Tag: 1985

Please write to your class secretary.

Happy New Year, ’85ers!

I’m writing this from my desk in the English department at the University of Maryland. I’m procrastinating on finishing my grading! Anyone who knew me at Wes recalls that I have some next-level procrastination skills. . . .

Speaking of people who knew me at Wes, Hillary Hess and I just had a night out with our husbands (Peter Gimlin and Michael MacDonald, respectively) to see Velocity Girl at the Black Cat in D.C. A super fun evening!

John P. H. Vigman wrote that he’s still in Japan, having worked for Veolia for “well over a decade, going from head of legal to [the] VP of Business Development Major Projects for Japan and India,” adding that he’ll be in Tokyo for another couple of years, so “if anyone is in the area, look [him] up.”

I also heard from Bradley Solomon who has retired from the California Attorney General’s Office and is now a different kind of counselor: “I’ve . . . started a new career as a private college counselor, helping students and families apply to college.” We can check out his new venture, Solomon College Advising, online.

Ben Wenograd ’85.5 was selected deputy mayor of West Hartford, Connecticut, in the November 2023 election. He previously served on the town council for eight years. His service has focused on affordable housing.

If you don’t want to email when I send out my quarterly appeals for class notes, you can send me your news anytime via FaceBook or Instagram. Wishing yours peace and health.

Hello, Class of ’85!

I hope you had wonderful summers. I’m guessing you were busy because I only heard from THREE of you.

One was Dave Pontrelli who joked that rather than “exhorting” you to write in, perhaps I should extort you! He might be onto something. . . .

I also heard from Rich Stoller. Rich is on the faculty at Penn State, in the Latin American Studies Program. He wrote: “I hope to retire next year from academic administration (not as glamorous as it sounds, and it doesn’t even sound glamorous), to devote myself to gardening, travel, and indecorous social media posts. We toured the Wesleyan campus with my then-high school student two summers ago and she asked why there weren’t any flowers on campus. I told her the students wouldn’t permit it as long as there was any suffering in the world, and at least for a moment she believed me, so Wes’s reputation remains intact although I *would* like to know why there are no flowers on campus.”

Lee McIntyre ’84 reported the sad news of Jonathan Haber’s passing in 2022. Remembrances can be read here:

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/bostonglobe/name/jonathan-haber-obituary?id=34816401

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2022-05-15-remembering-jonathan-haber-who-taught-so-many-to-think-critically

I hope to hear from more of you next time!

Hello, ’85ers! I had the good fortune to visit campus at the end of January to take part in a very fun mentoring workshop with current women athletes. The more Wes changes, the more it stays the same. I’ve reached that stage of my life where I visit places and say, “That used to be . . . .”  I found myself repeatedly noting, “That used to be a package store!,” which I thought was pretty funny.

I heard from Tim Clark that he, Larry Attia, and Steve Pace ’84 have continued their now 38-year-old tradition of watching a Mets road series together each year. “This year we will be traveling to Camden Yards for a Mets-Orioles set. We also upped the boys of summer ante a bit during the pandemic, with a weekly call on all things Mets and life (quite amazing how some codgers can talk about baseball passionately for an hour even in the off-season during the dead of winter). Two other happy items to report: my daughter Kyra ’23 will be graduating from Wes this coming spring; and I ran my first marathon in the fall (Marine Corp with a sub-4 finish).”

Stephen Schwartz writes that he returned last year to the U.S. after living and working overseas in Asia since 2004. He moved to Indonesia in 2004 as the IMF’s senior representative in Indonesia. In 2008 he left the IMF and moved to Hong Kong where he worked in a variety of banking and economics research positions, most recently with Fitch Ratings. Stephen now lives with his partner Jennifer in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where he has been enjoying hiking in the summer and cross-country skiing in the winter. He enjoys the relative peace and quiet after many years of living in the hustle and bustle of Asian cities.

Ellen Campbell is also planning a move to New England: “After a little more than 20 years in Tucson, my husband and I are putting our house on the market and ‘downsizing’ to Vermont. For the past few summers, we’ve been fixing up an old house adjacent to where I grew up . . . it will be our home base moving forward. It’s bittersweet leaving the Desert Southwest, such a lovely place! But new adventures lie ahead. I’ll have lots of barn space for a ceramic/painting studio in Vermont, and will continue teaching yoga classes in person and on Zoom. Winters? We may escape the Northeast (I’m a wimp!) . . . to be continued! Wishing everyone the best as we are so fortunate to be embarking on a new and exciting decade. How did that happen?!!” You can see some of Ellen’s work at www.ellencampbellart.com.

And, finally, it wouldn’t be the class notes without a cryptic yet lyrical note from Christopher Kylin: “Still conspiring to overawe reality with subtle genius and struggling against the bindings of inertia and ennui. In two years, I’ll be celebrated or dead.”

Let us all hope for the former rather than the latter. Take care, my friends, and keep in touch.

Please write to your class secretary.

Please write to your class secretary.

Forty years ago, we were navigating our first years at Wes! I’m grateful that so many of us have remained friends over the decades. Here’s news from some of those friends:

Marc Stein’s fifth book, Queer Public History: Essays on Scholarly Activism, was published by the University of California Press in March. “The intro includes some autobiographical reflections on our years at Wesleyan!”

KT Korngold has been accepted into a Montessori doctoral program through the University of Wisconsin–River Falls. She is part of the first cohort of this inaugural program, which began in May 2022. KT continues to direct the Montessori Children’s Center and Center for Montessori Education in West Harrison, New York.

Christopher Kylin dared me to include this note: “Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary has happened to [me] for over 2,133 days; [I anticipate] continuing this streak for at least another 7 days.”

Barbara Schwartz writes: “I hope everyone is doing okay in these crazy times. I have been doing okay. I am finally leaving the agency where I worked for 32 years. I was director of a therapeutic after-school program for homeless and at-risk children.  I am now just doing counseling and supervision in private practice. I still feel so young that it’s hard to believe we are headed toward 60 soon. My partner and I still hike every summer in a national park. I would love to hear from anyone who remembers me from Wesleyan.  I still have such fond memories.”

Joan (Edelman) and David Landon live in Walpole, Massachusetts. Dave is an archaeologist with UMass Boston and Joan is drug safety analyst with Harvard Medical School. They are empty nesters but are “expecting our first grand baby at the end of February and could not be more excited! We know everyone has had their own share of sadness over the course of the pandemic but we hope there has been some light as well.”

Amy Nash and I saw one another IN PERSON in Minneapolis in October. She is still working from home, coming up on 25 years as communications manager at MSR Design, a nationally recognized architecture firm. “I did manage to travel to NYC and Martha’s Vineyard last summer. While in NYC, I had dinner with Mike Groseth ’83. During last summer, I also had the pleasure of seeing Beth Purnell Gartman and Tim Dyke ’86 who were visiting Minneapolis on separate occasions. And last fall, I caught up with Caroline Hale-Coldwell and Nancy LaMarca Gordon, two other Wesleyan alumni who live in the Twin Cities. It was a great year for reconnecting with classmates even if it was a challenging year in every other way.” Amy also continues to write poetry.

Nancy Vélez, a fundraiser with over 26 years of experience in the nonprofit and higher education sectors, is the principal gift officer at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Nancy lives in the Bronx.

Bill Wrubel is “very excited to report that my daughter Maisie will be a [first-year student] at Wesleyan this fall, where she will be in the class with Andy Meier’s daughter Oona! They were both one-year-old babies on campus at our 20th Reunion in 2005.”

Hilary Jacobs Hendel works as an emotion-centered psychotherapist. Her 2018 book, It’s Not Always Depression, has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. Hilary runs Emotions Education 101 classes on Zoom and published the Emotions Education 101 Turnkey Curriculum. Hilary also has many free resources on emotional health at hilaryjacobshendel.com.

That’s all for now. Write me anytime with your news and updates.  Take care, my friends.

Hello, Class of ’85!

Can you believe it’s been 40 years since we moved into our dorms at Wesleyan? It’s both incredible and all too possible, isn’t it?

This summer, Hillary Hess and I observed our 40 years of friendship by enjoying a leisurely outdoor dinner with our husbands, Peter Gimlin and Michael MacDonald, respectively. Hillary and Peter’s daughter Charlotte is a third-year student at the University of Virginia, and their son Edward is starting this fall at the University of Vermont.

I had the great good fortune to reconnect with a lot of rowers earlier this year, fundraising for Wesleyan Women’s Crew, including Amy Huber, Margaret Bracken Thompson, Lea Barth ’84, and Carlie Masters Williams ’86, who still gets out on the water and is coaching here in the DC area.

Stacia Friedman-Hill is now a recipient of the prestigious Bloomberg Fellowship at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She’s received a full scholarship and is working toward her MPH while continuing in her position as a program director at the National Institutes of Mental Health.

That’s all for now—connect with me on Facebook or Instagram or write to me!