stay connected... and encourage all of you to come visit. Wishing you all well.” Helen Sinclaire Blythe writes that “all’s quiet on the Western front”—her front being the Santa Barbara, Calif., area. And Cindy Atwood Couch writes, “Will mention my daughter Cathryn and maybe someone will know her. She lives in the Sebastopol area in California—started the Ceres Community Project (teenagers who cook for people with cancer). Also have six grandchildren— some in college and some working. Life in the 80s is trying at times, but hopefully we do the best we can. Am lucky we have two of my children in the area. Hope all is well with you.” Anne Johnson Sharpe sends a short bio: After graduating from Bennington, “[I] married an architect, and we had two sons and a daughter. ... In 1976, I became director of the Norwich, Conn., senior center; later, I joined a human-service agency as director of the homemaker/home-health-aide department and rose to become vice-president of that agency. In 1991, I started my own practice as a geriatric consultant. I retired in 2006. Since then, I have become a widow and moved to Mystic, Conn. I am a hospice volunteer as well as a volunteer at a health and rehab center, and serve on some boards. I am most grateful for the years with my husband and for the good life I have had.” Some interesting Abbot lore from Nancy Gray Sherrill: While leafing through a Wellesley College museum’s book of photographs, Nancy came upon a photograph of a woman who looked like Abbot’s frail little French teacher, Marie Baratte—and so it was. The text, she says, told her that “the rumors we heard about Mlle Baratte’s war experiences were true. Her father was the headmaster of a college in Brittany. Four hundred German soldiers moved into the school buildings, but the Baratte family was allowed to keep their apartment at the school. At one time, the family sheltered a wounded British soldier and tried to get him out of France, but they never knew what happened to him. “Mlle Baratte came to America in 1946. When she arrived, she said, ‘I couldn’t believe what I saw. The luxury...the waste. The waste broke my heart. I had been without so many things for so long that I couldn’t accept a glass of milk. I was scared to death.’ ” Nancy continues: “At age 14, I had no understanding of what French civilians endured during the war. I am embarrassed to think what little concern I had for the shy, painfully thin Mlle Baratte. I was a poor student of languages and did not like French class. She must have shuddered when she saw a grumpy teenager lumbering into her classroom every day. This is a period of my life I would like to re-live.” On Sept. 15, I had a piece in the New York Times in the Sunday Styles section’s “Modern Love” column—about love among the elderly—which is getting a lot of attention. There is also a very funny video on the New York Times website. Try Googling “NYTimes love at 71” and see what happens. By the time Andover magazine comes out, these things may well be in the archives but, I hope, still seeable.
62
Andover | Winter 2014
PHILLIPS Eric B. Wentworth 2126 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Apt. 32 Washington DC 20008 202-328-0453 ebw@bellatlantic.net
Tony Herrey, chair of our 65th Reunion, scheduled for June 12–14, 2015, invites your “wishes, preferences, and recommendations” to produce a record turnout. “What will it take to return you to the Hill?” Tony asks. “How should we organize the program to ensure your enthusiastic participation? We appeal especially to those of you who seldom or never attended past reunions. How can we attract you to this venerable event? We promise our utmost to make this reunion as interesting, as stimulating, as relaxing, and as rewarding as possible.” Please send your ideas and requests to me, your class secretary, and I will relay them to Tony. You’ll be hearing further from Tony in coming months as the program takes shape. Last June, our ebullient German classmate, Burkhard Strack, and his wife, Trudi, hosted a 10-day visit to Berlin for Phil Brooks and wife Claire, Pim Epler and wife Eleanor, Bob Martin and wife Joanna, Will Watson and wife Myra, Charlie Flather, and Sig Sandzen’s widow, Pam. Joining them were a like number of Burkhard’s German friends. The itinerary, by Phil’s account, featured memorable dining experiences, visits to immense museums and ornate palaces, and bucolic boat rides on local canals and rivers. Will Watson wrote that Berlin’s many parks give the city “a more pervasive sense of refuge from the pace of urban life than you find in most cities of the world.” What most impressed him, Will added, was “the astonishing vitality of German democracy, most notably expressed in the achievement of unifying the two postwar Germanies.” “This was the fourth, and most likely the last, mini reunion to be hosted by Burkhard, our irrepressible classmate,” Phil commented. “I can’t help feeling that it is the end of an era.” Also last June, Jerry Schauffler and his wife, Barbara, enjoyed an art tour in France sponsored by the Oakland Museum of California. Jerry wrote that a highlight was the new Louvre-Lens museum outside of Lille in northern France: “It’s a joy to visit, and the collection, if you’ve not yet seen it, will knock your socks off.” The Schaufflers’ next destinations were to be Botswana and South Africa in December, with their kids and grandkids in tow. Charlie Austin was not letting macular degeneration in his right eye deter him from birdwatching. On a two-week trip in July to East African game parks with his wife, Carol, he not only saw prey animals and predators galore but, he says, with the aid of his good left eye, good binoculars, and excellent guides, added 68 new bird species to his list. Charlie said he has a database program on his computer that “keeps a giant checklist of all the
birds in the world and tags the ones I have reported seeing. I never argue with my computer. At the end (I haven’t quite finished entering all my Africa sightings) it should say that I have seen 2,147 (or thereabouts) species. Eye or no eye, I’m running out of places within my reach where I might see a lot more (although the world’s total is about 10,000).” Skip Schaum, another veteran long-distance traveler, was planning to attend the March opening of Iraq’s Basra Sports City, for which his Newport Global Project Management Group, Ltd., has been a major contractor. Skip was continuing to serve as a member of the U.S.-Iraq Business Dialogue Group for the State and Commerce departments and took part in a U.S.-Arab bankers’ conference in Newport, R.I. “I am still very optimistic about the future of Iraq,” he wrote. “Their oil output is now over 3 million barrels per day, greater than under Saddam.” Back here in the US of A, Bill Drake and his wife, JoAnn, towed their Airstream trailer out to the Nevada desert in late August for the fourth time in five years to join many thousands of fellow enthusiasts at the freewheeling Burning Man festivities. “Man!” exclaimed Bill. “Another world out there! Loved the sculpture, the space, and the variety.” He added, “The Airstream life seems to agree with us.” “Too much going on” was Bill King’s explanation from Bath, Maine, for putting off possible eye surgery. Bill provided a progress report on constructing an addition to a house owned by his companion, Jayne Palmer, in Bath and rebuilding a cottage down on the coast that Jayne owns with her three sons. He and Jayne were also visiting other Maine towns as community revitalization consultants—work he said was “still fun and rewarding.” Jim Malcolm wrote that he and his wife, Beverly, enjoyed their 46th season at their cottage on N.H.’s Bear Island in Lake Winnipesaukee. He said, “In July, we had 20 people and 4 dogs there at the same time, as family and friends got together to enjoy. Our son, Scott Malcolm ’82, and his wife, Rosanna, came from California, and we also hosted relatives from Ohio and Florida and friends from Alabama. As is our tradition, we flew the flags of the states from which they came.” John Li sent us a handsomely printed book, published in 2011, that recounts the first four decades of the health-care clinic in New York’s Chinatown where he served as a cofounder, one of the original volunteer doctors, and a longtime board member. John also became president of the Chinese American Medical Society. Mac Rohrbough’s new book Rush to Gold, published in July, tells the story of the California Gold Rush from the perspective of some 30,000 French participants who crossed the ocean to join the quest for riches. A University of Iowa history professor emeritus, Mac previously wrote the prize-winning Gold Rush history Days of Gold and several other books.