respond to his scurrilous remark about my said gambling with Mr. Morelos. Sandy Brown added his two cents, “I am president of Univision Sports. Univision is the largest Hispanic broadcaster in the U.S., based in New York and Miami. We are launching a new network this spring, which will be comprised of a lot of soccer (FIFA, Mexican Primera Division, CONCACAF) and boxing. I am spending a lot of time in Miami. My wife Tori and I live in Greenwich, Conn., with our daughter Kendall, 13, and son Alex, 10, both of whom are avid ice hockey and lacrosse players. Both are at Greenwich Country Day School. Just saw Bubbles [Bob Bulkeley] at a hockey tournament in New Hampshire two weeks ago. Nothing has changed; he looks great. I went to the Ravens divisional playoff game with Timmy [Jackson] and Terry [Swindell]. I had the displeasure of being in Foxboro. Long drive home. I will sadly be in Indy for the Super Bowl for work. I have a hard time going to that place at any time, much less now. It was great seeing everyone at our last reunion. I am always impressed with the progress of our class. We are a fortunate bunch.” Lastly, my favorite communication this year came from Marcus Ranum, who said, “Nothing new to report. Still geeky, living in the middle of no place, travelling too much. My biggest excitement lately was a visit I made to Chernobyl — just because I could.” The latter part of that message tweaked my interest enough to inquire about the details of that visit. Marcus was kind enough to forward me to his own website that included pictures and videos of him walking in and around the reactor and cooling towers of Chernobyl! You read that correctly. On that website, he also has written notes, and I copied the following: “Now, I have to admit something really embarrassing. There’s this cool thing that I completely forgot to photograph. It’s “the claw,” and it is one of the original devices that they tried to use to scoop out pieces of the burning core to dispose of them. The attempt failed and the claw was discarded without being properly cleaned or sent to the truck graveyard. It’s just sitting in the motor pool behind one of the buildings, radiating quietly. Picture a six foot-tall device that looks like a jury-rigged tree uprooter. You know those huge devices they use to snatch a whole tree and root ball out of the ground? It’s like one of those except instead of two half-cone blades it has four quarter-cone blades. And it’s made out of seriously jury-rigged heavy duty stuff. I’ve been told that if you walk up to it with a rad-meter, the rad-meter will begin to spin like crazy the closer you get. Amazingly, the rad-meter starts to climb like crazy. By the time I am 30 feet away the radiation level is at 32 millisieverts. And, those of you who are in the know will know that, by jingo, it increases with the inverse of the square of the distance! Every step, the meter jumps and jumps until it’s up to about 150 millisieverts. I’m impressed. But apparently one of the blades wasn’t as clean as the other, or had graphite up in the joints or something and is hotter than the others.” There is a video of Marcus’s hand holding the rad-meter as he approached the mentioned claw, and you can hear him giggle with excitement as the numbers shoot up on the meter. When I expressed concern for his health, and wondered about the radiation, he replied, “Nah. It
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was the equivalent of a couple chest X-rays. One of my other bad habits will doubtless kill me first.” How many of you smart Gilman grads can say with a straight face that you remembered from your science class that millisieverts increase with the inverse of the square of the distance?!? I don’t mind saying I didn’t — but I can easily say I have an almost certain vivid remembrance of Mr. Porter, or was it Mr. Lewis, telling us, “When a friend calls and asks you to tour the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, just abruptly hang up the phone, turn the TV back on, and enjoy the comfort of your home!” Marcus clearly must have been out sick the day of that class. But hey, at least the rest of us get the benefit of reading about his incredible adventure. As for my own report, my oldest son Henry is a senior at Friends, and he is in the midst of the whole college search process. My youngest, Ben, just entered Gilman as a freshman. He shares the grade with sons of Tim Jackson, Michael Mardiney and John Worthington. As I enjoyed having six of the same faculty members as when my father was at Gilman, I am glad my son can share in the same experience; I have seen Messrs. Siwinski, Thornbery, Christ, Duncan, Christian and Schmick. Life has been very good to both Caroline and me; we love living in Baltimore, and both enjoy our careers. What a great and eclectic bunch of people we have in our class! I genuinely enjoy hearing what is going on in each of your lives, so please drop me a line at any time, so I can share it with the rest of the bunch. The best way to get me is via e-mail at willy@southwaybuilders.com. If you take the time to send me a note, I will be sure to include it in next year’s notes. My best to you all.
1982 A. Brian C. Doud bdoud@lbvd.com
Our 30th Reunion took place on Saturday, May 12, 2012 at Jim Cooke’s house. Update to come in next year’s notes. I regret to inform you of the passing of a former classmate, Paul Cripps. Sadly, Paul passed away in 1998. I hope everyone took a good look at the 2011 Spring Alumni Weekend brochure. There was a picture of Jeb Saunders, Aaron Bryant and Mitch Ford singing with the Travelling Men. Dirck Bartlett continues in his role as director of business development for Ilex Construction & Woodworking, a firm that has offices in Maryland and Virginia and specializes in home renovation and the construction of custom architect-designed homes. He is also a member of the Talbot County Council. There is no truth to the rumor that Dirck named Sam Rhee Generalissimo of the Talbot County Revolutionary Guard. Dirck and his wife Christy live on the family farm in Easton, Md. His two children, Peter and Katherine, are in boarding school. Christy and Dirck are not temporarily empty nesters as Christy’s sister has temporarily moved in with them.