Knox Village, an inclusive, independent, continuing care retirement community in Pompano Beach, FL. They continue to expand www.philosophy-religion. org and www.nolan-pingpank.com. In 2012 they will celebrate their 57th anniversary as a couple and their third as legally (CT) married. Dick teaches mini-courses in religious/philosophical studies in the Village. In the Greater Fort Lauderdale region they participate in a variety of associations and with friends, such that each day is as full or laid back as one wishes. Dick is somewhat limited by medical nuisances, although Bob enjoys very good health. They attend a monthly Episcopal service held in the Village. YDS alumni are invited to be their luncheon guests in the dining room, especially if interested in this unique type of living; residents are 62+ and live independently or in the assisted living & nursing home residences. Their Scrapbook website includes many pictures. Email them at canon@rtnolan.com if you’d like to visit.
Class of 1968
Secretary, Wylie S. Quinn III vquinn@thechapelofthecross.org
Class of 1969
Class notes to: divinity.classnotes@yale.edu BONNIE SCOTT JELINEK received a D.Min. from Andover Newton and postgraduate certification in psychodynamic psychotherapy after graduating from YDS. She has served several churches in Connecticut and Massachusetts and is presently one of the pastors at the Wellesley Hills Congregational Church in Wellesley, MA. She has five children and eight grandchildren and no plans for retirement yet. HENRY M. SMITH journeyed to Montgomery, AL, on a beautiful weekend at the end of April to participate in a wonderful celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Southern Poverty Law Center (with about 2,000 other souls) and its impressive accomplishments/victories. He also did his annual sojourn in France (August) where he spent three delightful days out in Bayeux (Normandy) with a lovely French family; took in an excellent exhibition on the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (50 years ago!) at the fine Holocaust Memorial in Paris; spent quality time with French friends; and translated an editorial in Le Monde (3 Aug.) titled, “After the debt, stagnation threatens Mr. Obama.” He also spotted a t-shirt, which read: “Life is today.” He was a lecturer in French at UNH (1988-2006) and continues to reside in Durham, NH. WALTER GAFFNEY retired in February 2011 from the Connecticut Department of Social Services as its chief of staff. He is currently working with a federal grant at the Agency on Aging of South Central Connecticut as the program’s project coordinator. The grant calls for capacity building in the New Haven Public Schools by 10 VISTA members who will expand tutoring services for literacy in the city’s schools. Walter is married to Cheryl Gaffney and they have five children. They reside in Madison, CT.
Class of 1970
Secretary, Jerald L. Kirkpatrick mrstardad@yahoo.com DON CHANDLER owns a piano service business, serves as organist-choirmaster at an Episcopal church in Maryland, and has recently decided to resume his doctoral work in Japanese studies.
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Classes of ’70, ’71, ’72
CATHIE KOUTSOGIANE CIPOLLA retired from high school teaching but is now teaching English to a combined class of 7th and 8th graders. PAUL HARRIS spent nine months as the teaching/ missions pastor at Easter Lutheran (ELCA) in Eagan, MN, and three months teaching church history at Tumaini University in Iringa, Tanzania. Paul also serves as project advisor for Radio Furaha and the Microfinance Institute at Tumaini. JOHN HOLBROOK completed an M.A. in administrative sciences at Yale after his studies at YDS, then an M.D. at Harvard. He practiced two years in public health at the New Mexico State Penitentiary; practiced emergency medicine for 20 years in Springfield MA; hospital administrator 1990-1996; software designer 1999-2001; medical analyst for life insurance companies over the last 10 years. He is married and has two grown sons. JERRY KIRKPATRICK is retired but engaged in interim ministry. GARY AND LYNN MILLER are both retired. Gary has retired from a career in college teaching and chaplaincy and, Lynn, from college teaching and school administration. JUDY PUGH STONE is retired from her social work career in New Haven. KERMIT WESTERBERG is semi-retired and doing some consulting. JOE CASE has been dean of financial aid at Amherst College for the past 30 years. He recently ended 15 years on the editorial board of the Journal of Student Financial Aid, the last four as executive editor. SANDRA FORRESTER DUFRESNE leads a quiet life in retirement. She continues to respond well to chemotherapy plus prayer, in equal doses, to combat her metastatic cancer. She stays as often as possible at her place in Rehoboth Beach, DE, including riding out Hurricane Irene in August. She lives in Philadelphia with her younger daughter and travels often to California to visit her older daughter, who is expecting the first grandchild in January. BOB EMMAUS is completing 30 years of servant leadership in the nursing home industry, reading David Kelsey’s Eccentric Existence and participating
in an emerging Yale Divinity ministry at St. Andrew’s Episcopal in Greensboro, North Carolina. RON EVANS and wife Janet retired in 2007 to “Pilgrim Place,” Claremont, CA, an international community of clergy and academics. They enjoy music, lectures, college courses and engaging conversations. They travel east for YDS Advisory Board meetings and to visit New England every so often. SAM GLADDING continues to chair the Department of Counseling at Wake Forest University and to be active in his local United Methodist church where he occasionally preaches. His youngest son, Timothy, is a junior at Yale, so they make regular trips to New Haven. SAM LAMBACK continues to work part-time in retirement for the South Georgia United Methodist bishop with opportunities for banjo picking, Bible teaching, and projects around the house. Two grandchildren are in Atlanta and two in Germany. Gini continues teaching English as a Second Language to Japanese in Macon. SANDY WYLIE retired to 3 Wembly Circle in Bella Vista, AR, on June 1 after a 44-year career in the United Methodist Church. Wife Susan continues to work three days a week in Tulsa. Life is good.
Class of 1971
Class notes to: divinity.classnotes@yale.edu WILL WILLIMON is looking forward to retirement in a couple of years after long service as a university chaplain and now a United Methodist bishop. RICH REIFSNYDER is a Presbyterian pastor in Pennsylvania. BOB JONES is serving a church in Dayton, OH and undertaking intentional interim ministry training. DEAN DENNISTON, JR. is retired from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services, where he was director of civil rights. DAN AND SUSAN ‘69 GARRETT are now both retired from serving as United Methodist clergy.
it hosted an internabroad continued tional art auction to support victims of the massive earthquake and tsunami. “It is my hope the gallery functions as a small oasis in this troubled world,” says Ishikure.
Also in South America is Andrew McMillan ’80 M.Div., who has been in Colombia for almost a quarter century. The main church he and his wife, Kathy, planted in Medellin is rocking with 6,000 people, and they have planted another 14 churches round about.
Also in Japan is Hidekazu Utsunomiya ‘64 M.Div., ‘71 S.T.M., retired in Tokyo. In 2007 he started editing a small independent monthly journal in which retired teachers and workers can write anything relevant to their interests and serious concerns in their lives. “There are so many retired people in Japan who do not know how to live their second life after retirement,” writes Utsunomiya. “Each contributor types, proof reads, and pays for the expense. I edit and return two copies, and they copy them again and send them to their friends.”
Four thousand kilometers away, in Darwin, Australia, lives Jana Norman ’93 M. Div. Norman first went overseas to take a break from work but eventually found herself working for the Iona Community in Scotland, then in congregations in London and Australia. “A most satisfying development,” she reports, “was an ‘alternative resource community’ in Darwin, which now buzzes with a permaculture community garden, coffee shop, and recycled goods store all based on practices of sustainability, hospitality, discernment, connectivity, and spaciousness.” For over 50 years Bill Yoder ’68 B.D. has been working in Thailand as an educator. In 1985 he was appointed dean of the McGilvary College of Divinity at Payap University, in Chiang Mai, retiring as dean emeritus in 2006. “The high points of my career,” writes Yoder, “have been the rebuilding of the College of Divinity between 1989 and 1992 and the institution of the International Master of Divinity program taught in English in 2003. Yoder is now retired, living in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Under the auspices of the Beijing Yale Club, Jennie Ling ’61 M.A.R. and George Ling ’60 B.D. became been involved with the Kickstart scholarship program in 2005, which George serves as co-chair. Designed for rural high school graduates who have gained admission to universities but cannot afford the cost of attendance, Kickstart gives selected scholars the first year of full tuition, helps them find work-study jobs for the other three years, and mentors them all four years. Also in Beijing, since August 2011, is Peter Petite ’87 M. Div., a founding faculty member of the International Division of Beijing No. 2 Middle School (“middle” being equivalent to “senior high”). He teaches English to Chinese students who are committed to attending university in the United States. Two alumni have taken their faith and ventured into the international art world: William Ng ’05 M.A.R. in China and Kyoko Komatsu Ishikure ’59 M.R.E. in Japan. Ng is a Franciscan friar now living in Hong Kong. “I have been privileged to put my YDS experience into practice,” writes Ng. “With theological training in the study of religion and the arts, I am able to design and consult on creative services to various local church projects.” He feels that his engagement with formation ministry and itinerant preaching is greatly enriched by his orientation to spirituality in arts.
BENJAMIN AUNE is president and CEO of Operation Access, a San Francisco nonprofit that arranges donated surgical care for low-income, uninsured
Ishikure runs an art gallery in Tokyo that is mostly focused on assisting young artists to exhibit their works. Additionally, the gallery hosts various humanitarian events. Last spring, for example,
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Duff says he’s “still finding people and offering them a better life.” While living between Sydney and Sao Paulo, Watkins has also found time to serve as governor of the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia and, until recently, as president of the Yale Club of Sydney.
Further west, in North East India, recent graduate Kedo Peseyie ’11 S.T.M. is the chaplain at Baptist College Kohima. There, he works with eight small groups in discipleship and leadership development, offering certificate-level courses and overseeing four weekly chapel services. In addition to his chaplaincy and involvement in local church life, Peseyie is publishing a collection of short stories that reflects on the religious, social and cultural life in Nagaland. “I am immensely grateful to YDS,” writes Peseyie, “for the training I received and to the financial sponsors who made it possible.” In Africa are Evalyn M. Wakhusama ’01 M.Div., ’02 S.T.M.; Aidan Kwame Ahaligah ’11 S.T.M.; and Victor AttaBaffoe ’93 S.T.M. Wakhusama is the founder/executive director of the Women’s Initiative in Knowledge and Survival (WIKS), a Kenyan NGO that, among other things, in 2009 established the Nambale Magnet School in Nambale, Western Province, Kenya for children orphaned or made vulnerable by the AIDS crisis. Also in Kenya, Ahaligah currently teaches theology at the Presbyterian University of East Africa, near Nairobi. “Having served as a pastor in some of the poorest communities in Ghana prior to my coming to YDS,” writes Ahaligah, “my studies put into perspective what it entails to be a minister and theologian in communities whose aspirations to break from the shackles of injustice are inextricably linked to their faith in Jesus Christ.” In Ghana is Atta-Baffoe, dean of St. Nicholas Seminary, in Cape Coast. He is a member of the Inter-Anglican Doctrinal and Theological Commission, chairman of the African Network of Institutions of Theological Education Preparing Anglicans for Ministry (ANITEPAM), and served on the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission. This is just a glimpse into the lives of some of the many YDS alumni who have followed a call that locates them beyond the borders of America— bespeaking the fact that YDS is an internationally sensitive institution with a global reach and impact, and a mission that holds alumni together across time and space. Perhaps Goethe put it best when he said, “The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.”
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