Classmates,

            I have heard from four classmates, all of whom reside in California, whatever that means.

            First I heard from George McKechnie. George grew up in Bloomfield, New Jersey, came to Wesleyan where he majored in psychology, and then headed west for graduate work at Berkeley. He completed his PhD in personality and environmental psychology in 1972. His professors included Ted Sarbin (Sarbin had been Karl Scheibe’s advisor when he was a graduate student at Berkeley, and he was one of my teachers when I did graduate work at the University of California, Santa Cruz). George taught at Arizona State, and at Berkeley, and then left academe to practice clinical psychology and “to pursue home audio”—he was the founder and president of Audio Excellence, Inc. (the company’s clients included Francis Ford Coppola, Ray Dolby, and Boz Scaggs). He subsequently founded two more audio companies, Axiom Home Theater and Sync My Home Inc. He lives in Carmel, California, on the Monterey Peninsula.  

Then I heard from Ted Smith. He was cleaning out old stuff (aren’t we all?) and came upon a photo of the 1967 Mystical Seven, of whom he and I were two. He wasn’t sure who some of those other five mystics were.  I helped him identify them: from left to right me, Barbara Davidson (who somehow mystically snuck into that photo), Sammy Nigh, Steve Chance, Ted, Bill Cooper, Tom Drew, and Mike Cronan. This led me to research, if I may call it that, what each of the seven said about themselves in our 50th Reunion book. Cronin, Drew, Ted, and I wrote things for that sweet publication (and sent photos), but nothing from Chance, Cooper, or Nigh. I then spent a pleasant hour reading the entries that many of you sent, and “remembrances” and obituaries for 19 of our classmates who had died (alphabetically from Andrew C. Ackemann, who died in 2006, to Donald D. Wolff Jr., who died in 2009). So, thanks Ted, for reminding me what a nice resource that 50th Reunion book is. Ted, by the way, has had some health issues, but is doing fine. He and his wife, Mandy, live in San Jose, and they have three children and five grandchildren, all of whom are in California so they can see them frequently.

I also heard from Don Stone, who is living in the Bay Area. He writes that as a Jew-by-choice, active in his synagogue for 35 years, he is part of his synagogue’s reparations alliance partnership with a Bedouin village in the West Bank. As he explained, the residents “are nonviolently trying to survive the brutal efforts of a nearby, recent prosperous, Jewish settlement to expel the villagers.” According to Don, these Jewish settlers have used “terror, interrogation, arrests, beatings, home demolitions, seizing grazing land, and cutting off water, electricity, and intermittent access to medical and food sources . . . etc.” Don fears that these expulsions will end up as “not good for the Palestinians or good for the Jews.” 

Don reminded me that, should we be so lucky, we are approaching what will be our 60th in 2027. I had not thought about it, but it is now on my list of things I might do if I live long enough.

Finally, in the California correspondence category, Paul Nibur wrote a thoughtful response to the email I sent to many of you after the last set of class notes appeared. He also wrote the following: “I have been happily retired for 20 years from flying for United Airlines. I keep very busy with volunteering with my Rotary Club, hosting youth exchange students from Australia and Thailand, serving on a few local boards, maintaining my five acres near the Sierra foothills, and loving my family and grandkids. I’m happy to still be able to workout and stay fit although I had to give up running after nearly 50 years due to a complaining knee. I’m still very happily married to my first and only wife since 1970, and highly recommend that path (although that advice is a little late for many of us now).”

Also, on the ever-increasing obituary front, I got this email from Ned Preble: 

“Dave Reynolds ’71 died on Sunday June 30, 2024, at his home in Hampden, Massachusetts, after yearsof illness stimulated by Agent Orange during his service in Thailand. His wife, Heather, his son, Nat, and his wife, and Dave’s sister were with him. He and I stayed in touch from September 1963 until he died. He was a doctor, having pursued his MD and career conscientiously, from postgraduation through his ER tech job in the army, more pre-med courses and health care jobs. There will be a celebration of life October 6 featuring Steely Dan music. I will never forget his wise laugh and his broad shoulders that once kept NYC subway doors from closing on me.”    

Ned has lived in Portland, Oregon, since 2013, but before that he lived in Mystic, Connecticut, Westchester, New York, the Bay Area, Concord, Massachusetts, and Hanover, New York, among other places. His five children were born in four states, and his ten grandchildren, as he puts it, are “scattered from LA to Dallas to Nashville to southern New Hampshire.” He was in the Peace Corps in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the army, worked in admissions (as assistant dean of admissions at Connecticut College from 1970 to 1974), earned an MBA at Wharton, and for more than 30 years worked in “International Consulting in Strategic Innovation and Creative Problem Solving.”  He now teaches courses in “Change Management and Business Ethics.”  

Ned also shared the following information about some classmates: “Here is some information I have regarding the guys I have been in touch with over the years. Phil Corkill (freshman year roommate) and Suzie, his wife, are longtime Tucson residents, where he was superintendent at a big high school. She was a teacher, but not in his district (probably her idea). Jim Guard—retired architect and LONG-time resident and property owner in the San Juan Islands outside of Friday Harbor. He built his own house and came on the grid just 10 to 15 years ago. He owns a lot of land and is often clearing/creating roads and cutting his own firewood. Mary, his wife of many years, makes sure his chores do not exceed 22 hours per day. Dave Butler and his wife live in Saint Augustine, Florida, and play golf together. He watches WesTech football on his computer. He was an international lawyer for many years. I talked to Howie Foster the other day and he was heading off to play squash. His career is as a therapist. I think he is a psychoanalyst.” Ned also noted that he shot his age in golf two years ago (I did not ask him if it was miniature golf, a par three course, or if he only played nine holes).  

In exchanging emails with Ned, I told him a story from my limited golf history. He wrote back that “even though I read your golf story 10 minutes ago I am still laughing! I vote to have it included in the class notes—boldface type of course.” Given that these notes are online, and I am not limited by the usual 800-word stricture, I have decided to do so.  Here you go.

I play golf once a decade, no more, no less. On December 31, 2019, I finally got over to our par three course for my once-a-decade round. I had a three iron, a seven iron, and a putter. It was a chilly, but not too cold day, and I was the only person on the course. I double bogeyed the first eight holes, and ended up on the ninth hole, with a fairly long putt for the double bogey (maybe five feet). I could not believe how much pressure I felt. I did not want to end my string of double bogeys. I sank the putt, and it was like hitting a three-pointer for a win in my regular geezer basketball game (better actually). Definitely a sports highlight of the decade for me. (It is now only 2024, so I don’t plan to play for another four or five years).

Tony Gaeta wrote that Tony Conte was able to visit his sister and brother-in-law (who was turning 90) in Hilton Head Island, and Tony Gaeta was able to join him for four days. If you read my class notes carefully (in which case you’ll be more likely to pass the final exam), you may recall that in April 2022, Tony Conte, who lives in Walnut Creek, California, was hit by a car while walking home from dinner and almost lost his life. As he explained to me in an email back in November 2023: “Both Tony Gaeta and Tony Caprio have been fantastically supportive to me from the first minute. They are in part responsible for my recovery. I don’t think I could have made it through the trauma center, the ICU, the two hospitals, and the care facility without their constant contact and encouragement.” It was thus special that he could travel across the country to visit family, and special that the two Tonies could spend time together. As Tony Gaeta wrote, “He’s lucky to be alive, much less walking but it didn’t deter us from throwing down a few brews but not as quickly as in olden days.” 

Many of you responded to the email that I sent describing the decision of the editors to leave out a paragraph about Bernie Steinberg in my last set of notes. It was great to hear from you, not only about the deletion of the paragraph, but about other related and unrelated issues (golf! Walter Johnson High School! Unitarian ministers! UNC athletics!). Your supportive comments really meant a lot to me.          

—Richie 

Classmates,

Our classmate, Bernie Steinberg, died Sunday, January 14, 2024, age 78. Bernie grew up in St. Louis and majored in English literature at Wesleyan. After Wesleyan he went on to receive an MA from Brandeis and a PhD in Jewish philosophy from Hebrew University. He lived in Israel for 13 years and then worked at Harvard as the director of Harvard Hillel from 1993 to 2010. In 2012 he moved to Berkeley, California, where he was a vice president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and was a visiting scholar at the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. According to one article that I read after he died, “Most recently, he lived in Chicago, where his son Avi is an author and lecturer in nonfiction writing at the University of Chicago. He is also survived by his wife, Roz; a daughter, Adena; and a granddaughter.”

In one obituary, a former student is quoted saying the following about Bernie: “I have rarely if ever met anyone so committed to the sacred art of nurturing young adults and encouraging them to blossom. Over and above the hundreds and hundreds of undergraduate students he guided and counseled . . . when I worked at Hillel there was always a steady stream of young Jewish professionals who would come to see Bernie—to get his advice, to receive his assurance, to be challenged to think differently and more deeply about whatever was on their mind. The list of people Bernie mentored is like a who’s who of Jewish communal leadership.”

I got a nice email from Tony Gaeta. He is now, as he puts it, “long retired.” He and his partner are living by the water in Southport, North Carolina.  Here is some of what he wrote: “On a wonderful trip to the great state of Maine this past summer, my partner and I enjoyed dinner with Ed ‘Big Ed’ Simmons in Freeport, as well as seeing Billy Congleton at Bill’s brother Jake’s (’56) 90th-birthday celebration. As for me, I’ve been long retired from the legal profession and teaching at UNC Law and Campbell Law, sold my farm and horses in Pittsboro, North Carolina, and moved to Southport, North Carolina, to live on the water and be closer to my boat docked here in a nearby marina.” 

Tony also wrote that he had hoped to see his Chi Psi friend, Len “Bergy” Bergstein, when he went to San Francisco to see Tony Conte, who was recovering from a bad accident in April 2022. Here is his account: “I was deeply sorry to learn of Lenny ‘Bergy’ Bergstein’s passing. He and I became great friends at The Lodge and I had planned on seeing him last year on a trip to San Francisco, when I visited our other great fraternity brother and friend Tony Conte, as he recovered from a horrific automobile accident where he was literally run over twice on the sidewalk as he returned home from dinner one night in April 2022!  He’s recovering nicely and his accident has reunited us.” 

When I reached out to Tony Conte, he wrote back with the horrifying details of his accident (elderly driver, driving an old and silent Prius, and, alarmingly, not wearing the glasses she was required to wear). He wrote that “I have shed the wheelchair; I have shed the walker; and I still use a cane for balance and support…. Both Tony Gaeta and Tony Caprio have been fantastically supportive to me from the first minute. They are in part responsible for my recovery. I don’t think I could have made it through the trauma center, the ICU, the two hospitals, and the care facility without their constant contact and encouragement.” And Tony also had this to say: “I am lucky to be alive and savor each day.”

When I saw that there was new info on the JFK assassination, I wrote to Bill Klaber to ask him what he thought. Bill, as those of you who read these class notes assiduously well know, is the coauthor of Shadow Play: The Unsolved Murder of Robert F. Kennedy (originally published in 1998, with an updated paperback edition in 2018)and also the producer of a 14-episode podcast called The MLK Tapes that challenges the official story of how Dr. King was murdered. It won a Webby, which is a big deal in podcast land. Bill said about this: “Of greater satisfaction to us was the request from the American Civil Rights Museum in Memphis for the rights (the legal work now underway) to use portions of The MLK Tapes in their wing of the museum devoted to the murder of Dr. King, which is now closed until Juneteenth 2025 while they ‘rethink’ their exhibits and incorporate evidence that we were able to bring forward in our podcast. If you are ever in Memphis, be sure to visit this stunning museum.”

Here is what he wrote back: “Hey, Richie. Yes, we were freshmen when the president was murdered, and I was in law school when Bobby and Dr. King were killed. I’ve just returned from Dallas where I spoke at a conference marking the 60th anniversary. As far as Peter Landis, the Secret Service agent who recently revealed that he found a bullet in the president’s limo— his account is way more likely than the official story that has the first bullet traveling downward and striking Kennedy’s back before somehow traveling up to exit his throat, then moving over to shatter Governor Connolly’s rib before leaving his chest and destroying Connolly’s wrist, and then striking his leg. This slug, found at the hospital, is called the ‘magic bullet,’ because it not only merrily defies the laws of Newton, but emerges in perfect condition, which is impossible after striking so many bones. Landis says that his bullet was probably pushed out from the wound in Kennedy’s back, in line with the doctor’s assertion that Kennedy’s back wound had no path out of the body and no spent bullet in the wound. But however logical, Landis’ account requires an additional bullet, exceeding the three-bullet limit for a single gunman and proving the official account is a clumsy lie. And it’s not just this bullet, the lies are all over the place, like underwear in a burglarized apartment. I would love to come to Wesleyan and give a talk on these three, rather important, historical events. I’m a graduate of the CSS and have asked them for an invite to speak at their weekly luncheon. So far, no invitation. Still hoping. Bill.”

In early November 2023, my wife, Lisa, and I spent a day with Steve Sellers, my old roomie (from freshman and sophomore years), in Chapel Hill. He and his wife, Martha Julia, were visiting the Tarheel State from their home in Guatemala. It was a rare treat to spend a day together, wandering around Franklin Street, the site of many a raucous scene after various Tarheel athletic victories, and the Chapel Hill Botanical Garden. After earning a PhD in anthropology and teaching for a while, Steve, now retired, worked in what we call artificial intelligence (he was the first person to tell me about “the cloud”). Martha Julia, a developmental psychologist, was in Chapel Hill to organize a conference for Jerome Kagan, her graduate school mentor, who died in 2021. 

Ironically, or maybe just interestingly, or maybe just interestingly to me, two weeks earlier my wife and I spent a day with her freshman roomie from Mt. Holyoke. What, I wonder, are the odds of two old (and getting older) married folks at our advanced ages still being in close touch with their freshman year college roomies, and then getting to see them within a two-week period?  

Having spent part of the year in Florida and part of it in Westport, Massachusetts, for eight years, Tom Drew and his wife Carolyn Benedict-Drew decided to sell their place in Florida and buy a place in Manhattan. They are now still sharing their Westport time, but they share it with the Big Apple instead of DeSantis- and Trump-land. Children (four of them, including Joshua ’89 and Jacob ’98) and grands (nine of them) are all within striking distance of the Apple. Tom, a cardiologist, and Carolyn both retired in 2015, celebrating by sailing a boat from Westport to Sarasota. Now, they are into a new urban adventure.

After he read about Len “Bergy” Bergstein’s death in a recent set of notes, Rick Nicita emailed me. Bergy, he told me, was his temporary roommate sophomore year (“I can still hear his cackling laugh”) before they went their separate fraternal ways—Bergy to Chi Psi and Rick to Psi U. Rick enjoyed his career as a movie talent agent for 40 years and then was a “personal manager” for a few years. Now he is involved in producing movies. As he explained it: “I am producing a movie which filmed in Dublin starring my former client Anthony Hopkins, titled Freud’s Last Session that will be in theaters on Christmas Day, and I have a few other movies that might happen with former clients like Al Pacino, etc.  However, I’m not 24/7/365 like I was back in the day. Instead, I spend my life with my wife of 38 years, fellow producer Paula Wagner, play bad golf, and read good books. That suits me better now.”

Our classmate Jim Kates emailed to inform me that he now has a website (as he put it, “I’ve finally entered the very beginning of the 21st century with a website”). It has information about Jim (on the website he describes himself as “a minor poet, a literary translator, and the president and co-director of Zephyr Press”).  It also has lots of great visuals, lots of information about books Jim has written and translated, and much more (including a letter he wrote to his draft board in October 1967). I encourage you to check it out at https://www.jkates.net/about.

(Poaching again, this time from ’64.) When the story broke, I heard from one of my ’66 sources (actually, Smith College ’66, not Wesleyan ’66) that Rusty Hardin ’64, considered a “Texas legal titan” by the Austin American-Statesman and a “legal icon” who is a “Texas legal legend” by the Texas Tribune, was named as one of the lead lawyers working with the Republicans in the Texas Senate to impeach Ken Paxton, the suspended Texas Attorney General (also a Republican). Rusty has been the lead attorney in many high-profile cases. He represented the estate of Texas millionaire J. Howard Marshall in the dispute with former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith (she, memorably, responded to one of his questions in court by saying “Screw you, Rusty!”, a comment that has continued to reverberate as Rusty moves through life).  He also represented the accounting firm Arthur Anderson in the Enron case, and he has represented many professional athletes, including Rudy Tomjanovich, Roger Clemens, Calvin Murphy, Warren Moon, Scottie Pippen, and Wade Boggs. Rusty had this to say about the Paxton case: “This is not about a one-time misuse of office. This is not about a two-time misuse of office. It’s about a pattern of misconduct. I promise you it is 10 times worse than what has been public.”  (However, after a 10-day trial, the Texas Senate acquitted Paxton. According to the Texas Tribune, this was “his most artful escape in a career spent courting controversy and skirting consequences of scandal.”)

(More poaching, from further afield.) A retired guy with time on my hands, I have been reading (in, not all of) a 1,460-page book by David Garrow ’75 titled Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. Published in 2017 (to mixed reviews), it is a prodigious work, based on over nine years of research that included more than 1,000 interviews, all conducted by Garrow himself. Garrow, who was in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan, with a subsequent PhD in history from Duke, has written extensively, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. There is much to quarrel with and much to admire in this enormous and ambitious volume.

This leads me to today’s quiz. Who is your favorite Wesleyan author, and why? Two categories. First, those who were Wesleyan undergraduates (e.g., Amy Bloom ’75, Robin Cook ’62, Jennifer Finney Boylan ’80) and second, those who taught at Wesleyan or had other affiliations with the school (e.g., Paul Horgan, William Manchester, Phyllis Rose). Prizes to be announced.

Around the time of MLK Jr. Day, The New York Times published a front-page article about the likely effects on colleges if, as expected, the Supreme Court overturns affirmative action. Before I read the article, I saw the accompanying photo, a familiar view—the back of Olin Library, from the football field, scene of many a commencement (and many a walk across campus). The article focused on Wesleyan because it had been one of the first of the elite colleges that sought to diversify its all-male and almost all-white student body, an effort that really began during our sophomore year when Jack Hoy ’55, became dean of admissions. Almost as soon as I had read the article, I received an email from Ted Smith asking if I had seen it, an email that he sent to a bunch of classmates and that led to a series of shared, nostalgia-filled emails written by Harry Shallcross, Joseph Brooks Smith, Karl Furstenburg, Dave Garrison, Wayne Diesel, and Jim Kates. Some recalled Martin Luther King Jr.’s visits to the campus (King spoke at Wesleyan four times in a seven-year period, including a talk in the chapel in 1963 and another in McConaughy in 1966). I remember that when King spoke in 1963, Ron Young ’65 gave a fiery and eloquent introduction of King (actually Young introduced John McGuire, then an assistant professor of religion, and McGuire introduced King).

I was glad to be on Ted’s email list. My guess, and my hope, is that periodically there are similar exchanges about many topics among small groups of our classmates (the brothers at Chi Psi or EQV, baseball players, the guys who rowed crew, thespians, ethnomusicologists, or those who wrote for The Argus. . .).  An article in a current psychology journal is titled “Reliving the Good Old Days: Nostalgia Increases Psychological Wellbeing Through Collective Effervescence”; you’ll have to read it to see what they mean by “collective effervescence.” These reminiscences of King’s talk in McConaughy confirm what the title of a 2017 article in The Wesleyan Argus claimed after McConaughy was torn down: “Gone but Not Forgotten: A MoCon Retrospective.”

More from the nostalgia department: I had a phone call from Don Stone, and we talked about Jewological matters (unlike me, a Jew who had no choice, Don, after growing up gentile and flirting with Quakerism and various other goyish denominations, became a “Jew by choice”; he is a member of a progressive synagogue in the Bay Area). We also reminisced about things Wesleyan, including how we came to choose it. Among the things I learned, or once knew and forgot, were: 1) Don roomed with Reuben (Johnny) Johnson freshman year; 2) he was in CSS; 3) his older sister, like mine, went to Mt. Holyoke (his sister became the president of Sarah Lawrence; mine won a Pulitzer Prize). Don claims that he is having trouble remembering nouns (join the club) but that he does fine with adjectives (and expletives).

Two items from the Wesleyan Blurb Department (or maybe the Wesleyan Old Boys’ Blurb Network, or maybe the Wesleyan as Social Capital Archives).  #1. I wrote a blurb for Claude (“Bud”) Smith’s ’66 new book, Gauntlet in the Gulf: The 1925 Marine Log and Mexican Prison Journal of William F. Lorenz, MD. The book is based on the experiences of a prominent early-20th century psychiatrist who, in 1925, sailed a boat that capsized in the Gulf of Mexico. He and his crew subsequently spent time in a Mexican prison and he kept a journal based on this experience, which Bud explains, analyzes, and reproduces in this book (Shanti Arts, 2023).  Among other things, I said in my blurb that it “reveals an insightful and engaging storyteller as Claude Smith recounts and deconstructs this fascinating story.”

#2. Larry Carver ’66, wrote a blurb for my new book, Guilford College, 1974–2020:  Sort of a Memoir in Two Parts (Half Court Press, in cooperation with Scuppernong Books, 2023). Larry actually wrote a real review of the book for a real academic journal, and I chose some of it for the blurb, including the following: “In remarkably engaging, well-written prose laced with wit, good humor, and insight, Zweigenhaft also contributes importantly to our understanding of how the increased attention on the campus to Middle East politics, especially the conflicts between Israel and Palestine, affected Guilford and higher education in general, 1974 to the present, and to the challenges currently confronting small, liberal arts colleges.”

Full disclosure: My blurb for Bud was not my first blurb for a Wesleyan friend. For the late great Jim McEnteer’s 2006 book, Shooting the Truth: The Rise of American Political Documentaries (Praeger, 2006), I blurbed: “McEnteer has written a lively, insightful and much-needed analysis of the re-emerging genre of American political documentaries.” I meant every word of it, for Mac’s book and for Bud’s book.

Classmates,
Sad news.  Len “Bergy” Bergstein died Monday, October 17. His sudden death was apparently caused by a heart attack.
In 2002, after attending our 35th Reunion, I wrote my first set of class notes. A week or so later, I got an email from Bergy that began, “Richie—somehow, during the weekend I missed the point where Pat Dwyer and you did a body exchange . . . well they say miracles happen at events like this. I truly enjoyed the chance to get re-connected.”
He then caught me up on what he had been up to since our graduation: “As for me—I moved to Oregon in ’72 after completing NYU Law School. I joined Legal Aid and got involved with an urban political crowd . . . this led to political involvement as a campaign manager for two Democratic candidates for statewide office. When my candidate for governor won in 1974, I went to work for him in the statehouse—probably due to poor staff work, he only lasted one term. Five years later I was working for the Portland mayor, Neil Goldschmidt, when he was asked to join the Carter cabinet as U.S. secretary of transportation—so I joined his staff in Washington, D.C. In 1981, I headed back to Portland and set up my own public affairs company, called Northwest Strategies, which I have been doing ever since. It’s a nice mixture of government, media, and community relations for clients with complex issues. No two clients are the same . . . I have helped site large scale projects with challenging environmental issues [modern landfills, gravel mining reclamation project, etc.]; helped a Native American tribe establish a positive image to offset the negatives of casino gambling; have gained public approval of development projects and ballot measures; and currently am assisting a large-scale agriculture and dairy enterprise become established on 93,000 acres of land in Eastern Oregon. Oregon’s relatively small population and reputation for livability/quality of life issues makes this an attractive place for me to practice . . . .”
When I learned that Bergy had died, I looked online and found that he had become very well known in Oregon, not only for the active role he had played in political life throughout the state, but also because he was a frequent commentator on local television in Portland, known for, as one article put it, his “wit and wisdom.”
The accolades rolled in, from both senators (one, Ron Wyden, said, “Len was instrumental with my start in public life”) and from various other prominent Oregonians (if that is what they call themselves). He clearly was well loved and well respected. One of Len’s obituaries, with photos, appears here: https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2022/10/longtime-oregon-political-strategist-len-bergstein-dies-at-76.html.
He is survived by Betsy, his wife of 38 years, two brothers, three children, and four grandchildren.

(Poaching alert!)  Brian Frosh (Walter Johnson High School, ’64, Wesleyan, ’68) was in the news again, this time in an article that included his (stern but distinguished looking!) photo in The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/18/us/baltimore-priest-sexual-abuse.html). The attorney general of Maryland—Brian—filed a request that a judge release a 456-page document based on a criminal investigation that Frosh’s office initiated in 2019. It details decades of sex abuse of more than 600 victims by clergy in Maryland. According to the filing, “The sexual abuse was so pervasive that victims were sometimes reporting sexual abuse to priests who were perpetrators themselves.”  The Times writes that the report “is one of the first major investigations completed by a state attorney general on sexual abuse in the Church since a scathing report on six dioceses in Pennsylvania shocked Catholics across the nation in 2018.”   Brian was scheduled to leave office in January 2023.