Alumni at Large 1960s Waterville, but I am looking for a similar position in the Boston area. A wedding picture is available on the Web (www2.thomas.edu/faculty/ easton/).” . . . Liz (Drinkwine ’68) and Ted Houghton planned to spend the cold winter months in their RV near the beaches of Florida. Their twins continue to increase the grandchildren count with the birth of Kate’s third child in August 2003 and Geoff’s wife expecting a fourth child last December. Ted and Liz are very glad to have their home base condo (in Sturbridge, Mass.) near their New England families. Ted’s health continues to be good after a cancer episode three years ago. . . . The highlight of the summer of 2003 for Janna Vaughan Kasarjian, of Mahwah, N.J., was the June wedding
of her daughter in Janna’s childhood hometown of Wolfeboro, N.H. The wedding was held in the church where Janna’s dad had been the organist. Janna continues to teach English as a second language to pre-K through 12th graders in W. Milford Township, N.J., where she is the ESL director for the entire school district. With one daughter in New Hampshire, Janna can enjoy summer visits with her while having her other daughter nearby in Manhattan. . . . Good to have an e-mail update from Dennis Maguire of Boston. His daughter Elisabeth ’05 is at Colby and loves every minute so far. Dennis reconnected with Mike Clivner recently via e-mail, and he and Lee Oestreicher got together after a gap of 33 years.
He writes, “Neither of us has changed a bit—except that we both managed to marry way above our station. . . . Lee and I spent an evening recently with my visiting London cousin, with whom Lee and I stayed during the week of Churchill’s funeral in January 1965 at the end of our Jan Plan trip to Edinburgh and London.” . . . It’s great to hear of classmates reconnecting after many years. Is it a phenomenon of our “maturing” years, perhaps? Please “reconnect” with me by sending your news. E-mail makes it so easy—use the classnews1966@alum.colby.edu address (it gets forwarded directly to me) or use my personal address, megfwheeler@yahoo.com. I love hearing from you! —Meg Fallon Wheeler
67
As we write, the first snowy and icy day has paralyzed Route 128 in Boston. When you read this, of course, the crocuses will be pushing up in the gardens. . . . Michel and Pam Cooper Picher recently bought a house situated in the Gatineau hills, near Ottawa, on a country lot overlooking the Gatineau River. They will move their arbitration practice from Toronto to Ottawa over the next year and plan to take more time for more important things like golf and skiing. On their first stay in the new house, their neighborhood welcome package included a folder on “How to Co-Exist With the Black Bear!” They say the black bear is welcome to the master bedroom, they’ll take the couch. . . .
ted bromfield ’68
Law of the Land
The first inkling Ted Bromfield ’68 had that his future might lie somewhere other than Maine was when, during his senior year investigation of graduate schools, he came across a photo of a sunny beach, palm trees waving, blue sky beckoning in the background. It was a typical January in Waterville, and the photo was of the California Western School of Law campus in San Diego. The Kittery Point native, who had graduated from Traip Academy in Kittery and never traveled far, was intrigued. Though he also was admitted to law schools at Boston University, Boston College and Harvard, Cal Western made an attractive offer. Bromfield went west. He’s never found reason to move. Right out of law school, he was hired by the San Diego city attorney’s office, where he worked his way up to senior deputy city attorney, the top non-elective position in the office. Bromfield heads the environmental division, a big deal in a sprawling city of 1.3 million—exactly the same population as Maine, he notes. San Diego lies between the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Quinaca Mountains 30 miles to the east. Tijuana, Mexico, is to the south. “It’s an absolutely gorgeous place,” he said. Bromfield got his start just like the other 130 lawyers working for the city, prosecuting traffic cases and drunken-driving offenses. “In private practice, you might have to wait years for your first jury trial. Here, I faced a jury my first day on the job,” he said. The environmental division proved a good place for a rising young lawyer to make his mark. Under the landmark federal Clean Water Act of 1972, written by Sen. Edmund Muskie, San Diego, like all large municipalities, was required to treat sewage to federal standards. San Diego believed it could comply with the law more efficiently and cheaply, and Bromfield was in charge of guiding the city’s mammoth lawsuit against EPA through the federal court system. The litigation lasted from 44 | C O L B Y • S P R I N G
2004
1988 to 1995, but San Diego emerged with its own National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit. That saved the city an estimated $4 billion in construction costs. Not that environmental compliance has been a routine matter. Tijuana shares the same ecosystem, and it has taken an international commission to sort out the conflicting national legal and political systems. One result: a giant treatment plant built right on the border. While impressive, the plant is still inadequate for Mexico’s demands, “but the water is much better than it was,” Bromfield said. “You have to understand that it’s a different world there.” While San Diego’s millionplus population is well documented, “Tijuana has never had an accurate census. We have no idea how many people live there.” This year has been a particularly challenging one in San Diego. In September, three city councilors were indicted on federal corruption charges (the city attorney’s office is independent and uninvolved), and in October devastating wildfires struck the county’s eastern reaches. Bromfield had decided earlier that it was time to move on and told his boss that he plans to leave following completion of an intricate piece of litigation pending in court. He has no particular plans beyond hanging out his own shingle and, perhaps, anticipating retirement. He has raised a daughter, who lives in San Diego and is the executive director of a nonprofit agency. “She’s very politically involved,” he said admiringly. She tried working in Washington, “but she couldn’t stand the summers” and soon returned to California. In the meantime, there’s more work to be done. “After thirty-two years on the job, you think you’ve seen it all, but it’s not so,” Bromfield said. “There’s a new challenge almost every day.”