Tag: 1992

Hi all:

It’s class notes times again. I have just returned from a five-month sabbatical in New York City at the Russell Sage Foundation. I was jointed there by our classmate, Abby (Smith) Saguy, who was on leave from the UCLA sociology department. It was great spending time with her, and the (social) highlight was when Simon Fulford joined us for a fantastic dinner with Abby’s husband, Dotan. I also got to see a lot of old Wesleyan friends including Jill Slater, Doni Gewirtzman ’93, and Jane Thompson (including a fun weekend when Laura Hill joined us for NYC adventures). I also managed to catch up with a bunch of former Argus editors, including my co-editor in chief Mike Santoli, as well as Jason Rekate ’93, Andrew Siff ’90, and Alex Navarro-McKay ’90. My time in NYC ended with a big reunion with a large contingent of the 1988–1989 Clark Hall RA staff—David Patterson ’90, Linda Turnbull ’90, Nina Grekin ’90, and Claude Szyfer ’90. It was fantastic to be able to spend so much time with everyone!

In other news, Kate Edwards started a new job at Axalta in a research group working on matching paint colors after an auto body shop repair—and hopes no Wes alum needs this service! Her oldest kid starts at York University in Toronto in the fall.

Jody Sperling is still dancing and choreographing in NYC where she directs her company, Time Lapse Dance, and is eco artist in residence at New York Society for Ethical Culture. On the personal side, she’s currently planning her daughter’s Bat Mitzvah!

Kathryn Berla reports that her she and her son, Johnathan (14), had the pleasure of spending their annual San Diego vacation week with the Diana Strauss Casey ’91 and Hal Skinner families in July. Dan Grant ’91 and his sons joined for a few days from Marin County, as did Liz Martin ’91 from the D.C. area. They all had tremendous fun seeing the range of children (ages 13–22) body surfing and exploring the Ocean Beach community together.

In another huge reunion, Tim Proskauer and Mari Valerio Ferrari hosted a bunch of ’92ers in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. Blues and Brews regulars in attendance included Chris Arndt, Chris and Sara Mulhauser, Ben Ratliff, Jay Hardwig, Nita Smith, Ben Harris, Eric Halperin, Susannah Fox, and Brian and Francesca Wolff (along with two Wolff cubs, Ellington and Rosie).

Chris “Chez” Chesak continues to live with his wife and daughters in Cincinnati where he runs the Outdoor Writers Association of America. He’s excited to also be president-elect of the Society of American Travel Writers and to take over as their president during their convention in Istanbul this fall.

Joan Matelli finished up her last law class at Northeastern and is now one more experiential co-op away from becoming a lawyer.

In the spirit of “take this job and shove it,” my former Clark hallmate Anne (Jennings) Paris quit her job, participated in the FathomPDX interactive art experience in Portland, and then went to Burning Man. Let us all know what comes next Anne!

Another former Clark hallmate, Sam Robinson, writes that his daughter is a rising junior at Vassar College. They are a star on the women’s rugby team, sing a cappella, and will likely go to med school. Sam is retired from architecture, being diagnosed with spino-cerebellar-ataxia in 2019. He stays busy with his awesome property in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia, political volunteering, and sailing (when he can!).

Finally, Asya Geisberg bears sad news about one of our classmates. She writes: “I’m saddened to write about the very quick illness and departure from this world of Deb Whitney. Deb lived an incredible life on both coasts, with a career in film, TV, assisting Barbra Streisand in LA, and finally two decades as a paramedic in New Hampshire, where she was pursuing an MA in public health. Deb was beloved and respected by many in the medical community and leaves behind her longtime fiancé, Art, as well as extended family. Heather Nash and I are grateful we were able to visit Deb in April.”

Heather Nash adds the following tribute: “Thirty-six years ago, I walked into my dorm room on my first day of Wesleyan University, carrying a life-size poster of Humphrey Bogart only to discover that my new roommate, Deb Whitney, had brought the exact same one. This was my intro to the amazing person who would become one of my dearest friends and such an important part of my life. Deb loved Wesleyan, classic films, documentary-making, music, learning Russian, dogs, and sitting down for a good cup of tea with a friend. She moved out to LA after college to break into the film industry, worked in production and for Barbra Streisand for a bit, but ultimately pursued a career as a paramedic back East, where she took such loving care of her patients and co-workers. Deb loved her family and friends deeply and was one of the most open-minded, supportive, and nurturing people I knew. I am so grateful Asya Geisberg and I had the chance to visit her near Boston a few weeks after her cancer diagnosis this past spring. I feel blessed to have had her in my life and still cannot wrap my mind around the fact that she is no longer here. My heart goes out to her partner, Art Patriquin, her mom, Susan, sister, Emily, her nephew and niece, Art’s daughters, and the rest of her family. Deb, you were so very loved. Chris and I have told Ella all about you and we are going to watch Casablanca this weekend in your memory. Here’s looking at you kid. . . .”

Hello, Class of 1992!

My desperate plea for class notes material brought on a flood of responses. So much, in fact, that I have more news than I can fit into the 800-word limit of a single column. So, if your update did not make into this set of notes, fear not, you will have prominent placement in the next edition!

My old housemate Simon Fulford continues to live in Portland, Oregon, where he has been the executive director of a child-and-family-serving nonprofit. Last October they broke ground on a $25 million youth residential treatment campus—Oregon ranks pretty much worst in the nation for addiction and recovery services for kids and adults. Simon’s two youngest sons are seventh and tenth graders, providing all the joys and challenges that come with that. His eldest, now 21, currently lives in Buenos Aires.

Dr. John “Juan” Luque is a full professor at Florida A&M University, in public health in Tallahassee, Florida. He was recently elected president of the American Association for Cancer Education. He spends his free time playing tennis in USTA league and defended his title in the annual local mixed doubles Sweetheart Tournament in February. He is also training his elementary school-age daughter in tennis so he can have a second career as a coach.

Cathy Keane continues to live in St. Louis where she has been teaching classics at Washington University since 2001.

This year Sara (Davidson) Flanders opened a yoga studio in Providence, Rhode Island, where she lives with her husband and 10-year-old kiddo. It’s the first yoga studio in Rhode Island that’s donation based with a majority of teachers of color and teachers in the LQBTQ community.

Dan Wulf recently musically directed Working for the third time (all three versions) for his 27th Watertown (Massachusetts) High School musical. Dan also conducts the Boston chapter of HaZamir, an international Jewish choir, and crossed paths with Allison (Wienir) Wissot ’93 at the annual festival performance weekend.

Valerie Nozick was recently promoted to chief commercial officer at Europcar Mobility Group USA/Fox Rent a Car. Last fall she joined Fox to establish the sales and marketing group and to get back to the travel industry. When not traveling, she spends her time at home in Seattle with her husband, Dan, and their spoiled dog, Geoffrey.

Kathryn Berlá was inspired by her experience with our 2022 30th Reunion and continues to see Wes folk. She was happy to connect with John Melnick and Hal Skinner (and their children) visiting NYC in December, and then again with Hal and Jonathan Liebson in February on another quick trip to the city.

Sam Ernst is living in the Berkshires, teaching middle school, and emptying the nest of his three collegiate children. Sam recently finished a tour of the last dregs of the ski season, along with the eclipse, in northern Vermont and New Hampshire: Magic, Sugarbush, Stowe, Bolton Valley, Mad River, and Tuckerman’s. The trip left him pining for a reunion of the Wes ski team, so be sure to get in touch with Sam if you find yourself in New England.

Matt Wein is now leading corporate law and compliance at Bay Area-based gene-editing biotech Metagenomi, which just completed a successful IPO in February. He’s residing in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, and splitting his time between San Francisco and Boston.

Jen Mittelstadt reports that she and her husband, Aaron Matthews ’93, were thrilled be back on campus this year to drop off their son, Lucas Matthews, as a Wes frosh. She’s a professor of history at Rutgers University and Aaron is a documentary filmmaker. They live in Brooklyn with their daughter, Adelaide, who will be applying to college next year. 

Darcy Dennett is on hiatus from TV production, working on a corporate project for JPMorgan Chase & Co. She just ran the NYC Half, albeit it somewhat slowly in an effort to get into better shape for the Brooklyn Half in May. 

Rick Barot’s fifth book of poems, Moving the Bones, will be published in October 2024. He’s been a visiting writer at the University of Utah this year but will soon be back at his regular gig, directing the MFA program in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

That’s all for now. But even though I have some extra news for the next column, I’m always looking for your updates, so please continue to send me your news—I would especially love to hear from you if it’s been a while since you last checked in. Your classmates want to know what you are up to!

Dear fellow ’92ers,

I bring you news from our class!

Deb Lack reports that her younger daughter, Lane Daniels, will be attending Wesleyan in the fall, as part of the Class of ’28, intending to study political science, history, and theater. Currently at Wesleyan is Byron King’s daughter, Meriwether ’27, who has settled in and is making great friends, which Byron saw with his own eyes at Homecoming and Family Weekend this fall. Also there was Chris Chesak, who was voted onto the 1990s All-Decade Football Team and who got to catch up with his old teammates.

Edoardo Ballerini was back on campus last semester, teaching a guest course on narration and the spoken word in the Shapiro Center for Writing. In December he did a live reading for students from his Audible Original, The Angel of Rome, cocreated with best-selling author Jess Walter, a fictionalized version of his summer in Italy after graduation.

Another visitor to New England was Nancy McLoughlin, who was grateful that she was able to race in the Head of the Charles last fall among beautiful foliage—it brought back so many wonderful memories of rowing for Wesleyan.

Lisa Liang took a break from novel writing to produce a short film with her sister, which is currently making the rounds at festivals. On the personal front, her youngest heads off to college this year.

Jeffrey Kipnis reports that he and Jennie Van Cleef spent an amazing nine days together marauding across southern New Mexico and southwest Texas. 

Moving abroad, Dan Fortmann was recruited by Lufthansa at Munich Airport in June and is now a “passenger service professional debutante” in the aviation industry at Germany’s number two airport. 

Jill Slater started a new position as leader of the (Climate) Resiliency Team at the New York City Housing Authority. Jill continues to live in Manhattan’s financial district with her husband and their 10-year-old daughter. Fellow New Yorker Eric Leach-Rodriguez lives with his husband of 11 years and, on behalf of a childhood friend, became a living kidney donor last year. And on the Upper West Side is Darcy Dennett. She is working on a short film on the 100th Anniversary of the People’s Forest in Connecticut over the course of this year. In her free time, she is renovating a very old house, about one hour northeast of Wesleyan, getting back to running while still swimming laps, and did her first super minitriathlon this past summer.

Jody Sperling also lives in NYC, where her daughter is in seventh grade. She still dances, choreographs, and directs her company, Time Lapse Dance. Since the pandemic, she’s been an eco-artist-in-residence at the New Society for Ethical Culture. Jody and the company were featured in the documentary Obsessed with Light, which had its world premiere at the 2023 Rome Film Fest.

Another tristate resident is Kate Edwards, who lives in Pennington, New Jersey, and continues to work at Datacolor, which makes instruments that measure color. Her kids are getting ready to fly the nest—Iris is a high school senior and Nick is a sophomore.

Ty Jagerson continues to live in the Bay Area, now working at General Motors running their V2X program, building the business around using plugged-in EVs to power homes, businesses, and the grid.

Also on the West Coast is Ola Green, who relocated to Los Angeles and has been working in documentaries as an executive for Netflix since 2019. He is proud to have worked on award-winning films with Beyoncé (Homecoming), the Obamas (American Factory), and Questlove (Descendant).

Rounding up the news is an update from Maria Rosa Truglio, who works at Penn State as professor of Italian and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, and is working on Italian children’s literature. She got married in 2021 up in New Hampshire to Greg Fox. Her son, Thomas, is finishing up his residency in medicine at Dartmouth, and her other son, Anthony, has been teaching in the linguistics program at Penn State.

That’s all the news for now. Hope to hear from you all soon!

Hello fellow ’92ers!

Normally I am simply the conduit of information but this time, I have a bunch of news of my own to kick us off. In August, Princeton University Press published my new book, Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It. I’ve been working on this project since the early months of the first Obama administration so I’m thrilled (and relieved!) to finally see it off in the world. Also in August, I dropped my son Ben off at the University of Virginia where he is starting his first year. Just before I did, I had dinner with Matt Schortmann and Soo Lim whose daughter, Liv, is about to start her last year at UVA. It was great to see them and my fellow Itza Pizza alums Sarah Guernsey and Adam Blumer ’91, who all live in the Boston area.

I’ve got a lot of company in taking the college step, judging from my Facebook feed. Christina Scully Manning dropped her son off at Pomona College, Samantha Ball Karmel dropped her son off at Cornell, and my first-year roommate James Wilton dropped off his youngest daughter, Lola, at NC State. Lola joins her older sister Carley who is a junior education major. She just missed overlapping with her older brother Jack, who graduated from NC State this year and accepted a leadership development position in Orlando, Florida, with Colony Hardware. Now an empty nester, James remains in Waxhaw, North Carolina, and earlier this year added the title of branch manager to his duties as national account manager for Genesis10 in Charlotte, North Carolina. And he was named head coach for the Weddington (North Carolina) Middle School sixth grade football team for this coming season.

Also on the college front, Chris Chesak’s older daughter is off to Ohio State. Chris continues to live in Cincinnati and is a freelance writer and executive director of the Outdoor Writers Association of America. He was also just elected president-elect of the Society of American Travel Writers.

We also have a few classmates who are sending their kids to Wesleyan, 35(!) years after we started. Laura Hill’s daughter, Allegra, is joining the class of 2027, as is Byron King’s daughter, Merriwether. Bryon also reports that he recently attended the wedding of Julien Farland. In attendance from were Saad Khan ’93 and Anand Kini.

Cati Coe and her spouse moved from Philadelphia to Ottawa, Ontario, last year to take a position at Carleton University as a Canada research chair in migration and care.

Ken Lefkowitz is keeping busy co-developing an 80MW wind farm near the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria. Jennifer Blaine is still based out of Philadelphia and launched a new solo multi-character work, Mannequin, in May 2023. She also continues to work as a comedian and produced a new show in September in FringeArts, a festival based out of Philadelphia.

Kevin Prufer is still teaching in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston and has two books coming out soon. The Fears, a poetry collection, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2023, followed by Sleepaway: A Novel, from Acre Books in 2024.  Another recent author is Susannah Fox whose book, Rebel Health: A Field Guide to the Patient-Led Revolution in Medical Care is coming out this fall with MIT Press.

Jill Slater lives in Manhattan with her husband and nine-year-old daughter and leads Resiliency for the New York City Housing Authority.

And finally, Abby (Smith) Saguy will be spending the 2023–24 academic year in NYC as a Russell Sage Foundation fellow, living with her husband, Dotan. They are hoping for visits from their daughter, Claire, who will be in her senior year at UCLA, where she is majoring in labor studies and minoring in Spanish and food studies, as well as their son, Jonah, who will be in his second year at UC Riverside, where he is majoring in computer science with business application. And tying into Abby’s news is my last piece of news: I’ll be joining Abby at Russell Sage in February 2024 for five months, marking my return to Manhattan after over 30 years away. I’ll be excited to see my old friends, so give me a ring if you are in NYC!

That’s all for now. Please send me your news and notes for the next issue!

Please write to your class secretary.

Hi all: So great to see so many of you at Reunion this last May! Hope to catch up with more of you soon. In the meantime, here’s the news.

Susannah Fox and Eric Halperin report that they dropped their child Rain off at Butterfield this fall as a frosh at Wesleyan. Also joining the ranks of Wesleyan parents is Karen Earl whose daughter started at Wes this year. Karen is an endocrinologist in San Francisco. Her oldest will graduate from the University of Chicago next June and she also has a  middle schooler.

Brennen Keefe was sad to miss our 30th Reunion but was able to meet up with his old teammate Jonathan Soros this summer when Jonathan was in Chicago, managing operations of his Athletes Unlimited softball league.

Chris Chesak made the trip back to Wes for Homecoming where the Cardinals secured another Little Three Championship by beating Williams. Chris reports that it was great to reconnect with old teammates (Jason DeGeorge ’94 and Mike Flynn ’93), classmates (Karen Cacace), and meet others who had played football at Wes before (and after) him.

In other sports news, Tony Brita reports that the 1991 men’s soccer team was inducted into the Wesleyan Athletics Hall of Fame at the “swanky and opulent” Courtyard Marriott in Cromwell, Connecticut, on Saturday, October 1. The class of ’92 was represented by Tony as well as Odi Kuiper and Pete Doolittle. Another teammate, Vizir Ajro ’93 was also in attendance.

Ruthbea Yesner continues her job leading a team of researchers and advisors around implementing meaningful tech innovations in the public sector, with her specialization being urban areas. Most recently she spoke on a panel at the World Smart Cities Expo in Barcelona and collaborated with the World Economic Forum on a paper on developing public/private partnerships in smart cities. She reports that family life is good, too, with one stepdaughter in nursing at UMass, and three more teens in the process of finishing high school. Ruthbea managed to see a whole mess of ’92ers this fall. She met up with Karen Cacace and her husband Mike Flynn ’93 to see her whole extended family for a high school football game. She also had a great time over cocktails with Jonathan Soros in NYC, where she learned about how he is working to change the entire women’s sports industry; bumped into Katherine Petrecca at the airport as she headed to a conference for women leaders in the sports industry; and recently kept Dave Kane company while he drove to his newish home in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, after relocating from NYC.

Brian Cheek has started a new career as a golf professional. He was in Hilton Head, Bandon Dunes, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, last year but just moved to the Atlanta area to be the player development professional at Planterra Club.

Amy Larson is still living in Portland, Oregon, practicing law with a medium-size firm, and doing her best to keep up with her dynamic eight-year-old and three-year-old sons. She’d love to reconnect long-lost Wes classmates including Foss 7 dorm mates so reach out to her!

Also out west in Ty Jagerson, who joined GM last year to run the V2X team, which is the part of GM’s EV group building out new businesses around smart charging and VGI.

Maria Truglio is at Penn State, where she is a professor of Italian and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her son Thomas graduated from Drexel Medical School in the midst of the pandemic and is now a second-year resident in medicine at Dartmouth. Her son Anthony has been teaching with the linguistics program at Penn State. And Maria and her partner Greg Fox got married in July 2021 up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Several of Maria’s Wesleyan pals were able to join to make the day extra special!

Chris Arndt is still living in Telluride, Colorado. His sons Alden (13) and Graham (11) seem to enjoy school, and love playing lacrosse and basketball, and skiing. Chris continues to work to accelerate clean-energy politics and policy. His wife Patty is also well and has just started an as-of-yet unnamed interior design firm. Chris also continues to write and record music, inspired by his experience recording Baggage Claim songs from his college years as the Lost Bags album—check it out under the under Doc Project.

Grant Brenner remains in the East Village in New York City. On the professional front, the company he co-founded, Neighborhood Psychiatry and Wellness, merged with another group and Grant is now chief medical officer of The Collective—Integrated Behavioral Health. Also in New York, Kevin Day continues to live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and is telecommuting to his new job as VP of Portfolio Management at Conifer Realty, an affordable housing developer based in Rochester New York.

Chadwick Canedy welcomed a new baby girl on November 10th, Arden Haneul Canedy. She is currently doted over by brothers Easton (five) and Declan (seven).

Jeff Kipnis has released his third Lightning Squirrel novel and ninth overall publication this past July, titled the Legend of Lightning Squirrel and is book 1 of The Bolt Saga. Jeff also reports the sad news that his wife Nancy passed away on August 7, after a 20-month battle with cancer. She leaves behind their son Jack, who is 22 and is studying meteorology and psychology at Rutgers University, and their daughter Jenna, who is 19 and is studying health and exercise science at Middlesex College.

That’s all for now. Please send me your news—I would especially love to hear from you if it’s been a while since you last checked in. Your classmates want to know what you are up to!

Greetings and salutations from just outside D.C.

I’ll start this edition down in North Carolina with an update from James Wilton, national account manager and managing director for Genesis10. The former WESU DJ and campus heartthrob is a volunteer coach for football and wrestling. He sends word that his eldest son Jack is a senior at North Carolina State studying business; older daughter Carley is also at North Carolina State working toward a degree in elementary education; and his younger daughter Lola is a senior in high school. Wife Tracy is in her fifth year as a teaching assistant for exceptional preschool students.

On the other side of the world, Kristin Elisabeth Sandvik Lush sends word from New Zealand where she is working as an academic editor and “soaking in the homeyness of home and enduring the teenageyness of my kids as we travel around, have little adventures, and spend time with extended family and friends.” Kristen returned to the U.S. this fall for a balloon festival in New Mexico and visits to National Parks and the upper Northwest.”

It was fun to see the class of ’92 well represented at this year’s Emmy Awards. Francesca Harewood, senior vice president, Business Affairs at NBCUniversal, posted great pictures of her with Mike White who won multiple Emmy Awards for writing and directing The White Lotus. Meredith Tucker also won this year for her role in casting The White Lotus. Besides winning for being an excellent cook on short notice according to Oliver Ryan, Meredith now owns four Emmys and Mike has three. Not too shabby class of ’92!

Of course, an even better place to see the class of ’92 was at the 30th Reunion in May. It was wonderful to be back on campus and spend time with classmates. There were plenty of drinks, stories, songs, dancing, and lots of joy catching up with friends and remembering how special our time at Wesleyan was. The other fun thing about writing notes after reunion is I get to say, “it was great to see” and I’ll lead off by saying it was great to see Soo Lim on campus. Soo, visiting career services advisor at Boston College Law School and Matt Schortmann, vice president, and head of Institutional Product & Strategy at Columbia Threadneedle Asset Management, recently celebrated their 26th anniversary. With their two daughters—Liv a sophomore at UVA and Sophia a senior at Northeastern—in college, the empty nesters have recently discovered a love for TV tray tables, Wheel of Fortune, and Jeopardy as they plan their next adventures.

It was also great to see Oliver Ryan. Oliver continues to live a highly suspect entrepreneurial life as founder and CEO of Count.It, a tech start-up that powers wellness challenges for groups, mostly companies. Oliver sends updates on a number of classmates. “I had a great time catching up with everyone at the reunion, and road-tripping back to NYC with Sam Robinson, whose daughter Bella just started at Vassar. In the summertime, I share an old barn on Long Island with various Wes friends, including Meredith Tucker, Kris Rucker, and Lewis Canfield ’90. Kris is a partner at a chic creative agency in New York, runs the National Air Guitar Championships, and is launching a new tech business in his spare time. When not tending his garden in Williamsburg, Lewis has thrown himself into renovating a magical warehouse in Vermont. Over July 4th, Brian Wolff came for a visit with wife Francesca and kids Ellington and Rosie. That weekend we also had a surprise visit from Jacky Jennings, husband Doug Bothner ’91, and friends. We all sang the Wesleyan fight song. Ok, no, we didn’t, but only because Mark Mullen ’89 wasn’t there. Lewis and I are also in a band with Ben Rader called The Classic, which is anything but. Ben is the one who made the important point that you don’t need to be good (or young) to be in a band. Speaking of musicians, I saw Chris Arndt over the summer at the annual kids versus parents capture the flag game. Let it be known that the parents won. Again. Probably for the last time.”

And it was great to see Ruthbea Yesner, vice president, Government Insights, Education and Smart Cities at IDC. She sent in an update that she “loves her job, which has grown in scope from urban technology and smart cities, to police and justice, transportation, and water and sustainability. I work with tech vendors and state and local governments to adopt new technologies to make the world more livable.” I had a great time at the reunion and just felt transported back in time. I had the pleasure of driving down with Katherine Petrecca, who now runs the women’s division at New Balance, and I drove Matt Young and Adam Berinsky back to Boston. Last thought—there were too many people to name at the reunion that were an absolute joy to talk with. But shout-out to all of them! I’m lucky to have been able to spend formative years with such an amazing bunch.”

And it was great to see Neal Klinman back on campus for the first time in 20 years. “I’ve been wanting to reach out since attending our 30th Reunion this spring. I really enjoyed what was my first return to Wesleyan and Middletown since our 10th Reunion. I enjoyed a hot solo afternoon exploring by bicycle, and I took many photos of favorite places such as the Butterfield courtyard that I crisscrossed for three years and multiple summers, the boathouse and riverfront, downtown, the amazing arts center complex with its active gallery, printshop, and architecture studio, the cemetery where I built character running hills with the crew team, the ‘presence of the absence’ of MoCon, etc.” Neal has been teaching at the same public school in Cambridge where he has taught since 1999. He and his wife Debb live on the shore of the beautiful Chandler Pond with their three crazy but talented teens, two dogs, a secondhand canoe, and a garage full of bikes.

And it was great to see my old hallmate Sam Longley. Foss 7 was well represented this year. He writes, “Hi, fellow 1992ers! It was great to emerge from my ‘COVID shell’ to see so many folks during our reunion. I have been working as a technical sales engineer at Neo4j, which is the first company to bring a graph database to the commercial market (does anyone remember graph theory from math class?). My son Winston is a tween sixth-grader, and enjoys the cross-country team, all things Star Wars, and playing online games with his friends. My daughter Charlotte has hit the 10th grade with a running start, and has found, in volleyball, a rewarding activity and group of friends. She got to experience a night in the Clark dorm during the reunion and enjoyed that experience. My wonderful wife, Grace, has been doing double duty—taking care of the whole lot of us as well as working at our nearby school system.”

And finally, it was great to see my fellow class officer Teresa Ho, managing director at JP Morgan Asset Management. She adds that Karen Earle’s daughter is now a first-year at Wesleyan. Karen is an endocrinologist at Sutter Health. Really there were a lot more people I can say it was great to see—Jane Thompson, Jake Wizner, Adam Berinsky, and Rob Rich among many others but I have to stop somewhere.

Speaking of stopping. This year marks my 30th year of writing the class notes. To borrow a phrase from Bilbo Baggins, 30 years is far too short a time to write about such excellent friends and classmates as you, but it’s time for me to announce this is the end of my stint as class secretary. It was a ton of fun to plan all the senior-year social events with Bill Siegel, Teresa Ho, and Shalei Simms Pilgrim, and I have loved keeping up to date with everyone through the notes, but I am passing the baton. You are now in the good hands of Adam Berinsky who now has logged at least 20 as co-secretary and perhaps you. More to follow on how we backfill as Adam is looking for someone to share the duty.

All the best,

Paul