www.andover.edu/intouch joined the committee, to make this one we will never forget. Great ideas are always welcome, and we look forward to seeing as many of you as possible. Who knows—this may call for a road trip (plane and train) and a caravan from all corners of the globe. Looking forward to the 1995 “family” reunion...à tout à l’heure! —Lon
1996 John Swansburg 396 15th St. Brooklyn NY 11215 john.swansburg@aya.yale.edu
In 2009, a Naperville, Ill., man named Leslie Mayfield was arrested for conspiring to rob a drug stash house. Mayfield was eventually convicted of the crime and sentenced to nearly 27 years in prison, the stiff penalty stemming in part from the quantity of narcotics he believed he’d find at the house. Mayfield had been drawn into the criminal conspiracy by one Jeffrey Potts. Over the course of weeks, Potts pressured Mayfield, a former gang member and ex-con struggling to find work, into joining him for the raid, promising a rich payday and, when that didn’t work, threatening gang retaliation if Mayfield refused to participate. Ultimately, Mayfield acquiesced—at which point he was apprehended by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It turns out Potts had been working as a confidential informant; the robbery was in fact an ATF sting operation. Mayfield was convicted of conspiring to rob an imaginary stash house of drugs that didn’t exist. At trial, Mayfield’s counsel sought to argue that their client had been entrapped, lured by law enforcement into the unlawful acts of which he stood accused. But the prosecution succeeded in preventing Mayfield from making that case, on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to prove that the ATF had induced the crime. A panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s decision to disallow the entrapment argument. But when the Seventh Circuit heard the case en banc, it reversed the panel decision, voting 8-2 in favor of Mayfield, vacating the judgment against him and ordering a new trial. As the Chicago Tribune reported, the ruling was a blow to the ATF, which has made a practice of such dubious sting operations (which, among other things, have overwhelmingly targeted African Americans). Bravo, Jerry Bramwell, who successfully argued Mayfield’s case before the formidable jurisprudential minds on the Seventh Circuit. A dispatch from U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, another classmate to whom we should tip our caps: “I am now deployed at the NATO Role 3 Multinational Medical Unit (MMU) with the U.S. Navy in Kandahar,
Afghanistan. The NATO Role 3 MMU is the primary trauma receiving and referral center for all combat casualties in Southern Afghanistan. Our mission is to provide the best possible care to all injured and ill persons brought to the MMU. We are charged with supporting the NATO combatants, allied forces, and partners in accomplishing their missions. “The hospital is a 70,000-square-foot rocketresistant state-of-the-art facility with three operating rooms, a procedure room, a fully equipped emergency department, intensive care unit, and two CT scanners. Established in 2005 as part of an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission and originally supported by the UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Australia, Canada, and the U.S., since 2009 the U.S. Navy has served as the leader partner running and staffing the facility. It is inspiring to witness over and over the extraordinary teamwork that ensures each patient receives the highest quality care possible, which has led to a 98 percent overall coalition survival rate since the hospital opened. “While this mobilization has been quite challenging for me personally, I cannot think of a more fitting way to use my training and skills than to provide care to our injured personnel. I am incredibly grateful to Andover for giving me the courage to serve. Non sibi!” Back on the home front: Anh Nguyen checks in with news that she’s left the Gates Foundation to join Koru, a for-profit education startup focused on the college-to-career transition. Anh notes that Koru’s funding comes primarily from Seattle and Silicon Valley venture capital firms, plus a New York–based investor named Nasir Jones—you might know him better as Nas. “Our team met with him in October,” Anh writes of your secretary’s hip-hop hero. “He’s awesome.” Anh had her second daughter in October, and in December she traveled to New York for Katherine Jollon Colsher’s wedding, where she saw Doug Perkowski, Jimmy Moore, Marc Gottesman, Megan Kultgen, Maggie Klarberg Kennedy, Lauren Hacker Roth, Rob Fisher, Jane Biondi Munna, and Kealy O’Connor Murray, which makes Katherine’s the Andoverest wedding in recent memory. “I definitely saw some Borden Gym dance moves,” Anh reports. Also married this past autumn was Constantine Farmakidis, who married Leigh Wasserstrom in the bride’s hometown of Kansas City. Constantine and Leigh were introduced by Chris Lee ’98; Chris and Justin Steil were in attendance. Smina Khilnani is living in Texas, where she is finishing her residency in internal medicine. At press time, she was planning a baby shower for Afua Agyarko, to which Nina Judar had just RSVP’d. Billy Wilder liked to say that his guiding principle in filmmaking, whether he was shooting a noir like Double Indemnity or one of his comedies
with Jack Lemmon ’43, was “Don’t bore people,” a credo that seems as wise for class secretaries as it does directors. But if you’ll permit me one final item, from my personal files: Happy Menocal ’98 and I welcomed a daughter this past October, Daisy Wilder Swansburg. (The middle name is an homage to Billy, on her father’s side, and Laura Ingalls, on her mother’s.) So far Daisy’s favorite activity is pretending to be an airplane, her favorite book is Richard Scarry’s I Am a Bunny, and her favorite comedy routine is when one of her parents pretends to be a coyote. She looks forward to meeting all of you at reunion in 2016.
1997 Jack Quinlan 514 S. Clementine St. Oceanside CA 92054 760-415-9054 illegalparietal@gmail.com Kelly Quinn 2538 NW Thurman St., No. 205 Portland OR 97210 919-949-0736 illegalparietal@gmail.com
As we write to you, faithful of Old ’97, the holidays have passed and 2014 has come to its close. We enjoyed hearing from and seeing many of you, and receiving some delightful greeting cards from you, on these festive occasions. We are pleased to announce that both of your class secretaries were nominated to positions on the Alumni Council. In the fall, Jack Quinlan returned to campus to serve at his first meeting, along with classmates and fellow council members Socrates Kakoulides, Shirley Mills, Jed Wartman, Dave Constantine, and freshman congressman Seth Moulton. It was also Andover-Exeter weekend, and a number of us enjoyed cheering Andover on to victory under the lights. Todd Boling was there with his wife, Keena, and very newborn daughter, Margaux Jane Lorene Boling. That same weekend Erin Keaney Noonan attended the wedding of Tommy Ryan to Kathleen Fitzsimmons in Cohasset, Mass. A great many alums celebrated with the happy couple, including Owen Tripp, Dave Weiner, Josh Lemaitre, Paul Pennelli, Barry Staples, Leah Kalfas LaRose, Rob Holmes, and Todd Pugatch (who got engaged in December). For this round of notes, in addition to gathering news of your lives, we solicited reflections on the national and worldwide events of the past year, as well as predictions for 2015. Megan Greene offered this European economic forecast: “Europe will face a Japanese-style lost decade. The only way to avoid this is: (1) Germany accepts that it has to adjust as well by investing more domestically, (2) The European Central Andover | Spring 2015
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