Class Notes
BB&N lost one of its distinguished and dedicated alumni when Arnie Singal, Class of 1954, passed away on January 22, 2017. Arnie was an excellent student, athlete, and friend to many of us. He was an outstanding soccer goalie and basketball player and was captain of both teams in his senior year. The basketball team in 1954 won the New England Private School Class B Championship. He had a lifelong interest in education, community service, and helping and mentoring young people. Arnie graduated from Harvard College, Yale Law School, and Sloan School (MIT). He and his wife, Ann, founded and operated, for many years, Exploration School, a nonprofit summer program for students in high school, junior high school, and younger. The Program attracted students nationwide and internationally and continues to thrive today.
He was instrumental in the advancement of the BB&N Annual Fund and served with distinction of the School’s Board of Trustees. He had many outside interests, including a lifelong interest in basketball, and coached the MIT freshman and several high school teams, including BB&N.
what life will be like for folks in the 2040s, ’60s, and ’80s, from agricultural breakdown to massive migration. You can visit her website, kittybeer.net, and her blog, planetprospect.blogspot.com.
Arnie had many lasting friendships, which he developed over the years, including several of which he established through his BB&N connections.
Buckingham
He will be missed by all of us.
1956
Class Secretary: Eleanor (Littlefield) Hunter 207-420-7462
Browne & Nichols
Buckingham
Class Secretary: John T. Giblin 802-382-9586 tomg@sover.net
Kitty Beer’s third novel, The Hampshire Project, about climate change, is scheduled for publication in April. It’s the last in Resilience: A Trilogy of Climate Chaos. The novels are available in bookstores, libraries, and on Amazon. They explore
Wm. Evan Nelson (Cambridge, MA) writes, “I visited an old Buckingham friend of my late sister, Elizabeth Burr Nelson ’46, during the Cambridge Homes annual Christmas party. There I met numerous Buckingham and Browne & Nichols alumni/ae who were either residents or otherwise associated with this wonderful facility for the elderly. It was quite a party with jolly music and good food. During
1955
Class Secretary: Susan (Harwich) Pollock 781-862-4768 suhpol59@gmail.com
1957
Christmas itself, I saw my brother George Anthony ’57 and some 26 members of my loving and congenial extended family, who all met at my niece’s house on the North Shore. I also received news that I am again a great-great-uncle, this time to a little chap called Isidoro Korpi.
60th Reunion
Buckingham
Class Secretary: Joan P. (Floe) Holdgate 508-228-2680 theislander@comcast.net
“I contemplate whether I will be fit enough to coach the soccer goalkeepers at Boston Latin School again this fall. I have been doing so for 10 years now with great pleasure. Though entering my eighth decade in the fall, I shall hope for the best. Fortunately, the staff seem keen on having me back.
Beth Hale Sommerlad and Cary Greenberg ’75 enjoyed getting together again when Cary returned to Berlin for a visit in September 2016. In the photo that Beth sent [see below], please note the “living wall” behind them in the café.
“Meanwhile, I attend Boston Chamber Music Society concerts with my old B&N history teacher, John Brisbois, and have lunch about once a month with him and a few old school mates. I continue to work three days a week at Bob Slate Stationery in Brattle Square. In my spare time I exercise, go to doctors’ appointments, watch Masterpiece Theater, and read. I’ve read by now all the novels of Dickens, Trollope (my favorite), and Sir Walter Scott. I’m presently reading biographies of the Duke of Wellington—stirring stuff.”
Class Secretary: Mark B. DeVoto 781-395-1872 mdevoto@granite.tufts.edu
Browne & Nichols
1958
Buckingham
Lydia Thayer (Arlington, MA) writes, “My life partner, George Swanson, is now living in Sunrise of Arlington Senior Living. The chronic pain he is in because of avascular necrosis is moderated by numerous pain
WANT TO DOUBLE
THE IMPACT OF YOUR GIFT?
Class Secretary: Charles F. Woodard, Jr. 781-749-4693 charleswoodard@verizon.net
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PICTURED x 1 x The Hampshire Project, by Kitty Beer ’55 x 2 x Cary Greenberg ’75 and Beth Hale Sommerlad ’57 in a Berlin café, with a living wall behind them
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“In May of 2014, I had my necrotic, osteomyelitic lower left jawbone replaced by part of my healthy left fibula, and some veins from my left leg. Finally, in June 2016, after a number of surgeries, I had four successful dental implants in my lower left fibula-jawbone. (I’m still a lisp of my former self, and I don’t tell any fibulas). My facial infrastructure, now supported, is much to be thankful for. I’m beginning to get out more now that George is well taken care of. A massage therapist regularly helps me with my back problems stemming from numerous injuries, the last one my being hit by a car when crossing a street in Lexington in 2004. Thank goodness I have good bone density due to regular weightlifting, and calcium, magnesium, and zinc. Cindy Hersum Radue came to visit last November. We had a nice reunion with some old friends including Pat Murray Nagano and Cathy Holst Levine. Cindy and I go back to 4th grade at Buckingham.”
Browne & Nichols
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medications. Because George has difficulty walking and cannot do stairs, plus the fact that he has a very complicated medicine regime, we felt George could be more independent at Sunrise. There are too many stairs just to get into my house. It is a blessedly short jaunt down the hill from my house to Sunrise. We hope George can have some therapeutic injections in the near future. George is working on a second opera entitled Gilgo Beach, about the horrors of human trafficking and murder. George’s first opera, Natural Causes Killed Victor, successfully premiered in Bar Harbor, ME, the summer of 2014.
Richard Craven (Falmouth, ME) writes, “I’m alive and well and chipping ice here in the Portland, Maine area (and thankful for being here). I don’t see much of anyone else from BB&N, though I keep just missing Mark DeVoto ’57 in his travels. How many people know he and I went to elementary school together (also with the late Jon Narcus)? “Last May, my two sons invited me to Cambridge for a ‘Guys Day’, claiming they wanted me to show them my childhood haunts. Really? They hadn’t heard enough in the previous 40 years? Anyway, we walked, walked from Holden Green to Berkeley Street to Bow Street with a stop at 45