Classes & Obits

Class Note 1966

Issue

September-October 2020

We’re still here—and so is Covid-19. I’m writing this on June 26, with the virus very much alive and the world suddenly humming with the prospect of change—social, educational, political. Who knows where we’ll be or what will be happening when you read this in late August.

Classmates have been sharing their news and views about the past few months of forced confinement and upheaval. Here is what a few had to say.

“Doctors didn’t think I was going to survive,” Bruce Hamilton thankfully reports from Bensalem, Pennsylvania, “but I missed that memo and survived anyway.” Glad you did, Bruce! Bruce waged a courageous battle with Covid-19 that involved four weeks in critical care including six days on a respirator and three weeks in sub-critical care with rehab. “My wife, Pat, my kids, and the grandkids are all doing well,” Bruce says, “but going stir crazy in quarantine. The grandkids in particular (two are 16 and two are 14) are feeling bottled up.”

“In these trying months,” Peter Cleaves wrote from Austin, Texas, “I’ve tried to put the downtime to good use for our family history, bi-national appreciation, and the Dartmouth heritage of engendering adventurous youth.” Peter did all this by discovering, then preparing and editing the notes, tapes, and photos his dad, Dick ’32, made about his epic bicycle trip from Laredo, Texas, to Mexico City 88 years ago on the just-inaugurated Pan American Highway. Kindle Amazon will soon be publishing A Mexico Escape 1936: Biking the Pan American Highway.

For the past 25 years Paul Doscher has helped lead the Tuck Business Bridge program, an intensive, three-week management course for liberal arts and sciences students normally held on campus during the summer. It became “entirely virtual” this year. “I miss most the interaction with students and their parents,” Paul says, “and the long-term relationships that have grown from Bridge, with 6,800 graduates.”

For years Chuck Vernon has been putting his home shop in Windsor, Connecticut, to good use, constructing and then donating Lego tables to schools, churches, and daycares. With the lockdown he’s been making the attractive and sturdy tables for grandparents to give to their grandkids with the money Chuck receives going to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital or FoodShare in the buyer’s name. Nice!

The pandemic has demonstrated to Will Wilkoff how good a decision it was for him and Marilyn to settle in Harpswell, Maine, on the Atlantic coast. “There is no better feeling than getting up with the sunrise and rowing several miles on flat ocean water,” Will reports. “It’s just me and the seals and the eider ducks.” Will is also hoping that “in some way the pandemic will be a kind of Sputnik moment that restores in this country a reverence for science and the scientific method.”

Toni and Tim Urban have been watching the unfolding swirl of unprecedented events during the past few months from Winter Park, Colorado, giving Tim a chance to conclude, “We are on a trajectory of great social change. We may look back in 10 years (those of us still kicking) and wonder how we made so many transformative changes in our way of life, coping with climate change, human health, public education, social media, and, of course, social and racial justice. Bring it on!”

Stay well. Be safe. And start planning for our 55th reunion next June in Hanover!

Larry Geiger, 93 Greenridge Ave., White Plains, NY 10605; (914) 860-4945; lgeiger@aol.com