www.andover.edu/intouch my husband and I built a dream retirement home on the shores of a small lake in central western Vermont. I have called it “Elysium,” a reflection of how I feel about that tiny piece of the universe. I am looking forward to all of the changes retirement has to offer, including a serious redefinition of a very ingrained identity. We’ll see how well that goes! Send your news!
PHILLIPS Vic Obninsky 1101 Navarro St. Santa Rosa CA 95401 707-230-2271 707-843-5784 (fax) vpobninsky@comcast.net
We have survived another year and have reached or will reach the age of 70 in 2014. We all deserve congratulations for this feat; I must also thank the medical profession for its collective efforts on my behalf. Plans for the 52nd reunion are really starting to move rapidly. It will start on Mon., Sept. 8, and break up after breakfast on Thurs., Sept. 11. This is the result of unscientific polling procedures through our mailing list as well as by a majority of the 52nd Reunion Junta. It will be held at Chalet View Lodge in Portola, Calif., in the High Sierras; members of the Phillips Academy Class of 1962, spouses, girlfriends, partners, descendants, and pets are all welcome. Share yourself as a post-adolescent and your high school companions with those close to you. Lake and wild river fishing, as well as golf, will be available. The lodge is best accessed by car; Reno is a 45-minute drive from the site. Some 20 to 25 classmates have already expressed a strong interest. The planning junta is Archie “Buzz” Andrews, George Andrews, Al Blum, Chris Armstrong, Hobey Birmingham, Mike Davey, Jeff Hill, Tom Israel, Dan Jenkins, Mike Moonves, and myself. Larry Ehrhart still lives in Chicago and is semiretired. He and Diane are raising her 14-yearold grandson, thus recalling Larry’s days at the same age with Bobby Lane (not the Detroit Lions QB) at Pemberton Cottage. He still is interested in finance and programming but has “left the corporate rat race.” Tony King is a neighbor of mine living in Freestone, Sonoma County, Calif. He is a wonderful artist and has had a number of shows throughout the country. I had admired his landscapes with local subjects, but Tony has also done custom work, such as an enormous painting of the varied American bank notes in different colors. This was done for an Arizona bank and is apparently quite well known. He has two grown sons and greatly enjoyed having them home for Christmas. Al Reiter is enjoying retirement in Seattle. He and wife Sue just spent a month in Southeast Asia (Burma, Cambodia, and Thailand). It was their second visit to Angkor Wat; there is still an ongoing problem with ambient land mines. Al is retired from
commercial flying but has built an experimental plane for his own use. Here is an e-mail from Dave Partridge: “Two years ago, following my retirement from teaching, I enrolled in an intensive two-week course in basic woodworking at a school in Rockport, Maine. Since then, I have put together a decent workshop in my N.J. barn, where I have been fashioning a variety of furniture pieces. What has made this endeavor especially satisfying is that I am using lumber from our own trees—cherry, maple, and ash—harvested from our family property in upstate N.Y. The best of my work is an eight-foot-long cherry trestle table that resides on a summer porch in that upstate house. How cool it is that the wood for that table spent its entire prior life 300 yards away, on a hillside behind the house. On a scale of 1 to 10, my skill and proficiency levels are somewhere around a 3 but steadily inching their way up. Everything in the shop, including me, is a work in progress. Hopefully, my grandchildren may come to enjoy this pursuit; Zoe, my oldest, worked with me over Christmas to make a present for her sister. “On another note, [wife] Missy and I took a river cruise in May 2013 on the Seine, from Paris to Normandy. I had long wanted to visit the American cemetery there, ever since my tour of duty in the Navy ended, but it took 43 years to make it happen. After walking through those rows of white crosses and then, down below the cliffs, across the sands of Omaha Beach, all I can say is that if you have never made this trip you owe it to yourself to go. Put it on your bucket list; you will not be disappointed.” I am delighted to say that our class number has held steady since our 50th Reunion. This alone is cause to celebrate at our 52nd reunion. Seriously, please consider attending with your family and/or pets. Our PA classmates e-mail group now has more than 70 members. Contact me to sign up; there will never be a request for money or reports of deviationist thoughts. Happy spring! God willing, we will all party in early September.
1963 ABBOT
Cynthia F. Kimball 7 Thoreau Road Lexington MA 02420 781-862-6424 cynthiakimball@earthlink.net
Communication among some of our class members has continued to flourish, including mention by several of hopes that there really will be an Abbot Bazaar in May 2014. I had a wonderful letter from Lucinda Hannon written in October 2013, chock-full of news. Lucinda wrote, “Cindy Sorensen and I went to the opening of James Prosek’s show at the Addison (which was delightful, wonderful, stimulating, and more) and also to an afternoon at Sturbridge Village, where we rode in a stagecoach and took a little riverboat tour—lots of
fun. While I was in NYC for a benefit for the New York Aquarium, I had a very nice visit with Carol Humstone and am looking forward to seeing her again before long. By telephone I’ve connected with Danica Miller Eskind, whose mother died this fall and who was getting ready for her son’s wedding. I hope she sends photos. I’ve also spoken with Jonell Briggs Safford, who sounds like she’s full-steam ahead starting a new baking business. In November, Freddie Moxon Heller and I will attend the annual meeting of Physicians for a National Health Program in Boston. It’s just what its name suggests. I became involved with the organization back in the early ’90s, and I think Freddie will find it interesting. I’m looking forward to the Abbot Bazaar—I think it will be on Saturday, May 31. It will be fun to try to recapture some of the old fun and nonsense— beanbag throws, kissing booth, sack races, etc. I hope we can turn it into a mini reunion, and maybe even get the old PA classes to return. Let’s pick up on Betsy Cadbury’s idea for this. It is part of a string of events for celebrating 40 years of coeducation.” Thanks, Lucinda, for so much news! I hope the Bazaar does take place. In the meantime, please continue to write and share your news.
PHILLIPS John C. Kane Jr. 28 Puritan Park Swampscott MA 01907 781-592-4967 Jkane2727@aol.com
In my 70th year, the mind slows, the organization wanes, and the memory is clear (but only longterm). It is possible, therefore, that I have overlooked or mislaid your cards, letters, and e-mails. Possible but, sadly, unlikely. My suspicion is that your minds likewise are slowing, organization(s) waning, and impulses to communicate suppressed. Please remedy (preferably by e-mail to jkane2727@aol. com). As you are about to experience, the sound of my self-rumination is not endearing even to the self-ruminator. My contract with the Academy provides that, for me to receive the big bucks, each column must mention four (4) classmates in boldface print. So, Jim Brown and wife Tish recently celebrated their 45th anniversary, favored by a brilliant reminiscence delivered by their son Hayden on my behalf, in which I described Jim’s hours thoughtfully studying on the Newman House toilet during upper year, allowing me to sleep well in our one-room “double” en route to a 60 in Ed Hammond ’40’s geometry class. Dick Clapp and I enjoyed a Donald Ross bifecta in September, golfing at George Wright, a neat and scenic Boston municipal course, and Hyannisport. Johnny Bilheimer arranged a wonderful lunch in Washington, D.C., in December with two of the 12 African-American members of my Yale class of 1967—one a former law-firm colleague of Johnny’s in Little Rock, Ark., who, like Johnny, had experienced 1950s school desegregation Andover | Spring 2014
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