Class Note 1979
Whether or not March comes in like a lion this year, one thing you can count on is that our “class day of the year” micro-reunion featuring your selfies will take place on Wednesday, March 20. Please mark your calendars and participate in our annual virtual celebration. You can also count on mini-reunion co-chairs Carl Briscoe and Phil Odence to put together another robust schedule of live gatherings on or around the 79th day. Regional event details can be found on our class website. Thanks to your outstanding 2018 participation performance, the College named a Dartmouth scholar—Leah Casey ’20—in our honor. After breaking bread with Leah in London in September, Tim Prager shared this uplifting note with head agent Billy Mitchell: “Leah is absolutely delightful—charming, clever, sunny. If she is an indication of the quality of students presently at Dartmouth, then the future is bright for the College. She’s studying Victorian literature in London on her foreign study program and doing an independent research project on Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. There’s nothing bleak about Leah; she’s a credit to our class!”
After you finished reading our Class Notes in the September-October issue of DAM, we hope you found your way to “The Martian,” a “Voices in the Wilderness” piece about astrophysicist Nick Schneider. Nick, who coauthored The Cosmic Perspective, an introductory astronomy textbook “used at Dartmouth and other colleges,” teaches planetary sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he “leads a team studying Mars’ atmosphere using data collected by NASA’s space probe, MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN).” We hope to see Nick at our June 17-21, 2020, 40th reunion; no doubt we’ll find him at Shattuck Observatory, his old stomping ground!
Another classmate “opening eyes and minds to the sky overhead” is Carthage College (Kenosha, Wisconsin) professor of entrepreneurship Doug Arion, who spearheaded the college’s long-running astronomy partnership with the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC). “Under the program, college interns facilitate sky observations for visitors to AMC’s huts and visitor centers and the Flume Visitor Center in Franconia Notch (New Hampshire) State Park.”
Back here on Earth, Dean Esserman writes: “After 25 years serving as police chief in four American cities, I have come off the streets and accepted a job in Washington, D.C., as the senior counselor at the national Police Foundation, a think tank and technical assurance provider. This, combined with teaching and serving on a few boards, means I finally have hung up the uniform! I was proud to wear it for so many years.”
Dave Reed, who “pushed his way through Dartmouth with extra classes and non-stop terms to graduate in ’78,” has returned to his hometown of Syracuse, New York. After 20 years as in-house counsel for several “Big Pharma” companies, Dave set up his own practice about 10 years ago and never looked back. He now has “clients in the United States, Korea, Germany, the United Kingdom, Israel, and Switzerland.” We thank Dave for responding to our September birthday greeting and staying connected!
—Stanley Weil, 15 Peck Road, Mt. Kisco, NY 10549; (917) 428-0852; stanno79@gmail.com; John Currier, 82 Carpenter St., Norwich, VT 05055; (802) 649-2577; john.h.currier@dartmouth.edu
