Class Note 1984
As I write this Jan is busily preparing for her annual trip to the Napa Valley, California, to celebrate her grandmother’s birthday—this year will be her 98th! Jan’s trip always reminds me of the beauty of the Bay Area—misty cloud-covered hills, the Golden Gate Bridge and, of course, the excellent wines! With northern California on my mind I checked in with some of our classmates for news and updates. Marianne McCarroll writes from Stockton: “My husband, Dave, and I telemark ski at Alpine Meadows in Lake Tahoe—side country whenever possible—hiking with our skis on often along the Pacific Crest Trail to get to pristine meadows. We call it ‘hiking hard to ski easy.’ We also ski Squaw Valley and would love to hear from any ’84s coming to either mountain. My specialty food products and personal chef business, Marianne’s Pantry, is keeping me very busy. I source products from area farmers and sell them under my own label. My product line includes olive oil, balsamic and grain vinegars, as well as legumes, dried wild mushrooms, rice, nuts and a few other things.” Please check out her website at www.mariannespantry.com. Marianne recently catered a lunch at Steve Yecies’ mom’s house. Steve adds: “My mom provides an enthusiastic endorsement for Marianne’s catering service. My wife, Laura ’85, and I and are excited about experiencing Dartmouth from a new perspective. We are going to be Dartmouth parents in the fall as our daughter Margot will be in the class of 2015. I received a note that Peter Murphy’s son Zach is also going to Hanover in the fall. It will be fun to see some classmates at parents weekend.” Marianne also adds: “We’ll be starting to windsurf in the Delta as soon as the winds start blowing. I hope we connect with fellow windsurfer Kristen Hege.” Kristen confirms: “Yes, I am a windsurfer, but I don’t get out too much anymore. We are looking forward to a long 4th of July weekend in Hood River, Oregon, for our annual windsurfing vacation. This year we will be taking a Spanish exchange student with us and putting her in windsurfing camp with our two teenage daughters.”
In San Francisco, Anne Arquit Niederberger tells me: “There is a really good crowd of ’84s in the Bay Area. Last October I hooked up with Rob Watson for a day off in Hong Kong and we dropped in unannounced at Alan James’ house (in fact, we were settled in his living room when he returned home from an international trip). Karin Finkelston also lives there, but I haven’t managed to hook up with her (she’s the director for East Asia and the Pacific at the International Finance Group, a member of the World Bank). Rob and I always seem to be crossing paths in Beijing and Hong Kong. He has his own company in the green building space (www.ecotech-intl.com). Jack Oswald lives in San Francisco and is CEO of the clean-tech startup SynGest (www.syngest.com), which has developed a technology that can eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from nitrogen fertilizer production—and may see its first application in China.” Anne continued, “I helped launch and now serve on the board of directors for TopTen USA (www.toptenusa.org), where you can find some of the most efficient consumer products. Also around San Francisco I see Cary Bernstein, who has her own architecture firm (www.cbstudio.com), and Casper de Clercq, who is expecting his third boy any day now and is a partner at Norwest Venture Partners, specializing in the healthcare sector. He also joined us for the Sundance Film Festival 2011, where we had a lot of fun.”
—Jan Gordon and Derek Chow, 132 Wildcat Lane, Boulder, CO 80304; (303) 448-1580; janandderek @comcast.net
