Class Note 1975
Issue
July-August 2022
This month I received unexpected greetings from Peter Fisher, who now resides in a German town near the French border. As he states, “Lovely countryside, especially for biking. By train it’s less than two hours to Paris. My wife, Fiammetta, is Italian, so we spend time in Rome and environs when we get a chance.” Their children are active in healthcare; their son is a researcher in Santa Rosa, California, while their daughter works in pharmaceuticals in Munich, Germany. It is a challenge to stay in touch with his many friends from Dartmouth, so maybe try through our 1975 Facebook page and reconnect with roommates Jon Zins and Frank Willich or squash partner Dave Damiano. As an aside, Peter was an early traveler to Bucharest in 1972. He apparently kept a diary that itself has some historic value—according to Peter, “Parts of it written practically illegibly so that the Securitate could not use sensitive, private information.”
From Larry Johnson comes this: “I just watched the fascinating presentation that Jenny Kemeny ’76 gave last week at the Dartmouth Club of Suburban New Jersey’s spring seminar regarding the life of her father, President John Kemeny. I identified a few of our esteemed classmates visible on Zoom, including Kent Johnson, Doug White, Chris McConnell, Dave Spicer, John Reed, and Tom DeLancey. So many great vignettes given by Jenny brought back to life our Dartmouth during the pivotal time of his presidency.”
I hesitate to share my own vignette at Jenny’s expense, but here goes. Many of you may remember that my wife, Eliza, was a frequent visitor to Dartmouth in those years. She had an English setter named Jenny that got loose from us at Zeta Psi one day. We were both running around the back of the fraternities and toward Tuck yelling her name, when someone whipped open a window at the President’s House and called, “She is not home right now!”
Separately, Larry recently had dinner with Dr. Bob Dray and his high school sweetheart, Debbie, while visiting Nashville for an orthopedic meeting. He says that Bob remains a very fit, active urologist. Must be the farm life in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, that keeps him at it.
Just in time for the release of the new Top Gun movie, Al Austin and I connected because his son, Albie, has recently graduated from naval officer candidate school (OCS) in Newport, Rhode Island, and will be headed to Pensacola, Florida, for flight training. In the small-world category, my brother, Ed ’67 is one of Albie’s fraternity brothers and an OCS graduate as well. Ed’s son, Sam, is a retired Navy commander and F-18 Super Hornet pilot and was able to connect with Albie in Boston. On the heels of that, I learned that Al Barstow’sson is also an F-18 pilot. All hail “Top Gun.”
Vox clamantis in Tejas.
—Stephen D. Gray, 3627 Avenue M, Galveston, TX 77550; (650) 302-8739; fratergray@gmail.com
From Larry Johnson comes this: “I just watched the fascinating presentation that Jenny Kemeny ’76 gave last week at the Dartmouth Club of Suburban New Jersey’s spring seminar regarding the life of her father, President John Kemeny. I identified a few of our esteemed classmates visible on Zoom, including Kent Johnson, Doug White, Chris McConnell, Dave Spicer, John Reed, and Tom DeLancey. So many great vignettes given by Jenny brought back to life our Dartmouth during the pivotal time of his presidency.”
I hesitate to share my own vignette at Jenny’s expense, but here goes. Many of you may remember that my wife, Eliza, was a frequent visitor to Dartmouth in those years. She had an English setter named Jenny that got loose from us at Zeta Psi one day. We were both running around the back of the fraternities and toward Tuck yelling her name, when someone whipped open a window at the President’s House and called, “She is not home right now!”
Separately, Larry recently had dinner with Dr. Bob Dray and his high school sweetheart, Debbie, while visiting Nashville for an orthopedic meeting. He says that Bob remains a very fit, active urologist. Must be the farm life in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, that keeps him at it.
Just in time for the release of the new Top Gun movie, Al Austin and I connected because his son, Albie, has recently graduated from naval officer candidate school (OCS) in Newport, Rhode Island, and will be headed to Pensacola, Florida, for flight training. In the small-world category, my brother, Ed ’67 is one of Albie’s fraternity brothers and an OCS graduate as well. Ed’s son, Sam, is a retired Navy commander and F-18 Super Hornet pilot and was able to connect with Albie in Boston. On the heels of that, I learned that Al Barstow’sson is also an F-18 pilot. All hail “Top Gun.”
Vox clamantis in Tejas.
—Stephen D. Gray, 3627 Avenue M, Galveston, TX 77550; (650) 302-8739; fratergray@gmail.com