These three classmates balanced successful, satisfying careers with new adventures, accomplishments, and lifelong pursuits. Take Ken Lease, who retired in 2014 after more than two decades with the Oklahoma School of Sciences and Mathematics (OSSM), high school for gifted students in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ken, who has a master’s in math and doctorate in education from University of Oklahoma, soon after traveled to Singapore to teach a research class. These days he’s serving as mathematics head of the Oklahoma City branch of Oklahoma State University. Profiled in The Oklahoman, Pennsylvania-bred Ken joined the Peace Corps in Malaysia after Dartmouth, where he met Sharon, fellow volunteer and Oklahoma City University graduate. They married and taught in Guam for four years, where their first of two daughters was born, and then Iran, which they departed in early 1979 as the revolution got underway. Ken took a position as school principal in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and then an opportunity in Alaska while Sharon tended the children and worked for state department in Oklahoma. Ken moved back to the state by 1986 and soon settled in at OSSM.

Ron Schecter was established in a 30-year career as commercial and real estate litigation attorney in New York and New Jersey when he and wife Peggy, an accomplished flutist and Julliard graduate, relocated to Maui, Hawaii, 18 years ago to devote themselves full-time to music, a longtime passion of Ron, who now performs with the Maui Pops Orchestra and the Maui Chamber Orchestra and arranges and performs works for unaccompanied cello, including a piece based on the “remarkable resonance” Ron heard “between T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Four Quartets’ and the unaccompanied cello suites of J.S. Bach.” The Schecters’ daughter, Nicole, and her husband, a Turner Broadcasting engineer, have two teen-aged violin playing children.

Jim Cogswell’s love of outdoors and family continues after his retirement as radiologist in Hood River and the Dalles in the scenic Columbia Gorge region of Oregon. A native of Tucson, Arizona, Jim developed his “everlasting appreciation” for wilderness during residency in Denver and has been a member of the Sierra Club since 1969. Jim and wife Leslie, a native Oregonian, now live in Bend, Oregon, where they walk at least six miles a day and climb, hike, and backpack with their children and grandchildren. Jim has two daughters, Carrie ’90 and Kat, and two stepdaughters, Olga and Brisa. He is planning a third European bike trip this summer after missing last year because of the pandemic.

Psi U’s New Year virtual cocktail party included David Halsted, Jim and M’Adele Irvin, Dick Friedman, Charlie and Claire Logan, Chris Wiedenmayer, Sam and Deamie Cabot, and Wick ’62 and Liz Warrick.

I regret to report the passing of Edward Smith of Santa Maria, California.Classmate obituaries by Tige Harris appear in the magazine online edition. We also note the death of David Prentice ’69, publisher of our 50th reunion book. “He was a pure joy to know and work with,” said Ed Mazer, the book’s editor.

—Harry Zlokower, 190 Amity St., Brooklyn, NY 11201; (917) 541-8162; harry@zlokower.com