Class Note 1950
Issue
Jul - Aug 2017
John “Swede” Swenson sent a note from Chicago. His wife, Helen, passed on last year after 62 years of marriage. His father, Mervin Swenson ’23, was inducted into the Wearers of the Green last fall and his son, Bill ’79, was in Hanover to accept the award. Swede is researching and writing a history of Chicago and the Midwest before 1800.
Ken Rothchild checked in from Minneapolis. His granddaughter graduated from Blake School (where Curt Dunnavan and I were ’44s). She now manages a resort in Costa Rica and with her husband started a grade school in a community that had none. Ken and Nina plan to go there when war breaks out with Mexico, thanks to our willfully ignorant president. Ken notes that fellow Minnesotans Arnie Bockstruck, Fred Gamble, Tom Warner, Phil Brown and Arnie Oss are still among us. (I used to date Arnie’s sister, Mary Alice.)
I had a nice note from the long-silent David Steinberg, distinguished professor emeritus at Georgetown University and a fellow philosophy major at Dartmouth. He spent his junior year in China on a scholarship, in the middle of Mao’s revolution. His career was in teaching and in work for the Asia Foundation and the USAID, and he remains active in various academic endeavors concerning the Asian world.
Dr. Cal Sia sent an Aloha from Hawaii (a place our attorney general, who lied during his Senate confirmation, recently referred to as “some island in the Pacific”). Cal was recently honored for his long-outstanding service in pediatric medicine. His son, Michael ’81, is chief of pediatrics at the Kapiolani Women’s and Children’s Medical Center. Cal and his wife, Katherine, celebrated their 65th anniversary last year. He wrote, “Age and health issues are catching up with us, but we live each day to its fullest.”
As a former Republican, I close with a quote from David Leonhardt: “You don’t get to call yourself the party of Lincoln and stay silent when voting rights are abridged, hate crimes are met with silence and dark-skinned citizens are cast as un-American. I never expected to live through a time when bigotry would again be ascendant.”
—Alex Hoffman, 49 Maple St., Apt. 113, Manchester Center, VT 05255; (802) 362-2486; twinksalex@comcast.net
Ken Rothchild checked in from Minneapolis. His granddaughter graduated from Blake School (where Curt Dunnavan and I were ’44s). She now manages a resort in Costa Rica and with her husband started a grade school in a community that had none. Ken and Nina plan to go there when war breaks out with Mexico, thanks to our willfully ignorant president. Ken notes that fellow Minnesotans Arnie Bockstruck, Fred Gamble, Tom Warner, Phil Brown and Arnie Oss are still among us. (I used to date Arnie’s sister, Mary Alice.)
I had a nice note from the long-silent David Steinberg, distinguished professor emeritus at Georgetown University and a fellow philosophy major at Dartmouth. He spent his junior year in China on a scholarship, in the middle of Mao’s revolution. His career was in teaching and in work for the Asia Foundation and the USAID, and he remains active in various academic endeavors concerning the Asian world.
Dr. Cal Sia sent an Aloha from Hawaii (a place our attorney general, who lied during his Senate confirmation, recently referred to as “some island in the Pacific”). Cal was recently honored for his long-outstanding service in pediatric medicine. His son, Michael ’81, is chief of pediatrics at the Kapiolani Women’s and Children’s Medical Center. Cal and his wife, Katherine, celebrated their 65th anniversary last year. He wrote, “Age and health issues are catching up with us, but we live each day to its fullest.”
As a former Republican, I close with a quote from David Leonhardt: “You don’t get to call yourself the party of Lincoln and stay silent when voting rights are abridged, hate crimes are met with silence and dark-skinned citizens are cast as un-American. I never expected to live through a time when bigotry would again be ascendant.”
—Alex Hoffman, 49 Maple St., Apt. 113, Manchester Center, VT 05255; (802) 362-2486; twinksalex@comcast.net