Photos by Melody Guyton Butts
DA ALUMNI
Verle Regnerus is Honored for 25 Years Coaching Baseball
B
aseball alumni, current players and their families
recognized Verle Regnerus’s contributions to Durham Academy baseball this spring when they dedicated a new scoreboard in his honor. Regnerus has stepped down as coach of varsity baseball but continues to help with the program. Former players on hand to surprise and honor Regnerus were (from left) Ian Niedel ’88, Brandon Regnerus ’13, Nick Livengood ’08, Regnerus, Jason Sholtz ’99, Aaron Therien ’15, Neil Cornwell ’15 and Adam Lang ’98.
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while doing our best to not feel old. For example, the wedding train keeps on rolling, as Emily Glick, MK Pope Hayward and Marshall Friedman each tied the knot recently. Emily is currently living in Chicago, where she just finished a theatrical production of Sweeney Todd. Her talents certainly don’t end there though, as she is also working on growing her own private voice studio and applying her acting skills to coaching sessions for business people who want to learn how to give effective presentations. MK got hitched to a Canadian named Peter Hayward in a Chapel Hill ceremony in April. The couple now live in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and MK continues to love her job as a teacher. After teaching seventh and eighth grade writing for six years in Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood, she will be changing jobs next school year to finally fulfill her lifelong dream of being a high school English teacher. Adding excitement to the opportunity of transitioning to 10th grade English, MK will actually have a chance to teach some former students from her last job. Marshall just recently married his former yoga teacher Xiu Hu, whom he met several years ago while working for Alibaba in China. They have been living in Durham, where he just graduated from the MBA program at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. Marshall will be moving this summer to the adopted home of many Class of 2005 alums, New York City, to apply his newfound skills to an investment banking job. Next up in the wedding queue is Gabe Kussin, who is very excited to be getting married in July to Anna Orr, a fellow attorney he met in law school at
UNC-Chapel Hill. She works as a district attorney in Orange County, while he works a little farther down I-85 as an assistant public defender in the Guilford County Public Defender’s Office. Gabe adds: “It is a job that I absolutely love, despite the challenges of indigent defense in the criminal justice system, and I hope to be there for many more years.” The couple are definitely happy to settle in for their new life together in the area, as they just took the leap of buying their first house in Hillsborough. Bethany Walters is also enjoying life in the Triangle, as she recently started her first full-time job after a series of veterinary training programs. She now works as an emergency veterinarian at Triangle Veterinary Referral Hospital in Durham, loves what she does, and hopes to run into some other DA alums in the area soon. Meanwhile, over in Raleigh, David Hutchings teaches middle school Spanish at Ravenscroft, while serving as the head coach of the middle school lacrosse team and an assistant coach on the varsity cross country team. As if that doesn’t keep him busy enough, he will be going to New York City for the next two summers to pursue a master’s in Private School Leadership at the Klingenstein Center at the Columbia Teachers College. Even with many alums settling down close to home, the international feel of this class has not been lost. Jamihlia Johnson, for example, must maintain a global perspective while working as an International Tax Associate at PWC Washington National Tax Service in D.C. She also recently started serving a four-year term as a State Advisory Committee Member (SAC) for the United States