stay connected... execute my first conference successfully thanks to some support from my Andover family including Carl McCarthy, Allison Picott ’88, Meka Egwuekwe ’91, Monica Dacosta ’90, and former CAMD dean Bobby Edwards. Thanks for the love, y’all! And what would our class notes be without a tidbit from Andrew Kunian? Andrew keeps dodging my marriage proposals and jeopardizing the future of our dynastic children yet to be conceived. How could an OB/GYN and a natural gas baron not make great progeny? He has survived the recent floods of Houston, continues to believe in climate change, and allows us all a glimpse into his world. Awesome! If you are groaning or cheering at this edition of the chronicles of the Class of 1989 and have a deep desire to join me and Curtis in the shenanigans, drop us a note to come aboard. Non sibi love today and forevermore. —Gina
1990 Thomas W. Seeley 1572 Heifer Road Skaneateles NY 13152 315-263-0052 (cell) 315-685-3416 (work) twseeley@gmail.com
A quiet quarter in the land of 1990 as my time was consumed primarily with the cross-country road trip I’ve been planning since roughly three months before commencement... I had a wonderful time visiting with Roberta Ritvo and Louise Parsons Parry and meeting the entire Parry crew in DC at the end of June. Together, Weezie, Bert, and I enjoyed an evening of meditation with Tara Brach at River Road Unitarian Church, around the corner from the Parry residence in Bethesda, MD. Bert’s wanderlust took her to Seattle recently, where she enjoyed a cup of coffee with Annie Reese. I also found time to catch up with Regina DeMeo, who graciously hosted me for my visit. Regina continues her meteoric rise in the upper pantheon of family law expertise. Regina practices family law and blogs about all things marriage, divorce, and family relationships in the DC area. Excited to learn that Catherine Bryant Crocker signed on as dean of students for the Class of 2020 at Riverdale Country School, where she also teaches math. She is working with a new group of students for the next four years. Somehow, in between these newfound responsibilities and tending to her lovely family, Cat was training to run in the TCS NYC Marathon in November to raise money for cancer research in honor of a friend and fellow marathoner. Another amazing weekend catching up with Andover folks of all generations at the sixth annual day of remembrance for Todd Isaac and Stacey
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www.andover.edu/intouch Sanders ’94. What better way to start the day than listening to the inimitable Jake Barton discuss his firm’s design and development of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum? Jake is currently working on a project in Montgomery, AL, that seeks to tell the story of racial injustice from slavery to mass incarceration. Sounds like a good excuse for my next road trip. Shared a quiet moment of silence standing by Todd’s name on the memorial with Uche Osuji ’91 and Tiffany Corley ’91. Great to see Erik Moody and his two boys among the many cheering on those brave enough to battle it out at the annual alumni basketball game at Stuyvesant High School. I also had time to visit and reminisce with fellow Syracuse alum Ellie Miller ’92. The festivities found their full swing over Mexican food and cocktails at El Vez, where I was happy to see Ivy Baron among the many faces channeling Todd’s joy. As I was preparing to depart, I was tapped on the shoulder by Lucie Boyce Flather ’91, another familiar face not seen in many years, who regaled with tales of 1991’s excellent reunion last June. Was happy to make it back East in time for the Todd Isaac event after traveling 4,500 miles from Tucson to Skaneateles, NY, via San Diego with my 17-year-old. Managed to catch some rays on Venice Beach with Jennifer Brown Hodur and Heather Keller, along with their spouses and Heather’s wonderful son. Was sorry I wasn’t able to coordinate with John Achenbach and Anna Ivey, among others now calling the LA area home. Anna recently launched inli.ne, which provides college application assistance through a Google Chrome browser extension. Looking forward to testing it out as we navigate the college application process for my—gulp—high school senior! Sadly, our cross-country trek did not include a trip to Charleston, SC, to visit with Hamlin O’Kelley, Anne Wolfe Postic, and Avery Edwards, as Hurricane Hermine forced us to make our way home inland. Was happy to see Rob Bohorad made his way to the Holy City in August and caught a bite to eat with Hamlin. I hope all had a wonderful fall and a holiday season filled with love. Talk soon, I hope. —Tom
1991 Roxane Williams 2732 Goodwin Ave. Redwood City CA 94061 roxandover@gmail.com
Greetings, classmates! Wow, did you really vote me back in to do this again? I’m humbled to be here for another term and vow to do my best to deliver great columns until our…gulp…30th Reunion. Note that I’m writing now from Redwood City, CA, from my new home, on which I closed during reunion with the help of a traveling lawyer/
notary—because I really wouldn’t miss reunion for anything! For work these days, I run my own content-writing business, which mostly entails ghostwriting for tech execs. My daughter, Grace, is now a junior at Tabor, where she’s involved in varsity volleyball, varsity softball, model UN, and helping to run the school’s GSA. She also plays guitar and sings at every open-mike night, cementing her status as far cooler than I. My son, Taylor, just began middle school in Palo Alto and is loving flag football and year-round baseball. Also on the move, Shannon Canavin and family had an exciting summer that included moving into a new condo in East Cambridge, MA. Her music group, Exsultemus, which specializes in performing Renaissance and Baroque vocal music, recorded a new CD in August; their second CD was released this past May, and both are world premiere recordings. Shannon works in development at the Boston Early Music Festival, where she’s been working off and on since 1994. Her daughter, Leah, just began first grade. Nnaemeka “Meka” Egwuekwe is now emptynesting, with daughter Elechi in 11th grade at Groton and daughter Sobenna in eighth grade at Fay. Meka is the executive director of CodeCrew, a Memphis nonprofit that teaches kids to code. He founded CodeCrew in 2015 with funding from the Memphis Grizzlies Foundation and left his job as director of software development at Lokion this May to take on CodeCrew full time. Meka writes, “We have served hundreds of kids across Memphis and will soon be serving thousands, as we have been seriously scaling!” Nathaniel Pendleton writes, “I am a medical shut-in for the past four years, obviously missing 25th Reunion, reflecting several decades of declining health for undiagnosed reasons, but work on #DCstatehood...online from my room when feeling up to it, such as creating/operating the V4DC2 Twitter handle.” Nate also still runs the North East Rail Map Facebook page, marketing a free unifying map of all passenger rail services in the US Northeast for trip planning and line identification. Last but not least, let’s hope he changed that Facebook status: Uche Osuji is a married man! He wed the truly lovely Maggie Mund, whom many of us met and thoroughly adored at reunion, on July 30, with the following Andover crowd in attendance: Jonathan Tower, Mr. Chris ’66 and Sarah Gurry, Coach Bill and Nina Scott, James Elkus, Lex Carroll, Tigger Hitchcock, Alison Parnell, Melinda Page, Rejji Hayes ’93, and Jenny Elkus ’92. Uche has remained involved in the annual Todd Isaac Memorial event and reports that this year’s sixth annual gathering in NYC went very well. Allyson Ford ’92 and Tom Seeley ’90 also attended. Please continue to send me your news as it happens via email or Facebook. Till next time, best wishes for a magical winter. —Roxane
1992 25th REUNION June 9–11, 2017 Allen Soong 1810 Burnell Drive Los Angeles CA 90065 asoong@post.harvard.edu
As I write these notes in early September, New York–area alums and others in the tri-state/ New England region, including Natasha Austin, Tracey Mullings Reed, Josh Davis, Aditi Joshi, Ellie Miller, and Darryl Cohen, are gathering for the Sixth Annual Todd A. Isaac ’90 Memorial Basketball Game at Stuyvesant High School, to be followed by a class dinner at El Vez. This year the day also includes a tour of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum and breakfast with Jake Barton ’90, whose media and architecture firm designed the media installations for the museum and the algorithm used to place names around the memorial itself. Ken Lee, Gene Park, and Dylan Seff have set themselves up for a mini reunion in about 14 years, when they’ll be handing their kids off to the Blue Keys at Andover to start their junior years. Within a month, all three welcomed newborns to their respective families: Ken’s third child, Jonathan; Dylan’s third daughter, Daisy Monroe; and Gene’s firstborn (and future Stanford women’s golf prodigy), Dakota. Congratulations, guys! Congratulations are also in order for Sookyoung Shin, who was nominated to the Massachusetts Appeals Court by Governor Charlie Baker back in July, after having served as an assistant attorney general for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts since 2005. Another reunion of sorts occurred in the pages of the Wall Street Journal: Hilary Potkewitz interviewed Josh Davis (that’s Doctor Josh Davis, by the way) for her article “Why 4 a.m. is the Most Productive Hour.” Hilary explores why many executives and nonexecutives alike prefer to start their day while others are just hitting their third REM cycle. Hilary writes: “One of the most common challenges to productivity, Dr. Davis says, is that people booby trap their offices with distractions: Desk clutter, email pop-ups, cellphone, Facebook, news feeds. ‘By waking up at 4 a.m., they’ve essentially wiped a lot of those distractions off their plate. No one is expecting you to email or answer the phone at 4 a.m. No one will be posting on Facebook. You’ve removed the internal temptation and the external temptation.’ ” Hilary’s article—one of many she has written for the WSJ, by the way—was the most popular story on the Journal’s website for a few days in August. Notably, neither Hilary nor Josh copped to waking at 4 a.m. themselves. Alex Lockwood has been making abstract sculpture from colorful repurposed or recycled
materials in Nashville for five years now, relocating there from Brooklyn with his wife, Genie, a Nashville native who owns a kids’ clothing/ toy boutique. Alex takes small items that are commonplace and disposable, such as used lottery tickets, bottle caps, those plastic tabs that hold bread bags closed, and even expended shotgun shells, and works them into large-scale sculptures of hypnotically repeating patterns and bold colors that beg to be touched. His work can be seen at www. alockwood.com and at hole two of the mini golf course at Nashville’s minor league ballpark, First Tennessee Park. Alex works out of a building he and his wife own that is also home to a creative collective in the emerging Buchanan Arts District of Nashville. The group includes visual artists, a ceramicist, a jewelry designer, a pastry chef, and a florist. When he first saw the building, says Alex, “It was a mess. It was painted this really disgusting green. It had bad carpet and leaks all over.…But I could see it.” After beautifying and revitalizing an old forgotten commercial space into a creative haven, Alex now has designs on developing other live/work spaces for artists in the neighborhood, including an arts-education center for kids, to help establish a long-term presence for the arts community. “I was in Brooklyn for 15 years. I didn’t see change this fast. I mean, for artists who are struggling to find workspace, it’s scary. Maybe you’ll find a place in a neighborhood, but in a year that neighborhood could be a totally different thing, and you’re out of there.” Practically speaking, part of Alex’s plan is to maintain a two-tiered rent structure, with a lower tier for artists and a higher one for others. “I’m not going to gouge anyone, but at the same time, I really want to avoid the cycle of artists being displaced right when a neighborhood starts getting attention. I’d eventually like to create workspaces that I can then sell back to artists, so that they can be permanently invested in the neighborhood.” Alex counts himself fortunate. “I know I’m lucky. I know it’s not common. This is always awkward to talk about, because artists are usually really struggling to find space, and we’re not right now. In the Buchanan Street neighborhood, we can still make some things happen. For Genie and I to be both creative and also be in a position to develop something is really exciting. It’s a position that a lot of people usually aren’t in.” Start making your travel plans—reunion will be upon us before you know it! Check out the class Facebook page for updates; contact Jenny Elkus, Sherri Shafman, Pristine Johannessen, Darryl Cohen, or Daphne Matalene for an invite if you’re not already part of the class Facebook group. Please also make sure the school has all your latest contact info, particularly your email address. If you are interested in helping out, including organizing pre-reunion gatherings, reach out to your reunion cochairs Todd Lubin and Christy Wood or the Office of Alumni Resources.
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www.andover.edu/ alumnidirectory, and log in to update your information
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Alumni Records Phillips Academy 180 Main St. Andover MA 01810-4161
1993 Susannah Smoot Campbell 301-257-9728 Susannah.s.campbell@gmail.com Jen Charat 619-857-6525 jcharat@yahoo.com Ted Gesing 917-282-4210 tedgesing@gmail.com Hilary Koob-Sassen +44 7973775369 hksassen@hotmail.com
Hello, friends. Let’s start with wedding, birth, and new home announcements. Adam Cail and his wife and sons welcomed baby Elle, who was born in June. Heather Brown Lewis moved with her husband and kids from Stoneham to Reading, MA, where I’m sure they’ve started several home renovation projects that put HGTV personalities to shame. I saw a picture of lovely walls freshly painted in Edgecomb Gray. Amber Miller Mason and her family moved from Atlanta to Salem, VA, to the home Amber grew up in, which has been in her family for generations. Eric Hartell married Andover | Winter 2017
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