Class Note 1978
Issue
May-June 2022
In June our class gathers in Hanover to celebrate our reunion and that “Peaceful, Easy Feeling of ’78 at 45!”It’s not too late to register on the class website: https://1978.dartmouth.org. I plan to be there—please find me to say hello and tell me what is going on in your lives so I will have something to write about in the coming year!
On February 1 President Joe Biden signed the Ghost Army Congressional Gold Medal Act, awarding the U.S. Congress’ highest honor to the WW II deception troops known as the “Ghost Army.” This is a project close to my heart that Rep. Annie Kuster (D-NH) and I have been working on for seven years. Annie introduced the original legislation in 2015 at my urging. “The Ghost Army’s creativity and heroism struck me as an important part of our history to remember,” says Annie. We built support slowly during four Congresses. “There were times I didn’t think we would get it done,” she admitted after it finally happened. (Me too, Annie!) Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) was also a supporter of this bipartisan legislation, as was Delaware Governor John Carney when he was in the House. A number of other classmates were also involved in the effort—thank you so much! It is easy to get cynical about our government, but here’s proof that a group of passionate people without big corporate interests, pots of money, or celebrity spokesman can make themselves heard, and get a bill passed. Something to build on.
I’m sad to report that three of our classmates have passed away since the last Class Notes. Dave Jones died in Tucson, Arizona, on December 27. Denny DeVaux was killed in a car accident on January 6 in Thetford, Vermont. Kevin Barber passed away in Detroit on January 31 from complications of a stroke. On behalf of the class, I want to express condolences to their friends and families. Look for remembrances of them on the class website: http://1978.dartmouth.org/in-memoriam.
Christine Hughes wrote from Costa Rica, which she visited with her partner, Sterling Wall. “Skipping the more touristed sites, we flew from San Jose, Costa Rica, in a 12-seater to Golfito, a modest seacoast town near the Panama border, and then took a spectacular one-and-a-half-hour taxi ride up ever more windy mountain roads through tiny towns to the even tinier town of San Vito (find it on a map if you can) and the obscure and remote Las Cruces Biological Research station and Wilson Botanical Garden. Spectacularly beautiful, but definitely off the beaten path—only to meet a dozen or more Dartmouth students, ’23s and ’22s, here on a biology foreign study program [FSP]. The Keggy T-shirt on one was a dead giveaway. Happily, I’d packed my 40th reunion fleece vest. I did the math. It is as if one of us ’78s were on an FSP back in the day and ran into a member of the class of ’33.”
Send news!
—Rick Beyer, 1305 S. Michigan Ave., #1104, Chicago, IL 60605; rickbeyer78@gmail.com
On February 1 President Joe Biden signed the Ghost Army Congressional Gold Medal Act, awarding the U.S. Congress’ highest honor to the WW II deception troops known as the “Ghost Army.” This is a project close to my heart that Rep. Annie Kuster (D-NH) and I have been working on for seven years. Annie introduced the original legislation in 2015 at my urging. “The Ghost Army’s creativity and heroism struck me as an important part of our history to remember,” says Annie. We built support slowly during four Congresses. “There were times I didn’t think we would get it done,” she admitted after it finally happened. (Me too, Annie!) Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) was also a supporter of this bipartisan legislation, as was Delaware Governor John Carney when he was in the House. A number of other classmates were also involved in the effort—thank you so much! It is easy to get cynical about our government, but here’s proof that a group of passionate people without big corporate interests, pots of money, or celebrity spokesman can make themselves heard, and get a bill passed. Something to build on.
I’m sad to report that three of our classmates have passed away since the last Class Notes. Dave Jones died in Tucson, Arizona, on December 27. Denny DeVaux was killed in a car accident on January 6 in Thetford, Vermont. Kevin Barber passed away in Detroit on January 31 from complications of a stroke. On behalf of the class, I want to express condolences to their friends and families. Look for remembrances of them on the class website: http://1978.dartmouth.org/in-memoriam.
Christine Hughes wrote from Costa Rica, which she visited with her partner, Sterling Wall. “Skipping the more touristed sites, we flew from San Jose, Costa Rica, in a 12-seater to Golfito, a modest seacoast town near the Panama border, and then took a spectacular one-and-a-half-hour taxi ride up ever more windy mountain roads through tiny towns to the even tinier town of San Vito (find it on a map if you can) and the obscure and remote Las Cruces Biological Research station and Wilson Botanical Garden. Spectacularly beautiful, but definitely off the beaten path—only to meet a dozen or more Dartmouth students, ’23s and ’22s, here on a biology foreign study program [FSP]. The Keggy T-shirt on one was a dead giveaway. Happily, I’d packed my 40th reunion fleece vest. I did the math. It is as if one of us ’78s were on an FSP back in the day and ran into a member of the class of ’33.”
Send news!
—Rick Beyer, 1305 S. Michigan Ave., #1104, Chicago, IL 60605; rickbeyer78@gmail.com