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Hank Higdon ’59 and wife Erika ran into Pat and George Edmonds, faculty emeriti, on their way to dinner.
Tom Cushing, Jon Foote, and Peter Behn, all Class of ’54, chat while marching with their classmates in the Alumni Parade.
you can get and still stay in the Northern Hemisphere. And Tim came from 55 years away. Tim has been teaching computer science for decades—first at Carnegie Mellon and Harvard, and since 1974 at UC Irvine. There are still a couple of us who have never come to a reunion, so Tim’s record can still be broken—think June 2019—and there may still be a bit of orzo to sample. Folks looked remarkably good. Dave Smoyer and Hank Higdon were there to participate in the annual Athletics Hall of Honor ceremony. Dave was particularly proud of how short his acceptance speech was, and Hank was there because his and Erica’s son, Henry III ’94, was being honored. (Hank himself is already in the Hall.) Both Dave and Hank looked like they could just stroll out to the soccer or football field and pick up where they left off 55 years ago. Amazing! Equally amazing is Jay Nelson, who is still playing squash at the highest level and was recently elected to the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame. He regularly wins competitions in age categories way younger than ours. But, as I said, everyone looked good. Jim Bishop, of course, looked great; he’s planning to stay with Brooks Brothers at least till the company’s bicentennial year, 2018. I very proudly showed him my BB blazer. He looked at the buttons, then the label, and said, “Oh, yeah—they sell this version in the discount stores.” Damn! He nailed me! Bob Myers and his wife, Emily, live near Exeter, N.H., keep a sharp eye on things there and reported that there are no threats whatsoever— physical, intellectual, or spiritual—coming from that direction. We had a wonderful presentation (not because it was brief, but it was) by Chris Costanzo and Jim Hayman, who read from their recent books (after the orzo course), which was really delightful. We should all write books! Between Jim’s ongoing murder thriller series and Chris’s recounting of
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Andover | Fall 2014
his years as a covert agent with the CIA, it kept us delightfully awake! Both Chris’s wife, Margaret, and Jim’s wife, Jeanne, were there as well. It’s always a treat to see Bill Bell. He’s always up to something, and this time it was checking out the library exhibit of books written by ’59ers. (So that’s what’s in the library!) If you guessed that, as a class, we’d written more than six dozen books, you’d be right—and if you speculated that the most prolific of us is Ted White, with seven, you’d be right again. No time for orzo for Ted. He is a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, and his books focus largely on the Supreme Court, from John Marshall to Warren Burger. The Butler boys were there too! Bill Butler had convinced Tim, his old roommate, to come, and Bill came along as well. And John Butler and his wife, Chris, were there, just itching to get up to Maine and start the summer’s sailing season. “I think they put the boat in the water today,” John said. Also looking forward to the summer on the water was Lea Pendleton—his craft runs on gasoline, not wind, but he enjoys exploring the vast Maine coastline as much as anyone. Lea’s Marblehead neighbor, Kitty Sides Flather ’59, was there, and both were hoping that the fire at the Eastern Yacht Club the night before hadn’t done too much damage. Quinn Rosefsky (without Susan) and John Doherty (without Denise) put in cameo appearances on Friday night. They each had events to attend on Saturday, so no orzo for them—but it was good of them to drop in. It was positively wonderful to see, talk with, and drop in on conversation with Sully Sullivan and his wife, Ellen, and Al Killilea and his wife, Mary Ann. They were having much too good a time talking about a book that Al and Mary Ann were editing, whose working title is Befriending Death: How Do You Find Meaning in Life? It’s a compilation of onepage answers to that question—think about it, and you may still be able to get your one-pager to them. Another book by Al, who teaches at the University of Rhode Island, is The Politics of Being Mortal. Artie Rogers and his wife, Barbara, came to reunion, and they both look wonderful—life in Florida and Maine is suiting them very well.
Speaking of Maine, Susie Stedman ’59, newly elected president of the Abbot Academy Association, will receive an Andover Alumni Award of Distinction on Nov. 5; Lee Webb, elected to the board of the Abbot Academy Association, is closer and closer to completion of a PhD thesis at the University of Maine. Paul Neshamkin, and his wife, Ruth— just a year out from running Columbia’s 50th reunion—are considering a ’60s-style manual on how to run a reunion, which is bound to be both great and banned in all college bookstores by the administrations. Ann Stack ’59 came in from Indianapolis, where she’s still very active in all things artistic. Jim Williams is still in Denver, where he’s been for more than 30 years; like Lee Webb, he enrolled in a PhD program late in life (the University of Colorado’s School of Public Affairs). Start making plans: Our 60th is just around the corner, and I’m told that aged orzo is truly scrumptious! [Editor’s note: The Academy has received word that Laurence Stucki passed away on March 25, 2009. Please see his obituary in the In Memoriam section.]
1960 ABBOT
Lynne Furneaux Clark P.O. Box 1087 Manchester Center VT 05255-1087 802-362-1744 puffinplace@aol.com
Husband Dave and I just returned from a glorious two weeks in Oregon visiting grandsons and their parents. Aidan is 12 years old and 6 feet 4 inches tall; he plays basketball and is a straight-A student. Brendan is very artistic; his nickname is “Mini” and he moves at high speed in all directions. Corky Auxier Perez just had surgery for lung cancer and was declared clean, no chemo. She has returned home to help her husband care for their seven rescue dogs, four cats (two are feral), one opossum, and their bird and squirrel sanctuary.