from Joan Baez, who had broken off her tour of England when Bob Dylan took it over. She borrowed a guitar to sing at one of the weekly hootenannies held down there.” Hard to top that! Peter goes on to write: “The one celebrity of interest I met on campus was Norman Thomas, the aging socialist. I recall Jimmy Sugar, who would become a National Geographic photographer, taking his portrait.” Peter “was already planning my overall, and ultimate, appreciation for my Wesleyan education, which I suspect is quite unlike most others in both content and consequences. Ultimate because a serious medical diagnosis for my wife assures that I will have little time to offer further comments.” Here is his account of a brave, adventuresome, life well lived:  

“Essentially two of my undergraduate years were spent abroad: summers in Tours, France, and academic years in Paris, first with the College of Letters as a sophomore, then pivoting back to a regular curriculum to spend the next year in the Sweetbriar junior year abroad [program], rooming with classmate Stephen Giddings, among others.

“My fluency and knowledge of French culture did not lead to an academic career, nor to the diplomatic career as political analyst in a Francophone country for which I had hoped. I married and started a family too quickly to permit that, which is why I now have two wonderful daughters, Catherine, 55, an outdoor enthusiast in Burlington, Vermont, and Allison, 53, a marketing specialist in suburban Boston.

“My Wesleyan mates—few in number (Phil Shaver, Sam Carrier, Jim Brink),  strong in persuasion—pushed me to graduate school. But I walked—quite literally—out of graduate school in Worcester, Massachusetts, and down the street to a first career in journalism. It was a wonderful choice, informing me about all manner of things I wouldn’t have otherwise known, especially the nature of civic community that I had missed moving every couple of years growing up. 

“When I burned out of that field at 35–stress and alcohol fueled its demise—I moved near my two daughters in rural Vermont with only enough money to buy land. So together we constructed a homestead—a log cabin from slash, a two-story house off the grid, hauling water, chopping wood—think David Budbill’s Judevine Mountain—(I’ve just recovered photos of daughter Catherine hammering the outhouse together). 

“It was a five-year project that segued into my second career—after another year of graduate school—as a landscape architect, a wonderful calling for me, complete with constructing my pencil designs with shovels and tractors, and conserving land in stunning places, mostly here in Maine. 

“Over the decades, French has allowed me to fully engage with clients in the Acadian-infused folks in northern Maine, to hike isolated areas of France in the past 10 years, where I was more than once the first American locals had ever met, and to help asylum seekers from French-speaking African nations here in Portland.

“As a result of my years abroad, I lacked much contact with professors or students or the campus community in Middletown, but Wesleyan deserves a doff of my hat for its unique offering of a lengthy immersion in a wonderful foreign culture. (That undergraduate experience also convinced me I could learn other languages, so in the past decade I’ve spent one spring in Lucca learning Italian and two months hiking the Camino de Santiago after ramping up in Spanish.)

“One anecdote: In Paris of the ’60s, I befriended a plumber, who—despite being a Communist—bought a café where he one day accosted me with a pointed finger, saying, ‘Your capitalist society is dying!’ He was showing off for two mates in his Communist cell standing at the bar. I smiled and replied, ‘Yes, that’s why your daughter is studying English in London.’ He roared with laughter, introduced me to his pals, and gave me a free cognac.”

It finally happened: Tom Pulliam’sgranddaughter, Madeline, met Hardy Spoehr. Hardy writing: “We had a great visit with Tom Pulliam, his wife, Alice and . . . Madeline in January. Tom still looks like he can take the rugby ball from scrum over the goal line. Madeline is a student at our University of Hawai`i.”  Hardy goes on to write: “Last month, February, I received a great call from Rick Crootof who, with his wife, Linda, gathered with his family on Kaua`i. . . . Great to catch up with both.”   

Tom Pulliam corroborates the long-sought visit. “In February, finally got together with Hardy Spoehr and his wife, Joyce, in Honolulu. The occasion was visit to granddaughter Madeline, a sophomore at U. of Hawaii where she is studying marine biology and art. . . . She’s a self-taught surfer, so Hawaii suits her just fine. Was terrific seeing Hardy, who is still paddling in outrigger canoe races, and as it turns out, he has been competing in those races for years against an old rugby coach of mine, who also joined us all for dinner, which is how each found out: both recognizing the other as member of an opposition team.” Tom gave this further update on his ever-engaged, active life: “And speaking of rugby, one of the true highlights of the year was the return to rugby by oldest grandson, Evan, now a junior in high school, to play for his high school team, which resurrected its rugby team after being dormant for 100 years. He had stopped playing for couple of years to concentrate on MLSNext soccer, which forbids its players from playing any other sport. Evan couldn’t resist, though, and led his team to [a] six-game win streak, concluding a great season during which he played 9, the same position I played for several decades, and demonstrated skills that vastly surpassed any I possessed over a long career. An unexpected event: an action photo of Evan appeared on the cover of the national high school rugby magazine, but his MLSNext coaches undoubtedly never saw it. Evan will visit Connecticut College in a few weeks, which is interested in him playing soccer there, the same Connecticut College from our Wesleyan days (and nights), but not really the same at all. Wife, Alice, and I head to Italy at end of April for three weeks. Should be fun and probably a little different experience from my last visit to Italy in 1978 on a rugby tour. Still spending lots of time with daughter Amanda’s family. They live about seven minutes away. In addition to Madeline and Evan, there are Jay (14) and Ben (11 soon), who are also athletes. We spend many happy hours watching them compete.” Tom ends with this thought that no doubt many of us share: “Never planned a life this good. Never expected it. Has not stopped me from thoroughly enjoying it.”

Clark Byam writes that he has “nothing to report other than I’m now 80, still hiking. . . .” This led to a back-and-forth about the importance of staying active. I had no idea what an athlete Clark was and is, asking him innocently about his time on the Wesleyan swim team, and getting this: “I had a bad sinus infection my senior year at Wesleyan that kept me out of practice for three weeks. I came back for one week of practice and decided I no longer had the desire and quit the team. There was a biology professor who had spent a year in Japan and had also gotten his black belt in judo and was offering a class in judo. I took it, and it was a challenge but learned a lot from it. I also trained and boxed in the Golden Gloves my first year in law school before I went into naval aviation training in September of 1967. Later when I was a lawyer in Pasadena, I played a lot of tennis, over 10 years, at Cal Tech tennis courts with a client who was Cal Tech graduate and brilliant. Also played a lot of racquetball at a local gym. So, you might say I was a jack-of-all-trades and master of none, but I stayed active.” Whew! Keep it up, Clark! His parting words to all of us: “Stay healthy!”   

Let’s begin with this wonderful reminiscence from Barry Thomas: “Yesterday, my mind took me back to freshmen English and my struggles with the classics, such as Moby-Dick, with which, as a public school boy, I had had very limited experience. This, as opposed to the prep school guys, who had already read Moby-Dick, Pride and Prejudice, and other such, in some cases, more than once. There it was, in an old, battered box, my copy of Melville’s classic, all highlighted and underlined. Wonder if I will understand Ahab and his quest any better this time around? Call me Ishmael.” Barry’s discovery of that battered copy of Moby-Dick made me smile,recalling as it did my own struggles to keep up with our prep school classmates. And it took me to a bookshelf  where I have copies of Alfred North Whitehead’s The Aims of Education and Science and the Modern World, sent to us that summer before freshman year and the focus of those group meetings when we got to campus, mine lead by Professor David Abosch. From the underlinings I must have read both carefully, and The Aims has stayed with me, being relevant today. Abosch took us aback, prep school and public school alike, when he asked how many of us had read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. No one raised a hand; he opined that if one hadn’t done so by the age of 18, he would not amount to much. 

Barry goes on to tell us that “Dreaming for Change in Burundi has had a very good year. I have written previously about the visit Connie and I made to Burundi in February. We celebrated a five-year anniversary since the beginning of the work in 2018 to address malnutrition in one rural community. It was a very rewarding experience to see all that had been accomplished by our colleagues . . . to address the challenges with which people, especially women and children, are contending as they strive to survive each day in their subsistence life. The focus has been on improving family health and nutrition, providing educational opportunities, and improving family income. We could not have been more encouraged by the programmatic progress being made and the development of organizational capacity and capabilities.

“Now we learn . . . that Dreaming for Change has graduated from its start-up phase and is moving on to the next phase of sustainable growth and development. USAID has provided a grant to fund a vocational training program for women. Soapmaking and sewing/tailoring will be the focus. Many of the women will come from the microfinance program that now has 325 women formed into 13 groups. Remarkably, this Village Savings and Loan Program has become self-sustaining. Then, the U.S. Embassy announced in July that the embassy would be sponsoring the establishment of an ‘American Corner’ at the Dreaming for Change Center. American Corners are small library and computer lab facilities that U.S. embassies around the world make available to local people, especially young people, to help them learn about the United States, learn English, access scholarship programs, etc. Usually, these facilities are available only in urban settings. Our American Corner will be the first to be opened in a rural community in Burundi. It will be a resource that will enhance all the programming. Then, a month ago, a relationship was opened with a prominent, U.S.–based family fund whereby Dreaming for Change would receive annual funding support of an unrestricted character. In other words, this very ambitious service venture is opening new sources of funding, over and above the funding that its rather small group of U.S. private donors has provided during the start-up phase. Very welcome, of course, as the funding requirements of the preschool and primary school, now with 150 students, continue to increase and, though there is measurable progress, malnutrition programming remains a critical part of the service model. So, 2023 has been a really good year for this venture of service in one of the poorest places in the world. More work to be done.”

John Stremlau’s request in our last class notes that we share with him our memories of the visits that Martin Luther King Jr. made to Wesleyan set up quite an exchange, and here a glimpse of what I have seen:

Hardy Spoehr writes: “Aloha, Larry. I attended two of Dr. King’s presentations in our old dining hall on Foss Hill. Let me tell you, coming from Hawai`i in those days I really had no idea or background in the civil rights issues at that time . . . before coming out of those gatherings when all joined hands and arms and sang ‘We Shall Overcome,’ are still one of those times in one’s life that bring forth ‘chicken skin.’ We all left those gatherings feeling the power of ‘oneness in purpose’ and having no doubt that we shall overcome. There was so much hope and promise that now, at the age of 80, I can only tear up a bit when I view the current situation in the United States and only hope that this current generation of students, who we once were, can once again create an overwhelming wave for them to ride into the curl and come out of the tube bringing forth the promises so eloquently envisioned in those times at Foss Hill.”   

In response to John’s “query about MLK at WESU,” Bud Smith writes: “An attempt to reckon with Blacks in my life, it’s largely about one of our WESU classmates, Lawrence Benét McMillan, who followed me to campus from Bunnell High in Stratford, Connecticut, where our families were across-the-street neighbors. We were roommates for the first semester of my senior year, which was Benét’s junior year.” Bud goes on to include a link to his essay “Lights in the Darkness,” published some years ago in the Black Issue of the Tidal Basin Review”: https://issuu.com/tidalbasin/docs/tidal_basin_review__spring_2011/122. The essay, which “explores a number of campus incidents . . . including hearing MLK in the chapel,” is riveting. John’s e-mail is: john.stremlau@wits.ac.za. Do share your memories with him.

Bud has a number of irons in the fire, writing: “In May of 2023, the Connecticut legislature passed a controversial resolution exonerating all those accused of witchcraft in colonial times. The second edition of my historical novel The Stratford Devil (2007), about the hanging of Goody Bassett in my hometown of Stratford, was taught in the schools as part of the 15-year educational effort behind that resolution. The first edition (1984) portrayed Goody Bassett as an early feminist. The new third edition cleans up some errors in the first two and contains a much-needed preface. Coming in an age of religious terrorism, political witch hunts, Native American reparations, and environmental degradation—with attempts to limit wolf populations in states that have them ( including right here in Wisconsin)—the novel is a microcosm of America today.”  And meanwhile he is “collaborating on a screenplay based on the novel with a former LA screenwriter, whom I met through my softball league, which ended last month. Golf league is over, too, but I’m still fishing.”

Ever so good to hear from Dick Stabnick who still goes “to the campus periodically when I am in Middletown in court. Closed my original law firm after 50 years and now still practicing of counsel with my daughter’s firm. Cheri and I spend time between West Hartford and our home in Rhode Island with an occasional trip to our home in Florida. That’s the problem, no hobbies other than time with our daughters and grandson.” I see no problem at all.

Clark Byam and Paul Gilbert, among other news, remind us that an important date in our lives is forthcoming this year, Clark writing: “I turn 80 end of December and still hiking 2 to 3 miles most days.” Paul notes that “all is well here in Charleston, South Carolina. Once the summer heat lifts, the fun starts. Even Christmas is fun, although my wife and I miss the beauty of a snowy winter but not the aggravations. I’m turning 80 in March, which is a shock but I’m devoting my volunteer time to Veterans on Deck, an organization that provides sailing experiences to vets at no cost. Many of them are younger men and women who are battling mental issues from serving in the military. All we do is enjoy our trips with no expectations from our guests, and we do get lots of smiles and thanks. It’s worthy work.”

Two of our classmates will not see that 80^th year. David Griffith writes: “Jeff Dunn, a standout football player who was on our freshman team and left before the end of the year, has passed away here in Colorado Springs, after a very long and successful career in construction and real estate.” Here’s the link to his obituary: https://obits.gazette.com/us/obituaries/gazette/name/jeffry-dunn-obituary?id=53086268

And our classmate, David Witherbee Boyle, who had “been in serous decline for a couple of years, with kidney failure, Parkinson’s, and seizures,” died on October 22, 2023. As Rick Crootof writes: “David was a significant force in our KNK life, as an animated Autoharp and song-filled full member of our fraternity, and memorably as the owner of a VW bus (also memorably unheated since he bought it in New Orleans, and also with no gas gauge!), which spent numerous road runs to Smith and Holyoke transporting dates to and fro. At our reunions, he invariably was up front carrying our ’66 banner. When I would address our class dinner having chaired five, six, seven, eight, and eventually nine reunions and declaim ‘It is time for a younger man,’ his voice would reliably ring out ‘but you ARE the youngest man in the class.’ He was a lovable teddy bear, and he loved his family, his Cleveland Browns, and especially his Kentucky. He leaves a hole. RIP, David Witherbee Boyle ’66.” His obit: https://www.brown-forward.com/obituaries/david-boyle.

In closing, Essel Bailey, who denies stealing signs for his much beloved Michigan Wolverines, reminds us that we “Really need to get behind Wesleyan’s This is Not a Campaign . . . because there is more the current Wes could do in the world!”

And Liz Taylor ’87, Wesleyan’s Class Notes Editor, shares this photograph from Homecoming 2023.