stay connected... hours of Sunday. Stragglers from the Class of 1999 were shocked to learn we were 25 years their senior on seeing the wild scrum. Saturday night found Jim Troup working hard to prepare for a tennis match he had scheduled for Sunday afternoon. The next morning at brunch at Paresky Commons we lingered, reluctant to break the spell. Jon Drake and his wife stopped in on their way home from a family wedding. Nancy Peterson’s son, Sam, charmed his elders. John Friedenberg regaled Katy Van Dyke with his slow-burn wit. Betsy Gootrad savored the last few moments as we packed up and headed out. Steve Lubanko, a man who literally cheated death and now is determined to carpe every diem available, had a simple reason for coming to this reunion: the friendships that were and are the best thing about PA. Mason Wilkinson acted on this sentiment when, after gallantly helping Laura with a flat tire Sunday morning, he found brass polish to shine up the neglected panel honoring Dickie at what was her spot at GW. That’s what friends do.
1975 Mari Wellin King 1884 Beans Bight Road N.E. Bainbridge Island WA 98110 206-842-1885 marjoriewk@gmail.com Roger L. Strong Jr. 6 Ridgeview Circle Armonk NY 10504 914-273-6710 strongjr@optonline.net Peter Wyman 963 Ponus Ridge Road New Canaan CT 06840 203-966-1074 peter.wyman@merrillcorp.com
The first thing you know (not “old Jed’s a millionaire” from “The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” the theme song from the famous TV show The Beverly Hillbillies) is that those of us born in 1957 have turned (or will turn) 57 this year (nice symmetry). In about eight months, the Class of 1975 will have the chance to show that we are not “over the hill” when we return to the Hill to celebrate our eighth Andover reunion (do the math!). Wry financier Geoff Richards proclaims that age-related topics, including low T, ED, and AARP, will be verboten when we convene next June to relive pleasant memories and create new ones! Discussion topics that he approves: superfoods, driverless cars, and LIBOR rates! Geoff, currently enjoying a sabbatical after 33 years of analyzing global capital markets, was espied in Burlington, Vt., in late May for the graduation of son Christopher from the University of Vermont. Also on the commencement circuit were Dick King and
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Mari Wellin King, who were “ushering [daughter] Claire through graduation from Hamilton College [in Clinton, N.Y.], achieving careful balance between embarrassing ourselves without embarrassing Claire too much.” Many classmates marked the 35th anniversary of their graduation from college earlier in the year. While in New Haven over the Memorial Day weekend for the obligatory singing of “Bright College Years” (the song’s last line: “For God, for Country, and for Yale”), I chatted with Donna Cameron; she has opened her own law firm in Medfield, Mass., and also serves the equestrian community as owner of the state-of-the-art dressage training facility Cutler Farm Dressage. I also spoke to Nan Bond, who continues to practice maternal-fetal medicine in Greenwich, Conn. Although I did not see him personally, also in the Elm City was Thomas Briggs from Fort Worth, Texas. Among the nonattendees was Stephen Bache, who e-mailed that he was preoccupied with a pending move to Portland, Ore., from the Los Angeles area. Earlier in May, he chaired the organizing committee for the second annual Jewel City Fun & Fitness Ride in Glendale, Calif., and biked a 45-mile loop for charity. Phil Hueber, executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Western New Hampshire in Keene, N.H., reunited at Princeton with several Andover classmates, including Matt Finnie—but not Lisa MacFarlane, who was reportedly in Chile with her daughter, who studied there for a semester. In May, Phil bowled in his organization’s Bowl for Kids’ Sake fundraiser. Last year, George Letsou moved back to Houston to join the DeBakey Department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is a professor of cardiovascular surgery. “I do adult cardiac and lung surgery, heart and lung transplantation, and mechanical cardiac assist,” he notes. Eben Gay has been “working hard on a cuneiform translation computer program. This has the potential to enable anyone with a cell phone to read the 500,000-plus cuneiform records stashed in collections around the world and to access 3,000 years of history.” In early June, Eben’s son got married at the family home in Southborough, Mass. Ian Baker, admitting that he has been “remiss in providing class notes [news],” reports that he remains based in Asia, where he writes books and leads travel seminars in Tibet and Bhutan. According to his company’s website (www.rarejourneys.com), “Rare Journeys offers a multi-dimensional approach to exploration, adventure, and discovery, encompassing educational travel seminars, publications, and films.” Ian’s 2006 book The Heart of the World: A Journey to Tibet’s Lost Paradise, a memoir of his journeys into the unexplored heart of the Earth’s deepest gorge, culminates in his team’s discovery of a fabled waterfall held by Tibetans to be the gateway to a mystical paradise (the origin of the myth of Shangri-La); the book is being considered for
adaptation into a Hollywood movie. In San Francisco, Lewis Butler and his wife, Catherine Armsden ’73, “have two kids out of college and employed and have filled in with two dogs at home.” The architecture firm his wife founded now has more than 25 employees and recently completed a second LEED Platinum house—the highest energy and environmental design rating a building can achieve. Lewis writes, “California tends to encourage pioneering environmental work, and we are happy to do our part. I will be at our reunion, for the first time in 30 years, so I’m pretty excited about that.” Victoria Christian says she started her third company last Christmas and plans to retire from full-time work at Duke sometime after 2020. Son Max is happily employed as an emergency veterinarian in Boone, N.C., and daughter Daphne is serving her three-year residency at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C. Arthur Kell, working on his fifth CD of original music, remains busy gigging and composing for film and performance-art projects and looks forward to a European tour in spring 2015. Arthur was interviewed for an upcoming documentary about our late classmate Thomas Chapin, created by Emmy Award–winning filmmaker Stephanie J. Castillo. In January, a major benefit concert was held in New York City “with a who’s who of New York City musicians who worked with Thomas,” says Arthur. Additional information about Night Bird Song: The Thomas Chapin Story and a seven-minute trailer for the film can be found at www.thomaschapinfilm.com. Please send Mari news for the next column. We hope to catch up with many of you at Andover next June! —Roger
1976 Ruben Alvero 7875 S. Wabash Court Centennial CO 80112 303-358-8739 ruben.alvero@ucdenver.edu Lisa Barlow 530 9th St. Brooklyn NY 11215-4206 lisabnyc@gmail.com
As I put the finishing touches on these notes, it is spring, and we seem to be finally coming out of what has been a long and fearsome winter. Here in Colorado, the South Platte River Basin snowpack is at 230 percent of median, which should ease the drought. While last winter’s weather may have kept many of us grounded, it does not appear to have kept Henry Wigglesworth from pounding the pavement. In January, on his 56th birthday, at a track event in New York, Henry ran a 4:57 mile, which is officially the second-fastest mile run this year in