Golf will make its debut at our annual Homecoming reunion this year. If you can make it to Hanover by 10:30 a.m. Friday, October 17, and golf is your thing, contact Tom Perry at (603) 298-6034 and you may still be able to join the fun. The sport has gained a foothold in class activities, with three off-campus reunions last year and more planned for 2015. As a would-be golfer, I contacted a few ’63 participants for some commiseration and tips. 


Doug Cooper, who played at the Palm Desert, California, mini, advises patience on the course above all. He credits Vin Di Figlia of San Diego for getting him to make the trip from Rocky River, Ohio. Doug is retired from a career as commercial real estate lawyer with a local law firm and a developer. He currently serves on the board of revisions, which reviews challenges to the tax valuation of real estate in his community. Doug’s son Bryan ’89 recently celebrated his 25th reunion. 


“Watch golf swings, practice on the range and above all maintain realistic expectations,” counseled Norris Siert, who traveled with wife Willie six hours from their south Florida home to the Sarasota golf mini-reunion that included friends Ed Wirth and Jay Olin and other classmates. Sarasota is also home of the Circus Ring of Fame, where Paul Binder was inducted in January with Bill Wellstead and Bruce Coggeshall in the audience.


Norris, who once had a four handicap, said he started learning golf by chance in Omaha, Nebraska, when his parents saw an ad in the newspaper for a children’s golf clinic. He ended up in Florida after graduation when the energy company in Omaha that employed him transferred him there and he has lived in south Florida ever since, eventually working for another company and then doing consulting. A Barbary Coast saxophonist as a student, Norris was president of the Greater Miami Symphonic Band from 1993 to 2012. Daughter Debra ’93 is a lawyer. Norris says he now has a handicap of 20 and plays golf once a week. His goal is to play some of the great courses, including Pebble Beach.


Daryl and Joy Smith divide their time between Florham Park, New Jersey, where they work and Palm City, Florida, home of Harbor Ridge, a community originally developed by a Dartmouth alumnus and whose current residents number “four or five from our class.” Harbor Ridge has two courses, one designed by the well-known course designer Pete Dye and the other, a links course where this year’s Palm City golf mini-reunion was held. “Golf tips? I’m the last one to give advice,” said Daryl modestly. He is chairman and CEO of Troy Corp., a chemical company in Florham Park, and on the board of Theater for New Audience in Brooklyn, New York. Doug served on the board of regents at Seton Hall University.


I regretfully must report the deaths of Jeff Rosen, Jim vonGal, Gregory Gates, James Wendell, Chuck Racine and Thomas Martin.


—Harry Zlokower, 60 Madison Ave., Suite 1010, New York City, NY 10010; (212) 447-9292; harry@zlokower.com