www.andover.edu/intouch 2014. Peggy reports that her parents’ Tamworth Inn in New Hampshire was bought by a company associated with Quaker City Mercantile. Part of it was preserved as an historical site and part was taken down to build a distillery. “That’s a partial success for historic preservation, and actually better than I had hoped for,” she says. Mary McCabe writes that she, Mary Anna Sullivan, and Nancy Cohen keep planning a mutual 60th birthday party, but it hasn’t quite happened yet. Mary will be attending a reunion of her junior year abroad classmates from the University of Edinburgh in May-June in Edinburgh, Scotland. Daughter Anna is doing fantastically, attending Berklee College of Music to pursue her singing and songwriting career. Mary attends every performance, be it at a seedy little barroom in Haverhill, Mass., where Anna sang a couple of jazz classics with a bunch of old-timers, or Anna’s performance as Sandy in the Camp Fatima performance of Grease. Mary does admit to having a hard time seeing her daughter in a tight, slinky catsuit like Olivia Newton-John’s in Grease! This past fall, Lucy Pope and Abby Johnson did a Northeast driving tour. In addition to visiting Abby’s ailing relatives and retracing the Berkshire territory of their post-Abbot bicycle trip and wild early-1970s summers, they landed at the home of Carol Kennedy McCarthy and husband Dave in Binghamton, N.Y.; Carol’s daughter Maeve and son, Owen, also live and work in Binghampton. Carol and Dave are fully engaged grandparents to Owen’s three kids. Carol and Boston-based daughter Beven joined Lucy and Abby for dinner in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood with Beatriz McConnie Zapater. After some beach time on Cape Cod, Abby headed to DC on business, just in time for the government shutdown. Instead of the (closed) monuments, Abby explored the Newseum and enjoyed a Chinese potsticker dinner with Lexi Freeman ’70 and her family. Dory Streett will pull up stakes in Shanghai in June and head to St. Catharines, Ontario (20 miles from Niagara Falls), for a year. Dory will help revamp the university counseling program at Ridley College, which is a secondary boarding school. As we know, Dory and her husband, Dave, have had placements all over the world in the past few years, which has expanded their professional expertise and allowed for extensive traveling and exploring. Some of us armchair travelers have thoroughly enjoyed living vicariously via these class notes and various Facebook posts from Dory. Dory promises that they will continue to travel the world even when they retire, so the rest of us can remain cozy in our armchairs if we so choose. We guess that if notable publications such as the New York Times can admit and list their mistakes, so can we! We apologize to Linda Hynson, as we misidentified the school where son Nick received a master’s degree. It is Villanova.
PHILLIPS Frank duPont 8 Nichols Drive Hastings-on-Hudson NY 10706 914-478-7818 dupont@wdfilms.com
“Semiretired”: I like the phrase. It seems to be cropping up more often these days in conversations with classmates and has the benefit of covering myriad different situations. But whether we’re still working, semiretired, or fully retired, the challenge seems to be the same—being fully engaged. I got in touch with Sam Walker in Athens, Ga. He’s covered a lot of territory since PA. After graduation Sam went to West Point. His military career included a tour of duty in the first Gulf War. Sam says he was “an aviator by specialty. Served in a special unit…flying little attack helos off the back of Navy frigates and destroyers in the Persian Gulf. We were in there…before the war began. Very exciting, one of the most satisfying experiences of my career. Not good for the family, though. I spent over 18 months gone out of a two-year assignment at Ft. Bragg.” Sam has been married for 35 years to June, a flight attendant for Delta, and has two children, Benjamin and Charlotte. Ben was fourth generation at West Point and became a ranger, serving five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s getting married this year. Charlotte married recently and is working for the state of Colorado in human services. While in the Army, Sam got a master’s degree in education. Since retiring in ’96, he has been teaching and coaching in the Atlanta area. Over the years Sam has seen Dana Seero, who contacted Sam back in ’81 when he enlisted, Ernie Adams, Stan Livingston, and Kurt Kuchta. Ernie, after leaving the New York Giants (in 1986), was helping the Army coach break down football film. Kurt stays in touch with Sam and enjoys bonding over their shared experiences as lacrosse coaches. Kurt also reports recently connecting with Charley Schaff, who’s living in Palo Alto, Calif., and seeing Pete Sachs occasionally. Pete, who continues his architecture practice in Newton, Mass., reports spending a few days over the Christmas holidays skiing with Chris Gardella and their families—Pete with his three kids and wife Tracy, Chris with his daughter, Katerina. Pete, who rents a house at Loon Mountain in Lincoln, N.H., has all three of his relatively young children totally dedicated to freestyle skiing. I had a great night recently with Stewart Crone and Pierce Rafferty over steak and drinks in NYC. A lot of stories. Stewart is funny and iconoclastic as ever; Pierce still the sharp, sardonic observer of human nature. Stewart has recently retired for health reasons from a career in graphics. When not working on his 1840 house and playing with Photoshop, he’s traveling—planning a trip to Spain and Languedoc, France, this spring with his wife, Peggy. Dave Andrews reports attending Harry Chandler’s daughter’s wedding in December in
NYC. Dave continues his work in neuro-oncology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, while Harry, semiretired, pursues his third career, in painting. Vernon Barksdale got in touch from Arizona, where his work as the corporate medical director for Recovery Innovations focuses on using disciplines like meditation to advance inner peace and a sense of connection with ourselves and the lives around us. Vernon recounted returning to PA a few years ago for the 40th anniversary celebration of the Af-Lat-Am Society and giving a workshop about spiritual awareness to a receptive audience. “I’ve been presenting and working with integration of the best of science and spirituality for some time. …Too often we forget about such an important aspect of our being when caught up in the race for recognition.” Nils Finne writes from Seattle that, along with staying in touch with Bill Gardner (in Nova Scotia), he’s had two encounters over the past couple years with PA classmates, Michael Carlisle in NYC and Jameson French in Seattle. Nils comments about being “struck by how much of who we now are can be traced back to Andover, yet the stories are naturally so much more varied and unexpected due to the intervening years.” David Gravallese reports getting in touch with Chaiya Wongkrajang, with whom he hopes to connect the next time he’s in Bangkok. David joined the Office of the Legal Adviser at the Department of State in 2012 after many years at EPA, where his last position was assistant general counsel for international environmental law. David reports he is “having great fun” and is “constantly challenged working on topics that range from protection of the ozone layer and the oceans to Arctic and Antarctic affairs to trade negotiations.”
1972 ABBOT Julia Gibert 300 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7ED England + 44 0 7766 022832 juliagibert@gmail.com
There’s been a lot of virtual wringing of hands— mostly from the men—on the AA/PA ’72 Facebook page about our 60th birthdays, which most of us will celebrate (or mourn) this year. I, for one, have decided to go the celebratory route and have declared 2014 a party year. My first birthday party was at Sam Butler ’72’s house in New Hampshire, where he and Walter Maroney ’72 hosted those of us from both schools hardy enough to brave the February cold and snow; from Abbot that meant Nancy Pinks Bennett, Amy Broaddus MacNelly, Brett Cook, Elly Mish, and me. The class notes deadline comes too soon for me to be able to report that great fun was had by all, but I am sure it was. Andover | Spring 2014
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