Class Note 1978
Issue
November-December 2022
Greetings, ’78s, and thank you for the flood of great stories you sent in response to my first plea for news. If this keeps up, the next six years are going to be a lot of fun.
Fresh off our 45th (okay, 44th) reunion in June, I asked you to riff on the theme of connection and reconnection. You had a lot to say.
Many of you wrote warmly of the “peaceful, easy feeling” of being with classmates you hadn’t seen in years. Vicki Smith and David Shoemaker gathered over reunion at Vicki’s home in Lyme, New Hampshire, with Jack Manheimer; Wendy Muello and her partner, Peter Gair; and David’s wife, Candace. “Our stories were shared with lots of love and the enthusiasm that comes with swapping tales with best friends,” Vicki wrote. David added, “So affirming to realize that, after not seeing each other for so many years, we’re still great friends and can pick up as if no time had passed.”
Bill Petit, who attended reunion with his wife, Christine, and their son, Bill, wrote that it was “fabulous” to see his freshman basketball teammate Sterling Edmonds for the first time since graduation: “still with a great smile and a freakishly fit physique!” Sterling and his wife, Regina, were attending their first-ever reunion thanks in part to Sharon Lee Cowan, who as a reunion volunteer had contacted Sterling and other McLane freshman dormmates to rally them. Sharon and her partner, Andrea Vincenzi, made the trek from Italy, their first reunion since our 25th.
Will Browning reconnected with Steve Bova, whom he hadn’t seen in 40 years, over lunch in June with their spouses and Will’s daughter, a Dartmouth ’22. Will and Steve first met in spring 1976 on the French language study abroad in Blois led by John Rassias.
Moving north was a recurring theme. Lynda and Mike Pittenger, who moved in 2020 to Cape Elizabeth, Maine, near all three children and six grandchildren, are also near old friends that they can see regularly, including Cindy and Bill Dexter, Cindy and Bob Gross, and Randi and Willard “Bollie” Bollenbach. Lynda retired last year and Mike consults on cybersecurity.
Jane Kirstetter Ingram reconnected at reunion with Martha and Mark Arnold, old friends from Chicago Booth business school. The Arnolds have just moved from New Jersey to Eastman in New Hampshire, not far from Lake Sunapee, where Jane and her husband spend time.
There were some regrets. “Didn’t attend [reunion]. Wish I had,” David Master wrote from Denver. “Miss Hanover and have only fond memories of four long years there.”
Jeff Miller and Harvey Weinberg also missed reunion, but they reconnected during the spring when Harvey contacted Jeff about fundraising. “Our conversation—Harvey’s voice has not changed at all in these past decades—immediately brought me back to all that was fun about those late 1970s,” Jeff wrote. “It confirmed my intention to be in Hanover for the 50th (as will Harvey) to celebrate what was and what is.”
Send news!
—Anne Bagamery, 13 rue de Presles, 75015 Paris, France; abagamery78@gmail.com; Rick Beyer, 1305 S. Michigan Ave., #1104, Chicago, IL 60605; rickbeyer78@gmail.com
Fresh off our 45th (okay, 44th) reunion in June, I asked you to riff on the theme of connection and reconnection. You had a lot to say.
Many of you wrote warmly of the “peaceful, easy feeling” of being with classmates you hadn’t seen in years. Vicki Smith and David Shoemaker gathered over reunion at Vicki’s home in Lyme, New Hampshire, with Jack Manheimer; Wendy Muello and her partner, Peter Gair; and David’s wife, Candace. “Our stories were shared with lots of love and the enthusiasm that comes with swapping tales with best friends,” Vicki wrote. David added, “So affirming to realize that, after not seeing each other for so many years, we’re still great friends and can pick up as if no time had passed.”
Bill Petit, who attended reunion with his wife, Christine, and their son, Bill, wrote that it was “fabulous” to see his freshman basketball teammate Sterling Edmonds for the first time since graduation: “still with a great smile and a freakishly fit physique!” Sterling and his wife, Regina, were attending their first-ever reunion thanks in part to Sharon Lee Cowan, who as a reunion volunteer had contacted Sterling and other McLane freshman dormmates to rally them. Sharon and her partner, Andrea Vincenzi, made the trek from Italy, their first reunion since our 25th.
Will Browning reconnected with Steve Bova, whom he hadn’t seen in 40 years, over lunch in June with their spouses and Will’s daughter, a Dartmouth ’22. Will and Steve first met in spring 1976 on the French language study abroad in Blois led by John Rassias.
Moving north was a recurring theme. Lynda and Mike Pittenger, who moved in 2020 to Cape Elizabeth, Maine, near all three children and six grandchildren, are also near old friends that they can see regularly, including Cindy and Bill Dexter, Cindy and Bob Gross, and Randi and Willard “Bollie” Bollenbach. Lynda retired last year and Mike consults on cybersecurity.
Jane Kirstetter Ingram reconnected at reunion with Martha and Mark Arnold, old friends from Chicago Booth business school. The Arnolds have just moved from New Jersey to Eastman in New Hampshire, not far from Lake Sunapee, where Jane and her husband spend time.
There were some regrets. “Didn’t attend [reunion]. Wish I had,” David Master wrote from Denver. “Miss Hanover and have only fond memories of four long years there.”
Jeff Miller and Harvey Weinberg also missed reunion, but they reconnected during the spring when Harvey contacted Jeff about fundraising. “Our conversation—Harvey’s voice has not changed at all in these past decades—immediately brought me back to all that was fun about those late 1970s,” Jeff wrote. “It confirmed my intention to be in Hanover for the 50th (as will Harvey) to celebrate what was and what is.”
Send news!
—Anne Bagamery, 13 rue de Presles, 75015 Paris, France; abagamery78@gmail.com; Rick Beyer, 1305 S. Michigan Ave., #1104, Chicago, IL 60605; rickbeyer78@gmail.com