While there may be a hint of spring in the air for some readers, this column is actually being written on Christmas Day. So it’s only fitting to acknowledge our own class Chris Kringle, Jim Tent.


Jim, dressed in a patriotic Santa uniform, and equipped, as he says, with “my long, dead-white beard (and unwanted tub) seems to fill the role brilliantly” as the National Museum of Civil War Medicine (NMCWM) Civil War Santa. 


Jim has been training for this key assignment pretty much since leaving Hanover. He spent 36 years at the University of Alabama teaching European history with a specialty in modern Germany before retiring in January 2010. About two years ago Jim and retired math teacher wife Bunnie moved to Frederick, Maryland, where they both became active volunteers with the NMCWM in Frederick. 


Another classmate enjoying a busy retirement at a new location is Richard Tufaro. Following a 34-year career as a partner in the litigation group at Milbank Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, first in N.Y.C. and then in D.C., Richard and Helen moved to Amelia Island, Florida, in 2010. Both are active with their churches and Richard has been asked to join the board of Amelia Island Plantation, a community of about 2,100 owners.


Richard and Helen also keep busy keeping up with their four children, Mary (33), Ed (32), Paul (30) and Cynthia (28) and six grandchildren. Last summer they dug a bit deeper into family history and, during a driving tour of Italy, visited Terra Nova di Pollino in the Basilicata region, the place where Richard’s dad was born before coming to the United States at age 3. “It was a great trip,” Richard reports, “full of variety and little traveled by most tourists.”


Also very busy in retirement is Steve Smith, who, along with wife Jean and a few neighbors, founded a land trust in 2000 to “protect the open space and natural character” of the area around Lakeside, Michigan, where the Smiths now live. Chikaming Open Lands have now protected more than 1,000 acres in nine townships. “It has been fun,” Steve reports, “and has allowed us to stay involved and active in important local environmental and community issues.” Steve retired from AVEX, an $800 million contract electronics manufacturer, after stints with a familiar alphabet of top-tier telecom players—GE, GTE and AT&T.


Al Ryan is one classmate still working, seemingly at three professions. Al’s day job is dealing with intellectual property and other legal matters for Harvard Business School Publishing (for 11 of a total of 27 years at Harvard). Drawing on his experience as a war crimes prosecutor for the Justice Department, Al also teaches war and justice law courses at the Harvard extension and summer school in the journalism master’s program and at Boston College Law School.


To fill in any down time, Al has written Yamashita’s Ghost: War Crimes, MacArthur’s Justice, and Command Accountability, recently published by the University Press of Kansas. It’s about command responsibility for troop behavior, from WW II in the Philippines to My Lai and Abu Ghraib. Sounds like a good read.


What are you up to?


—Larry Geiger, 93 Greenridge Ave., White Plains, NY 10605; (917) 747-1642; lgeiger@aol.com