Class Note 1969
Issue
May-June 2024
Tom Cronan looks forward to our 55th and writes: “Jan and I are spending the winter in St. James, North Carolina. We moved back to the Upper Valley [Quechee, Vermont] in 2017 after I retired. We met while I was at Dartmouth and she was at Colby, so the move was probably driven by sentimentality. It never dawned on me that Hanover winters can be harder on a 70-year-old than a 19-year-old, especially if the younger Big Greener was frequently ‘fortified’ by 500 gallons of New England rum.
“New England winters ultimately proved too much for us so we began spending winters in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, but that became increasingly risky as the Caribbean is not the best healthcare destination on the planet. Like many, we find that competent medical care is a consideration these days. I’ve had ‘replacement’ parts installed to the point where, during a recent meeting with an estate lawyer, I brought up cremation and he suggested that I consider a smelting shop instead. I also get a free rain jacket from GoreTex annually from my cardiologist’s frequent flyer stent loyalty program.
“All that said, we left St. John and finally landed in North Carolina, where we had friends from up north. Way too cold for scuba but at least warm enough for golf, even in January, and close enough to decent medical care to satisfy our docs back at Dartmouth-Hitchcock.
“After a roughly 40-year, self-imposed exile from all things, I reconnected several years ago largely thanks to my fraternity brother Dan Cooperman, who coerced me into returning for a reunion of the Ivy Championship 1967 football team. Since then I’ve stayed in fairly close touch with a number of classmates and that’s been great. About half of them are fraternity brothers who join a semi-regular Zoom meeting hosted by “Goose” Goodenough and then get together in person at Tom Park’s home in Maine right after Labor Day each year. We replay the same old stories every year. The facts never change but the stories—the telling of them—gets better and better. You don’t want it to end, but you hope it does because your sides ache from the laughter.
“The other group that that I stay very close to is the ‘Baker Bunch’—a dozen or so ’69 misfits who came together after our 50th reunion under the leadership of the amazing Peter Schaeffer. We get together by Zoom every Sunday evening. That’s 250-plus meetings and counting! I can’t say much more about this group, but if you sometimes feel like you’re languishing—and tried less than ideal ways to dealing with those feelings—you can reach out to Peter or Tex for more information.”
Our thanks to Tom, and we’ll see you all in Hanover in June!
—John “Tex” Talmadge, 3519 Brookline Lane, Farmers Branch, TX 75234; (214) 673-9250; johntalmadgemd@gmail.com
“New England winters ultimately proved too much for us so we began spending winters in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, but that became increasingly risky as the Caribbean is not the best healthcare destination on the planet. Like many, we find that competent medical care is a consideration these days. I’ve had ‘replacement’ parts installed to the point where, during a recent meeting with an estate lawyer, I brought up cremation and he suggested that I consider a smelting shop instead. I also get a free rain jacket from GoreTex annually from my cardiologist’s frequent flyer stent loyalty program.
“All that said, we left St. John and finally landed in North Carolina, where we had friends from up north. Way too cold for scuba but at least warm enough for golf, even in January, and close enough to decent medical care to satisfy our docs back at Dartmouth-Hitchcock.
“After a roughly 40-year, self-imposed exile from all things, I reconnected several years ago largely thanks to my fraternity brother Dan Cooperman, who coerced me into returning for a reunion of the Ivy Championship 1967 football team. Since then I’ve stayed in fairly close touch with a number of classmates and that’s been great. About half of them are fraternity brothers who join a semi-regular Zoom meeting hosted by “Goose” Goodenough and then get together in person at Tom Park’s home in Maine right after Labor Day each year. We replay the same old stories every year. The facts never change but the stories—the telling of them—gets better and better. You don’t want it to end, but you hope it does because your sides ache from the laughter.
“The other group that that I stay very close to is the ‘Baker Bunch’—a dozen or so ’69 misfits who came together after our 50th reunion under the leadership of the amazing Peter Schaeffer. We get together by Zoom every Sunday evening. That’s 250-plus meetings and counting! I can’t say much more about this group, but if you sometimes feel like you’re languishing—and tried less than ideal ways to dealing with those feelings—you can reach out to Peter or Tex for more information.”
Our thanks to Tom, and we’ll see you all in Hanover in June!
—John “Tex” Talmadge, 3519 Brookline Lane, Farmers Branch, TX 75234; (214) 673-9250; johntalmadgemd@gmail.com