Gathering news for the DAM column is like snatching tidbits from a gale! We reach out but only occasionally succeed in picking something from the wind. But first a reminder: You will have received the annual brochure announcing plans for our mini-reunion that this fall will be the weekend of September 30 to October 2. Reserve your accommodations at the Courtyard by Marriott, where a block of rooms has been set aside for us. This is not Homecoming, so rates will be more favorable. Frank Gould has put together his usual high-quality program and the Penn-Dartmouth football game will be Saturday afternoon. Since the last column Rob Goodell has sent DAM obituaries for the classmates who were listed, and those should be available at its website. We have identified a number of deaths for which obituaries had not been written and Rob has done that. The two most recent deaths we know about are for Frank Gato and Al Gazzaniga. Coleman Colla has provided some interesting stats. “When our class of 1958 cohort was born, the life expectancy of a white American male was 63 years. That would have taken us on average to or past 1999. Now, at about 86, for those of us still alive, life expectancy is 92 years, or half of us will live to see 2028!” As of June 30, of our original class of 753, 424 remain or an extraordinary 56 percent! One death of note outside the class is of John Andersen, who with Donna, hosted us for several Homecoming years at Breakfast on the Connecticut. Among the living, I’ve heard from Bob Abbott, who has consolidated his home in Vero Beach, Florida, and left Massachusetts after many years. Carl Wentworth emails that “California remains attached to the mainland, although the San Andreas fault continues its inexorable movement and occasional earthquakes; the next ‘big one’ is always just ahead of us.” Hmm! Skip Coggin emails that he and Gersh Abraham hosted Buddy Teevens ’79 at a breakfast at their continuing care retirement community in Evanston, Illinois. Not recruiting, I suspect!

—John Trimble, 99 Mooncussers Lane, Chatham, MA 02633; jtrim99@comcast.net