CLASS NOTES School, and Stu recently retired from his law if we use them to make that world a better practice and now enjoys travel with wife Patti. place. Without exception, this service to • Benson Blake, looking at your page in the others is an important part, in varying ways and degrees, of all our adult lives. • The guys yearbook reminds me of My Three Sons. Ben toured the NMH campus, particularly the has taken his three sons on ocean voyages in Rhodes Arts Center, including chats with John his sailboat across the Atlantic and back. Amazing! • Once he spoke with his British Rummler and Kingsley Parker about our days accent, I recognized Kim Daniels. Kim was a on the lacrosse field. More classmates joined us for Friday dinner, with a welcome from two-term exchange student who started the Head of School Peter Fayroian and a poem by Rugby Club at Mt. Hermon. I attended one rugby practice. At one point I was in this Peter Fulton read by Peter and Lois Lake “scrum” with about 20 other guys all bigger Church. We had a rousing hymn sing that than me, arms locked together, pushing and night, with Jean’s husband and “adopted class shoving, cleats flying, and I’m thinking to member” Gerald Wheeler at the organ. • Then myself, “Frank, this is not your sport.” Kim, it was entertainment led by our Jim Watson glad you could join us, and that you got to on the guitar and a poetry reading, his own, row in one of the three boats on the by Peter Fulton. For those of us up for it, Connecticut River with me (Jean). Still there was a band, Relentless, and dancing and drinking on a patio. Some of us just talked in playing rugby? • Peter Goelz, check out our the dorm with the music as background — it class Facebook interview with Carroll Bailey. was a time for catching up and sharing. • Carroll says that he may not have expressed it Saturday followed with an early-morning row, at the time, but he does love you. Ron Cooper run, swim, or bike ride. Bob Bruce, Dave and Dave Bethea visited Carroll and Elaine (Rankin Bailey ’55) recently and expressed Edsall, and Dave’s daughter did the swim. warm regards for him in our reunion yearbook. Dave said his daughter won but he is partial. I Ron, nine demerits in your first week at Mt. know Chris Taylor and Peter Talmage cycled Hermon? Seems like this “misdirected kid” and Jean Penney Borntraeger Wheeler rowed, turned out pretty darn good. • Our Sunday even with a braced left wrist (recovering from chapel service, a multi-faith and remembrance an April ski injury). That morning there was a service planned and led by our ordained session, “Education in Action,” on the classmates, Elizabeth Braddon and Ginger tremendous strides the school has made and the exciting plans for the future. That Allen Taylor, was lovely and inspiring, a fitting afternoon there was a heartfelt alumni of color sendoff to those of us who sang and attended. panel in which present and former students of So many good times and stories to tell. Visit many different backgrounds shared their Facebook and check out the hundreds of experience and acceptance by the NMH photos your classmates have posted, particucommunity. Our Elsa Calderón was one of the larly by Jeffy Stevens Dunmire and Henrietta presenters. • The Alumni Convocation in deVeer, not only of reunion but also of our Memorial Chapel was next. After the Dixie days as students. Or go to our class web page a Land Band, we quieted down and listened to special thank-you, Jeffy, for setting up and tributes to Lamplighter Award recipients Wil maintaining this and the Facebook page for us! • If you missed this reunion, don’t worry: Everhart and Suzie Steenburg Hill, both for their dedication and fundraising for the school. We’re already talking about having regional gatherings and another get-together next year Susanne Rheault received the Community to preface our official 55th in five years! Best Service Award for her committed leadership in until then. — Frank and Jean developing an orphanage and educational program in Tanzania. We had a sumptuous Northfield Mount Hermon dinner under the tent on Crossley field and Donna Eaton-Mahoney dancing late into the night. • Late into dmeato@outlook.com Saturday night I (Frank Sapienza) reminisced • Dana L. Gordon with Jack Clough about playing lacrosse and mounthermon1967@comcast.net hockey on semi-frozen Shadow Lake. For the fourth time in the last five reports, we Heng-Pin Kiang made it back from Seattle, begin with sad news. Chris Guida died in JanuWash. In our day it would take three of us to ary 2016. According to his wife, it looked like wrestle the 6’ 6” Ping down. He has been a Chris had once again cheated death, as he was lawyer and also has practiced international making good recovery at home from the business consulting. • Sam Boot also traveled complications with his November surgeries. from Washington and is as friendly and His wonderful sense of humor had returned, talkative as ever. It’s easy to see how he has had and he was enjoying entertaining his many a successful career as a sales engineer with visiting friends. When the time came, he went Hewlett Packard. • Great to see my old quickly and painlessly, and while he was far roommate, Frank Donnini, who has had a very too young it is just the way he would have successful career in the U.S. Air Force as a chosen to go. See Chris’s obituary at career officer and later as a defense contractor. obitsforlife.com/obituary/1247585/GuidaAlso great to see old friends Alan Coulter and Christopher.php. • Writer/editor Roger Hahn Stewart Bennett. Alan continues as an has been living and working in New Orleans instructor with National Outdoor Leadership
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Jim Weiss ’66
for nearly two decades, having previously spent long stints as a magazine editor at Washington University in St. Louis and as a communications manager with Chevron Corporation in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most recently, he has been working with the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities on KnowLA.org, an online cultural encyclopedia, and is the author of The Sounds of Louisiana: Twenty Essential Music Makers, an illustrated overview of Louisiana’s rich musical heritage. • Jack Osborne accelerated his plan to move to the wilds of Maine when his house in New York sold just three weeks after being listed; he could not be happier. Jack looks forward to seeing everyone at our 50th reunion. • Wendy Syer served in the Peace Corps in Uganda and Malaysia, which led to a career in international education. She earned a master’s in intercultural communications from University of Minnesota before moving to University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 1985 as an international student and scholar advisor. Over the years, her job has evolved from education and communications to immigration law. She retired this year. Wendy and husband Dick Trowbridge, a fellow Peace Corps volunteer who owns a custom woodworking business, have a 29-year-old son who’s an environmental activist. Wendy plans to attend our 50th. • Carlos Castellanos and his wife have stopped living in various countries and “traveling like lunatics.” They are spending time at their home in Vermont when they’re not in New York. Carlos will also attend reunion. • Bob Turner has spent a lot of time on the high seas, sailing his boat from the Caribbean to southern Florida to Charleston, S.C., to New England and points in between. • Debby Buhrman Topliff’s latest novel, Hiding, is available on Amazon. • Cynthia French Pasackow retired from teaching at Champlain Valley Union High School in Vermont in 2013. • Also in the Green Mountain State, Sheila Morse is happily retired, living in Guilford, Vt., after having lived and worked all around the U.S. and in many places overseas. She remains deeply involved in community politics and is happily managing a multi-generational household that is always open to friends and families. • Steve Meyerhans and wife Marilyn have more than 100 acres of tree fruit and organic vegetables under cultivation in central Maine. Steve