Class Note 1981
Greetings! In October we launched our “Big Question Series” to honor our 60th birthdays as well as the College’s 250th anniversary. The first question, “If you could re-experience one day or moment from your Dartmouth career, what day or moment would that be?” elicited many enthusiastic responses. For Robert Goldbloom it was “February 29, 1980. I had the two best swims of my life—20 minutes apart! The best feeling was all of my teammates leaving the stands to come to the end of my lane to congratulate me. Twice. (It never happened again.)” Chris Goff would redo graduation. “This time I would not stay up all night, would be sober and conscious, and would not have to wait for the video to see what happened. (Watching our kids graduate has been a nice proxy do-over.)” Susan Lasko Sulisz fondly recalls the day the football team won the Ivy League title against Princeton in 1978. Caroline Rudd: “I have many fond memories, which are not necessarily significant moments. If there were one moment I would relive, it would be to hear, again, live John Kemeny’s speech at our graduation. Just hearing him say ‘Men and Women of Dartmouth’ was always such a treat. We were truly honored to have such a great man lead us for our four years and I would happily relive his parting words during our Commencement celebration.” We agree, and that’s why we have posted our entire graduation ceremony, including Professor Kemeny’s speech, on our class website. Check it out! Bob Dewey recalls “The Jack-O-Lantern’s final comedy review during senior week. Enjoying the Grateful Dead concert from the best seats in the house or waiting three days in line for those tickets! To relive so I could change a decision: enrolling in ‘Astrophysics 101’ freshman spring—not a good idea!” That reminds me of when I took “Biology 5” freshman fall thinking that it would be an interesting distributive for a govy major and then finding out halfway through that it was a pre-med course. This Argentine girl was pretty clueless back then. My GPA never did quite recover from that ill-conceived idea! Brad Stone answered philosophically—“Dartmouth was and is a cumulative experience. There isn’t any one thing I would single out in the way this question asks. But I don’t hesitate to say that I would take greater advantage of its opportunities, more depth in my studies and breadth of coursework, more engagement with faculty and classmates, more of all that the College had to offer. I didn’t fully appreciate its richness at the time, and I left a lot on the table. And yet I learned how to learn more deeply and broadly and am grateful for my time at Dartmouth. Plenty of mistakes, few regrets.” We couldn’t agree more!
We look forward to receiving your answers to forthcoming questions at our class email address, d.81.news@gmail.com. You’ll be able to see them throughout the year in this space, the newsletters, and class website.
—Veronica Wessels, 224 Buena Vista Road, Rockcliffe, ON K1M0V7, Canada; (613) 864-4491; vcwessels@rogers.com; Emil Miskovsky, 520 Seneca St., Suite 312, Utica, NY, 13502; (802)345-9861; emilmiskovsky@gmail.com
