CLASS NOTES
Susan Chandler ’62 (left) and Louise Cole Nicollet ’62 in France, a decade ago
I leave you with Susan’s last words to me in an email dated 10/12/15: “The one thing I want, my glorious friend, is for you and yours to be well and happy. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. I am just checking out early. We all have to go someday. And who knows? I may last for a while. Your job now is to enjoy life to the full. You are good at that. And know that I’ll be thinking of you and our many happy adventures. I have learned so much from you over the years, my treasured friend...” • Take heart from Susan’s courage and love for others up to the very end of her all-too-short life. • In other news, Karen Anne Smith Zee writes, “I was so happy to see many of you at our 50th reunion. And as it turned out, the big surprise was to become reacquainted with and to fall in love with Eric Riedel, whom I had dated at NMH. So Yum Yum married a Nobleman in September 2014. Eric is now retired and moved to Boston in July 2014. We have joined our homes in Brookline and expect to be here through the fall of 2017. So, this is definitely the time to come visit. We were at Vespers this year to help soothe our hearts and minds after the passing of my roommate and dear friend, Susan Saunders Chandler. Please keep her family and close friends in your hearts. In addition, we are troubled by the epidemic of shootings here at home, plus wars in other countries. We are grateful for an active Greater Boston Interfaith Organization that allows us avenues of good works along with other Christians, Muslims, and Jews.” Karen Anne sings with her church choir and with the Harvard Choral Society. She is also a five-year volunteer curatorial assistant in the woodblock print section of the Japanese collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. • Emily “Emmy” Zapata Doherty spent the past few months with her daughter, Becky, and family while learning to walk again after major spinal surgery. “Being an everyday grandma to Lukas (4) is just the best!” says Emmy. • Along with fellow classmates facing the daunting prospect of diving into the waters of our eighth decade, Rosamond “Roz” Roswell Gianutsos has the good fortune of being in excellent health and struggling with the “R” word: retired. Roz is “pursuing my interests in evaluating driver competency and promoting rational, safe decisions, I am an instructor for the AARP
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retirement and is keeping busy with seminars and travel reports for the Meriden Power Squadron. Websites for Meriden, Pattaconk Yacht Club, and Ellington Historical Society round out the volunteer work. Granddaughter Eliza (12) is a constant joy and invites Jim to Veterans’ Day celebrations at her middle school. Jim’s wife, Nancy, is the curator at the Nellie McKnight Museum in Ellington, Conn., where they live. Summertime is boating on their 32-foot lobster boat. Trips around Long Island Sound are the most frequent excursions. Two longer trips include a trip up the Hudson to Troy, N.Y., and a trip to From left: Elise Elderkin ’63, Heidi Herrick Davis ’63, Mardy Swett Gordon ’63 Boston’s Charles River Basin for the fireworks. Winter brings wood cutting for the following Smart Driver program. I do clinical driver year’s wood stove. • Our very own Indiana evaluations and continue to work with people Jones, Jonathan Meader, has two new books. attempting to forge a new life for themselves He just released a children’s book, I Dream I following severe brain injury. I’m involved Am, and with his co-author, Barbara Demeter, with the New York City Medical Reserve Ancient Egyptian Symbols: 50 New Discoveries. Corps, which was formed after the 9/11 attack “I discovered the sources and meanings of 50 as a further layer of emergency response. In ancient Egyptian symbols, including many the grandchild department, we have four little of the most important. I’ve been working on ones on the ground and one more in the pipethis project for 12 years,” says Jonathan. Most line. I expect to stay in the New York City area, of the more than 300 color illustrations are and would very much welcome classmates Jonathan’s work. “I’m delighted to have blurbs who would like to use my guest room as a from leading Egyptologists. My background jumping-off point for visits to New York. Best is as an artist, which may explain why I saw contact is email: cogrehab@pipeline.com.” • I things others missed; but it doesn’t give me hope that you will all help me to make our credentials that most Egyptologists would take column a full and newsy one in the next issue very seriously.” Three months after a hip reof NMH Magazine. To that end, send your placement, he suffered a “widow-maker” heart news now, while you’re thinking of it! attack (less than 10 percent survive). “Luckily, the only doctor in the area who knew how to Mount Hermon operate on my condition just happened to be E. Scott Calvert passing by the hospital. Then I had to wait a scottcalvert@mac.com year before I could have major back surgery, As those who received my September email and got addicted to pain meds. Nasty business. know, Laddie Jeffers received a pancreatic However, I was just out riding my Kawasaki cancer diagnosis in June 2015. He is being a week ago and feel great.” • Dick McKerr: “I treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New am loving being back in Boston, and have York City. As he reported in September, “I re-connected with my early-teenage-years best am in a very good place — my days are very friend, and after having seen each other three full of stuff to do: fellowship meetings, stock times in 47 years, we decided that no further market machinations, working with Long delay was necessary. I sold my business in Island Choral Society, church choir, keepRaleigh, and moved in with Jain in Jamaica ing up with newspapers, and trying to help Plain, Mass. Jain and I traveled to India in and follow the lead (and instructions) of my October for a three-week visit. I had been beloved Liz — my advocate, helpmate, and in India after graduation from Middlebury partner. She has been amazing!” In November, College until 1968 in the Peace Corps, and Laddie added that initial reports after a comhad traveled extensively. I can report that the pleted chemo regime were encouraging. • If you did not receive my September email about Taj Mahal looks just like it did 48 years ago, but with more people. I’ve also been cranking Laddie, that means you have not registered or up the French I started to learn at NMH, reported a change in your email with NMH. driving around rural France for about three As we move into a more electronic world, it weeks a year. Small-world department: In the becomes essential that you do so if you wish mid-1970s I went to Harvard Business School to keep up with the class. It is really easy to for two years for an M.B.A. and I kept seeing do on the NMH website at nmhschool.org/ a guy in the halls who looked familiar. I never alumni-2, click on “NMH’s Online Community,” and follow directions. • Ted Lenz reports, stopped him to ask why he looked so much like Dave Rikert ’63, who was my roommate “Anne and I will have been married for 50 senior year at Mt. Hermon. This was in 1977, years this December (met her at age 14 at Mt. and I just discovered that he looked like Dave Hermon, but who knew?). We’re planning a because he was Dave Rikert.” trip somewhere (probably Hawaii), but seem to be having more fun talking about it than actually planning.” • Jim Long is still enjoying
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