Tag: 1981

Greetings, once again, from Brooklyn. I never know when these will find their way to your mailbox, months after I write them. I write this in June, as I am about to visit my oldest son in Arizona, and, more importantly, his 2-year-old girl. He is a year from 30, and his sister just turned 25. Yes, their youngest sibling is still 9, as I write this, but some of you must have children who have hit 30 already. How do you cope with the knowledge that your child has hit the big 3-0? And, as important, if not more so: Can you still trust them?

Brian Ford reports that his book came out last year: Respect for Teachers: The Rhetoric Gap and How Research on Schools is Laying the Ground for New Business Models in Education, which examines and critiques the privatization of the public education system.

Gene Norden writes that after Wes, he got a law degree from Duke and an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago business school. “I practiced law and was a wealth manager for many years, and recently made a career move to become director of trusts and estates at Bonhams auction house in New York. I love being in the art world and have never been happier! I remain very close friends with Tom Danziger, who is uniformly considered one of the top art lawyers in New York, and who has been invaluable in helping me make the transition.”

Steve Blum, who blogs at negotiatingtruth.com, finally finished the book he has been working on since he was class secretary. Negotiating Your Investments joins knowledge from his two longtime careers by applying negotiation methods he has taught at Wharton for two decades to investing and finance strategies from his practice.  Steve wonders aloud about the loss of dignity involved in begging classmates to read the darned thing.

Paul Godfrey is proud to report that his son, Charlie, graduated with distinction from the University of Wisconsin, Madison with degrees in math and physics. Next year he will be going to graduate school at the University of Washington headed towards a PhD in math. And, he will be a graduate teaching assistant. “Since I took self-paced calculus at Wes on a pass-fail basis and got a P, followed by a huge sigh of relief, this makes perfect sense.”

After a 25-year career as a broadcast photojournalist, Kit Tyler founded The American Mercury Inc., a media production company specializing in broadcast documentary programs. Kit has created dozens of series and programs on a wide range of topics from Autism to climate change to Western history.  Saving The Bay, a history of San Francisco Bay, won several Emmy awards. His latest work, Becoming California, the environmental history of California will premier in the fall of 2014. Kit lives in Sacramento, with his wife, Libby. They have two sons, Nicholas and Henry. 

Wesleyan friends Nancy Traub Chirinos and Charlie Spiegel recently traveled together to Seattle to celebrate Nancy’s younger daughter Eva’s graduation from University of Puget Sound, and to show Seattle Univ. to Charlie’s daughter, Nora.  “We continue to ask Nancy’s daughters, who are in college, if they want to stay in touch with their friends for their next 35 plus years,” Charlie adds, “although we progressively less articulate the exact number of years.”

Nancy is a marriage and family therapist intern at S.F.’s Marina Counseling Center. Charlie is a family lawyer/mediator in solo practice, and recently completed re-writing a California-wide low-cost divorce educational presentation to include same gender couples (divorceoptioninfo.com). “So we do weekly morning exercise walks up S.F’s Twin Peaks, and often swap case tips, and recognize how lucky we are to still live one block from one another. Join us some morning.”

David Todd informs us that “Since graduation, a collection of men from the class of ’81 has gathered now and then for a weekend in the wild. In April, Rich Eastman, Danny Haar, Chris Heye, Joel Kreisberg, Tom Land, Beck Lee, Kevin Osborn and I traveled to upstate New York to navigate a treasure hunt, hike together while all still can, and play poker. Kevin, as usual, won. Other outings have included Ryan Helwig, Rob Levin, Ted Parker and Perry Pockros. See the photo: classnotes.blogs.wesleyan.edu/

And finally, I will make one more shameless plug for my cousin, Gabrielle Fondiller ’07’s not-for-profit Hatua Likoni (hatualikoni.org). It’s a community NGO working to promote education and employment among youth in Likoni, Kenya. Through scholarships, mentoring and career guidance, Hatua helps Likoni’s top students gain the skills, credentials and networks they need to contribute to and benefit from Kenya’s growing economy. As you consider end-of-year charitable gifts, please keep this in mind.

David I. Block | david.I.block@gmail.com

JOANNE godin audretsch | Berlinjo@aol.com

David writes: Greetings from Brooklyn. Thanks for your contributions this month:

Tom Furrer is in his 27th year of ordained ministry in the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut and the 10th year of cooperative medical clinic ministry with the Anglican Diocese of Kaduna, Nigeria. In July 2013, he was installed as the Archdeacon of Kaduna Diocese—the first non-Nigerian to receive this honor. Over the past 10 years, this cooperative work has provided medical care to 100,000 people. A second clinic will open in 2014 that will double the capacity of the medical ministry.

Dave Robertson writes: “Mary Roach and I have at least four things in common: We’re both Wesleyan class of 1981. We both published books in 2013 (me: Brick by Brick; Mary: Gulp). Both of us have focused on topics that are of interest primarily to 7-year-old boys (in my case, LEGO; in Mary’s, eating and pooping). We shared a mailbox freshman year. Remember how they used to group us by last name? Robertson and Roach shared a box.”

Brian Tarbox is proud to announce, “I had a patent granted for caching of media in video streaming, and gave a sermon at our local UU Church on the meaning of spirituality in a heterogenous liberal faith. I’ve trained our congregation to replace ‘amen’ with Battlestar Galactica’s ‘So say we all’ at my services.”

Judith Mogul, with her husband, Dan Kramer ’80, tells us, “We had a Wesleyan wedding this summer, with our daughter, Ilona Kramer ’08 marrying Daniel Meyer ’08 at our home in Cold Spring, N.Y. Daniel’s mother, Anne Meyer ’71, is also a Wesleyan grad, so his father Rob was the only non-Wesleyan among the four parents.”

Jeremy Kenner still lives in Melbourne, Australia, “a wonderful city,” and works for the government in the health advice and research field. “I am the expert adviser for ethics to the National Health & Medical Research Council (our NIH, but much smaller scale). More important, after raising three sons to adulthood, I am starting over as the stepfather of a 6-year-old and father of a 15-month-old named Akiva Benjamin, with whom I am completely smitten. With their mother, a Russian emigré, I live a peaceful life by the bay just south of the city. I am also developing a piece of land in northeast Tasmania as a getaway for me and my five sons. Life couldn’t be better.”

During a US trip last summer, Jeremy saw Bob Stern ’80, Suzanne Papert Hinman, Bob and Fran Pepperman Taylor ’80, Peter Frumkin ’80 and Anji Fink Citron and Todd Herron Citron ’82. “All are well, as are all their 14 children.”

He adds, “Australia is all the good things people say it is. Come and see!”

Neil Foote got promoted to principal lecturer at the Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas, where he teaches introductory and advanced classes, including digital and social media for journalists. “I also am still running my communications consulting firm, where I do everything from traditional public relations, media strategy, content management and brand positioning for such clients as nationally syndicated radio personality and entrepreneur Tom Joyner. My wife, Jane, and I have enjoyed visiting our daughter, Alex, who is in her junior year at Harvard where she is in East Asian Studies. I’m a lifetime trustee at The Lamplighter School, an early childhood school, which my daughter attended and where fellow alumnus Jonathan Morgan ’94 serves on the board. I’m also president of the board for the National Kidney Foundation, where we’re raising money to increase awareness about preventing kidney disease.”

Chris Heye was fortunate last fall to see many old Wes friends. “I spent time before and after Game 6 of the World Series wandering the streets of Boston with Dan Lynch ’80 and Steve Mooney ’80. I also saw Dan Haar and Joel Kreisberg at the Head of the Charles regatta in October. Finally, I visited Dave Bartholomew in his new digs in St. Louis. Fortunately this was before the World Series. I hope he will still have me back.”

Chris Graves has more news than can fit here! “The big news is that my daughter, Julia Graves ’17, started this year at Wesleyan, alongside many alumni friends’ sons and daughters, as well (Matt King, Melissa Stern ’80 and Jim Friedlich ’79). Julia also ran into several friends from Hong Kong, now also at Wes. How amazing to be young and at Wesleyan. Not so bad to be old and visit either.” At Homecoming, Chris witnessed our first Little 3 title in 43 years. “Who knew it had been that long?”

Chris continues to serve as global CEO of Ogilvy Public Relations, whose group, Ogilvy and Mather, was named for the second year running, number 1 at the annual Cannes Festival. He was also a contributing author of the third book in a series, called Reimagining India, which includes fellow contributors Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt (Google chairman). In October, he chaired an event in NYC he named “Content Frenzy!” leading a no-holds barred debate among media leaders from Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Business Review and digital “natives” from BuzzFeed and others.

Finally, here’s a plug for a worthy not-for-profit, run by Gabrielle Fondiller ’07, who also happens to be my cousin. She spent a semester abroad in Kenya while at Wes. After graduation, she started and now runs an organization called Hatua Likoni (hatualikoni.org) helping young Kenyans to be able to afford high school, which is not mandatory, so they can get the education they need to succeed. Please help if you can. Thanks.

David I. Block and Joanne Godin Audretsch 

dAVID.I.block@GMAIL.com
Berlinjo@aol.com