Tag: 1991

What a fabulous 25th Reunion! Congratulations to the co-chairs, Jeremy Sacks and Christine Pina, as well as all the members of the committee. And hats off to the phenomenal, spontaneous memory explosion on Facebook. The photos and the videos…whew. I’m serious when I say we need a class archivist to collect, collate and preserve!

I also want to pick up on Sam Schneider’s lovely thoughts from the Class Memorial, and Sam, forgive me if I butcher the words, but the sentiment is to start new memories, new conversations, with people you might not have known on campus, but might want to know now. Our classmates are doing amazing things, from teaching GED courses to pushing the Senate to action, to writing the book you want to read this summer. So take a gander at what we’re up to, and reach out to that person!

Debby Popkin’s midwifery group, Birth & Beyond, won first place for Best Midwives in Hartford County in the CTNow readers’ poll this year.

Joshua Samuels is a pediatric nephrologist and hypertension specialist at University of Texas McGovern Medical School at Houston. In 2015, he was promoted to professor of pediatrics and medicine, elected to the Academy of Master Educators, and received the Dean’s Teaching Award.

Jenny Tucker is the second in command at the National Organic Program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, overseeing the use of the USDA organic seal on food across the U.S. and around the world: “it is a wonderfully complex job that I love.” On the side, Jenny volunteers as the executive director of the nonprofit FOSS Institute, which Jenny’s father, Allen Brown Tucker ’63, and she founded in 2013. FOSS, or Free and Open Source Software, seeks to bring together computer science students, nonprofits, and software professionals to build sustainable software tools that support the nonprofit’s mission, while also giving the students real-world software development experience.

Todd Denmark, who has lived in Kansas for eight years, just bought a house with his partner in Shawnee. Todd worked for the Department of Homeland Security for six years and then switched to the National Benefit Center in June 2014. He moved to the Records Division in March 2016.

Suki Hawley announces her production company’s new film, Who Took Johnny, a documentary about the first missing child pictured on a milk carton, Johnny Gosch, and his mother’s relentless search for what happened to him. Catch it on Amazon, iTunes, and Netflix. John Waters called it “an amazing, lunatic documentary that will leave you creeped out, excited, and surprised.”

Brett Hardin lives in Atlanta with his family, (kids ages 8, 10, and 15) and will be the new Head of High School at Paideia, a progressive pre-K through 12th-grade school. “We tend to send at least one student a year to Wesleyan.”

Kristin Sandvik Lush reports from The Land of the Long White Cloud, where her couch awaits visits from Wesleyan friends. Last year she had lunch with Bobbito aka Cool Bob Love aka Bobby Nice aka Robert Garcia ’88, who was performing in Auckland. Kristin teaches ESOL, and stays busy with projects and family responsibilities (husband’s elderly parents and home-educated kids ages 9 and 11). She’s looking forward to a visit to the Pacific NW at the end of 2016 and a PDX Wes mini-union.

In January 2016, Tara Magner was named the director of the Chicago program at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. Since 1978, MacArthur has invested nearly $1.1 billion in Chicago. Grants have supported more than 1,300 organizations and individuals in the region, including awards to arts and culture groups, and programs in housing, community economic development, immigration, anti-violence, and education, among others. Prior to this new role, she was a senior program officer at MacArthur, making grants related to immigration and refugee policy. Tara joined MacArthur in 2012 after many years with the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary in D.C. She lives in the Chicago with her husband, Scott Hibbard, a political science professor.

Michael and Sarah Lewis Chaskes are in Los Angeles, where they continue to edit reality TV and teach sixth grade, respectively. They and their two teenage daughters try not to miss any opportunities to visit with the family of Ben and Liz Beckenbach Leavy in Sacramento.

George Irvine is the relatively new director of corporate programs and partnerships at the University of Delaware’s Lerner College of Business and Economics. He builds knowledge partnerships with companies, organizations, and the state to help them meet hiring, employee development and business research needs. He’s also working toward a PhD in urban affairs and public policy with a research focus on the past, present, and future publicness of American research universities.

Wendy Bellion, associate professor of American art history at the University of Delaware, is finishing her second art history book, exploring iconoclasm in New York City before and during the American Revolution. George and Wendy have two sons: Luke, 12 is approaching a Tang Soo Do black belt, and Griffin, 7, excels at baseball.

Lizandra Vega lives in Westchester and is an executive recruiter in Manhattan, placing VP-C-Suite executives in the beauty, fashion, luxury sectors. She was “thrilled to see friends on campus and share her experience with son, Christian (7), daughter Julianna (15), and husband Steve Brown.“

Michael Reinke serves as the executive director of the Inter-Faith Council and works towards ending hunger in Orange County. On the side, he’s trying to master the banjo. He lives in Durham, N.C.,

Rory Kerber Bernstein is a project manager at the Simons Foundation, a nonprofit providing funding for basic math and science research. Rory oversees the process of redesigning two websites.

After many years as a classroom teacher, Cameron Gearen has become an essay coach, working for Partners for Achievement in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., helping kids get into the colleges of their dreams. She also posts a twice-yearly reading list of favorite books, just in time for summer.

Renée K. Carl | rcarl@wesleyan.edu

Bayard and Betsy Klimasmith live in Belmont, Mass. Bayard is a middle-school assistant principal in Lexington, and Betsy is an English professor at UMass Boston. Their son, David, is in kindergarten, and daughter Sophie ’20 is a member of Wesleyan’s class of 2020.

Eric Glatt earned a JD from Georgetown University Law Center in 2015 and serves as an attorney at the ACLU of Alaska. Eric continues work on the ongoing lawsuit he and Alexander Footman ’09 brought against Fox Searchlight Pictures over the issue of unpaid intern labor and minimum wage laws, and on the lack of federal non-discrimination protections for unpaid interns and volunteers.

Lauren Simon Irwin won a big employment trial representing a pharmacist against Wal-Mart in the US District Court in New Hampshire. She’s enjoying the victory while waiting for the inevitable appeal.

Michael Reinke is executive director with the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Julia Arlinghaus Charles writes, “I’m enjoying life in the SF Bay Area with my 15-year-old daughter. I work for Touro University California, writing grants and crunching data; in my spare time I paint and try to design a foolproof automatic chicken coop door.”

Maria Snyder received tenure at Central College in Pella, Iowa, and is now an associate professor of French and German. Stephanie Hirschman Wade, lives in Maine with her 13-year-old daughter and works at Unity College as director and associate professor of writing. Brian Howell, professor of anthropology at Wheaton College, is on sabbatical this semester, teaching in Tanzania, presenting a paper at the University of Edinburgh and a conference in Cambridge, and joining a “faculty development” trip along the Camino de Santiago in Spain.

The American Academy of Religion awarded Jerome Copulsky the AAR-Luce Fellowship in Religion and International Affairs. The award funds Jerome’s Franklin Fellowship at the Office of Religion and Global Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Jim Ghiloni serves as a fellow in the president’s inaugural White House Leadership Development Program, designed to foster the next generation of senior executives in the Federal government.

In January 2015, Deborah Mayer took over as chief counsel and staff director for the Senate Select Committee on Ethics and reconnected with Narda Jones, who works for Senator Maria Cantwell. She’s also celebrating 17 years with the Navy, serving as a military judge, trying court-martial cases throughout the Navy and Marine Corps.

Laurie Woods returned to her hometown of D.C. in June 2015, after more than two decades away. She’s happy to be closer to her parents and reconnect with Maud Casey.

Katherine Wingfield Barry writes that Will Barry now serves as chairman of the Olney Boys and Girls Club as well as part of the executive committee of the law firm, Richards Kibbe and Orbe. Will coaches one of their sons in football and lacrosse. Their 8-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, is the only girl playing tackle football in the whole program.

Tasos Theodorou lives in Dallas and works in healthcare consulting. His son, Apostoli Stone Theodorou, was born Sept. 22, 2015. Eva Pendleton and her husband, Patrick Barnhart, are adopting a baby boy, who was placed with them at birth on Dec. 8, 2015. “His name is August James Barnhart and we are enjoying life in the new parent vortex!”

Ian and Zanne Gerrard ’94 visited Sarah Sutter, who is celebrating five years in Tokyo. They watched basketball, explored shrines in Kamakura, and ate lots of excellent Japanese food.

Phil Faroudja assisted with the passage of “Laura’s Law” in San Francisco County. Laura’s Law moves people with mental illness out of the court system and into healthcare facilities and provides funding for mental care professionals.

Tim McBride and his family live in Hingham Mass.,where he heads the New England region and Boston office for Bessemer Trust. Tim’s stayed connected to the Wes basketball program and took the players and coaches out to dinner after they played in a tournament in the Boston area.

Kevin Greiner marks 10 years as president and CEO of Atlanta-based Gas South and serves on the boards of the United Way of Greater Atlanta, YMCA of Metro Atlanta, Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, and the Atlanta Opera. Also in Atlanta is Pierrette Maillet, director of alumni relations at Kennesaw State University. She recently completed a master’s degree in higher education administration.

Josh Horwitz added Clear Mind Tutoring, which blends meditation with subject tutoring, as a second business alongside Craniosacral-East, which he’s run for 14 years. He’s also completing an MA in creative writing at Wilkes University. His 2-year-old daughter, Lucia, learned drumming from John Lee ’92, of the band The Laytcomers.

Sharon Panitch of Burlington, Vt., tallies her household as: one spouse, three kids, two cats, and five chickens. She’s producing for Theatre Kavanah, a company “dedicated to staging the Jewish experience.”

A February New York Times Well column featured comments from Brookline, Mass., psychologist Ann Goebel-Fabbri, who specializes in treating people with diabetes who have eating disorders.

Nikki Harmon announced she has written and self-published her first novel, When I Was Your Girlfriend. Dorian Hart published The Ventifact Colossus, the first in a planned series of five books. Dorian also serves as the stay-at-home dad for daughters Elanor (11) and Kira (8). Also in the author corner, Cameron Gearen presents Some Perfect Year, a book of poems published by Shearsman Press.

Alex Kudera reports that his second adjunct novel, Auggie’s Revenge, was launched at the AWP conference in Los Angeles, and that a classroom edition of Fight for Your Long Day, with additional interviews and articles on adjunct labor and student debt, is being prepared for publication by Hard Ball Press in Brooklyn.

Jeremy Arnold’s book, The Essentials: 52 Must-See Movies and Why They Matter, serves as a companion to Turner Classic Movies’ weekly Essentials program, highlighting the most significant and influential films ever made. Make a date to look for him on-air May 15, as he introduces the James Cagney double-header of White Heat and Footlight Parade.

Two nights later, on May 17, check your local PBS station for Genealogy Roadshow. This is the second season I’ve worked as a senior researcher for the show. It’s great fun, and I love researching the stories of everyday Americans. Looking forward to seeing everyone at Reunion!

Renée K. Carl | rcarl@wesleyan.edu

Please write to your class secretary:

Renée K. Carl | rcarl@wesleyan.edu

Dear Classmates, this summer issue of class notes laments the news of the passing of another star in our small constellation. Dr. Katharine Kellond Roth, known as Katy, died on Dec. 15, 2014, after a long struggle with seizure disorder and Behçet’s Syndrome (an auto-immune disease). A resident of Washington, D.C., since 1997, Katy was a determined and devoted hospice and palliative care physician.

Originally from Delaware, Katy was the daughter of the late Senator William V. Roth, Jr. (R-DE) and Jane Richards Roth, a federal judge. She is survived by her husband of 16 years, Chris Weston ’92, and her sons, Nicholas and William.

My apologies to family and friends for the delay in this posting. Please send memories and stories for posting in a later issue, or other news of note.

Bayard Klimasmith reports that Betsy Klimasmith continues as a professor at UMASS Boston, and Bayard serves as an assistant principal at a middle school in Lexington. Their 16-year-old daughter is a junior and Wesleyan made her short list! Meanwhile, their 5-year-old is looking forward to kindergarten next year and “keeping us a lot younger than we had planned; we are in this parenting thing for a loooonnng more time!”

After working in the diplomatic arena as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs during the first term of the Obama Administration, Spencer “Kip” Boyer is enjoying his deep dive into national security. He’s taken the position of National Intelligence Officer for Europe in the National Intelligence Council, the center for long range strategic thinking within the U.S. intelligence community. He’s also an assistant adjunct professor at the BMW Center for German and European Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Jeremy Sacks, preeminent host of Portland, Oregon, welcomed Nicki and Jim Miller to town to “watch the worst Celtics team of our lifetimes defeat my Blazers. After that, we tasted a boatload of beers in Astoria and Portland, visited a craft bike shop with a beer bar and projection room, and ate well. No, Fred and Carrie weren’t there in person. A good time was had by all.”

Also taking Jeremy up on his hospitality was Scott Timberg, who lives in LA with wife Sara and son Ian, 8. Scott’s book Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class, came out with Yale University Press in January, to great acclaim. Subtitled How Sweeping Economic and Social Changes Are Imperiling Artists, Writers, Musicians, and America, the book digs into the roots of what is happening to artists, from the economic recession to social shifts to technological change. Most importantly, he explains why this matters: “When artists and artisans can’t make a living, we all pay the price.”

Jeremy Arnold continues working as a writer for Turner Classic Movies’ website, and his book Lawrence of Arabia: The 50th Anniversary was published by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in 2012. You will also be able to find Jeremy providing audio commentary on a restoration of Alfred Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn, being released in May.

In September 2014, Drew Marrochello was officially named Boston University’s director of athletics. Drew joined the BU athletic department in 2005 and is the 13th athletic director in Boston University history.

As many of you read on Facebook or the Class Notes listserv, we lost one of our own in 2014: Jennifer Entine Matz. Bayard sent me this warm-hearted remembrance, “We were housemates senior year and, besides her disdain for the mac and cheese (with mustard and frozen peas) that Joseph and I made, she was just…awesome. A serious loss. A star just went out in our constellation.”

Renée K. Carl | rcarl@wesleyan.edu

Newsmaker: Robin Delman Ekiss ’91
	Robin Delman Ekiss ’91 received one of only six 2007 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards. The foundation selects women who demonstrate excellence and promise at the beginning of their writing careers. Ekiss, whose poems have appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Ploughshares, and Triquarterly, is finishing her first book of poetry, The Mansion of Happiness.

Newsmaker: Daniel B. Prieto ’91

Daniel B. Prieto ’91, an adjunct senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of the newly released CFR report, War About Terror: Civil Liberties and National Security After 9/11. The report addresses a range of issues—from Guantanamo to warantless wiretapping—and how to maintain America¹s longstanding democratic traditions while protecting it from real and serious threats. To download a copy, go to www.cfr.org/war_about_terror. Prieto, who worked for over two years on the politically-charged project, earned his Wesleyan degree in the College of Social Studies and his master’s from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

Newsmaker: Catherine Rob Rogers ’91

Catherine Rob Rogers ’91, a Laramie County, Wyo., Circuit Court Magistrate and a private practice attorney, was appointed to the First Judicial District Court by Gov. Dave Freudenthal last September. In a Wyoming Tribune Eagle article, Freudenthal praised her, saying, “Her reputation for honesty and ethics is of the highest order. What makes her uniquely qualified is that the Circuit Court is really the people’s court, and she has a great people sense about her.” A sociology major as an undergraduate, she earned a JD from the University of Wyoming College of Law and was admitted to the Wyoming State Bar in 1998. “I am humbled by the Governor’s confidence in me, and I will do my best to serve the judiciary and the people of Laramie County with fairness, courtesy and a commitment to equal justice,” Rogers said. She is married to Kevin Ohlson ’90.

Newsmaker: Stephen K. Friedman ’91

Stephen K. Friedman ’91 has been promoted to president of MTV. Since the fall of 2008, he has been general manager, and he will now oversee MTV, MTV2, mtvU, MTV.com, MTV Hits and MTV Jams. During Friedman’s tenure, MTV has had five consecutive quarters of growth, and launched such successful shows as Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant, Life as Liz, and the upcoming Teen Wolf. He joined MTV in 1998 and started MTV’s strategic partnerships and public affairs department. As general manager, he launched mtvU, the channel dedicated to college students, in 2004, and helped shape the channel’s Emmy Award-winning Sudan campaign to protest genocide in Darfur. In announcing his promotion, The Los Angeles Times writes: “Over the years, [Friedman] has been instrumental in many of MTV’s social and political causes. … He was deeply involved in MTV’s award-winning ‘Fight for Your Rights’ campaign and its ‘Choose or Lose’ political drive.” Before joining MTV, Friedman was director for the PEN American Center, an international writers’ human rights organization. At Wesleyan, he majored in the College of Letters.

Beth Haney is now operations director for Free Bikes 4 Kidz, a Minnesota nonprofit that cleans,  refurbishes, and gives away gently used bikes to kids—5,000 bikes in 2013! If you live in the Twin Cities and have mad bike repair skills, or are good at cleaning and shining, Beth would love you to help out. Free Bikes 4 Kidz is also working on expanding to other cities across the US. Details are at fb4k.org.

Drew Marrochello has been appointed director of athletics at Boston University, where he has worked since 2005. According to BU Today, “Athletically, my goal is for BU to be viewed as the best non-football-playing Division I school in the nation.” 

Meanwhile, I’ve had a crazy, busy, and challenging couple of months working as a researcher for the second season of the PBS production Genealogy Road Show, uncovering family histories and mysteries in St. Louis, New Orleans, and Philadelphia. Shows will air in early 2015.

And that’s it! Write me with your news.

Renée K. Carl | rcarl@wesleyan.edu

Happy spring? I wonder as I compile the notes. I do hope it’s here to stay once this column hits your mailbox. There are far more interesting things to read than the weather, so here we go:

Carol Sherwin writes, “I just finished a two-year stint in the retail sector; working in a department store environment has been the toughest career to date, and for anyone keeping score I now count at least five, including: “mad scientist” at Consumer Reports Magazine, clinical professor at NYU, business strategy consultant and HR director. Not sure of my next step, I headed back to where it all started and attended Connect@Wes, a two-day seminar. I hadn’t been back to campus in more than 10 years, and it is as beautiful as ever. I ran into Cecilia Pohorille McCall, who is doing very interesting work that draws on her legal training.

“While on campus, I participated in the “speed interviewing program organized by the Career Center and got to check in with our class’ dean, Meg Zocco, who now works in University Relations. So many surprises on campus: a moment of silence for Mocon; a moment of amazement at the coffee bar/sandwich shop in the Science Center lobby. And everyone has a laptop….”

Carol adds that she still lives in Westchester, N.Y., with her husband of 17 years and while she figures out her next career step, she’ll continue her volunteer work for Wesleyan, conducting alumni interviews for prospective students, “I joined WAAV six months after we graduated and have never failed to learn something from interviewing a student!”

Kristin Sandvik Lush was in Tokyo in autumn 2013, and when she posted on Facebook “I’m in Tokyo,” Sarah Sutter responded “OK! Where can we meet up?” Kristin and Sarah connected in person over the course of the time Kristin was in Japan. The impromptu visit concluded with a gathering at an izakaya in Kanda later in the week. “It was great to see her—it had been 20+ years!”

Kristin adds, “Upon my arrival, my former student asked, “What do you want to do in Tokyo?” I hadn’t done any pre-tour homework, until I met up with Sarah, and she wrote out a Cool-Things-to-See-and-Do list, with a key train stations map on the back! Who needs Lonely Planet when you’ve got a frosh year WestColleague with local knowledge?! I’m looking forward to her spending a holiday with us in New Zealand!”

Sarah continues to teach at the American School in Japan. Some of her photos were published in The Sky Unchanged, a collection of photographs, interviews and tanka poems from survivors of the 3/11 triple disasters. The poems are printed in Japanese and English, but the interviews are only in Japanese. You can view Sarah’s photos in the book here: bookclub.kodansha.co.jp/books/topics/kawaranaisora/.

Michelle Lockhart has been busy in Texas launching Charlotte Max Designs, named for her grandmother. Michelle took her love of 1950s vintage Lucite handbags and accessories and updated them with bright colors and contemporary lines. Look for them in museum stores and at charlottemax.com. “We are proud that all of our products are handmade in the US and cruelty-free.”

Alexander Levi a hybrid 1990–91 grad, shares “recent highlights of a very Wesleyan-rooted adventure in creative, innovative, professional success: after practicing 10 years in Spain and five years in NYC, my studio, SLO Architecture, is winning awards: Harvest Dome 2.0 won the 2013 Dwell Vision Award and the 2014 AIANY Design Award; Bronx River Right-of-Way won an unprecedented second Blinder Award from the James Marston Fitch Foundation; and SLO is almost done with the construction of an integrated art installation for an elevated NYC Subway stop in the Bronx, the Cross-Bronx Waterway.”

More awards for classmates: Andrew Junke won this year’s Marvin B. Sussman Best Dissertation Award from Yale University’s sociology department. He will give a lecture at Yale in conjunction with the award. Brian Howell has been promoted to full professor at Wheaton College in Illinois.

Dan Prieto, Jerome Copulsky and Jeff Hayes spent a “what happens in…” style weekend in New Orleans in March. Not long after that, Jerome and Dan hosted Jeremy Sacks in DC, when he was in town from Portland, Oregon. Of note, they were sitting across the bar from Sting, who was in town for a concert.

Stuart Rockoff is now executive director of the Mississippi Humanities Council. He and wife Susan live in Jackson with their two daughters. A few hours away, Laurie Woods lives in Oxford, Miss., with her Mississippi-native husband. She teaches a very small class (three boys) of elementary students at a Montessori school and will soon begin a master of education in literacy with the goal of becoming a literacy specialist.

Jennifer Fletcher completed a Master of Teaching degree at the University of Sydney in 2013 and teaches high school English. She recently took her family to their first baseball game in Australia! Jennifer excitedly reports, “We (Team Australia–notice my shifted allegiance) thrashed the Diamondbacks.”

After 10 years raising children, Debby Popkin is practicing midwifery again and finally fulfilling her dream of attending home births, along with Lillian Siegel, ’08, CNM. You can find them in the Southington, Conn. area.

I close this issue with sad news. Brain Lenhard died suddenly on March 13, 2014. Brian lived in Wilmington, Del., and his loss is mourned by his wife, Melissa Dodds Lenhard, and children Nicholas and Caroline. If you’d like to share a story about Brian, I would be happy to publish it in the next issue of class notes.

Renée K. Carl | rcarl@wesleyan.edu