Class Note 1979

With the untimely death of Daniel Smith on February 11, our class has lost another beloved son of Dartmouth. We mourn Dan’s passing and will keep his memory alive through all our days. These are trying times for us sexagenarians; too often we are reminded of our mortality at this juncture, a surreal moment in time when the demands of everyday life have been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic. We wish everyone well and urge those experiencing distress or despair to reach out to a compassionate group of ’79 volunteers for confidential support via our class website.

Now it’s time for a guest column from a real-life spy who came in from the cold. David Bridges was reminded of his mortality early and repeatedly, remarking that he “didn’t think he’d get out of his 40s.” We’re so glad he did; here’s a bit of his story: “After graduation I headed west to earn an M.A. at the University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Armed with my advanced degree, I spent a year working in a bar on Nantucket Island before landing a job with a peacekeeping force in the Middle East, where I spent the next five years. While there my boss was killed in a terrorist attack, which was quite shocking. Not as shocking, though, as the death of the 12-year-old daughter of a guy I knew in a separate terrorist attack a few months later. I figured if people were murdering 12-year-old girls, I wanted to do something about it, so I quit my job, moved back to the United States, joined the CIA in 1987, and spent the next 25 years in the agency’s clandestine service, mostly abroad and mostly in radio silence. I had a good career, got to work with exceptional women and men, saw a lot of the world (especially the back-of-beyond parts), went to the wars, and retired as one of the espionage cadre’s senior executives. I didn’t have a Plan B when I decided to punch out—I just knew the time had come to find something else to do with my life. So my wife and I moved to the old farmhouse we bought years ago in Vermont; I took the first real vacation I’d had in years and only then began to think about my next chapter. I ended up cold-calling Fidelity and was hired in 2012 as their senior geopolitical guy. These days, when I’m not in Boston working with fund managers and analysts or, as I am now, hunkered down in the Upper Valley, I’m on the road talking to Fidelity’s institutional clients about what’s happening—and what’s gonna happen—in the world. It’s a good gig and certainly not one I would have seen myself in while I was doing that runnin’ and gunnin’ CIA thing. Of course, I didn’t foresee working for the agency when I left Dartmouth, either. I guess some of us navigate the paths we’ve planned for ourselves and some of us, well, we just go with the tides.”

—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