Tag: 1966

“A bit hard to digest that it was 60 years ago that we started at Wesleyan,” begins this inspirational update from Dave McNally. “The 1960s were a different world, exciting like an erupting volcano, and I for one am extremely grateful to have come of age in that era. I am also grateful for the innumerable learning opportunities Wesleyan offered—in the classroom and beyond—although I regret not having taken advantage of more of them. Like many of you, I suspect, the older I get the more often I think about friends and experiences from years ago. I recently have happily reconnected with several friends from elementary school with whom I had no contact for nearly 70 years. And I have reread with pleasure the journals I kept on world travels over many decades. One of the innumerable benefits of retirement for me is having time for such reflections.

“Despite being afflicted with an unusual variant of ALS that has caused me to lose the use of my arms and hands—and which will inevitably spread and lead to my demise—I am a very happy camper, due to my incomparable wife, best friend, and (increasingly) caregiver, Michelle. We love our Williamsburg-style home outside Alexandria, Virginia, though we spend much of our time at our log house deep in the woods of the West Virginia Panhandle. There Michelle has created what I call ‘Mount Palomar East,’ an observatory with a 22″ Dobsonian telescope housed in its own dome. After three years and prodigious technical assistance from the Cumberland (Maryland) Astronomy Club, Michelle finally got the telescope and dome working perfectly just before Thanksgiving. The views may not quite compare to those from the James Webb Space Telescope, but they are pretty awesome.”

Though Barry Thomas and Connie’s “return to Burundi has been delayed until 2023, the good work continues there. A well-integrated set of programs—with focus upon nutrition and food security, early childhood education, keeping teenage girls in school, and women’s entrepreneurship—are now well established. The very dedicated Dreaming for Change staff are being challenged by the day-to-day requirements for preparing and serving cups of porridge to 400 children and mothers, tending to 147 children in the preschool and first primary grade, supporting 125 women engaged in the Savings and Loan Program (a type of microfinance), and working with over 225 families who participate in the Kitchen Garden Program. On top of the daily challenges, the leadership is really being challenged by the rigors of finding funding to cover the now ongoing and growing operating costs for this broad array of service programming.

“I will give specific mention to the Acute Malnutrition Program that was started in November 2021. We had become aware that the daily porridge and the other family nutrition programs were not doing enough for the children suffering from an acute level of malnutrition. The level of under-five child mortality is improving in Burundi, but it remains among the worse in the world. With kind and generous support from a couple of our Wesleyan classmates along with support from a local church in Boone, North Carolina, we were able to put together a more intense program for these really destitute children and their families. The Dreaming for Change nurse administers the program. Our U.S. organization provides funding for the food and the specialized medicine. Personnel from a nearby government health clinic provide medical diagnosis and oversight as well as referral when necessary. There are over 60 families in the program. Community women who have been responsible for cooking the daily porridge have now received additional training and are going out to identify and serve families that live greater distances from the village center. They are called ‘Light Mothers’ in French. It is quite an innovative way to bring a basic level of care to the more remote rural population. Of course, the current state of global economics and geopolitics, ultimately, cascades down to affect the very poor, such as, in Burundi, most severely.”

Tom Pulliam writes: “Granddaughter Madeline is settling in very nicely at University of Hawaii, studying marine biology and surfing in her spare time. My wife Alice and I will eventually visit Oahu to see her and connect with our classmate Hardy Spoehr. Madeline’s younger brothers have begun playing MLS Next soccer, the highest level of youth soccer in the U.S. It is sort of the same game they have been playing for years, but the level of skills of all players is amazing as is the pace of play. In September our Pleasantville High School class reunion convened in Healdsburg, California, and it could not have been better: incredible energy from a couple of dozen senior citizens who remembered events from 60 years ago as though they just happened (though remembering what they ate for lunch that day was more troubling). Just finished making plans to head to Vancouver, Canada, in March for HSBC Rugby 7s World Series event there and will be joined by one of my original Stanford teammates. I am still thoroughly enjoying helping coach Stanford women in rugby and coaching 11-, 12-, and 13-year-olds in rugby for the San Francisco Golden Gate Rugby Club. I started rugby at Wesleyan when my fraternity brothers insisted I play at Williams because they were short a player. I resisted mightily (anticipating my 130-pound carcass would not survive) but they prevailed. That decision turned out well over the years.”

Phil Shaver attended “my 60th high school reunion in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, last month. I hadn’t been back for years. Of our class of 1962 (about 300 people), a third have died. Of the living, many have lost a spouse to death or dementia. So even though I had just undergone knee surgery for a torn meniscus, I felt grateful to be alive, generally healthy, and mentally sharp. My main research collaborator and I have two new books in press. My wife is still a full-time workaholic professor, in good mental and physical health. Our 26-year-old twin daughters are thriving. I’ve been taking watercolor painting classes for a couple of years and am enjoying it and getting better. I’ve actually sold a couple of paintings and had one on display at a local gallery. We’re all concerned about the unhealthy state of our country but can’t figure out what to do about it.”

Another high school reunion and more, Bob Dearth writing that the “Post COVID-19  lockdown lifestyle reset is proving a challenge. Our plans for a visit to Portugal gave way to a higher-priority hip replacement surgery for my wife Barbara to correct both a stress fracture and arthritic deterioration in her right hip, which I understand is a pretty common surgery these days. Recovery is in progress. Have downsized vacation properties in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, moving to a modest three-bedroom condo versus the big custom-vacation property with pool. So far, not a bad trade-off. Anticipate hosting one son and grandkids this coming December after Christmas. Will continue to enter the smaller of the billfish tournaments in early October this fall, weather cooperating. Have traveled to Lake Erie for walleye and smallmouth bass fishing recently. Lots of fun and fresh fish fillets to share. Sixtieth high school reunion in June was fun too but too few attended.”

This autumn found Essel Bailey and his wife, Menakka, in California, “having finished the harvest in Knight Valley and our Knights Bridge wines are on the lees! We came out from Ann Arbor after beating Michigan State in The Big House and listening to Wynton Marsalis and his jazz group in three separate presentations. Moving around still and enjoying it!”

And this update from Barry Reder. “I retired from the practice of law (helping businesses of all sizes, ranging from banks and insurance companies to chefs and entrepreneurs with a dream) at the end of 2006 and have not figured out how I maintained a seven-day/six-night law practice while doing all the ‘stuff’ that endlessly has kept me busy ever since. Ann has struggled with the afterlife of getting two new knees simultaneously more than a year ago, and we walk most days to try to improve things. Each of our two daughters has a boy and a girl and live in San Francisco. After 43 years in a wonderful house in the Richmond District (a suburb in the city), we downsized last spring into a wonderfully urban, quite new three-bedroom apartment. It took six months to clear the house out but only two days to sell it. When it was completely empty, it was strangely devoid of the emotional content I had expected; when empty, it was just a house, no longer the home where we had raised our kids and celebrated holidays and life. We spend half the year in the city apartment and the other half on our wonderful acre and a half on a hill in Sonoma with five table grapevines, a meadow, a putting green, and a pool. My handicap had its nadir at 9 and, despite diligent practice almost daily, is now 20+. Though nearly every weekly calendar has at least one medical entry, we feel endlessly fortunate and hope to enjoy stasis for a while.”

We end with two celebratory notes. Jeff Nilson’s grandson, Isaac Ostrow, Wesleyan Class of 2026, has become a member of Wesleyan Crew. Rick Crootof and Linda celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary on September 4, 2022.”

We begin celebrating the distinguished career of Bill Dietz, his many years of clinical, metabolic, epidemiologic, and policy work devoted to helping us understand childhood obesity. Recently, Dr. William H. Dietz of George Washington University was “recognized as an Expertscape World Expert in health education,” a result of citations to Bill’s work, placing him “in the top 0.1% of scholars writing about health education over the past 10 years.” Well done, Bill!

A great story from David Griffith, inspired by Jack Knapp’s account in our last class notes about not being prepared for Wesleyan: “My first class on the first day, a lecture in philosophy that was part of the integrated program. The instructor, a newly minted assistant professor whose name I have forgotten, walks in, mounts the podium, and begins with words I will never forget: ‘I assume you all know the difference between a priori and a posteriori reasoning.’ I stared dumbly into space for a moment and then wrote in my notebook ‘Jack, you’ve made a big mistake.’” David, in the same class, remembers that the professor was Paul Reynolds and provides this reminiscence:

“One lovely autumn afternoon, the sun was streaming in the window of a seminar room in Fisk Hall, with a cardinal singing just outside, and bathed in that incomparable soft air of the Connecticut countryside, we slowly drifted in after lunch for a lecture in the freshman course on philosophy, part of the Freshman Integrated Program at Wesleyan in 1962. The original instructor, Mr. Shiman, had taken leave, I guess, and in any event that day the discussion and lecture were presented by Professor Reynolds, who was known and called ‘Rip Reynolds’ by the upperclassmen. Rip was a soft-spoken fellow, slight and thin and gray haired, with a little beard, in his 60s, and semi-retired from the faculty. He was noted for a paper he had published somewhere on Reverend Berkeley’s works on empiricism, and after our customary introductions, he launched into the talk that he gave from his paper, spread out on the wood table in that wood-paneled room, with 15 of us in attendance, seated on very comfortable armchairs. Rip’s delivery was as rumored, easy and light as a feather, slow and deliberate, reading more than speaking from knowledge, all on a topic that would hardly have stirred the heart to action or the mind to engage. As one might expect, as the lecture wore on, the combination of the afternoon, the armchair, and the soft tones of the speaker took their toll— first one student and then another slowly slumping into the chair and surrendering to the charms of Orpheus encased in quotations of Berkeley. Rip was not one to ask questions during a lecture or try to start a discussion, and he simply soldiered on, as one after another of my friends and fellows nodded off, until finally, about 45 minutes into a 55-minute lecture, even my friend Andy Kleinfeld drifted off, and then I no longer had it in me, and allowed my eyes to close. A public-school boy in a private school dominated class, I was diligently taking close notes on every class, trying to keep up with those privileged in their preparation for this college work, but I could not resist the day and the lecture, which was waning in strength. I suddenly opened my eyes and awoke from my light doze when there was no longer that soft droning speech to lull me to sleep, as happens when a sudden silence will wake a sleeper used to background noise; and as I opened my eyes, I realized with mild surprise that even Rip had fallen off, that he had indeed talked himself to sleep. It was somewhat gratifying to realize that I was the only one awake, that even the future valedictorian and master of all knowledge, Andrew J. Kleinfeld, had fallen off, and I was the witness. I kind of tapped on the table a little before the bell rang, which gave Rip a chance to bring up his head, shake off the afternoon nap, and stand to allow us all to leave. That was my only real experience with Rip or Berkeley, but I will never forget it. It was a signal to guide me, but I don’t know to what.”

Essel Bailey writes with the good news that “Our Knights Bridge Winery just opened a production facility in Knights Valley, California, and our wines got serious attention in this weekend’s Naples Wine Auction!” He and Menakka “recently acquired a property in northwest Connecticut where travel to Wes campus is very convenient.” And they have “reorganized our nursing care homes company, to become an ‘Employee Stock Ownership Plan,’ with all of our 1,600 employees as co-owners.”

Rick Crootof sees “Jack and Carla Knapp regularly since they are now living here in Wolfeboro, renting from friends of ours, from September to June, and 30 miles away in the summer. This is their second winter here and they are contracting for next winter again. Like you, they are former urbanites converted to the joys of small-town living. Many pleasant interactions conclude with ‘and this wouldn’t happen in Chicago!’” Rick also keeps up with Sandy Van Kennen, the two recently being “joined on a hike by Peter Monro.” Rick continues to enjoy Zoom “meetings with KNK brothers Jack, Dave Luft and Charlie Ingrao ’69,” where politics dominates. On the way to Sarasota for the winter, Rick and Linda spent a “night in New Haven with Bob and Priscilla Dannies.”

Received this inquiry from Tom Pulliam: “Do you happen to have email address for Hardy Spoehr? My granddaughter has been admitted to University of Hawaii and is interested in marine biology. I would absolutely love for her to meet Hardy, one of my all-time favorite people,” as he is for so many.

An update from Barry Thomas: “Connie and I are gradually getting back to a ‘normal’ pace of activity. Have been to a couple concerts—symphony and bluegrass. We have moved into a period of relative calm with the work in Burundi, striving to stabilize and make sustainable all building and program development activity undertaken during the past year. A third Department of State grant is providing opportunity to do more teacher training, which has to be done virtually. We hope that our return to Burundi is only delayed, and we will be able to travel to East Africa later in the year. The next big issue involves electrifying the Dreaming for Change Community Center, including the preschool. We are looking wherever we can to find an organization interested in supporting such a project.”

Let’s end on this uplifting note. Will Rhys writes: “Pandemic be damned, I did two performances in December of my one-man Christmas Carol and am now in rehearsal for Harry Townsend’s Last Stand, which will have a run in February at the Good Theatre in Portland, Maine.”

 

We held our 55th Reunion of the Wesleyan Class of 1966 on Zoom. There were two sessions—the evenings of May 27 and 29—both totally enjoyable. Twenty-three of our classmates attended. Tom Broker, Larry Carver, Rick Crootof, Gif Lum, Dan Lang, David Luft, Dave McNally, John Neff, Sandy Shilepsky, and Sandy Van Kennen attended both sessions. Essel Bailey, Jack Beeler, Pat Curry, Jeff Evans, Paul Gilbert, Jack Knapp, Peter Monro, Barry Reder, and Bud Smith joined us on the first night. Bill Fehring, Steve Giddings, Tom Richey, and Hardy Spoehr tuned in on the second. Both nights were laced with good and often moving accounts of lives well lived, humor and good fellowship reigning. Jack Knapp, thinking about his grandchildren, opened with a question that resonated with everyone: What kind of education will equip the young for a future with so many challenges, any one of which would be enough for any generation? Essel, who sits on the Wesleyan Board of Trustees, talked about Wesleyan’s strategic plans to provide that education. He also caught us up with his staff’s remarkable success in dealing with COVID in his long-term care facilities, two cases among 1,600 living there. His venture in viniculture, Knights Bridge wine, is going well.

Professor Broker and his wife, Louise, are still conducting their important research on human papillomaviruses, and Tom has taken up racewalking. My account of not being prepared for Wesleyan, my struggles in the first few years, opened up e-mail discussions with Jack Beeler and Jack Knapp, the latter recalling “my first class on the first day, a lecture in philosophy that was part of the integrated program. The instructor, a newly minted assistant professor whose name I have forgotten, walks in, mounts the podium and begins with words I will never forget: ‘I assume you all know the difference between a priori and a posteriori reasoning.’ I stared dumbly into space for a moment and then wrote in my notebook ‘Jack, you’ve made a big mistake. True story; I used it in several commencement addresses.” Dave McNally recalled his class on November 22, 1963, and spoke movingly of having ALS. Dave’s mentioning of Martin Luther King Jr.’s visits to campus sparked a conversation, many chiming in. Laughter flowed from Sandy Van Kennen’s ongoing story of becoming an entrepreneur of marijuana. Gif gave a harrowing account of his wrestling with cancer and a splenectomy, the good news being that he is on the mend. Bud Smith’s life is chock-full of good things, a wonderful marriage of 50 years, golf, fishing, and writing—he recently being the winner of the Midwest Review of Fiction Award. Sandy Shilepsky, while keeping up with mathematics, has taken up pickleball. Really! He also talked about his and his wife’s plans to move to a cottage in Charleston’s Bishop Gadsden Episcopal Retirement Community (Paul Gilbert is planning on moving there as well). Dan Lang and his wife are keeping up their extensive gardening, having made their fifth trip to the Artic. Dan continues to teach one course at the University of Toronto. Barry Reder and his wife, Annie, also avid gardeners, live on an acre and a quarter outside San Francisco. Barry, recovering from a bad bout with strep, is enjoying family life, loves golf. The peripatetic Peter Monro continues his epic hikes. His work on carbon pricing to address climate change is gaining traction. John Neff, who moved to Winston–Salem in 2001, is keeping busy giving talks and completing a work on the watercolors of A.R. Ammons. Rumor has it that with COVID restrictions lifting, he has a date.

Rick opened our second session by paying tribute to those in our class who have died since the 50th Reunion, 2016: Michael Botein; Robert Killheffer; William Hauser; Alton Flanders; John Harter; Roland Crowl; John Baxter; Henry Lufler; George “Rick” Churchill; Thomas Francis; Richard Mastronarde; and Peter Spiller. Rick, who knows nearly everyone in our class, had words for all. Others chimed in with memories, Hardy on Thomas Francis, a football teammate and one incredible athlete who still holds the Wesleyan record for the hammer throw. John Neff shared a story that shed light on the enigmatic person Richard Mastronarde apparently was.

Then David Luft, Steve Giddings, Bill Fehring, Tom Richey, and Hardy Spoehr spoke of their lives, their memories of Wesleyan. David evoking Wesleyan’s liberal education as an ideal that has guided him; Steve recounting his 25-year career as a Foreign Service Officer with USAID, his three children, and heart surgery; Bill recalling a class with David McAllester and an evening and night spent in the presence and incense of Ravi Shankar; Tom, in that slow, beautiful, Georgia accent, recalling his early studies in philosophy, his becoming a lawyer, his volunteer legal work, his family being a Wesleyan one—his brother Russ (’63) a graduate along with Tom’s two sons; and Hardy telling us a startling story about hitchhiking back to Middletown in the night and being picked up by none other than President Butterfield. The discussions, the back and forth, were poignant and humorous.

      Bill took away another valuable experience from McAllester’s class. Attending an African American Church at McAllester’s suggestion, he learned to play the tambourine. Years later, while working in the South, he used his music skills to connect with the community; this would go on to help him in working with African Americans on environmental stewardship. In a recent update, Bill writes: “Bianca and I continue to survive the pandemic by being careful. Now that we’ve both been vaccinated, we’re looking forward to a bit more freedom with other vaccinated friends. I spend much of my time hiking, flying my plane, and taking photographs. Until the pandemic I was teaching wetland biology, birding, and photography at a local preserve . . . I have visited with Rick several time over the last few years to attend Orioles spring training games or photography outings.”

     Tom Pulliam, who was down the hall from me on Foss Hill our freshman year, has lived in San Francisco since 1971. He has “just completed an undefeated season coaching my grandson’s U12 rugby team . . . have had an awful lot of fun with sports in my lifetime (including 48 years playing rugby that began at Wesleyan and four national championship teams), but nothing has given me more pleasure than helping these kids learn rugby skills, then watching them go out and execute them beautifully against much larger opponents. Aside from that, retired from law practice several years ago and find being a grandpa and rugby coach vastly better than trying cases around the country . . . daughter, husband, and four kids live about 5 minutes away . . . son and his girlfriend live about 20 minutes away . . . having them all so close makes life very, very enjoyable . . . especially during this past, exceedingly strange year. We really never missed a beat, spending lots and lots of time with the family. Married 51 years to Alice, still living in the one and only house we’ll ever own.”

In response to Tom’s update I wrote in part: “Though we shared the same floor on Foss Hill as freshmen, I did not know of your prowess in rugby and wish I had, those four national championship teams being impressive. My most vivid memory of you was one evening when I was going to take a shower around 10:00 p.m., having just finished a paper for our English class. I asked how your paper was coming along: ‘I haven’t started it yet.’ I got a B; you received an A.” This exchange sparked these memories from Tom:

“I remember freshman year on Foss Hill. We had quite a bunch on that hall with poor Jim Dresser trying to keep us in order—Jimmy Byrne, Steve Murphy ’68, Don Berger (my roommate) and assorted others. Yes, my work habits were not something to be proud of. The first paper I wrote freshman year I finished days early then proceeded to revise and revise to make it perfect—it earned me a C+. I decided then and there that I could do that well by writing papers the night before they were due and did exactly that the rest of my four years. I was very fortunate things worked out as they did.

“Coach Don Russell made a huge difference in my life. After playing freshman basketball for him, he made me a starting second baseman on the baseball team over a highly recruited teammate. I think he appreciated my determination (inherited from my mom). I ran into him in Oregon where I was traveling with my wife and little kids. There was some NCAA event at the same place we were staying; had a wonderful time talking with him. I went on to have a lot of fun playing baseball for years, then won some slow-pitch softball championships in San Francisco as a pitcher of nothing but knuckleballs, which danced in the San Francisco winds.

“Hiking is good, especially where you have sights like that in your photo—country like that is good for the soul. My family lived in Golden, Colorado, a few years. I loved waking to the sight of the Rocky Mountains, worked doing remodeling construction in the summer there, including building a cabin in Tin Cup, in the mountains. Loved it and would have done that instead of practicing law if it had paid as well. Got back to the Rockies years later, playing a few times in the Aspen Ruggerfest, winning a memorable championship in 1976 in the mud against a rep side (i.e., all star team) from Southern California. Very good to rekindle old Wesleyan memories, Larry.”

     Clark Byam “will have 49 years with same firm in September and am retiring at end of year. Had first year of law school right after graduation from Wesleyan then went into naval aviation in summer 1967 and came back to Hastings Law School in 1970 to complete last two years of law school. Now enjoy golf, following stock market, and hiking in hills where I live about 5.5 miles per day. Stay healthy.”

“I am doing well,” Robert Rockwell writes, “but we are delighted the mask business is about to go away as is everyone. Retirement is calming but we miss in-person activities, don’t we?  We mourn for our classmates and their families who lost members. There must be quite a few, certainly some fellow ’66ers. We extend a collective embrace to them. All is well here and trout season proceeds apace—the ultimate in social distancing. Lots of reading and the like this past year. But it’s time to start gathering again, and I wish a great summer to all.”

And this update from Barry Thomas, about life in rural North Carolina and his and Connie’s work in Burundi. “Here in the mountains of North Carolina, life seems to be rather quickly getting back to ‘normal.’ Although still a bit cautious, I am relying on the vaccine and the herd immunity which seems to be taking hold, at least, in this neck of the woods. The county in which I live has not recorded a new case of COVID-19 for some weeks. There are two existing cases who are in residential care. I became part of a research study soon after the pandemic hit and am doing a blood check by mail each month that determines if my antibodies (from the vaccine) continue to be active. It is an interesting process.

“In Burundi, great progress is being made on the construction of two school modules, each with two classrooms, for the preschool that began operating in open and temporary facilities in March 2020. Work began on the first module the end of May and then on the second module last week. The expectation is to have the new buildings available for classes and 112, four- to six-year-old girls and boys in September. The project also includes latrines and a kitchen.

“It has been very interesting and invigorating for us to get a sense of the commitment by the parents in the community to the project. Although there is a project manager with engineering credentials and a crew of ‘professional’ masons doing the brickwork, we are employing community people, men and women, on rotating two-week shifts to do the heavy-lifting type work. It provides an opportunity for local people to earn some cash income. One will see women with babies strapped to their backs working with hoe and shovel in hand. This little project is injecting significant energy into this subsistence-based community, and we hope the preschool experience will help launch these little kids onto a track leading to a better future.

“The challenges of covering operating costs (teacher salaries, classroom materials, security, etc.) lie ahead, and we hope to be able to electrify the new facilities in a next phase of development. The solar installation that is planned would provide the first electricity in the Butanuka set of villages with about 30,000 people.”