www.andover.edu/intouch
Lisa Johnson and Peter Meyer held the banner for their class in the Alumni Parade.
eternally grateful for the global perspective, love for intercultural engagement, concern with social justice, spirit of non sibi, and quest for wisdom reinforced by mentors, peers, and programs at Andover, which remain an inspiration to this day. I haven’t heard much from Alexandra Gillespie recently. I assume she’s been conserving British thermal units and coping with the long Canadian winter as the pile of cordwood dwindles out back of her spare Ontario cabin. My other partner in crime, Adam Simha, tells me that Hans Wydler was on the train that derailed north of Philly recently. He reports that he was banged up but, thankfully, escaped OK. Finally, not to be outdone by the dry heat of a California sun, and with the hope of raising a grin out on the rolling Iowa prairie, Jim Reische recently passed along to me an item indicating that grand theft auto has given way to grand theft Iowa ribeye in the shadows of Grinnell College.
1985 Pamela Paresky P.O. Box 8878 Aspen CO 81612 pamela@ayearofkindness.com
Whit Spalding and Caroline Cannon ’87 had he best excuse for missing reunion: their twin boys were born in early July. In the weeks leading up to reunion, Chris Smith reached out with this note: “Sitting at Tom McGraw’s table on the occasion of his retirement celebration was a transcendent moment in my life. I cherished my five years on the Alumni Council and have never felt better about Andover.” If you are interested in participating on Alumni Council, contact Dick Howe, associate director of
alumni engagement, at rhowe@andover.edu, or 30th Reunion cochair Alison Smith Lord, who spoke eloquently on a reunion-wide panel about women and leadership. John Caron, whose artwork was recently shown throughout New England in an exhibit titled “A Dimple and the Deep Blue Sea,” wrote, “Graduating from Andover, and being the only member of my family to do so, was a great honor. My grandfather came to this country on a boat at age 9 from Italy, sucking on lemons so he wouldn’t get sick. He lived the American dream: to work his way out of the mills and live long enough to see his grandson graduate from Andover.” Although John and Chris missed reunion, their notes are emblematic of the tremendous gratitude that permeated the weekend. Andover was for many of us a crucible of sorts. Thirty years later, as Van Meter Pettit observed, it was good to become reacquainted with our former selves. We looked back on our time at Andover with recognition of the gifts Andover gave us—including one another. Several attendees remarked how great it was to get to know classmates we didn’t know while at PA. We kicked off the festivities with an afterdinner party at a house rented for the weekend by Alice Stubbs, Elliot Smyth Berndt, Ben Schwall, Stuart Magruder, Craig Kaufman, Tajlei Levis, and me [Pamela Paresky] and additionally hosted by Lisa Johnson and Liz DeLucia. As Liz said, it was a unique opportunity to be together without other classes, “under one roof and feeling connected.” We looked at old photos (many of which are now available on our class Facebook page) and regaled one another with stories of the craziness of Andover in the ’80s. Most of those stories are unprintable here, but here’s one I think we can print: Phillipian staffers told us that they drove a van to Cambridge late on Thursday nights to print the paper on the Harvard Crimson
presses—completely unsupervised! (If you don’t know the story of how student van-driving came to an abrupt end, post a question on the Facebook page and someone will give you the scoop.) In the wee hours Saturday morning, when all the rest of the housemates had gone to sleep, Craig Kaufman, Stuart Magruder, Sean Wood, and Sid Smith were still telling stories. Photos of Ian Watson, Harry Keates, Maureen O’Brien, Buck Durbin, Laura Obbard Brightman, Julie Chang, Alvin Wen, Okechukwu Uzoma Ugochukwu, Becca Daniels, Peter Meyer, Juan Rodriguez de Hostos, possibly Martha Fenton ’83, Hal Gillam, and Libby Lefever, along with everyone else mentioned here, are all over our class Facebook page, and it’s incredibly fun to relive the weekend (or vicariously enjoy it, for those who missed the merriment) by looking at the great photos everyone posted. (Please tag the photos!) Solange Brown, a neuroscientist, spoke at a fascinating panel (and those of us who went to the philosophy class instead kicked ourselves for missing it). Alex May and her two children gave each of us a copy of Out of the Blue, a collection of Andover narratives, including one by Tom Beaton ’73, who shared part of his moving story in Cochran Chapel at the Annual Meeting of the Alumni Association. (If you don’t have a copy, you can purchase one for $10 from the school.) And over the weekend, Ben Schwall acquired a bust of himself created by Mrs. Wilkins in Will Hall in 1984. “I’m told it haunted Bulfinch for a decade,” he says. “I’m also told I used to have hair and a thin face!” (Photos of the bust are on Facebook.) Nina Davenport brought her son, the little star of her documentary film, First Comes Love. Reunion cochair Dorothea Herrey brought her husband, toddler, and baby (and shares her dad’s reunion year, so parents attended, too); Denyse Clancy brought her husband and baby (who is even Andover | Fall 2015
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