Class Note 1978
Issue
January-February 2021
A year ago the phrase “virtual tailgate Zoom” would have been meaningless. How things have changed! About 20 classmates took part in such an event in October, and it was great to connect with them.
One person I hadn’t seen in a long time was Sally Eastman, so I reached out to her. Sally and her family have been dividing their time between N.Y.C. and La Jolla, California, since 2013. She continues her work as vice president of the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures and sent the following note.
“I enjoyed seeing all who were on the tailgate Zoom during Homecoming Weekend, as I hadn’t seen many of you since the fifth-year reunion. Every day I am grateful for the four years I had at Dartmouth—all of them in person. While my eldest is in the class of ’22, he now lives under semi-quarantined conditions in his fraternity and laments the fact that those traditions his mother lauded won’t take place at all this year. It is an incredible privilege to connect with Dartmouth again in an intimate way through him. I regret all the occasions I failed to reunite with you, and I hope to make it up with occasions to meet you in the future. After all, it’s bucket list time; it’s always been bucket list time. I just didn’t know it. I send you all love and enclose a poem I hold dear: ‘And it isn’t the things you do, Dear,/It’s the things you’ve left undone/That give you a bit of a heartache/With the setting of the sun.’ ”
Sally sends hugs—and we send them back!
Susan Kepes sends greetings from Portland, Maine, where she recently retired from her career as a physician assistant. “One of my patients asked if it seemed strange to finish during a pandemic. I think of it as a bookend, since I started to practice during the AIDS epidemic. Travel was meant to be a big part of retirement. We have planned a trip to Portugal in fall 2021, fingers crossed. Until then I might just have to travel the USA visiting friends and national parks.”
Chris Hughes is also joining the ranks of the retired after 16 years as vice president and general counsel at Emerson College. “She has been a knowledgeable, wise, and gifted confidante,” said Emerson President Lee Pelton, “who has had the very useful knack of telling me not what she thought I wanted to hear but rather what she thought I needed to hear in order to become a more effective president.” Yeah, that sounds like Chris!
I’m sad to report the loss of two more classmates. Debra Prairie Chief Kodaseet passed away in Clinton, Oklahoma, on September 9. Jimmie Lee Solomon died on October 8 at his home in Houston. Both were 64. On behalf of the class, I want to express condolences to both their families. Look for remembrances of them on the class website: http://1978.dartmouth.org/in-memoriam.
Send news!
—Rick Beyer, 1305 S. Michigan Ave., #1104, Chicago, IL 60605; rickbeyer78@gmail.com
One person I hadn’t seen in a long time was Sally Eastman, so I reached out to her. Sally and her family have been dividing their time between N.Y.C. and La Jolla, California, since 2013. She continues her work as vice president of the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures and sent the following note.
“I enjoyed seeing all who were on the tailgate Zoom during Homecoming Weekend, as I hadn’t seen many of you since the fifth-year reunion. Every day I am grateful for the four years I had at Dartmouth—all of them in person. While my eldest is in the class of ’22, he now lives under semi-quarantined conditions in his fraternity and laments the fact that those traditions his mother lauded won’t take place at all this year. It is an incredible privilege to connect with Dartmouth again in an intimate way through him. I regret all the occasions I failed to reunite with you, and I hope to make it up with occasions to meet you in the future. After all, it’s bucket list time; it’s always been bucket list time. I just didn’t know it. I send you all love and enclose a poem I hold dear: ‘And it isn’t the things you do, Dear,/It’s the things you’ve left undone/That give you a bit of a heartache/With the setting of the sun.’ ”
Sally sends hugs—and we send them back!
Susan Kepes sends greetings from Portland, Maine, where she recently retired from her career as a physician assistant. “One of my patients asked if it seemed strange to finish during a pandemic. I think of it as a bookend, since I started to practice during the AIDS epidemic. Travel was meant to be a big part of retirement. We have planned a trip to Portugal in fall 2021, fingers crossed. Until then I might just have to travel the USA visiting friends and national parks.”
Chris Hughes is also joining the ranks of the retired after 16 years as vice president and general counsel at Emerson College. “She has been a knowledgeable, wise, and gifted confidante,” said Emerson President Lee Pelton, “who has had the very useful knack of telling me not what she thought I wanted to hear but rather what she thought I needed to hear in order to become a more effective president.” Yeah, that sounds like Chris!
I’m sad to report the loss of two more classmates. Debra Prairie Chief Kodaseet passed away in Clinton, Oklahoma, on September 9. Jimmie Lee Solomon died on October 8 at his home in Houston. Both were 64. On behalf of the class, I want to express condolences to both their families. Look for remembrances of them on the class website: http://1978.dartmouth.org/in-memoriam.
Send news!
—Rick Beyer, 1305 S. Michigan Ave., #1104, Chicago, IL 60605; rickbeyer78@gmail.com