Assn.... After Amanda Bellino married UVM grad Luke Owen in June on Peaks Island (joined by 20 Batesies) they honeymooned on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. They’re now at home in Cambridge, Mass., and Amanda works in human resources at State Street and recently completed a master’s in human resource education at Boston Univ. She is also training for her fifth marathon, in November in Philadelphia.... Joisan Decker married Rob DeHaan last summer in Stetson Chapel at Kalamazoo College, where her parents are alumni and she now works. But Joisan and Rob, both natives of Kalamazoo, didn’t exactly rush into it. “In total, Rob and I dated 10 years, off and on, before marrying,” she reports. “I met him the summer before my sophomore year at Bates, and we’d date each summer but break up when I returned to Bates. We started dating again when I was in grad school at Tufts then living in New York and he continued to live in Kalamazoo. In 2009, we bought a house together outside Kalamazoo, he proposed, and a year later we were married.” Batesies at the wedding kept good friend Suzi Andrew South ’04, at home with her new baby, “up to date with texts and pictures of the ceremony via phone.” See their wedding photo in this issue.... The St. Petersburg Times chronicled the “adventurous engagement” of Stetson Univ. law student Suzie Eldridge and environmental photojournalist Carlton Ward Jr. “A mutual friend introduced them, seeing how they saw the Big Picture, from the fragility of the ecosystem to the frailty of humanity,” the Times said. Suzie, who helped start two nonprofits that focus on emotional health issues in young women, is now the managing director of the Univ. of South Florida Hope House for Eating Disorders. She and Carlton, whose work supports nature conservancy projects, met at a charity benefit in 2007. Traveling together to Brazil, the Bahamas, and Cuba stretched and strengthened their friendship. He proposed in Thailand after they surfed on Nai Harn Beach, giving her a ring from his surfboard shorts pocket. “I turned to my right and he’s in a foot of water, on his knee. I still can’t stop smiling,” she said. They were married June 5, 2010, in Tampa, Fla.... Brent Jarkowski was training for his fifth marathon, slated for October in Toronto. By now he expects he’ll have another great run behind him!... Mike Masi took over as head coach of the boys soccer team at York High School this season. A 1999 York graduate who played soccer at Bates, he was the second of three Masi brothers who excelled at York and later played soccer in college. “I’ve had my eye on this for a while, so I was happy to get it,” Mike told Seacoastonline.com. Previously he was a volunteer assistant to the boys soccer teams at Oyster River High School, where he teaches physical science and astronomy.... Kirstin McCarthy’s new position as an education and development specialist at DevTech Systems Inc. took her to Ghana and Colombia this past summer to work on USAID projects. In September she completed her fifth Olympic-distance triathalon at the Nation’s Triathlon in DC. Other Batesies competing included Tom Sheridan, Michael Jensen ’01, and Gudrun Mirick ’01.... Congrats to Rick Morrill, the new resource manager for Baxter State Park. He’ll manage the park’s Scientific Forest Management Area located in the northwest corner of the park. At 29,587 acres, the area is actively managed to demonstrate exemplary and sustainable forest management. Rick has a master’s in forestry from UMaine–Orono. He’s a member of the Society of American Foresters and serves on the board of directors of The Forest Guild.
04 l reunion 2014, June 6–8 l
Class Co-Presidents: Eduardo Crespo, Apt. 714, 33 Gold St., New York NY 10038, ecrespo@alumni .bates.edu; Tanya M.L. Schwartz, Unit 612, 1225 13th St. NW, Washington DC 20005, tanyaschwartz@alumni.bates.edu Abigail Adams and Robert Graves were married in September 2010 on Martha’s Vineyard. Abby works
Jesse Reich ’01
A Misfire for Biodiesel Entrepreneurs sometimes strike it rich. Other times, says Jesse Reich ’01, “you get hosed.” Reich is talking about the biodiesel business in Massachusetts and the situation facing his startup, Baystate Biofuels, the state’s first fullscale commercial facility dedicated to biodiesel distribution. When the North Andover company went online in 2009, Massachusetts was fired up about biofuel. A federal $1 per gallon tax credit was spurring biodiesel production nationally, and Massachusetts had passed a law mandating a biodiesel blend for home-heating fuel. “It was beautiful,” Reich recalls. “The first three months we had well over $1 million in sales. We were just flying.” The business got rave reviews for using the existing infrastructure of a massive, shuttered telecom manufacturing plant, with the firm retrofitting large tanks once used to store fuel oil. “We didn’t kill a tree” to create the green Baystate Biofuels facility, he says. The beautiful situation turned beastly last winter. First, Congress allowed the federal biodiesel tax credit to expire — sort of. Then, in July, Massachusetts regulators, after waffling on implementing the state biodiesel mandate, decided not to implement it at all.
as a director of marketing for Market Platform Dynamics, a consulting firm based in Boston. Robert, a chartered financial analyst, is a vice president for Columbia Management in Boston.... Timothy Cooke, wife Sita, and daughter Sibel moved last summer to Stuttgart, Germany, where he works as the academic coordinator for the Defense Department’s U.S. European Command.... Carrie Curtis began her master’s of music education degree at the Univ. of Northern Colorado in Greeley. She misses the mountain lifestyle of Vail but is excited to be moving in a new direction.... Leslie Shages is in her second year in BU’s graduate business program. She went to Senegal last summer to do business development consulting with the West Africa Trade Hub.... A Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist profiled a group of young “Cleveland believers,” including Graham Veysey, who are “bright, energetic, and committed young people — people who not only love this city, but are obsessed with making it better.” Dubbed the Cleveland Coalition, the nine young leaders have
By H. Jay Burns “Losing the federal tax credit in itself isn’t so bad,” Reich says. What’s bad is that Congress hasn’t killed it completely, and the resulting uncertainty is killing Reich’s company. He explains: Oil companies are mandated by the federal government to use biofuels alongside conventional fuels. One way they can get credit for compliance, besides purchasing biofuels, is by purchasing a credit known as a Renewable Identification Number. And who sells these credits? Yup, companies like Baystate Biofuels. “We can sell RIN as well as fuel to make a profit,” Reich says. But right now, Baystate Biofuels faces a ludicrous, heads-I-win, tails-you-lose situation. Because oil companies believe that the biodiesel tax credit might come back, they’re not buying RINs. Nor is anyone buying much biodiesel, since biodiesel without the dollar-a-gallon credit isn’t competitive with petrodiesel. “Our business model works whether the tax credit is or isn’t in place — but not when there’s regulatory uncertainty,” Reich says. Reich, a Bates chemistry major who earned a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Texas A&M, got his biodiesel idea after working in sustainable product development for chemical company BASF. “We looked for sustainable products where the cost is the same [as an unsustainable product] but where the environmental footprint is less. Then it’s a beautiful product.” Reich and his wife, Alene Wilmoth Reich ’02, live in Ayer with their daughter. When not running BayState Biofuels, he teaches at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. “If Baystate Biofuels fails, we’ll move on,” Reich says, “and figure other ways to support the environment and create a better future for our family, friends, and community.”
begun “sharing ideas to make Cleveland better,” wrote columnist Brent Larkin. “The Cleveland Coalition is no social club. The only entrance requirement is a willingness to act and a burning desire to make Cleveland a better place.” Graham, who grew up in Shaker Heights, now owns his own media company, North Water Partners. He’s “passionate,” wrote Larkin, about his work on a six-acre urban farm on the near West Side, where “we can walk that produce to the West Side Market.”
05 l reunion 2015, June 12–14 l
Class Co-Presidents: Lawrence J. Handerhan, 3915 23rd St., San Francisco CA 94114, larry.handerhan@ gmail.com; Sarah K. Neukom, 78 Westland Ave., 307, Boston MA 02115, sneukom@alumni.bates.edu Marselle Alexander-Ozinskas now works as a foundations grant-writer for Ceres, a sustainability nonprofit in Boston. She and her boyfriend moved W I N TER 2011 Bates 45