The countdown to our 35th reunion has begun: It’s “Back to the Green in Twenty-Fifteen!” the weekend of June 19-21. Ellen Gomprecht Oppenheim and Charlie Vieth, our intrepid reunion co-chairs, are hard at work planning a great time and encourage you to visit the reunion page on our class website for more information, including opportunities to assist the reunion committee.


I’m happy to report that Rick “Cowboy” Swanson is once again an elected official, this time as a selectman in Wilton, New Hampshire (population 3,500). He was sworn in by local attorney and town moderator Bill Keefe ’76. Cowboy writes, “I moved back to the Granite State four years ago when I married Wendy Bruneau, my hometown honey. In addition to learning a lot in my selectman role about how small New Hampshire towns must do more with less, I do nonprofit development work for the Historical Society of Cheshire County. I met Tom French, Carl Yerkovich and George Morris ’80 in Aspen, Colorado, last March and look forward to seeing reunion attendees next June!”


About 172 miles northwest of Cowboy, Bill Gottesman is still happily making sundials in his basement workshop in Burlington, Vermont. Bill had a “rollicking good time” in Indianapolis, Indiana, in August at the North American Sundial Society’s 20th annual conference, where, he says, “engineers and mathematicians closely watched shadows moving very slowly.” On a more serious note he related that, “A world-class sundial made in England in 1773 specifically for the College is one of Dartmouth’s oldest artifacts. The engraver accidentally engraved two South-South-West labels on different direction markers at the center compass of the dial, however, a mistake that was permanent without the luxury of a Control + Z undo code back then. The bronze dial can be viewed in the King Collection of Historic Scientific Instruments in Kresge Library. Dartmouth has at least three public dials on its campus dating from our undergraduate years. They include a large stone vertical dial on Stell Hall at Tuck School, a smaller wood vertical dial on Shattuck Observatory and a metal armillary sphere in the Zahm courtyard between Hopkins Center and the Hanover Inn.”


Out of the Midwest comes news from Phil Coffin, who continues to run the executive search firm he established 25 years ago. “I moved to Chicago after receiving my M.B.A. from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management 30 years ago,” says Phil, “and recently relocated my business into the Willis (Sears) Tower. Coffin & Associates recruits and places transactional finance professionals for firms operating in mergers and acquisitions, leveraged finance, and distressed and turnaround business situations. I’ve been married to Holly for almost 26 years and have three kids who are a complete delight. My two sons have graduated from college and my daughter is starting her freshman year.”


Lastly, congratulations to Phil Olson on the world premiere of his new musical comedy, Don’t Hug Me, We’re Married, at the Lonny Chapman Group Repertory Theatre in Los Angeles from October 3 through November 15! 


—Stanley Weil, 15 Peck Road, Mount Kisco, NY 10549; (917) 428-0852; stanno79@gmail.com