Pete Cornish, whose career as creative director at mega ad firms Young & Rubicam and J. Walter Thompson qualifies him for Mad Men, likes to cite classmates with whom he has had unique memories or with whom he has just been in touch. He also has the ad man’s gift of gab. There was Pete’s early showbiz phase as drummer in the Lancers, a campus rock band led by guitarist, singer and class president Jim Valentine, and Pete’s post-college avocation as quiz show contestant, recruited by Paul Binder, then a producer at Jeopardy. Pete moved on to To Tell the Truth, where he played an impostor. Pete and Jill, a retired teacher, relocated from Philadelphia to Asheville, North Carolina, during 50th reunion week, and Jill “was kind enough” to do the packing to enable Pete to drive up to Hanover with Gamma Delt brother Bill Manbeck, a construction executive from Mifflintown, Pennsylvania. “We pulled up to our dorm, opened the car door,” recounted Pete, “and somebody says, ‘Pete.’ A guy comes up and says he remembers me, but I don’t know him at all. Turns out he’s Pete Petersen, a Sig Ep, and we were in the Choate Road dorms. When I saw his nametag said Henderson, North Carolina, I realized we were moving right near there that very week and that we were going to be neighbors again. So we got to know each other at reunion and now it’s Jill and Judy, who is Pete’s wife, and Pete and Pete,” a retired manufacturing executive for American Cyanamid in New Jersey. “It’s been nice to get to know a ’63 I didn’t know,” says Pete Cornish, who also stays in touch with Bob Kaplan, a lawyer in Santa Monica, California.


And if that is not a great story, how about Bob Greenwood, a thespian’s thespian, who returned earlier this year after a three-week tour of teaching and performing in Iran? Bob’s Sun.Ergos, a theater and dance company he founded in Alberta, Canada, with partner Dana Luebke, taught acting and movement, performed Shakespeare at the City Theater Hall in Tehran and did research at several of the city’s important museums. They also worked in the Iranian cities of Lahijan and Isfahan and stopped in Istanbul, Turkey, for two days of research. A Dartmouth Players stalwart, Bob earned a master’s at Yale School of Drama and taught at universities before creating Sun.Ergos in 1977. He has taught and performed in 20 countries, including in the 1990s in war-torn Croatia, for which Bob and Dana received the highest Croatian cultural prize. 


Mark your calendars for October 9-11, when we have our annual Homecoming mini-reunion at peak foliage, featuring Yale-Dartmouth football, dinner, party, class board meeting and Hanover Inn breakfast. Limited number of rooms are reserved at Comfort Inn in White River Junction, Vermont, or you can stay elsewhere, but make your reservations early.


I am sorry to report the deaths of Peter Gina, Don McKinnon, Greg Knight, Robert Neuman and Gordon Fowler.


—Harry Zlokower, 60 Madison Ave., Suite 1010, New York, NY 10010; (212) 447-9292, ext. 17; harry@zlokower.com