www.andover.edu/intouch 1949 PHILLIPS
James P. McLane 28 County St. Ipswich MA 01938 978-356-4149 jpmcl@cs.com
It’s a love story. It’s the extraordinary telling of a woman’s courage facing a slow, predictable tragedy. You can get it on Amazon, and it is called Around the House. It’s by David Swenson’s wife, Harriet K. Swenson. From the outside, they appeared to have the enviable life and marriage we all want. They rattled around their picturesque New England colonial home filled with the memories and traces of a well-raised family. She was the chic, wise, intellectual wife, he the Andover–Yale–Harvard Business School guy with the Great Stone Face that resembled the one at Franconia Notch. It wasn’t completely without warning when the diagnosis struck. He had had some shortness of breath and troublesome coughing. He was, after all, a smoker and a stonecutter surrounded with granite dust for years. They sat in the doctor’s treatment room anxiously awaiting the results of the latest round of tests. The news was dreadful: obstructive pulmonary disease accompanied by small-cell carcinoma in the lung, thus beginning, in Harriet’s words, “a six-year regimen of different inhalers, a gradual shift from nighttime to full-time oxygen, many medications and rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, and a total change in how we would live and what was left of our daily survival in Camelot.” The real, many-layered story is about how she managed to make a life for herself and for her husband under the most catastrophic circumstances. Among their other difficulties, they had no health insurance. David’s good friend Turk Smith told me about the book, which I read with wonder and admiration for this couple, especially for Harriet. Ben Potter gave the eulogy at David’s funeral. Resquiescat in pace. The touching book Around the House is highly recommended.
1950 ABBOT
Nora Johnson 1619 Third Ave., Apt. 13G New York NY 10128 212-289-2097 noraj31@gmail.com
This is too little, too late—but have been in and out of hospitals and rehabs for months. Will certainly make it for next time. Love to all. —Nora
PHILLIPS Eric B. Wentworth 2126 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Apt. 32 Washington DC 20008 202-328-0453 ebw@bellatlantic.net
Charlie Flather had to leave our 65th Reunion last June a day early. While many of us stayed to the end, lingering through the Sunday brunch, Charlie was off on an adventure. His itinerary would take him to Murmansk, above the Arctic Circle, in time to board a Russian ship bound for the North Pole by way of Franz Joseph Land. Charlie was one of 120 passengers from 16 countries who sailed on the 50 Years of Victory— the name, translated, of Russia’s largest nuclearpowered icebreaker, chartered by Quark Expeditions. “On the third day,” Charlie reported, “the ship entered pack ice, then about 10 inches thick, which became heavier as we progressed, until it measured 10 feet at the Pole. The ship occasionally had to back up to gain greater momentum going forward in order to break through, particularly when it encountered pressure ridges. For six days the sun never set. We did see whales, walruses, and polar bears. The bears, which have no predators, were not afraid of the ship, and in some cases their curiosity brought them to within 30 yards of us. “At the Pole (where the temperature was 28 degrees Fahrenheit), we were able to disembark onto the ice. A British telephone booth was placed on it, and each of us was allowed to make a two-minute satellite call. There were also hot-air balloon rides. Santa Claus was not right there, but I think I may have seen him in the distance ministering to his reindeer. One of the best parts of the trip was the lecturers: naturalist, geographer, environmentalist, and perhaps the world’s preeminent Arctic historian.” With classic Yankee understatement, Charlie remarked, “It was a worthwhile experience.” What inspired him to sign up? “I try to take perhaps two major trips per year, and two of my good friends did the North Pole in 2014 and came back with glowing reports,” Charlie replied. John Ottenheimer, who lives on Whidbey Island in distant Puget Sound, Wash., was among the classmates who did not make it to our 65th— much less keep going to the North Pole afterward. “Maybe I’ll make it to the 100th!” John said. John left Andover halfway through our upper year and enrolled in the University of Chicago Great Books program. He then served five years as an apprentice to famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright and followed this with 11 years with Taliesin Associated Architects, a group dedicated to maintaining Wright’s legacy. After that, he established his own practice in the Pacific Northwest. John reported this past summer that he was dealing with an “overload of projects,” after
completing a three-week assignment for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation the year before to produce a report about present conditions and future directions at Taliesin, Wright’s home and studio, in Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona. “I have been doing quite a bit of writing as well as designing over the years and am just about to the point of needing to look for a publisher,” John wrote. “It’s taken so much time because in my life the design work has always had to take precedence over the writing.” Invited to list some of his current projects, John responded that he was working on details for the reconstruction and restoration of Wright’s Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Milwaukee; doing lots of R&D work on architectural designs and construction details relating to energy conservation; designing a tennis facility for 24/7/365 play; designing “convertible yoga-type studio/minitheatre/cabaret/chapel buildings in a wooded setting”; and completing his manuscript of firsthand accounts of Wright and his works. “What he was like as a person—that’s what everyone asks me, and for once this will give a true picture of what a marvelous human being, as well as architect, he was,” John wrote. Also on his list, he added, were other architectural books and monographs and a few novels. “I just hope I live long enough to get them off my to-do list,” he concluded. In July, Bill Drake and his wife, JoAnn, headed down to Mexico with friends for a convivial visit with Spencer MacCallum and his wife, Emi, who were living in Casas Grandes and (like John) did not make it to our 65th. Bill and JoAnn were intrigued with Spencer’s life there and his discovery and sponsorship of a remarkable Mexican potter, which had spurred the revival of an ancient pottery technique by other local potters. In late August, in a new Chicago gallery, Bill displayed photos he had taken on trips to Cuba, including those he had included in our reunion exhibit. “After the reunion,” Andy Hall reported, “our one artistically talented grandson, who had just graduated from the Hill School, joined us on a Queen Mary 2 crossing to Southampton, England, following which he and I attended a five-day intensive sculpture course in Lavenham, Suffolk. Although we went down different paths—he with plaster, resulting in a beautiful eagle, I with a clay bust of the model provided—we both finished with ‘keepers,’ his to be cast in bronze and mine in resin.” Skip Schaum alerted us that his autobiography, New Horizons, is now available as an e-book on Kindle and can be found through an Amazon search by author’s name (Rounsevelle Schaum) or by title. I’d already read Skip’s book in the print version he gave me at the reunion. It’s quite a saga, packed with anecdotes, tracing Skip’s eventful personal life and his impressive professional career as a project manager, venture capitalist, and entrepreneur. Andover | Winter 2016
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