Despite diminished interactions and blanker calendars during the past year, classmates continue to demonstrate a high level of activity and productivity. Julie Schuetz Lowe continues her excellent work for the Make-a-Wish Foundation of eastern North Carolina, where she is vice president of mission delivery. The challenge of the past year has been the inability to grant travel wishes to many families. She plans to retire in March, explaining, “My husband has waited patiently for me to finish my professional career so we can travel. We’re coming up on our 40th anniversary, so it seems like it’s time.” George Keagle and his wife, Ronna, who moved from suburban Washington, D.C., to Texas upon George’s retirement six years ago, have been doing a ton of hiking and biking. He finds this a welcome shift from his 30-year career strategizing employee benefits and compensation for Lockheed. He looks forward to resuming road trips exploring the West and visits to children and grandchildren on the East Coast and writes, “Among our extended family, there are many teachers and healthcare workers. The roll out of vaccines is a great relief.” Doug Kimball has published his second novel, Virga Joy, or the Adventures of El Colonel De Corona, available as an ebook at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, Scribd, and Smashwords. Fern Bennett Phillips is making more than lemonade out of Covid lemons; she has established her Maine company, Little Big Farm Foods, as a force in bake-at-home foods. The company’s premium baking mixes, free from artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives, are delicious and idiot-proof (as I am your witness). For you, my classmates, I placed a massive order and donned stretch pants to fulfill my editorial verification responsibilities. I am midway through testing sugar cookies, white chocolate coconut brownies, chocolate chip blondies, banana bread, peppermint-flavored chocolate molten lava cake, and pumpkin latte and can report utter bliss other than the fact that I may need to be cut out of these stretch pants. Paul Lazarus has launched a spoken-word album of 10 short stories by Russian writer Alexander Tsypkin read by heavy-hitters Stacy Keach, Vanessa Williams, Tim Daly, Jason Alexander, and Rachel Dratch ’88, among others. Paul being Paul, it wasn’t enough to produce the project, he translated the stories with the author and is learning Russian in the process. He says, “It’s an amazingly hard language and starting a language learning process at an advanced age is not for the faint of heart.” Class communications vice president Dana Rowan, Ralph Damiano, Scott Fraser,and their wives gathered for a fall weekend in Woodstock, Vermont, venturing to Hanover to indulge in nostalgia and fall colors. Techno-wizard and webmeister Joe Jasinski has made sure our class website, 1976.dartmouth.org, is chock-full of great ways to stay in touch with Dartmouth and each other including live campus webcams, class project info, and…wait for it…easy online dues payment!

—Sara Hoagland Hunter, 72 Mount Vernon St., Unit 4B, Boston, MA 02108; sarahunter76@gmail.com