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Drew Guff and Ed Hill helped represent the Class of ’79 in the Alumni Parade.
others with his issues—I don’t know. We’ll miss him sorely.” Please stay in touch, hug your loved ones every day, enjoy life fully, and plan to attend our 40th Reunion in 2017. I will be there, and I hope you will, too. Be well. —Buck
1978 Jeff Strong jstrongnyc@gmail.com Jamie Clauss Wolf 514 Ribaut Road Beaufort SC 29902 843-694-7443 Jamie.wolf@thestartover.com
Jonathan Lee recertified on his medical boards, an arduous task. He reports, “Last year’s reunion was fine, seeing Peter Bennett, Greg Soghikian, Sue Prochniak Helms et al., all the way to the wee hours when only Rich See, Warren Patterson, and I remained under the tent, listening to Rich Ward go off on Middle Eastern politics! Good thing nary a drop remained in all those beer and wine bottles. Meanwhile, I continue to work four jobs in the hopes of getting a startup medical practice going. My daughter, Stephanie, recently graduated from the University of Miami.” Ben Batchelder is “tiring of the risk-averse gatekeepers of life, so I’m publishing two travelogues with a small imprint (my own) named Earthdog Press.” Check out Ben’s awesome work about a trip around the U.S. borders and a journey into Brazil’s past and culture at earthdogpress.com. Ben says he
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Andover | Fall 2014
“leads a bi-hemispheric life, as a mountain man in the hills of Minas Gerais, Brazil, who comes down to the sea at Miami Beach, Fla.” Georges St. Laurent divides his time between academic research in disease genomics and a new startup called SeqLL, dedicated to singlemolecule DNA sequencing. He works late nights in his new lab outside of Boston and occasionally visits the Amazon region to discover interesting research samples. Joe Tatelbaum and wife Grace continue their travels, says Joe, “having most recently visited South Africa and Japan. Shanghai continues to grow around us, as does the pollution. Our son is off to Babson College in the fall. We have marked the calendar and expect him to start supporting us in the fall of 2018.” Ron Ryan, Jeff Strong’s former roommate in scenic Stearns West, is still living in Tennessee. Ron’s own consulting firm works with middlemarket companies on “profitability and sales yield improvement. I am also working on a book—isn’t everyone?” Ron’s daughters are figuring out college choice (elder) and going to ski-racing school in Vermont (younger, who won U16 nationals in dual slalom last year). Youngest child, Roland, stars at football and baseball; he’s a high school freshman with size 14 feet who packs 175 pounds on a 6-foot frame. Ted Gagliano is interested in knowing how he may best contribute to the Andover community. Jeff Strong recently attended a book launch party for the newest release and fourth consecutive New York Times bestseller by Bill Cohan ’77. The Price of Silence revisits the Duke lacrosse scandal and its aftermath and is a fantastic read if you’re interested in the evolution of higher education, big-time sports, small-city politics, and incredible reportage. PA was well represented at the party by Mike Cannell, a couple of Buttricks (Mary Buttrick Burnham and John Buttrick ’75), and former history instructor Gil Sewall, who is currently fighting the “dumbing down” of history textbooks as director of the American Textbook Council. Peter Frisch reports, “Stepson number one continues to work toward a PhD degree in physics with a concentration in photovoltaic systems, stepson number two enjoys working and living in South Boston, a really hopping place for recent college graduates, stepson number three graduates from Connecticut College on May 18, and daughter number one heads to Tabor Academy next fall. My wife continues to look for ways to let her creativity and generosity out, and I continue to sail competitively as often as possible in and around Marblehead and Boston Harbor. I particularly enjoy sailing as a sighted guide in the SailBlind program of the Carroll Center for the Blind.” Greg Soghikian remembers our 10th Reunion, when many in our class were starting families, and reflects he started a bit later. “Now my kids are looking at colleges, and in two years the house will be much quieter. When I started my first ‘real’ job
after residency and fellowship training 21 years ago, I thought I’d retire between age 53 and 55. Ha! Certainly not with three kids in college until I will be (choke) almost 60! So I have a new plan. The past three years, partly because of a divorce and partly just to have more time with my kids, I have been trying to work a little less, with the thought I’d kick it back into higher gear again once the kids weren’t around all the time. But now that I have seen a few of my contemporaries get ill or pass away early, I am starting to think that I may want to take some of that time to enjoy life even more. One thing on my bucket list is to see what I can do with my surgical skills in an area of the world that doesn’t have an orthopedic surgeon on every block.” Jamie Wolf (your correspondent) completed her 16-week healthy aging contest by losing 12.5 pounds, 20 inches, and 3.4 of her percent body fat and at 54 is now sharing her newfound energy, health, and path to longevity with all who are interested in sleeping better, overcoming stress, and feeling more alive. “Having never been an athlete in my youth, this has been a pretty fun turn of events—I’m not going back to what I was, I’m going forward to something better than I’ve ever been! Seriously, with so much compromised health all around us, I am on a mission to promote strong immune systems, so we can head into the next several decades as positive examples for those following us!”
1979 Amy Appleton 2201 Hall Place N.W. Washington DC 20007-2217 202-338-3807 Applta9@aol.com Rick Moseley 7703 McCallum St. Philadelphia PA 19118 215-275-5107 rdmoseley@gmail.com Doug Segal 1556 North Orange Grove Ave. Los Angeles CA 90046 323-969-0708 dougsegal@earthlink.net
Dear friends: Nearly 50 classmates convened for our 35th Reunion in mid-June, and I am told by the authorities that we were a large and spirited group for this cohort. Below are mostly reflections from those who came, in their own words. If you have not read a good book lately or attended an English class (especially one on Faulkner), do not skip over Professor Pedraza’s musings. Jamie Marks writes, “Two classmates spurred on my partner, Mark’s, and my soccer-loving 12-year-old son, Peter. Jorge Pedraza brought his cleats, because he read in a group e-mail that