Tag: 1976

Thanks to everyone for such an enthusiastic response to my plea for notes! We’ve heard from several people who have never sent in a note before. Here’s the latest, in the order I received it:

From Don Fallati: “I have recently joined the Board of Trustees of Print Center New York (https://www.printcenternewyork.org/). It is the leading nonprofit exhibition space in New York dedicated to exploring the medium of prints. The Print Center offers interdisciplinary exhibitions, innovative scholarship, educational programming, and digital resources, and it has recently opened a new, ground-floor space at 535 West 24th Street. It’s in the heart of the Chelsea Arts District, and I encourage anyone interested to visit as the Center always has interesting exhibits.

“My wife (Ruth Pachman ’78) and I have been collecting prints and works on paper for many years, mainly focused on modern and contemporary artists. We are also excited about Wesleyan’s new art gallery being constructed in tandem with the renovations to the PAC. It will be a great new arts space in the center of campus and a showcase for the school’s significant art collection.”

From Nat Needle: “This might be fitting: my old Alpha Delt roommate, J. Mark Beamis ’77, came out from Boston for my birthday show in Worcester and recorded this. The evening revolved around accompanying eight different vocal soloists, so I only got to sing a couple myself [including] a 1931 tune I hadn’t done in maybe 40 years, a request from vocalist and erstwhile bandmate Tina Le, who prefers Perry Como’s more relaxed version.”

From Elyse Grasso: “The beginning of August saw ground being broken, finally, for the rebuild of my house that was burned to the ground in the December 30, 2021, Marshall Fire and wind event.”

From Tom Kovar: “I’m still pursuing three creative outlets (music, fiction, photography), and the photo is from a brief but outstanding family vacation on Cape Cod.”

From Merle Kummer: “I’m pleased to report that I’ve helped found the CoLAB High School Stem Career Collaboration, which just incorporated as a nonprofit in April 2023. We connect Watertown (Massachusetts) High School Students with local STEM professionals to inspire them to pursue science, technology, engineering, and math. Here’s our new website:  http://bit.ly/WHS-CoLAB.”

From Jaimee Kurfirst Mirsky:  “Not much new to report except a new granddaughter, Ruby. She is the fourth grandchild and first girl of the bunch. Jay and I are enjoying retirement—we both spend as much time as possible with the kiddos, and lots of time working in our garden. I’ve been part of an online classics book group since the beginning of COVID. I never wanted to join a book group before, but the time was right, and this one is pretty special—we actually read and talk about the books. 🙂 I’ve also been advancing my knitting skills and doing tutoring for a local literacy organization. Not exciting, but I’m fine with that at the moment. I’m including a photo of the family from a recent week on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.”

From Byron Haskins: “Gabrielle and I reconfirmed our wedding vows on August 12, after 20-plus years of everything you can imagine in a partnership during turbulent times (but I won’t get into the details that include getting her citizenship because she believed 2016 was the time for the first female POTUS and seeking a third act in Canada because it wasn’t). It was a joyful recommittal, small group of friends and family on our back patio. Tears shed, laughs laughed.  Also we sold the property in Quebec, are ending our apartment lease in Montreal, and consolidating in Michigan for the next leg of our journey. I will miss Montreal, as we made a few friends there and got a bit closer to Quebecois family during the last two years. I still volunteer sometimes with the Michigan Democrats as part of the Senior Caucus (one fight against ageism) and the county party organization, and continue my hobby of creating technology-assisted one-man-band esoteric music under the label of ‘the ignorant savants,’ which is a poke at how we Americans have a tendency to plow into things as if we are all-knowing when we actually generally keep heads-in-the-sand about the requirements of a common good, a common ethos, or a historical use of convention. It’s an end run around facing growth-enhancing cognitive dissonance. Also I’m keeping the door open on the Classmate Conversations for which you can contact me and Joanne Lukitsh about anytime— if any two or three classmates want to chat about something chat worthy, I’m willing to produce the video and post it on our Wes76Alum YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Wes76Alum.”

From March Boal: “Life is good! My two sons are grown and started on their careers. I just got back from a week on Cape Cod, where I worked several summers while at Wesleyan—it is still beautiful but considerably more crowded. I have not retired yet—I am still enjoying teaching economics at Drake University in Iowa. By the way, I have a message for any high school seniors daunted by the decline of affirmative action: we have empty seats here at Drake. We may not be as prestigious as Harvard, but our professors knock themselves out for students and our graduates do quite well in the job market.”

From Leslie Gabel-Brett: “I am feeling fortunate that I have love, health, and family in abundance. Carolyn and I took a great trip to Italy with our daughter and 15-year-old granddaughter. We are also enjoying summer vacation on Cape Cod with all our kids and grandkids—we made them play pickleball! I am keeping my creative brain cells active by developing a one-act play about Victoria Woodhull and Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. And I am happy to continue as a visiting faculty member at Wes, teaching a course on social activism and theories of change. I share with and gain inspiration from the next generations who will do their part to repair the world.”

From David Cohen: “I had my (roughly) annual reunion with Michael Greenberg and Matt Paul and our spouses in Boston this spring. Sadly, Stewart Shuman missed the affair this time. My wife, Sandy, calls these annual events “Seven Doctors and Me.” She only has a master’s degree, poor thing. As usual we walked many miles, ate, drank, and talked family, art, politics, Wesleyan, and science while touring the Boston Public Library and Mike’s famous lab. I’m recently semiretired to the Berkshire Mountains, woodcarving, and working on writing a book on some local history. Check out my COVID lockdown creation, a self-published children’s book called The Amazing Life of Squirt the Water Drop. It only took me 25 years to go from concept to publication. My youngest two kids live on Maui and are emotionally traumatized but physically safe!”

           Norm Kerner, who is retired from his long career as a record producer and recording studio designer/owner, now oversees operation of his two studios in Hollywood, California. Here’s a look at one of them.

           From Debra Neuman: “Barbara Strauss invited me to spend a week with her at Quisisana Resort in Center Lovell, Maine, in August, a place she and her late husband Jeff have loved for many years. It was a wonderful week and here’s a photo of us playing pickleball, a new passion.”

            From Cheryl Woodson: “Talk about how to ‘live out loud and age excellently!’ I’m 67. My Aunt Terri (in the middle) is 96, and her main runnin’ buddy, Miss Edna, is 103! I’ve been posting their wisdom on my Facebook and LinkedIn pages for the last couple months.

           “I’m also gearing up to offer two online courses in November (National Family Caregiver and Alzheimer’s Awareness Month) To Survive Caregiving—Yes, you CAN! offers info and insights from To Survive Caregiving: a Daughter’s Experience, a Doctor’s Advice that won first place in the 2022 Writer’s Digest awards for Best Self-Published Books—Inspirational/Motivational Category. Dementia: The ‘Slow Walk Home’ (thusly named by Bishop T. D. Jakes) covers the genetics, physiology, and pathology impact on people who live with Alzheimer’s and other dementias and the people who love them, treatments, and ways for everyone to cope.

           “I’m launching an updated website at www.drcherylwoodson.com [and] will begin social media marketing for the courses in September. Stay tuned!”

           From Lyle Weinstein: “I am not sure what people might be interested in reading, but my wife suggested that it might be helpful to people to mention the two books I have written on caregiving for dementia patients, The Alzheimer’s Family Manual, and, more recently, The Montessori Alzheimer’s Project. There are a few online videos of talks I have given on these topics, such as the recent one in Halifax, Nova Scotia at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elk5NVdt6E8.

“Other things I have edited and published include a four-volume series on Dissociative Identity Disorder and early childhood trauma entitled Engaging Multiple Personalities, several books on Tibetan Buddhism including Penetrating Wisdom by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Devotion by Lama Pema Tsewang, and others that are not sold on Amazon . . . .

           “I have retired from practicing law (which I did in Colorado and California) but still assist my wife, Riza, in the Montessori school community she established in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Throughout all these years, I have continued my study and practice of Buddhism, helping to establish some meditation and retreat centers in the United States and Canada, in particular, Thrangu Monastery in Richmond, British Columbia.”

           From Susan Mitchell and Sue Heller Clain: “We got together at Sue’s home in Media, Pennsylvania. Sue has retired from teaching economics at Villanova University. I was visiting my son and his family, including my 2-year-old grandson in Philadelphia. I am also at the very beginning stages of seeking ordination to the Episcopal priesthood in Maryland. We’ve been friends since being assigned adjoining suites in Lawn Avenue (CSS) in 1972.”

           From Meredith Bergmann: “I taught a workshop on ekphrastic poetry at the Frost Farm Poetry Conference [in August] in Derry, New Hampshire, and had a wonderful time. Participants came from all over the country, and were serious, enthusiastic, and irreverent—lots of interesting conversations and debates about all aspects of poetry, biography, and art.

           “On [August 21], we drove to Albany for the unveiling of the Ginsburg bust in the State House; photos from the event are at the link https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-unveils-portrait-carving-immortalizing-justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-new-york.

           In late August “will be the ceremonial groundbreaking for my Lexington, Massachusetts, sculpture, Something Is Being Done. The bronze won’t be installed until next May—it’s at the foundry, in progress.” Meredith Bergmann and MA State Senator Cindy Friedman

           From Rob Williams: “I am currently living in Maui and working as a disease physician. I have been here since March of 2021. Although I didn’t get to see him, Elliot Epner was here and left right before I arrived. I have not seen his name listed in the oncology department. I missed him by about a month. I’ll be here until March of 2026. I’ll then be looking to retire.

           “I survived the Maui fires and we are very safe. The entire island is in mourning as we all know someone who has lost a home and/or family members. Recently heard from Pete McArdle. He is retiring after working many years as a veterinarian. More recently he was a research coordinator at Novartis. I have been very busy with the COVID-19 pandemic and retirement is looking very good right now.”

           From Polly Hays: “Greetings from Denver, where we had the rainiest June on record, and then in July and August are continuing to break heat records. I continue to enjoy the leisurely pace of life in retirement, and recently told someone that I am a homebody who likes to travel. This winter I made my way to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada, for a singing and mediation retreat; we also enjoyed the reward of a spectacular view of the northern lights one evening. Yes, they were just like the pictures, and yes, it was cold out, about minus 20 [degrees] Fahrenheit. This summer, I had a totally different adventure in Atlantic Canada. Trip included hiking in Cape Breton Island National Park and experiencing the tides of the Bay of Fundy in both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

           “Below are a few pictures from Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park in New Brunswick, where you can walk on the ocean floor at low tide, and kayak among the rocks at high tide. Now that was fun!!!”

             From Cindy Arnson: “The highlight of 2023 was the June wedding outside of LA of our son Micah to Maya Paz. The photo says it all. We were very happy! I should be easy to spot; others in the photo are my husband, Gerry; oldest son Zack (a U.S. Foreign Service Officer); and Micah’s twin sister Jeanne (a grad student at George Washington University, in clinical mental counseling). We’re sorry to have Micah and Maya on the West Coast, but since we racked up a lot of frequent flyer miles during the pandemic, we have a nice cushion for travel.

“After 30 years of not being in the classroom, over the summer I taught a class on Latin America for midcareer master’s students at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS, where I did my graduate work). I’ll continue in the fall of 2023 and accompany the group to Chile in mid-October. It’s challenging but rewarding and keeps me on my toes. So much for ‘retirement,’ but I’m very happy not to have to fundraise, attend staff meetings, fill out personnel evaluations, etc., all part of my previous job at the Wilson Center.  We feel blessed to be in good health, have kids we’re proud of, and additional time for hobbies like woodworking and fussing over our garden of native perennials!”

           From Douglas Morris: “Since I have never before sent in a note, let me boil down what I have done between graduating Wesleyan and retiring a year ago: Mostly I worked as a criminal defense lawyer for indigent defendants in federal court, largely trying to persuade judges to give my clients less time or keep them out of the hellholes of federal prisons altogether; I now am adjuncting at Brooklyn Law School, teaching a seminar on the Nazi legal system; I have also moonlighted as an independent legal historian writing two books on lawyers who resisted the Nazis (Justice Imperiled: The Anti-Nazi Lawyer Max Hirschberg in Weimar Germany [University of Michigan Press, 2005] and Legal Sabotage: Ernst Fraenkel in Hitler’s Germany [Cambridge, 2020]), and I am now finishing up a short book on the anti-Nazi Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, criticizing his badly flawed theory of resistance; I am married (happily, still getting along), and have two children and three grandchildren, each of whom I have tried early on to introduce to ideas of social justice by reading to them Yertle the Turtle, which I first came across in the 1973 Nat Needle production of Dr Seuss! at Wesleyan after I landed a minor role as a turtle, an oppressed turtle.”

           From Steve Smith: “I started at Wes with the Class of 1975 but took 1974 off and graduated in 1976. I married before senior year and we ran and lived in the Alumni Guest House, so I wasn’t too visible, either. But with friends in classes before and after mine, maybe someone will remember me.

“After graduation we spent 10 years in Oklahoma and have lived in the North Carolina mountains since then. No prestigious awards or inspiring work experiences, but 48 years married to my best friend and 52 together is worth a lot. Four years ago we both retired and haven’t looked back.

“Since junior high Jean has been an artist and I’ve been a ham radio operator. After retiring, we started going to state and national parks about once a week, where I talk to folks around the U.S., Canada, and Europe on a small radio and Jean paints two or three watercolors with pen-and-ink added in the two hours we’re usually there. Then we visit that park before looking for a mom-and-pop restaurant in the area and checking out a new-to-us town. So far, we’ve gone out 197 times to 142 parks in six states. It’s been fantastic, having a one-day vacation every week!

            “One photo is of my setup one day last year in South Carolina, with Georgia across the river.  I sometimes use a microphone but prefer Morse code using the WWII key shown. I talked with 97 people that day. The other photo (below) is a painting Jean did at a park last month. It’s been fun watching her progress in creating paintings quickly without knowing in advance what they would be.”

            From Desmond Whitney: “I don’t have much to report except to say that being nearly 70 is not anything like what I would have imagined when we were all together in Middletown. Without a doubt, the last decade or so has been the best chapter of my life (recognizing I can say that in part because I’m lucky to have continuing good health).”

           Notes from Facebook (provided here with permission):

           Seth Lerer retired from UCSD in June, after a stellar career as a professor of literature at Princeton, Stanford, and finally UCSD. Retirement hasn’t slowed down his productivity; this year he provided an essay for the recently published Textual Communities, Textual Selves:  Essays in Dialogue with Brian Stock, and next January his Introducing the History of the English Language will be published by Routledge Press.

           Jon Daniels has relocated to upstate New York after a long stay in Phoenix, Arizona. Welcome home!

           Marjorie Allen Dauster and her husband Rip ’74 met David Harmin and me for lunch at Rein’s Deli not so long ago; they regaled us with tales of their recent trips to Iceland and Italy and, to be honest, I can’t remember where else because they’re traveling so much! Both are in good health and are greatly enjoying their grandchildren. You wondered why I mentioned puffins in Iceland? This is why!

           From Melissa Blacker: “David and I are still living in Worcester, Massachusetts, which we call the spiritual center of the universe. At least, it is for us. We have moved out of the Buddhist Temple that we founded 14 years ago. The Temple is supported by the local and now national and international Zen community that we started 30 years ago, and though no longer living on site, we are still the guiding teachers. Our new official name is Boundless Way Zen Temple:  www.boundlessway.org. David and I live a 10-minute walk from the Temple, which was closed to in-person visits for the three years of the pandemic, but during that time we found a new life on Zoom. And now we’re once again open to the public. The Temple has an acre of gardens and winding paths in the backyard, with a koi pond and waterfall. If you’re ever in Worcester, feel free to take a stroll and enjoy the flowers, shrubs, and statues.

           “Our daughter and her husband are expecting their second child in early September, a girl, and are the happy parents of a four-year-old boy. He calls us ‘Baba’ and ‘Nana,’ and they live about an hour away, so we get to be with him once or twice each week. And we’re still together, enjoying our entry into aging.”

           From Jim Rolston: “We bought carbon-fiber gravel bikes when we retired just as COVID hit. Good way to be outside and away from folks. Studded tires for riding on ice! We did a bit over 1,000 miles on the rail trails that first year of COVID. Perfect time to retire and the perfect way to get fresh air, exercise, and stay away from people!”

           And, finally, from the Harmin household: “David is still working full time in Mike Greenberg’s lab at Harvard Medical School; it’s hard to retire when you love your work and your coworkers!  He is spending his spare time singing with the local Vox Lucens choir and walking our ancient, doddering dog around Cambridge. I am enjoying retirement more with every passing day and am keeping busy volunteering with the Weavers Guild of Boston.

         We both feel incredibly lucky to enjoy continuing good health, wonderful friends, and a home in the best neighborhood either of us have ever enjoyed. See you at the 50th! 

Susan Jung writes: “I’ve been happily retired for the last 10 years, doing the usual volunteering, genealogy, and traveling. I’m struggling to master Mandarin, which isn’t my family’s dialect, but beggars can’t be choosers. I live right next door to another Wesleyan alum, Robert Nick Anderson ’68.”

Cheryl Woodson shares that “The Democratic Women’s Caucus invited me to participate in their March 3 conference on issues that affect women. A five-woman panel of experts explained that caregiving is a women’s issue, and why the face of financial insecurity in aging is FEMALE. We recommended specific strategies to more accurately assess the needs of unpaid family caregivers and the poorly paid caregiver workforce and inform them of legislative progress.

“This month, Writers Digest will announce that the second edition of my first book, To Survive Caregiving: A Daughter’s Experience, A Doctor’s Advice, won first place in the 30th Annual Award for Best Self-Published Books, non-fiction, inspirational/self-help category (out of 1,192 submissions).

“My empty nest has become a temporary full house: both adult kids, my six-year-old grandson, and two cats. On the one hand, it’s been fun to have the band back together again, but it has also been a challenge for all of us. Come September, come!

“I’m back in high-intensity interval training to finally lose the COVID 20. I’m also polishing novel #2, which I finished while the sun came up over a balcony on the Smooth Jazz Cruise in February. My pseudonym is Teria Robens.

“I offer workshops for women, but I should also write a book about my experience dating over 60.

“That’s it for now. Anyone who wants to book me for an event or just give me a hug can reach me at cew[at]drcherylwoodson.com.”

Oliver Griffith is “happy to say that my request for French citizenship, which has been pending for over three years, was approved in February. Since I’ve been in Paris since 2007 and intend to stay in France, it makes sense. Moreover, I grew up in Germany, so it’s a homecoming to Europe of sorts.”

Jack O’Donnell writes: “As my career in law was winding down last year, I was fortunate that a longtime client, who was gravely injured by five New Haven police officers, wanted me to represent him in his civil case. What has made this such an amazing experience is that I brought Benjamin Crump in to assist me and together we are working toward an historic settlement with the City of New Haven. It is a tragic case of gross inhumanity toward an arrestee but in addition to getting our client full compensation, we are seeking major procedural and legislative changes. For example, retrofitting prisoner conveyance vans with seatbelts in New Haven and elsewhere and a medical civil rights law where detainees must be asked if they need medical attention and be provided it if requested. All in all, a rewarding way to end my career.”

Tom Kovar is “aiming for retirement in June of 2024. Counting the months but not yet the weeks or days. Still enjoying my various creative pursuits.”

B. J. Buckley says: “How are we doing with winter? This was Interstate 80 across southern Wyoming between Rawlins and Hanna. Four to 6 feet of snow fell, and then it drifted. They got FOUR rotary plows like this stuck, one after the other, also the huge tow truck that came to pull them out . . . took 18 hours to get everyone extricated. Parts of eastbound lanes near Evanston are still not open.

“Montana not much better, weeklong whiteout  (visibility at my place, about 6 inches in front of my face), 55- mph wind with gusts past 80 . . .  which DID blow some of the gravel roads near me completely clear, though you couldn’t actually SEE the road. ‘Course, now my yard has 10-foot drifts. And it’s snowing again.

“The Rocky Mountain states clearly need new names . . .  Wyarctica? Montundra? Coldorado? North and South Polekota?

“And then there are the nice folks who moved here during the pandemic who still do not have snow tires, never mind chains, and who set off driving to town (31 miles) in a blizzard wearing T-shirts and sandals. A coat? Nope. (No, we did not let them become ice sculptures. Yes, their car is still in the ditch. For their own protection.)”

Bruce Demple writes: “Last July, my wife Sue and I camped in northeastern Utah with Chris Thomas, who started with us in 1972. Chris drove from Chico, and we arrived via Salt Lake City. The first couple of days was in Dinosaur National Monument, which was superb, if hot as hell. Luckily, Chris arrived first and managed to get our campsite moved to a place with at least a little shade. We then drove up to the rim of Flaming Gorge Canyon (where the photo below was taken), for two to three much cooler days that were also great.

“Unrelated, Sue and I stopped in Newton, Massachusetts, the last weekend of February (2023) to spend a couple of days with Bonnie Katz ’77 and Rich Gallogly, which was a welcome reunion as always.  We were nearby neighbors in Newton for almost 20 years, so it’s always a reunion to spend time with them—and it’s always too short, at least for us!”

Debra Haffner shares: “For the next two years, I am serving as the interim minister at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Huntington, Long Island, and would love to welcome Wes friends at worship on Sunday mornings, in person or online. My long-term marriage ended during COVID, and I am now enjoying my life’s great love story with a new partner. Life is good!”

Ethan Bronner writes: “My wife Naomi and I moved to Tel Aviv a couple weeks ago where I will be Bloomberg Israel bureau chief and senior Mideast editor for the next few years. It was an unexpected offer from Bloomberg and we had to think a little bit about it because we now have a seven-month-old grandson, Hugo Bronner, son of Eli ’10 and daughter-in-law Maheshie. But we will visit, they will visit. And I couldn’t say no to a last foreign posting hurrah for this old man. It is my fourth tour in Israel as a correspondent, each for a different news organization (Reuters, Boston Globe, New York Times, and this one) and I plan to submit this fact to the Guinness Book of World Records. Israel is facing an existential identity crisis and it’s a heck of a time to be here.”

Joe Reiff says, “I am elated to announce the birth of my fourth grandchild and second granddaughter, Ivy Geraldine Reiff, born in Baltimore on March 6, 2023, to our daughter-in-law and son, Jenni and Joseph. Her middle name is after my mother, who died in February 2022. As my parents said long ago after the birth of our first child, ‘Grandparenting is great!’ I retired in 2020 after 30 years teaching religion at Emory & Henry College, and my wife and I remain in Abingdon, Virginia. I am keeping busy, including work on a book about the advent of clergywomen in Mississippi Methodism.”

Nat Needle is “still in Worcester, Massachusetts, deep into the musical growth of 40-plus piano students ages five to seniors. Teaching classical, jazz, gospel, calypso, popular (vintage to recently released and not just USA). Also composition, theory, self-accompaniment for vocalists, and music appreciation. AND improvisation, sometimes paired with improv storytelling! Just starting arc toward many fewer students, much more community engagement through performance, and much less income earning. Sons Asa and Noriyoshi are helping me complete the shift by the end of 2024. Please reach out to me: nat[at]natneedle.com. ‘Dr. Seuss’ alumni: 50th anniversary cast/crew reunion in November? What Say You?”

Meredith Bergmann is doing marvelous work! In The New York Times read “Million-Dollar Staircase Adds a New Face: Ruth Bader Ginsburg”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/12/nyregion/ruth-bader-ginsburg-albany.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

“And on March 8, an unveiling at the New York State Museum in Albany of the one-third-height model for my 2020 Women’s Rights Pioneers monument.”  http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/womens-history-month

Karen Gervasoni writes that “On May 11, I married my sixth-grade sweetheart on the beach in Kennebunk. It was a beautiful day, with just our kids, our priest (a friend from high school) and his husband, and a dear mutual friend and her husband. We spent our six-week honeymoon in the fall meandering cross country in our travel trailer. Life is good!”

And a bit of news from the Harmin household: After working at one thing or another since 1968, I stepped into full retirement and am enjoying the unknown luxury of unstructured free time. (Note that “unstructured” is not a synonym for “idle”—just ask Byron Haskins.)  David Harmin, however, continues to love his work as the in-house bioinformatician in Mike Greenberg’s lab, and has no plans for retirement any time soon. We recently discovered that the neighbors on each side of us are also Wesleyan alum, and there are pockets of alumni elsewhere in the neighborhood. We’re everywhere, it seems. . . .

And to end on a sad note, Susan Jung also noted the sad news of the death her Wes roommate Josette (Despotova) Hendrix. The details of Josette’s remarkable life can be found at https://tinyurl.com/f7tj8y5u.

What we lack in quantity of notes, we more than make up for in wonderful detail from the people who wrote. Thanks so much to Byron, Liz, and Cindy!

Byron Haskins writes:

“Gabrielle and I continue our adventure in Montreal which, other than spending almost the entire summer at our home in Michigan, involves living in one, and now a nicer, old apartment on the west side of the city.  But, like every other place coming out of the COVID hangover, we haven’t seen much of the city other than family. We did manage to help organize a tenant’s association before moving out. They really need one. Don’t get me going about real estate investment trusts as landlords . . . .

“And on another unpublishable topic, we are trying to sell her family property in Shefford—you can get the full story by going to my music website www.ignorantsavants.art. If you know anyone who wants a 1.2-acre riverside property with well and septic (the building needs a complete makeover or demo) for $200K U.S., this is the place! The ultimate plan is to return to a politically liberal Michigan and work to keep it a learned oasis of moderation in the upper Midwest.

“Meanwhile . . .  I’m using all my free time continuing to learn to make music in intentionally eccentric ways and posting the attempts on SoundCloud under the ‘ignorant savants’ moniker—and on www.ignorantsavants.art. My goal is always to take a work from a germ of an idea to a completed piece (sometimes with an accompanying video) in less than 48 hours. I always give credit to Carol Bellhouse for stopping by my house, showing me GarageBand, and asking me if I could create music soundtracks for her poetry-art videos (https://carolbellhouse.com/movies/). It’s just fun, and if I were not retired, I’d consider it all a waste of time. I call it keeping my neural networks functioning while my spouse continues to work in traditional ways.

“I continue to intend to do more for the classmate conversation videos and, one day, Joanne Lukitsh and I will have coordinated time to turn it into something really amazing.”

Liz deSchweinitz writes:

“I really did graduate from Wes U in 1976, tho’ I knew few from that class, having started out in the class of 1977. A year at Wes, a year at Bowdoin, a year at Wes, and out and off.

“The best memories of Wes? My freshman hallmates in Clark Hall, mothered by our RA Adrienne “Boom Boom” Bentman ’74, with a roommate (Kath Booth ’78) that later Eurailed around Europe with me, where we ran into another hallmate on a train in Norway, of all places (she had been visiting her Sicilian relatives). Delta Tau fraternity, where I had numerous friends and lovers. Being on the women’s crew team in 1975–76, rowing in the same shell as later Olympian rower Kathy Keeler ’78. The Cris Williamson concert at McConaghy. Impossibly finding the contact lens that popped out of my eye into the grass of the football field when playing tag football at night. Fellow students who introduced me to NYC jazz, rock climbing, consciousness raising groups, and more. Teachers who took the time to get to know their students, and introduce a science person to Chaucer, studio art, and economics. The satisfaction of getting a good education at somewhere other than Harvard or Yale, with more fun and less stress. Go Wes!”

Cindy Arnson writes:

“After 27 years at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars—16 of them as director of the Latin American Program—I ‘retired’ in May 2022. The word is in quotation marks as I’m still working a lot and look forward to staying engaged on Latin American issues—teaching, consulting, and especially traveling. So, to use Ruth Messinger’s words, it’s more like a ‘rewirement.’ My husband Gerry preceded me into retirement, so we definitely look forward to more time on the road! Our three adult children are a never-ending source of pride. Our oldest, Zack, is in the U.S. Foreign Service, currently posted in North Africa; our twins Jeanne and Micah are separated by distance but still close as only twins can be. Jeanne is a graduate student at GW in clinical mental health counseling (thank you, class of ’76 dear friend Wendy Lustbader, for all the advice and encouragement!); and Micah, in the tech world, has moved to LA with his fiancée Maya. The wedding is in June 2023. Life is full and we feel very blessed.”

Reminder that if you’re on Facebook, there are two groups that might be of interest to you:  “Wesleyan 1976” and “Wesleyan in the 70s” (the more active of the two).

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with notes!

Debra Hafner writes: “My life has changed pretty dramatically post-COVID. I’ve gotten divorced and I’m moving from Reston, Virginia, to be the interim minister at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington, New York, in August. I’m excited about the new possibilities ahead! Since our services are now online each week, I’d be delighted to have classmates join us at 10:30 a.m. EST on Sundays! I’d also love to connect with anyone who lives on Long Island. It’s a bit daunting to move at 67 to a new community!”

Mike Donnella reports: “My second attempt at retirement did not stick, and I just finished my first year teaching and running the Center for Compliance & Ethics at Temple University Law School. Though a different time and place from Wesleyan, I am enjoying the experience, despite the occasional flashback. Guest speakers are welcome at the Center. Let me know.”

Phyllis Bethel is “[e]njoying semi-retirement from music therapy. Our son graduated from Princeton and our daughter is a rising sophomore at Vassar. Tina and I are counting our blessings having avoided COVID thus far. Can’t believe I am going to my 50th high school reunion!”

Oliver Griffith: “I’m still living in Paris after retiring from the World Bank in 2016 and should get my French citizenship in the near future. I find France to be a far more rational country than the U.S. I continue to write freelance for NGOs, corporations, and international organizations, but am also doing a lot more performing in Parisian jazz clubs. I combine this with travel around Europe, which was great during COVID with far fewer tourists, and more recently worldwide in Club Meds (free vacations). A couple of months ago, I had dinner with classmates Alida Jay and Meg Walker, who had been with me in Paris 48 years (!!) earlier for the Wesleyan Program in Paris.”

Carol Bellhouse says: “We have snow on the mountains (August 10) so I’ll be heading back to my winter home in southern New Mexico soon. It’s been a great summer in Colorado—I’m attaching photos of the fresh snow, the moon in the aspens, and my waking view every morning. Love it here, but not so much when there’s 12 feet of snow on the ground!”

Barb Birney is ‘[l]ooking forward to celebrating my 50th high school reunion in Amherst, Massachusetts. Following that, I’ll be visiting my 97-year-old parents in Virginia. Dad is Bob Birney ’50. Post-COVID retirement activities are a lot more fun with restrictions lifted. Currently, I volunteer at the Mount St. Helen’s Forestry Learning Center. Interpreting a BIG BOOM story is always effortless.”

Rob Buccino is “[s]emi-retired and splitting time between Manhattan and northwest Connecticut, playing a lot of music, gardening, and daydreaming. Daughter Nora just got an MBA from NYU and started working with McKinsey. Shout-out to David Apicella and the Eclectic crew from way back when.

David Harmin and I have had a wonderful summer taking part in mini-reunions. We got together for lunch in Rockport with Karen Gervasoni and her new husband, Greg Horan, Mel Blake, Beth Penney Gilbert, and—of course!—Tom Kovar. (For me, it’s not a reunion unless Tom is there.) Everyone is well. We were evenly split between those of us who are still working and those who were retired. I have to say that the retired group made an excellent argument for joining them! Karen and Greg are taking off on a cross-country road trip in their camper van, seeing America before winter sets in. We’ve also seen Nina Rusinow Rosenstein, her husband Simon, Marjorie Allen Dauster, and Rip Dauster ’74 for our semiannual get-together; all are well and, once again, enjoying retirement.

Nic Collins sent in class notes! It’s his first time; I’m hoping other classmates will decide if Nic can do it, they can do it too. Here’s his report:

“This may be the first time I have ever submitted to the alumni magazine. Which puts me in a poor light indeed, considering the depth of my gratitude and affection for my Wesleyan experience. Given Karen’s carte blanche on length for this online issue, some background might be in order. I met Alvin Lucier on my third day on campus at the end of summer in 1972. I performed at his memorial service in New York two months ago. In the 50 intervening years, I dragged my family around the world on ‘nothing more than boops and beeps,’ in the words of one puzzled friend—despite our cheerful dean (Sheila Tobias?) calling me into her office in the fall of our senior year to confess, “Wesleyan doesn’t have a great job-placement record for electronic music majors.”

“Maybe not, but I survived (marginally at times, I admit) thanks to what Wes provided. I met Susan Tallman ’79 in the Arts Center, married her in Essex, raised said family with her (Ted, b. 1990 in NYC; Charlotte, b. 1995 Amsterdam), and we’re still together. I was lucky to grab a Watson Fellowship on the way out of Middletown, which sprinkled me around Europe for a year. San Francisco in the late 70s, NYC’s East Village in the 80s, Amsterdam and Berlin in the 90s. In 1999, running on freelance fumes with two kids in international schools, I accepted a teaching job at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I wrote a book on hardware hacking for music, now in its third edition (see http://www.handmadeelectronicmusic.com), whose resulting sounds would be familiar to anyone who took a class with Lucier.

“The pandemic coincided with a sabbatical that should have been spent back in Berlin but instead confined me to the old family summer house in West Falmouth, Massachusetts. I can’t complain, but it was not the most musically conducive location for an urbanite until, in those fraught months between the election and the inauguration, I somehow managed to produce this: http://www.nicolascollins.com/LuckyDip.htm.

“Not to finish on a down note but, speaking of fraught, I’ve never been as worried about the future of this country and the larger world as I have in the last five years. I’m keeping my Chilean passport current, renting a small apartment in Berlin, and hoping that one of these two lifeboats can float me if things get even grimmer. But what am I leaving to my children?”

And, finally, Seth Lerer sent me this lovely piece, entitled “Bicentennial: A Wesleyan Memory”:

“There were weeks when every day could be a poem. Sunrise, sunset, a great sandwich, or a blade of grass. My undergraduate ambition was to take the sublime and the stupid and turn it into poetry, to live a life rewarded in the verbal transformation of the everyday into the eternal. I’d spend hours looking for such inspirations, walking corridors, standing in the rain, or orchestrating crazy things to do that would be done just for the memory of having done them: a 2am mock Bar Mitzvah in the dorm, a drive to Montreal for breakfast, a staying-up-all-night reading the Aeneid out loud in Latin.

“In the spring of 1975, I realized that the opportunity was there, at last, for something lasting. I don’t know how I heard about it, or even if I knew what to expect, but I became convinced that spending April 18 on the common in Concord, remembering the ride of Paul Revere, the shots heard round the world—that this would be the moment that would make me a poet.

“Again, it was so long ago I don’t remember how I planned this trip or how I got there. But I do remember that I asked a girl to go along. Her name was Pam, and I cannot conjure up our friendship or why I asked her (did I ask her first or last?). But somehow, Pam and I got on the Peter Pan bus from Middletown, Connecticut, and made it to Concord on the night of April 18. I do remember that she wore bell bottom jeans and a white t-shirt with a sweater, and I dressed up in my tweed jacket and my button-down shirt, and as we both walked into Concord common—already, shortly after sunset, filled with people on the grass, playing guitars, having a picnic, dancing—we must have seemed like travelers from another time, beamed in to witness a great moment in history, except missing the date by 200 years.

“There were some speeches. Someone showed up in a tricorn hat. I don’t think Pam and I said much to each other, but by 10 pm or so we were both bored and hungry. Pam’s mother and her stepfather lived somewhere in the Boston area, and she suggested that we crash with them and cadge a meal. We got up off the grass, and walked away, and as we walked, our hands found each other, and our fingers interlocked. Like tendrils looking for a tree, I thought. And at that moment, even though we’d never kissed, we’d never talked romantically, we’d never done a thing—at that moment, it was the most intimate experience I’d ever had, unspoken, unrequested, two hands in the aftermath of a great historical anticlimax.

“We wound up, unannounced, at her house and without seeing her parents, Pam let me sleep in the guest room and she disappeared into what must have been her own, old room. The next morning, having showered but put on the same clothes from the day before, I met her stepfather at breakfast. He was a Chinese man in his 50s, reading the newspaper, and picking at what must have been last night’s chicken dinner. He looked at me, I sat down at the table, and without breaking eye contact, he picked up a whole chicken thigh with a pair of chopsticks and, through some trick of leverage, held it up and split the bone in half, the piece now hanging together by remaining bits of skin and meat, and I could hear that snap, and he brought the whole thigh up to his mouth and took a bite and put the rest down on the plate, and never stopped looking at me.

“Somehow, with or without Pam, I made it back to Middletown. I knew I had my poem in my head, and in an afternoon I wrote it down.

“Bicentennial”

Emerson, obsessed with pageantry,

Saw revolution in sunrise,

Doctrine at dawn.

He saw himself enmeshed in memory

Of dead for liberty

In Concord, crotch of history.

In the moment is the glory,

In the memory is the myth,

In the dream is history.

“I read it out loud to myself a few times, and then typed it up. It looked so clean on the good piece of bond paper, the ribbon from the typewriter, recently replaced, giving each letter a depth and heft that I could feel as I ran my fingers across the sheet. I typed up three or four more poems that day, ones I’d written in a class with Richard Wilbur— mannered, learned things about the clown Will Kempe in Bedlam and the pet fox kept by Stalin’s crony, Nicholai Bukharin, and a couple of translations from Old English. Still on a high, I folded them in thirds and took them to the library, where I found the current issue of The Southern Review and copied out the name and the address of the editor. I ran back to my room, typed up a cover letter and an envelope, put too many stamps on it, and mailed it. No self-addressed stamped envelope, no nothing else. Just the poems.

“Classes would be over in a month, and certainly, as I remember, before we were done, I got a letter in my postbox telling me that The Southern Review was going to run my poem, “Bicentennial,” in their Spring 1976 issue and that I would receive a check for $15 upon publication.

“I floated out of the mail room, walked up the hill and stood facing the football field, the May breeze catching the letter in my hand and making it flutter like a wing.

“A full year later, weeks before graduation, three copies of The Southern Review appeared in my mailbox, along with the check. There was the poem, my name, and my name again in the notes on contributors. I flipped through. There were unpublished poems by Delmore Schwartz, essays by Kermit Vanderbilt, Larzer Ziff, and Albert Guerard. There was a translation of something by Paul Valery and a review of a book of poems by the then barely known Geoffrey Hill.

“Fifteen dollars was a week of student groceries. A round of drinks for virtually everyone I knew. A round-trip ticket to Concord. I sent the poem to Richard Wilbur, ensconced in his pastoral in Cummington, Massachusetts, and he wrote back right away, letting me know how he ‘much liked the movement of Bicentennial’—such a Wilbur phrase, with its inverted word order and its alliterative push. Did he craft such sentences, or did he really think like that? And, rereading my poem, now, what made me think it literature? So full of adolescent overstatement. Who writes a poem with the word “crotch” in it? After over forty years of teaching, I can imagine how Wilbur must have reached deep to say something positive about such lines.

“I graduated, went to Oxford, to Chicago, and to teaching jobs at Princeton, Stanford, and the University of California at San Diego (where I served as dean of Arts and Humanities for five years that would fill a whole magazine, let alone a class note). I wrote a dozen books. I won awards. You would think all of this would have filled me with self-esteem. But then, they say there’s nothing like your first time.”

Meredith Bergmann has been awarded three new sculpture commissions. The first two are in Ithaca, New York—one honors Frances Perkins, FDR’s secretary of labor; the other, Lucy J. Brown, a community activist in Ithaca. The third is in Lexington, Massachusetts, and commemorates the role of women in the Revolution.  Details about the Lexington Monument can be found at https://www.lexseeher.com/monument.

Deborah Malamud has retired from full-time law teaching at New York University School of Law, but will continue teaching seminars. She will thus maintain a home in “law land,” while spending as much of the rest of her time as possible making music, traveling, and being with family and friends. She and her partner of 30-ish years, Neal Plotkin, will continue to divide their time between New York and Ann Arbor.

Byron Haskins writes: “Gabrielle and I are still splitting our time between Quebec and Michigan, but she has obtained somewhat of a dream job in Montreal, so we are fully stationed in a beautiful, almost 100-year old apartment building on the very west end of downtown Montreal. I’m truly trying to learn French for the first time in my life!”

Jack O’Donnell writes: “I’m still practicing law in New Haven and any notion of retiring was dashed when I got very sick in September. Being idle for two months reinforced how much I need the action of criminal defense work! Retirement goes on the back burner again!!”

Elyse Grasso writes: “If you look at the map of the damage from the December 30th Marshall Fire in Boulder, Colorado, my house was basically at the geographical center. I lost the house and its contents, but I got out safely and I’m settled into a temporary place while I make plans to rebuild. The view didn’t burn.”

Dan Henry writes: “My wife Jean and I have been blessed by the arrival of our fourth grandchild, Imogen Anne Henry on February 3. I continue to do a small amount of tech support for people and businesses. Two years ago, I switched to remote support only to eliminate the hassle and time of travel as well as to avoid COVID-19.”

Larry Davis and his wife Ronna managed to sneak away to Slovenia and Austria between the delta and omicron waves for some fly-fishing and general tourism. Otherwise, Larry still works part time as a senior advisor and chief scientist at MAP Energy and as a volunteer with several nonprofit organizations in Oklahoma City. Larry has been able to stay tangentially involved with the Earth and Environmental Science Department at Wes and is involved with the Middletown/Wesleyan Chabad House.

David E. Cohen and his wife Sandy have raised three kids in New Jersey, now (almost all) launched into the world. David is slowly sliding into semi-retirement from his medical practice and will soon be relocating to the Berkshires. David enjoys wood carving, boating, boatbuilding, and genealogy, and has been doing research for a book on some interesting local history in the Berkshires. In September 2021, David and Sandy spent a fantastic weekend in Woods Hole with Matt Paul, Stewart Shuman, and Michael Greenberg and their wives for their annual gathering, sharing memories, wine, great food, spirited conversation about science and politics, and a pretty long bike ride.

Rob Briskin writes: “I’m still in solo concierge-style practice in internal medicine in Jupiter and live in beautiful Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. My wife Limor and I have four kids, two 12-year-old twins, a 24-year-old son, and a 26-year-old daughter. Keeping busy with the twins, pickleball (my new passion), and some tennis. Doesn’t make sense to retire at this point, plus I enjoy practicing, so will continue for the foreseeable future!”

Peter Hansen writes: “My wife and I continue to be based in DC and are slowly easing into retirement. We both still get enough emails and calls from clients so that we’re not quite ready to quit doing marketing (me) and public health (her). Fortunately, there’s enough flexibility so that we can devote our talents to helping other causes that we care about: a group that focuses on providing opportunities for underserved youth in DC,  animal welfare organizations, and a group (31ststreet.org) that is all about developing voting infrastructure at a grass roots level in key states across the country. Many of you would probably be interested in the latter and should go look at what we do. Along the way we find time to visit the grandkids in NYC and also get to Seattle to see our daughter. And locally I’m always up for a bike tour of the monuments in DC with anyone who is in town!  We managed to cross paths with Jon Daniels in Phoenix last fall and also took a bike trip with several friends including Jeff Shaw ’78 last fall.”

B.J. Buckley writes: “My chapbook, In January, the Geese, recently won the Comstock Review’s 35th Anniversary Poetry Contest and will be published in April 2022. I’ve also had, after a long ‘drought,’ a number of poems accepted this past year by a variety of fun and interesting journals, among them Plant-Human Quarterly, Calyx, Sugar House Review, Dogwood, SWWIM Everyday, Pine Row, Whitefish Review, and ellipsis.”

Rob Williams writes: “After 32 years of working in South Jersey, I moved to Maui. Unfortunately, I’m not here to retire but to work. As of now I’m the only infectious disease doc on the island working in the only hospital. I’ve been here a year, and I’m very busy, but I’m enjoying the island. I’m committed to at least working here five more years. I’m expecting visits from my eight grandkids and any old classmates who would like to visit. Rumor has it that Blaise Noto ’74 is living here but I haven’t found him. Also, I apparently got here right before Dr. Elliot Epner left.”

Mark Berger writes: “I’m pleased to report that I recently started a new job, as I just wasn’t anywhere near ready to retire.  I’m the chief medical officer for Genprex, a small but promising biotech company. Since I’ve spent over 25 years in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries working to develop new oncology therapies, this is an extension of my previous work. To me, the strategy of oncology drug development has been endlessly interesting and challenging, and I consider myself lucky to have fallen into this field.

“I’ve also been lucky to still be married to Jane Eisner ’77, who’s presently working at Columbia Journalism School. We’ve lived in New York City for 10 years, after 30 years in the Philadelphia area, and proximity to our two grandchildren in Brooklyn is a big benefit to our Manhattan location. Our oldest daughter Rachel (’06) and her husband Ari take care of the grandchildren when we’re not spoiling them. Rachel is in charge of nutrition for New York City’s Department of Aging. Our other two daughters live in Washington, DC, where Amalia, our middle daughter, is a nurse practitioner, and our youngest, Miriam (’12) works on the foreign desk of The Washington Post.

“Note that the true definition of family planning is that Rachel’s Wes reunions are the same year as mine from ’76, and Miriam’s Wes reunions are the same year as Jane’s from ’77.  Who could possibly have imagined that as a Wes undergraduate!”

Carol Bellhouse writes: “I bought a winter home in southern New Mexico. It’s on a hill with a massive rock wall so it looks like I live in a castle! Loving it—lakes, hot springs, artist community, and lots of sunshine!

David Harmin, Tom Kovar, and I took advantage of the brief pandemic cease-fire in October and returned to Wesleyan for Homecoming. We never got around to attending official events, but spent the time wandering around campus, hoping that the three of us could cobble together clear memories of our college experience. It’s a wonderful experience being there; a sudden fragrance or play of light and you can be immediately transported back to your college years. For the three of us, the Arts Center particularly brought back visceral memories; the minute we stepped into a stairwell in the music building, I could just hear Nic Collins practicing his sax. I mention this as a (not terribly subtle) way of reminding you that our 50th Reunion is around the corner. I’d strongly encourage you to attend, even if you cut ties with Wesleyan in June ’76 and never looked back. It’s good to remember what an extraordinary place it was—and is!

Byron Haskins and his wife Gabrielle have moved to Montreal so that Gabrielle can take her dream job. They’ll be figuring how to split their lives between Montreal and their home base of Lansing. What a wonderful adventure!

Sue (Feinstein) Barry and her husband Dan spent the pandemic in Arlington, Massachusetts caring for their granddaughter. Sue also finished her second book, which was published by Basic Books, last June. It’s titled Coming to Our Senses: A Boy Who Learned to See, A Girl Who Learned to Hear, and How We All Discover the World.

Joe Mabel has retired from the software industry and is working with soprano Juliana Brandon on the Weill Project (http://weillproject.com/), dedicated to the work of composer Kurt Weill  (1900–1950). They have created 15 original guitar-and-vocal arrangements of Weill songs, and have also plunged into a critical and historical study of Weill’s life and work. They’re putting together a series of academic lectures and demonstrations with collaborator German artist Yvette  Endrijautzki, which will include visual art related to, or inspired by, Weill and his songs. Their first major performance will be February 2022 in Seattle. They hope to showcase the amazing range of Weill’s work, from opera to cabaret to Broadway, and from innovative expressionist music to tangos and foxtrots. In addition to several songs from Threepenny Opera and his other collaborations with Bertolt Brecht, they will perform two lesser-known environmental protest songs from 1928. They’re also working up two songs he wrote in France between leaving Germany and coming to America, as well as a World War II Allied propaganda song he co-wrote with Howard Dietz, and three Broadway songs he co-wrote with Ogden Nash.

Oliver Griffith is still living in Paris after retiring from his last job at the World Bank in 2016. He is doing some freelance writing for NGOs and French companies, and regularly playing in jazz clubs.

Debra Haffner is leaving her position as minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston after five years. She’s returning to a community ministry of teaching, writing, preaching, and consulting, primarily in areas related to congregations and sexuality issues. She’s not ready to retire: “I have at least one more professional act in me.”

Leslie Anderson, reference librarian at Alexandria Library, Local History/Special Collections, was recently named a Virginia Humanities Scholar by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society. Twenty scholars were selected on the basis of their expertise in history and genealogy, framed within an understanding of the African American experience. Leslie served as the Project Editor for the Virginia Slave Births Index, 1853–1865, which has become a standard reference work in public and special libraries.

Adrienne Scott writes: “After 22 years, raising 2 bonus children and now 5 grands, my husband and I are divorcing. I retired from college administration and an adjunct faculty position and enjoy part-time English language tutoring, specializing in work with local indigenous tribes, which I will return to in the fall. Here in Roseville, California, in 2016, a local TV station acknowledged my work as the first African American television news reporter in Rhode Island in 1977, by doing a story on my personal interview with Muhammad Ali and how he gave me an exclusive. ‘He took care of his community,’ I said, because he knew how disrespected I was, and that I was told by my news director that Rhode Island isn’t ready for a black anchorperson. The flirtatious Ali took away some of the sting of racism.”

Deb Neuman lost her husband Paul last year after 35 years of marriage. She remains in Mystic, and continues to work as the VP of Advancement for Enders Island, a beautiful Catholic retreat in Mystic that has a small residential community for young men in recovery from addiction. She notes that participating in the 40th and 45th Wesleyan Reunion committees and renewing acquaintances with fellow alumni has been a positive experience.

Cathy Popkin has officially retired after 35 years in the Columbia Slavic Department. She recently became a grandparent and is dividing her time between New York and New Hampshire. She adds: “Happy to be alive.”

Robert Osborne continues teaching voice in the music departments of Vassar College and Columbia University/Barnard College.

Joe Mingolla writes: “After Wesleyan, I attended and graduated law school at Boston College.  Subsequently, I returned to the place where I grew up, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. I worked for my family’s construction company for a few years and then, in 1990, I opened my own practice and right from the start my career took off. I ran a boutique criminal law practice focused on primarily federal crimes and appeals taking place in the Caribbean and Florida. The Caribbean is the sunny place for shady people! Lots of cartel people, money laundering, and con men down there. My slogan was “Reasonable doubt at a reasonable price!”

“Meanwhile, in 2001 I met my future wife, Lia. She was a senior executive with a Canadian bank and was assigned to head up the Compliance Division for the banks in our region, where she used to find money launderers, have the FBI bust them, and then, often enough, the miscreant would come crying to me for help! It was a beautiful thing!

“We married in Stowe, Vermont, in 2005 and have been living happily ever after. When Lia was reassigned to headquarters in Toronto in 2012, I was burnt out on my criminal practice, and so we relocated to Toronto, and after she retired we left Toronto to live in the country on Lake Ontario. I love Canada and its people very much. I’m becoming a dual citizen. Too much craziness in America right now.

“During the past 45 years, I traveled extensively, learned to fly, collected exotic and classic cars (25 or so), rode motorcycles until this year, became an expert scuba diver, sailor, and yachtsman. We have no children, but few regrets.

“I’ve been writing humorous short stories for a few years and living a quiescent life. It’s such a contrast with how I used to live, but the ubiquitous stress that was my daily companion is no longer extant. Who would have predicted that I would enjoy tending our flower gardens?”

Leslie Gabel-Brett continues to teach a course each spring at Wesleyan called “Social Activism and Theories of Change.” She adds that she gains a little dose of hope and optimism each year by meeting students who are ready to change the world. She has retired from her other work obligations and looks forward to being with Carolyn and her family to see what retired people really do all week.

Bruce Demple writes: “In mid-June, my wife Sue Avery and I made our first foray out of New York state since March 2020. There was a time when staying so close to home for that long might have seemed unremarkable, but over the years we had gotten quite used to frequent trips away, both for professional and for personal reasons. This time, we had a ‘tour’ of our long-time home, Massachusetts, staying with four different sets of friends not seen for the past 15 months or more. It was sublime! We started by spending a long weekend with our dear friends, classmate Rich Gallogly and Bonnie Katz ’77 (whose expected in-person Reunion next year we certainly plan to crash!). We lived within 2 miles of each other in Newton for almost 20 years, and our children grew up together. We then stopped with a former Harvard colleague in Brookline, in order to celebrate a colleague and close friend—our former department chair—who passed away in May 2020. From there it was down to Martha’s Vineyard, where a close friend from Exeter has a wonderful house. He generously invited us and three other couples  (including none other than Danny Ruberman ’77 and his wife Anne) to spend a week there, ahead of the arrival of their three sons and their children. This group usually meets up in the winter in Maine for a ski trip, which in fact was our last out-of-state trip in early March 2020. So this year’s gathering was a much warmer consolation prize, with ample conviviality, aptly described by our host as ‘several days of hiking, biking, dining and general carrying on.’ Our last stay was in Grafton, with a very close friend from the very first days of grad school in Berkeley, and his wife—they were also the last folks we stayed with before coming home for so many months. And we finished with a stop in . . . Middletown! That was to visit Anthony Infante, with whom I did my senior thesis research, and the person I credit with sending me irreversibly on the road to being a biochemist. We have remained friends, but last saw him only on the occasion of our 40th Reunion. He is well, and very sharp, and 90 minutes together was nowhere near enough.”

Sid Cohen recently retired after a career in academic medicine and biomedical research, and now consults for medical device companies working on cardiovascular devices. Sid and his wife reside in Pleasanton, California, where he is an avid gardener, photographer, and amateur radio operator, and also stays busy with home projects. Retirement has allowed him to pursue interests he never had a chance to enjoy while working, such as music and art. Sid has two grandchildren; he adds that they “are a delight to watch grow although taking on the role of grandparent, while delightful, it is a bit sobering. I wish all my 1976 classmates happiness and health.”

Nat Needle teaches piano to about 40 students, ages 5 to 75 in Worcester, Massachusetts, which, he writes, “is home to the whole world. My students look pretty much like the city. Until now, their work with me has been one-on-one. However, the spirit of mutual support at our (second online)  June 2021 recital made me think more seriously of how much nurturance and inspiration they would receive from connection with one another throughout the year. That vision is even more compelling because of barriers that would ordinarily exist between them in society being lowered thanks to this special vehicle they all have in common. So, as we enter ‘post-pandemic life,’ we’ll be co-creating our own ‘piano college,’ blending online and in-person activity. As we musicians like to say, stay tuned.”

Bob Craft reports that after 35 years in Los Angeles, he and his family have moved to Portland, Oregon. He says: “Now it’s time to enjoy my retirement.”

Finally, I am sad to report that Winifred Van Roden ’77 passed away on June 6, 2021.