Tag: 1978

PepPep Bachman uses her operatic experience to teach presentation skills, specifically to female executives in the U.S. and Europe. As such she finds herself commuting between two very nice spots—San Francisco/Portland and the Austrian Alps.

Geoff Ginsburg is at Duke Medical School as director of the Center for Applied Genomics and Precision Medicine, and also runs a nonprofit company, Global Genomic Medicine Collaborative, as well as two enterprises which he founded, Predigen and MeTree&You. “Keeping busy, enjoying the North Carolina beaches except for Hurricane Florence. Best wishes to classmates.”

Lucy Mize travels worldwide in her work for USAID, adding Finland, Burma, and China this year to her log, additionally getting in some recreational travel when accompanying her husband Tim in his work with the World Bank. Stateside, she splits time between Vermont and the D.C. region. When in the latter, Lucy follows the MLB Nationals intensively with Bill Tabor, and reports she had nice visits there from Alicia Springer ’79 and Kathy Mintz.

David Ocean is executive vice president of sales for the Four Seasons Residences, in Surf Side, Fla.

Steven Peretz practices intellectual property law in Miami, where he both grew up and eventually co-founded his legal firm 10 years ago. His daughter Sarah works as a social media influencer in Los Angeles (“I have found that following her on Instagram is the best way to know what she is doing”); son Jonathan attends college in South Florida. Steven’s passion is flying. He has logged approximately 2,000 flight hours, particularly enjoying trips to the Florida Keys and the Bahamas.

Kurt Schwartz has retired from a long career in public service for the state of Massachusetts—as a police officer, EMT, state criminal prosecutor, the cabinet undersecretary, the homeland security adviser, and, finally, the emergency management director, during the past 40 years. He plans to do some homeland security and international disaster consulting, but has been “transitioning into retirement pretty easily,” enjoying travel and the freedom from the call, preparation, and response to “disasters and emergencies,” and is enjoying his newfound time with his wife, Susan, and their two kids (ages 25 and 29) who live nearby.

Jon Spector and his wife, Wendy, are happy in Woodstock, Vt., to where they moved from Boston four years ago. Jon stepped down from his CEO position at the Conference Board last year, for which he still provides some advising, and Wendy works part-time for the Sharon Academy. Their four boys “are doing well . . . one married, one engaged, all employed, only one off the cell phone plan.” They’re soon to equip their 200-year-old house with new windows and solar panels, “which is what passes for excitement in Vermont these days.”

Lynn Thomas went on a terrific trip to Morocco this past February with her daughter Carolyn Grace Kimberley Helaine Thomas (“…a royal name as she is royal to us!”), who is excitedly heading off to Ithaca College this year. Lynn stays busy with her consulting firm, which focuses on training, coaching, and working with companies to learn and integrate emotional intelligence (“responsible for 80 percent of our personal and professional success”) into their working culture.

James Washington and his wife, MaryLu, are into their first year of empty-nesthood. Jim is director of admissions for strategic initiatives at Dartmouth. He continues publishing poetry—in the digital Bloodroot Literary Magazine—and is studying for his second master’s degree, in creative writing, in Dartmouth’s Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program.

Gary Friedmann remains active in environmental and energy issues in his state of Maine, recently leading a coalition of statewide organizations to a State House meeting with the governor and other state officials regarding climate change action; this resulted in legislative passage of a bill seeking to make Maine energy-independent, as a net exporter of renewable energy, by 2030.

Keep us posted on your lives!

Susie Muirhead Bates | sbatesdux@hotmail.com 

Ken Kramer | kmkramer78@hotmail.com

Class of 1978 Endowed Scholarship Fund
Matthew Grimaldi ’21, Florence, MA

Greetings, classmates. Hopefully by print time, the snow has melted and spring has sprung! Thanks all of you who answered the Lyris request for news this month. We had lots of material for our notes.

Doug Hardy and Roselyn Romberg ’79 returned to Concord, Mass., in 2018 where Roselyn continues her consulting business to nonprofits including Harvard Business School and several health-related foundations. Doug is at work on his 15th nonfiction book.

Gary Friedmann chairs the Bar Harbor Town Council and the board of A Climate to Thrive, a grassroots organization working to make Mount Desert Island and the state of Maine energy independent.

Our hearts are saddened by the news that Peter Kelley died of a heart attack on Oct. 8. His friend Casey Blake, wrote that “Peter’s creativity, kindness and gentle charisma are fondly remembered by his housemates at 49 Brainerd as well as other alumni.” Peter majored in studio art at Wesleyan, was an important participant in the University’s art history program, as well as captain of the crew team. After graduation, Peter took an MFA at Pratt Institute and embarked on a highly successful career as a digital artist. He is survived by his wife, Tracey, their sons, David and Aaron ’10, as well as other family members.

After five years, Bill Adler still loves living in Tokyo. He shares an apartment with “one cat, one girlfriend, and a view of Mt. Fuji.” He is busy writing novels as well as researching and writing about wristwatches at abetterwrist.com. If anyone is going to Tokyo, he’d be happy to show you around.

Nancy Chen reports on many joyful changes in her life recently. She moved to Bozeman, Mont., got engaged, and is launching a new division of her coaching business for women’s leadership: powertothequeen.com. Her older daughter is going for her PhD. in environmental engineering and her younger daughter will get her BA in English and communications this spring.

Suki Hoagland is happily back at Stanford University where she loves teaching and her students. Her husband is also at Stanford, co-directing the Center for Ocean Solutions. They rescued a Golden Retriever who seems to really like his new owners and has brought great joy and laughter into their home. Their eldest son, Ben, is a congressional fellow. Their youngest son, Jonathan, is completing a dual masters in transportation engineering and urban design at MIT. He has taken up Zouk, a Brazilian dance, and he choreographs, teaches, and performs all over the world.

Pete Lewis sent sad news that his father, George Lewis ’53, passed on Dec. 22. George was an Alpha Delt and loved everything Wesleyan. Pete said that if his dad could have sent a message to the Wesleyan alumni community it would have been, “Be generous to those in worse circumstances than yours. The next time you come upon a homeless person, instead of walking past, reach into your wallet and pull out a $10 bill.” Completing the circle of life, Pete’s grandson, Jameson, was born in September and George got to hold him in November uniting four generations. Pretty cool.

Wendy Kaufman sent greetings from Denver, where she feels lucky to celebrate 33 years of marriage, three great children, and two dachshunds. Their twin sons turned 30 in February and their 27-year-old daughter survived the 2015 Nepal earthquake at base camp. To be safer she started rock climbing. With a couple of JDs, an LLM, and an MBA later, Wendy considers her kids all “launched.” She is active with some Denver nonprofits, loves to travel, and is excited to be involved with John Hickenlooper ’74, MA ’80, Hon. ’10’s Giddy Up group.

Jim Kurose and Julie Johnson Kurose have been living in Northampton, Mass., since 1984 when Jim joined the computer science faculty at the University of Massachusetts. For the past four years, he’s been on leave working as an assistant director at the National Science Foundation and at the Office of Science and Technology Policy in D.C. He’ll return to UMass in in the fall. Julie is retired from her job of many years as registrar at Northampton High School. They have three grown children, Chris, Charlie ’10, and Nina, and a grandchild, Micah, all of whom they enjoy visiting in San Jose, Chicago, and Paris.

Over the past few years, George Raymond had been getting together annually with his friend and former CSS economics professor Peter Kilby. When George visited Peter at his summer home in Maine in June, little did he know that Peter would die suddenly on Aug. 2. Since 2002, George has been interviewing talented Wesleyan applicants who live in Switzerland.

Kevin Rose P’19 enjoys keeping up with our class via the notes and helped enhance this column with some news of his own. His son, Danny ’19, has thoroughly enjoyed his own Wesleyan experience. He loves the school, his friends, baseball, and all the University has to offer. Kevin will be attending as many Wes baseball games as possible this spring!

Jim Gubbins is a professor in the interdisciplinary studies department at Salem State University in Massachusetts. He is the president of the faculty and librarian union on campus. Jim remarks he is “fighting for fair pay and decent working conditions for employees—sounds very Wesleyan.”

We hope you enjoy keeping up with your classmates through this column and look forward to your updates.

Susie Muirhead Bates | sbatesdux@hotmail.com 

Ken Kramer | kmkramer78@hotmail.com

Greetings to all. This issue’s column has the uncanny privilege of featuring two of our classmates who have just released new books.

Elise Bean has just come out with Financial Exposure: Carl Levin’s Senate Investigations into Finance and Tax Abuse, which draws upon her 30 year of experience working as an investigator for Senate Levin (including 15 years of service on the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations). Notably, Elise mentions that a significant theme in the book involves the favorably bipartisan nature with which much of the congressional investigative work has taken place during her years there. She was recently back on Wes campus for Family Weekend to discuss the book in a Weseminar. Elise retired from her investigative congressional work in 2015 and remains in Washington, D.C., where she runs training programs for congressional oversight investigations and performs nonprofit work.

Helen Reiss has released The Empathy Effect: Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work and Connect Across Differences. Helen is founder and chief scientific officer of Empathetics, Inc., and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Congratulations!

Susie Muirhead Bates | sbatesdux@hotmail.com 

Ken Kramer | kmkramer78@hotmail.com

Summer greetings, classmates! Hopefully everyone is enjoying all the pleasures of the season. The most important news would be our successful and well-attended 40th Reunion over Memorial Day weekend. Thanks to a lot of organizational and creative effort on the part of our Reunion committee and university liaisons, all the activities went off without a hitch. Our first class gathering took place on Friday in the new resource center where the library was dedicated and named for the class of 1978, in honor of its generosity during its 40th Reunion year. A plaque commemorating our gift includes a quote by Toni Morrison, which reads, “If there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” As to our generosity, it’s a pleasure to report that we met our 40th Reunion fundraising goal of $400,000 for the Wesleyan Fund and $5,000,000 in multi-year commitments.

Saturday kicked off with an organizing breakfast meeting for women athletes (thanks to Suki Hoagland and Fran Rivkin). An energetic group of ’78s rallied for the class march to Memorial Hall and many attended the box lunch under the big tent afterwards. Eclectic held an afternoon party with many ’78s in attendance. Our well-attended class dinner was held in the ’92 Theatre. Irma Gonzalez did a fabulous job of MCing the evening and we had a hot-off-the-press university update from Michael Roth. During our meal, the mic was passed around and classmates shared their Wesleyan experiences. An added bonus to the weekend took place off-site up in Foxboro, Mass., on Sunday where our own Men’s Varsity Lacrosse team competed in and WON the Division III National Championship! There were many alumni and students in attendance to watch the exciting game.

To the 63 classmates who were able to attend our Reunion, surely you are treasuring many special moments—and to those who weren’t able to attend, you were missed. For everyone’s enjoyment, Kathy Mintz put together a photo album. Thank you, Kathy.

Andrea Gabor sent in news of her new book, After the Education Wars, published in June by The New Press. Her earlier books include Einstein’s Wife, The Capitalist Philosophers, and The Man Who Discovered Quality. Andrea is Bloomberg Chair of Business Journalism at Baruch College.

Ken and I celebrate 15 years as co-secretaries and are on board for the foreseeable future. However, the columns are only interesting if you send us news!

Susie Muirhead Bates | sbatesdux@hotmail.com 

Ken Kramer | kmkramer78@hotmail.com

Class of 1978 Endowed Scholarship Fund

Matthew Richard Grimaldi ’21, Florence, MA

Alison Gilchrist is enjoying life on the coast of Maine. She volunteers at the Penobscot Marine Museum’s photo archive, as well as for the Midcoast Restorative Justice Project as a mentor. She’s catching up on her travels, and is appreciative of it all: “My kids are all doing well, I’m healthy, I have great people and family around, including brother Geoff ’92 and his family. I’m so lucky!” Nice.

Richard Order is serving on the board of the Mandell Greater Hartford Jewish Community Center and is co-chair of its Jewish Film Festival. He continues his work as a partner in the legal firm of Updike, Kelly and Spellacy, in Hartford, Conn.

Marisa Smith continues dual careers as both a playwright and a theater book publisher. Smith and Kraus Publishers have surpassed its first quarter century, with 700 titles in print. About 10 years ago she got the bug to write plays herself and has become an award-winning playwright. Upcoming productions include Sex and Other Disturbances in May (Portland Stage, Maine) and Venus Rising in January 2019 (Northern Stage, Vermont). Her oldest son, Luke, is married and works as an attorney in San Antonio, Texas, while second son Peter is a sommelier in Los Angeles.

Our 40th Reunion is coming up on May 25-27. Hope to see many of you there.

Susie Muirhead Bates | sbatesdux@hotmail.com 

Ken Kramer | kmkramer78@hotmail.com

Hello, classmates. In case you haven’t heard, we have a big reunion coming up next year! Please mark May 25-26, 2018 on your calendars and plan to be in Middletown to celebrate our 40th Reunion. I know what you’re thinking…How could it be our 40th?! Seems like graduation, or at least our 10th or 25th was only yesterday. No matter the year, we’re still going strong and looking forward so let’s make it the best reunion weekend ever! Also, let’s beat the 40th Reunion attendance record set by Class of ’77. We need at least 107 attendees. Hope you’ll be one of them!

In the meantime, please send us your news. The next issue would be the perfect time to tell fellow classmates your news and plans to attend reunion.

Onto the News: Lisa Alter made Variety’s inaugural “NY Dealmakers Elite” list which honors “power players” having a significant impact on Broadway, advertising, and the music business. Lisa is a partner at Alter Kendrick & Baron LLP in NYC and practices primarily in the area of copyright law, with a focus on domestic and international music copyright issues. She counsels composers, authors, musical estates, music publishers, and equity investors on a wide range of copyright and transactional matters, including music publishing, acquisitions, selling and administering copyright catalogues, and recapture of copyrights, among others. Lisa is the author of Protecting Your Musical Copyrights, which is now available in its third edition, and the recent Forbes article “Concord Bicycle Music Buys Imagem Music Group Heralding a Golden Age of Music Publishing.”

Jon Spector and wife, Wendy, enjoy life in Vermont. He commutes to The Conference Board in New York. “Wendy chairs our local arts organization and will be ski ambassador at Killington. My major accomplishment was participating in a one-hour art class and painting an image of a boat dock on a lake bordered by mountains—which according to several observers almost resembles a boat dock on a lake bordered by mountains. I feel a second career beckons.”

Rachael Pine has an empty nest in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with one daughter at Oberlin, and the second having graduated and now working as the food program coordinator at Oberlin Community Services. Her husband is general counsel of the Legal Aid Society and she works at a private foundation managing grantmaking related to health/healthcare and immigrant communities.

Bill Adler, our expat living and writing in Japan, says, “My cat, however, is indifferent to the view and thinks that the dim LED power lights that proliferate the apartment are a signal from the moon to make as much noise as possible at 3 a.m.”

Nancy Grossman sent her only child, Daniel, off to UMass Amherst with a “tentative” major of mechanical engineering. She says, “I am finding the empty nest so much easier to take when the boy is only four miles away!” Nancy practices acupuncture and publishes the occasional op-ed.

After 30 years of pastorate in the Atlanta area, Ken Samuel has been awarded a Lilly grant for a sabbatical. Among other things, he’ll be spending a month in the Philippines teaching at Silliman University.

 Gary Friedmann chairs the citizen grass-roots organization, A Climate to Thrive, which has the goal of making Mount Desert Island, Maine, energy independent by 2030. Their Solarize MDI initiative doubled the Island’s solar-generated power in 2017, and they aim to continue that trend, along with weatherization, local foods, recycling, electric vehicle, and student internship initiatives in the coming year.

Stefan Watson is the owner of Watson Custom Builders. He and wife Eileen Devereux ’76 have been rebuilding homes in downtown Albuquerque for 40-plus years. He writes, “All of our projects seem to take 10 to 12 years to complete—most recently a complete renovation of 8th and Mountain Road in downtown Albuquerque. We had acquired four corners 14 years ago thinking how nice it would be to own an intersection with six houses and an old gas station, now coffee shop.” Stefan completed a new floor design with artist Richard Tuttle for a Zahad Hadid Design home in Miami for real estate developer Craig Robbins. They’re working on a series of tile tables to be in Richard Tuttle’s gallery show later in the year.

David Rosenthal serves as co-head of the Global Capital Markets practice at Dechert LLP. He writes, “I’m very proud of my son, James ’08, who is following in my footsteps as a mid-level transactional associate at Willkie Farr & Gallagher in NYC, and my daughter, Elise ’11, who is following in her grandfather’s footsteps (inorganic chemistry freshman year ended any aspirations to become a doctor that I might have had) and is a first-year resident in ob-gyn at Montefiore in the Bronx.”

After many years at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Bob Kalb moved to Chicago to be the director of the Les Turner ALS Research and Patient Center at Northwestern Medicine and chief of Neuromuscular Medicine in the Ken & Ruth Davee Department of Neurology. He writes, “This promises to be a marvelous opportunity to both enhance the basic research in my lab and to foster translational medicine.”

Susie Muirhead Bates | sbatesdux@hotmail.com 

Ken Kramer | kmkramer78@hotmail.com

Bill Adler “waves to classmates from Tokyo,” where he has been living for the past three years. He reports: “I spend my days writing novels and my nights sleeping only when my cat thinks I deserve to. If you like time-travel fiction, pick up a copy of my novella, No Time to Say Goodbye. I’m currently writing a Japanese ghost story.”

Wolfgang Natter proudly announces the graduation of his son, Joseph ’17, an honors physics major who plans to extend this background to “social physics of the law.” Wolfgang has accepted the position of vice president of academic affairs at The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minn. He welcomes contact from “any Wes alumni who reside at or near the borders of Lake Superior and Minnesota.”

Rich Order continues to litigate business disputes as a principal partner in the firm of Updike, Kelly, and Spellacy, in Hartford, Conn. He and Denise, his wife of 34 years, live in Simsbury, Conn. Their son Daniel, a graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder, will be attending the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University this fall to pursue a master’s degree in documentary filmmaking.

Susie Muirhead Bates | sbatesdux@hotmail.com 

Ken Kramer | kmkramer78@hotmail.com

Class of 1978 Endowed Scholarship Fund

Vera Benkoil ’18, Psychology and American Studies

Greetings classmates! Hope 2017 is getting off to a good start for one and all. Susie writes for this issue. Seems many of us are enjoying celebrations of one sort or another these days. 60th birthdays (remember 60 is only a speed limit!), children’s graduations and marriages, not to mention arrivals of precious grandchildren.

Jennifer Atkinson says her biggest news was the birth of her first grandchild, Karlyn Ryan Steinberg, on New Year’s Eve. She added, “Next to her, everything else fades to near insignificance.” Jennifer, a professor at George Mason University, also published her fifth book of poems, The Thinking Eye, this past year.

Bloomberg Professor of Business Journalism Andrea Gabor sent greetings from Havana where she was leading her second group of Baruch College/CUNY journalism students on a study abroad trip exploring Cuba’s rich biodiversity and efforts at developing sustainable agriculture and fisheries. Their first trip was January 2015, just weeks after President Obama and Castro began their détente.

Bill Adler has been living in Tokyo, Japan, for the past two years and is enjoying life as an expat. He’s writing and occasionally publishing books. His novella, No Time to Say Goodbye, is coming out this spring.

Dave Wilson had some good success with his fourth and most recent album, from the Dave Wilson Quartet, There Was Never, which was released on the New York-based ZOHO Music Label in 2015. The album included original music by Dave, a saxophonist, and interpretations of some well-known tunes. The album received radio airplay in 40 different markets across the country, and in 2016 received a nomination for a Grammy by ZOHO for Best Instrumental Jazz Record. Dave lives with his wife, Lisa, in Lancaster, Pa., where in addition to his performance career, he teaches privately, and has a business buying and selling musical instruments. He can be reached at davewilsonmusic.org.

Elizabeth Weiss Ozorak is keeping herself busy and fit! One of her highlights for 2016 was winning the Bronze Freeskate at USA Adult Masters Games last July. She would “love to hear from any other late-blooming athletes and/or adult figure skaters out there!” [eozorak@allegheny.edu]

Jon Spector and his wife, Wendy, enjoy life in Woodstock, Vt., where they moved two years ago when they became empty nesters. Wendy is on ski patrol and is an EMT, while Jon is working in New York at The Conference Board. A small nearby airport allows Jon to make trips to and from the city fairly efficiently. At The Conference Board, he is joined by fellow Wesleyan alumni Moira James and Russell Morris ’87. Alan Dachs ’70 is a trustee and chairman emeritus.

Life in Duxbury is never dull with our toddler grandson (and his parents) living in town. Our oldest just moved to San Francisco and our youngest just graduated from college in December (a semester early!).  As we put our best and most positive feet forward in 2017, I’d like to sign off with these words by John Wesley: “Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.”

Please stay in touch,

Susie Muirhead Bates | sbatesdux@hotmail.com 

Ken Kramer | kmkramer78@hotmail.com