Tag: 1978

Jon Spector has retired from his position as CEO of The Conference Board and is “comfortably settled with my wife, Wendy, in beautiful Woodstock, Vt., getting in shape, improving my tennis, and helping to figure out how best to develop our local economy.”

Ruth Pachman has relayed the sad news that Debbie Stuckey died, surrounded by family and friends, on Jan. 6, following her long battle with breast cancer. Ruth, along with Marilyn Fagelson and Elise Bean, “had visited with her just two weeks before, spending a lovely day trimming her Christmas tree and cherishing what was clearly close to the end of 45 years of friendship that started in Clark Hall freshman year and wound through Delta Tau, the William Street apartments, Foss Hill, and McConaughy. Debbie was a government major and got her doctorate in psychology from Boston University and Harvard. She was a family relationship therapist with her own practice in Washington, D.C. At Wes, Debbie was a fabulous dancer and singer. Her intense joy of music, among countless other things, will be remembered by us and many other classmates.” Debbie leaves behind two daughters, Kiera and Hayley, and a son, Will. Our heartfelt thoughts go out to her family.

Dave Wilson has an active musical career on saxophone and released his fifth album (One Night at Chris’) last summer with great acclaim. Dave lives with his wife, Lisa, in Lancaster, Pa., where he teaches music and owns a musical instrument shop.

Julie Skolnik is a flutist in her long-successful chamber group of 22 years, Mistral Music, and relates a heartening tale of this past year, which made the front page of The Boston Globe. Just as the group was starting a concert piece, an elderly woman in the front row collapsed in cardiac arrest. With doctors present in the audience, CPR was initiated; she came around, pleading from her departing stretcher to just be left alone (“What are you doing? I want to hear the music!”). The group responded with an encore of “Here Comes the Sun” and a visit to her in the hospital. Heart-stopping music, they feel.

Susie Muirhead Bates | sbatesdux@hotmail.com 

Ken Kramer | kmkramer78@hotmail.com

Ralph Rotman has been recognized as a top financial advisor by Northwestern Mutual. For the 20th time, Ralph will be inducted into the company’s elite membership, Forum Group, an award received by less than 5% of more than 6,000 financial representatives. Bravo, Ralph!

Lucy Mize is happy to report that a fourth family member is joining the Cardinal flock. Her daughter, Belle Brown ’22, is transferring to Wesleyan this fall adding to the family Cardinal dynasty of her son (’17), Lucy, and her father (’51). Lucy continues in her work in international public health and has added Myanmar and Finland to her list of travels. She is slowly cleaning out her dad’s house in Chelsea, Vt., and hopes next summer it might be ready to reprise an epic Eclectic house party she hosted there 41 years ago. No doubt many other attendees, like me, would love to see that happen!

Mark Laser confesses to never having contributed to our class notes. However, what he sent as his first submission more than makes up for his absence. Mark has “enjoyed an interesting and varied life since graduating.” He started out working for the Singer Sewing Machine Company in their R&D labs, went to grad school for astrophysics at Columbia, worked on the space shuttle, went to grad school for neuroscience and medical school at Yale, and went into private practice as an ob-gyn in 1994. Along the way he got a private pilot’s license and became a Coast Guard master captain skippering his 41-foot sailboat across the Atlantic. Now, he’s retired and moved onto Paradox, his 45-foot sailing catamaran. Soon, he and his wife, Amy, will begin exploring the world on their boat. Anyone interested can follow them at paradoxsailing.com, their cruising website.

Andrew Liveten and his wife, Nancy, live on a small farm in Bethany, N.Y., with their horses, goats, and chickens. They are thrilled with the recent birth of their first grandson. Congratulations to one and all.

Congratulations to Nancy Chen who got remarried in June and has moved from Colorado to Bozeman, Mont. Her younger daughter, Isabelle, graduated from college this year and her older daughter, Ariane, will be wed next year. Nancy has a blog, powertothequeen.com, which supports women leaders.

Wishing you all a wonderful autumn and joyful holidays to follow.

Susie Muirhead Bates | sbatesdux@hotmail.com 

Ken Kramer | kmkramer78@hotmail.com

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