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www.andover.edu/intouch they called on the different governments to secure funding (successfully), and by night they traveled by sleeper between cities. The mind boggles at the idea of fitting the almost 7-foot John into a sleeper berth. “John shared that he had spent three weeks in a coma with a brain bleed, as compared to my three days. For those of you who have never had the opportunity, it is a trip, and I got to see two original movies.” That’s Leslie. At that memorable dinner, Craig Whitney reports that attendees received “encouragement to use our ‘Andover French’ by Liliane. We steered mostly but not completely away from politics, and Les, I remember, contributed the strikingly original and provocative thesis comment that modern technology (smartphones, Facebook, the Internet generally, and Twitter) is changing the way we think. I concur wholeheartedly—Twitter threatens to make birdbrains of us all. That’s #birdbrain61, right?” Classmates: Would you grab a piece of modern technology, please, and let me hear from you?
1962 Jim Rubin, Bill Drayton, and Dave Kirk chimed in along the same lines. And two words from Cy Hornsby expressed so much: “If only. …” More on the Hannon family, from Dave: “While our grandchildren (4 and 2) will visit us for Christmas, we will visit them in Santiago, Chile, in January. Jake and Kelly teach math in an international school there. Our older son, Drew, finished a doctorate in American studies at Yale this year and is teaching at Johnson & Wales in RI. Sarah is working on a doctorate in education at Harvard. We are still in Cambridge and enjoying it greatly. My wife, Fay, is very active as an artist.” Liliane and Jim Rubin invited classmates John Marks, Dennis Cross, Craig Whitney, and Leslie Stroh and wives for dinner at their home in NYC. “We stayed with John and Susan in Amsterdam last May while I was at an art history conference there,” wrote Jim. “I love Amsterdam, and so I go there at least once a year. We spent six months in Alsace, which will be our new schedule. Delphine [Rubin McNeill ’95] lives in London with our two future Andover grandchildren. If they simply keep up with their British school peers, they’ll be well prepared. The Brits push them way beyond anything American elementary and middle schools, including privates, ever dreamed.” Leslie Stroh sent along a picture of that dinner gathering, and some comments. “Liliane Rubin was a good sport and fabulous cook of a classic French dinner who looks after a well-fed Jim,” said Leslie. “John Marks shared with us how Search for Common Ground was founded. After he and Susan Collins Marks were married, they took a 10-day train trip between the capitals of Europe. By day
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Andover | Summer 2017
55th REUNION June 9–11, 2017
ABBOT
Kathrin Krakauer 240 Columbia Drive Bomoseen, VT 05732 802-273-2548 kkrakauer@shoreham.net
PHILLIPS M. Charles Bakst 1 Wayland Ave., Unit 112N Providence, RI 02906 401-465-2781 mcbakst@gmail.com
All the way from Thailand comes this update from John Garver, whom I hadn’t heard from in decades, and it certainly is interesting: “After Yale, I graduated from Fordham Law School in 1970. I first worked as an associate at Shearman & Sterling, then worked for the Goelet family office in New York City as a legal and financial advisor, and then moved on with an attorney friend of mine creating long-term placement insurance trusts. After a messy divorce, at 62 I took early Social Security and moved to Bangkok, the City of Angels in the Land of Smiles, where I have been a happy camper for the past 10 years, having the opportunity to travel extensively throughout SE Asia from Cambodia to Vietnam and being able to meet and appreciate extraordinary people of many different cultures and beliefs.”
Lee Gilbert also gets around. “With eight children and 17 grands stretched between California and England, Becky and I fly ourselves around visiting the kids, testing the old adage concerning guests after three days starting to smell like fish. …I still find takeoffs breathtakingly magic, especially from the pilot’s seat.’’ Life is also busy for Andy Levy and family. Consider this dispatch regarding his very talented spouse, Tovah Feldshuh: “My wife continues to enjoy acting, even though they killed her off in (AMC’s) The Walking Dead. She is now the overbearing mother (a real stretch for her, believe me) in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend on the CW, and she continues to do cabaret, special events, and, a few times a year, her Broadway show, Golda’s Balcony.” Andy is senior counsel in the New York office of global law firm DLA Piper. But he also has time to invest in some real estate projects, advise a wealth management company, raise funds for several businesses, and travel, including two longish 2016 trips to China. He also caught up in DC with Bill McKee—an old story of sorts. How old? Well, they’ve known each other since first grade and roomed for two years in law school. Meanwhile, Charlie Stuart was finishing up a documentary about mental health—specifically, PTS, schizophrenia, and suicide—to air next fall on PBS. Title: Out of the Darkness. Coupled with the broadcast, says Charlie, “is an outreach campaign involving more than 350 partners who will help change the culture in this country surrounding mental wellness.” He is raising money to see the project through. Check out timetotalkaboutmentalhealth.com. By the way, if you visualize the Charlie we knew in school or even later as a hockey player, delete that image. He says he gave up years ago after reporting to work at Boston’s WGBH-TV one morning with a huge bandage and a black-and-blue face from a game the night before. “It was,” he says, “time to move on.” It’s always good to know when to move on, but that doesn’t mean we need to shed our memories. I mentioned in an email to the class last fall that, almost subconsciously, a 10th-grade interest in chess—notably Tuesday night Chess Club meetings in Cooley House—had welled up and propelled me to buy a ticket to November’s World Chess Championship in NYC. This rang a bell for Clay Sundermeyer, who recalls playing rec room and dormitory bridge with Chuck Freeman, Dick Penley, and others. “When I went home for vacation, I played my first bridge tournament in 1961 unencumbered by any real knowledge of what I was doing! I met my wife, Nada, at a bridge tournament in St. Louis. With 10 years off here, 15 years off there, we still play today.” Jon Baron, UPenn psychology professor, remembers: “I got the flu and was in the infirmary. There was a radio tuned to a jazz station. In my feverish state, I discovered Miles Davis.
“Once, in the music building, Mr. Schneider was in the classroom admiring his new stereo speakers and playing a record of someone singing. He was pacing back and forth with excitement. ‘What a voice!’ he said. That was Joan Baez. “I loved to wander the stacks in the library. The psychology and philosophy books fed an interest that became my career.” In my mind’s eye, Rick Barry is sitting near me and devouring the Dallas newspaper as we wait for an assembly to start in GW. I wouldn’t have predicted what would become a major interest for him in retirement, but then too, neither would he. “I have almost inexplicably developed an interest in the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs,” Rick reports in reference to the creator of Tarzan and other famous characters. “I had always looked down my nose at Burroughs until six years ago when, for complex reasons, I read his book A Princess of Mars. It was stunningly imaginative and fun, and since then I’ve read most of his 70 or so novels.” While we’re on the subject of memories, many of us will recall watching the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates and the long election night that followed. Vic Peppard notes another historic event we took in on TV: the U.S. Olympic hockey team’s incredible victory over the USSR at Squaw Valley. Folks nowadays might be more likely to think of the triumph in the 1980 Olympics, but Vic, who is now a Russian professor at the University of South Florida, says, “For me, the first Miracle on Ice took place in 1960.” And he’s right. Our 55th Reunion is June 9–11. We were honored to attend PA and we can honor the school—and one another—by coming together on this grand occasion. As anyone who has been to a reunion can attest, they’re interesting—and fun. I join with Class President Dan Jenkins in saying: Be there!
1963 ABBOT
Cynthia F. Kimball 7 Thoreau Road Lexington, MA 02420 781-862-6424 cynthiakimball@earthlink.net
Our thanks to Ann MacCready Northup, who is on the Alumni Council and attended a meeting in Andover related to the council this past November. This April will be the 10th anniversary of Non Sibi Day. As we all know, non sibi is the motto of Phillips Academy, and in the past 10 years Non Sibi Day has developed into an important alumni event called Non Sibi Weekend. This global weekend of service involves a collective effort of outreach, planning, and organizing service projects around the world. It is meant to symbolize Andover’s year-round commitment
to community service and service learning. In addition to Non Sibi Weekend, the committee and the school are deeply committed to serving as a catalyst for year-round expressions of the non sibi spirit. Non Sibi 365 is designed to include all Andover alumni service, from starting a nonprofit to coaching a soccer team to holding a book drive or working at a soup kitchen. That means many, many alumni meet the criteria without knowing it. I have participated in some Non Sibi Days (along with Cindy Sorensen) and attest to the terrific nature of this program. It is thrilling to think that all over the globe, we Abbot and Phillips Academy folks are participating in such a great venture at the (relatively) same time! In my request for updates from Abbot classmates, Cindy Sorensen wrote the following: “As you might expect, I’ve continued to enjoy many activities and expand my horizons with greyhounds and their people. Retirement from teaching has given me the freedom to delve into kennel chores at Greyhound Friends in Hopkinton, MA, and to help with adoptions and an educational outreach program about the history of the greyhound. Going to the dogs has also taken me to annual events in Gettysburg, PA, and Dewey Beach, DE.” Thanks for all your great work, Cindy! As always, it’s great to hear about what classmates are doing, so please keep me posted.
PHILLIPS John C. Kane Jr. 28 Puritan Park Swampscott, MA 01907 781-592-4967 Jkane2727@aol.com
If my columns had titles, the preceding two perhaps would have been titled “Memories from an Empty Email Box” and “Remembering Denny” (and yes, I know Calvin Trillin has rights to the latter, and I believe his book by that title is one of the finest I have ever read). The title for this column would have to be “Class of 1963 Book Fair.” Remarkably, books by four classmates were published in 2016. Ken Kusterer has released Touch under the pen name Casey Costra. It is available on Amazon as an e-book and in paperback. From a short summary sent by Ken: “Domestic violence almost kills Rosa and does kill Tony’s police wife. Their responses touch off an abused-women’s movement in Little Italy and beyond. Neither can heal without touch, yet their paths to recovery leave them untouched and alone.” And from the related website caseycostra.com, Ken offers this on the process leading up to the book: “Writing Touch I talked with people who knew marriages and relationships gone terribly wrong. I learned how some women lived past such calamities. Well, some women and one man named Tony. I learned how
they recovered, how some of them went on to help others recover, and how a few of them helped to eliminate the calamities so fewer would ever have to recover. I think it’s a hopeful book. The calamities are as bad as we thought. Worse. But some women are making them easier to move past, and others fight to make them fewer.” Why Casey Costra? Ken explains he was looking for a gender-ambiguous pen name to respond to a concern that women might not read a book on this subject written by a man. “I’ve used ‘Casey’ since I was 17 and printed myself fake IDs after-hours in the print places I worked. Back then it was Casey Kaye from my initials, KCK. And in the 50 years since, Casey has become a unisex name.” Touch actually is Ken’s third completed novel, but it’s the first one available in “prime time” (Ken’s words). Bill Hartman has self-published The Link. It, too, is available on Amazon, in Kindle form. Bill wrote the book in the mid-’80s, and let it age (“like fine wine”—Bill’s words) until publishing it last summer. At my request, Bill offered the following description: “The Link is a novel about finance, political intrigue, and PR battles with an independent financial consultant saving the world. But economic turmoil, Soviet agents of influence, the specter of political disruptions, and advancing prospects for major corporations remain while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) may still have a role to play. The Link is also a love story; however, lacking the collaborative efforts of Tangled Wives, I left sex-scene details to readers’ imaginations. And, The Link provides time travel. Those who grew up in the pre-Internet world will be reminded of life in an earlier era while events depicted in the book lend perspective on today—akin to reading Orwell’s 1984 in 1984. When asked if The Link is autobiographical—for the record I will neither confirm nor deny that I met Gorbachev…” In Kindle form, Bill’s book is very modestly priced. Jon Turk has released his most recent book, Crocodiles and Ice: A Journey into Deep Wild. Jon’s description: “Crocodiles and Ice is a scientist/ adventurer’s journey into a Consciousness Revolution based on a deep, reciprocal communication with the Earth. This book highlights my National Geographic award-winning polar expedition circumnavigating Ellesmere Island, but also shares wisdoms from our Stone Age ancestors, the poets of the ’60s, a wolf that lingers, a Siberian shaman, a Chinese bicycle nomad, a lonely Tlingit warrior lying down to die in a storm, and the landscapes themselves. Because beyond the wondrous and seductive opulence of our oilsoaked, Internet-crazed, consumer-oriented society, there lies a glorious and sustainable lifestyle that is based on Deep Wild as a foundation of solace, sanity, compassion, and hope.” You can purchase the book online or in bookstores. Did I say “books by four classmates were published in 2016”? As Bill Clinton might Andover | Summer 2017
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