Class Note 1985
Issue
July-August 2023
Thank goodness (and by goodness, I mean classmates who composed them) for Green Cards! Like an old, trusted workbench tool or a lifelong friend, the Green Card never disappoints. A sampling of what was shared follows, minus the great pictures.
From Kim Booker Schmid: “Celebrated my 60th birthday in March with friends in the Bahamas! The five of us have had dinner together once a month for 20 years and this was our first vacation together. If we were not sitting on the beach, then we were lounging on the porch with a view of the ocean. It was an amazing way to welcome the next chapter of life.”
From Kathy Reilly Gross and Mark Gross: “Happy 85th day! Charlotte Hart is visiting us in Jackson Hole [Wyoming] with her daughter, Jayne, and husband Tim for fun skiing and winter adventures. Kathy also sent a blurb about Lisa Reilly Nadler, Rob Nadler, and Chris Bean and their Worldloppet (look it up) adventures. More to come on that!”
From Jeff Weitzman: “Sixty? Am I 60? Holy cow. Well, if I must be 60, I’m going kicking and screaming. My actual birthday was spent with my family skiing at Palisades Tahoe, where I scored a new backcountry ski setup for a birthday present! The real 60th birthday challenge was a couple of months earlier, though, when I joined some friends for a cycling trip in Italy. The highlight was the climb up Passo Stelvio, an iconic ride in the Italian Alps, considered one of the roughest of the regular Grand Tour stops. Almost 15 miles long, 6,000 feet up to the 9,100-foot elevation pass, and 48 switchbacks to navigate, set among the snowcapped alpine peaks, it is a bucket-list item tailor made for big birthdays.”
Thanks to Beth DeBernardi for this update: “Sadly, we lost three classmates during our college years: Charles ‘Chud’ Gorlicki, Michael Woolley, and Peter Sorenson. In the spring of 1985 our class planted an evergreen tree with plaque in their memory on the lawn across from the Hopkins Center. Visitors will note the tree disappeared years ago. One of Chud’s childhood friends noticed the tree was missing and reached out to several people, including Beth Hobbs. Beth, channeling Jessica Fletcher, located a replacement tree and plaque that have been placed east of Bartlett Hall, across from Topliff. If anyone has been trying to visit the original tree, please know that it has been moved to a new site.”
Additionally, we learned that classmate Jay Dautcher passed away in August 2018. His family has a memorial website, “The Amazing Life of Jay Dautcher” (lynjeffery@wixsite.com), and there are also other remembrances of him online, including “Notes from the Ethnoground: Women Have Hair, Men Have Nicknames: Remembering Jay Dautcher.”
Why not take the time to fill out your own Green Card? You and others will be glad you did!
—John MacManus, 188 Ringwood Road, Rosemont, PA 19010; (610) 331-6417; slampong@aol.com; Rebecca Blake Osborne, 42 Olive St., Newburyport, MA 01950; (603) 381-4164; rosborne29@comcast.net
From Kim Booker Schmid: “Celebrated my 60th birthday in March with friends in the Bahamas! The five of us have had dinner together once a month for 20 years and this was our first vacation together. If we were not sitting on the beach, then we were lounging on the porch with a view of the ocean. It was an amazing way to welcome the next chapter of life.”
From Kathy Reilly Gross and Mark Gross: “Happy 85th day! Charlotte Hart is visiting us in Jackson Hole [Wyoming] with her daughter, Jayne, and husband Tim for fun skiing and winter adventures. Kathy also sent a blurb about Lisa Reilly Nadler, Rob Nadler, and Chris Bean and their Worldloppet (look it up) adventures. More to come on that!”
From Jeff Weitzman: “Sixty? Am I 60? Holy cow. Well, if I must be 60, I’m going kicking and screaming. My actual birthday was spent with my family skiing at Palisades Tahoe, where I scored a new backcountry ski setup for a birthday present! The real 60th birthday challenge was a couple of months earlier, though, when I joined some friends for a cycling trip in Italy. The highlight was the climb up Passo Stelvio, an iconic ride in the Italian Alps, considered one of the roughest of the regular Grand Tour stops. Almost 15 miles long, 6,000 feet up to the 9,100-foot elevation pass, and 48 switchbacks to navigate, set among the snowcapped alpine peaks, it is a bucket-list item tailor made for big birthdays.”
Thanks to Beth DeBernardi for this update: “Sadly, we lost three classmates during our college years: Charles ‘Chud’ Gorlicki, Michael Woolley, and Peter Sorenson. In the spring of 1985 our class planted an evergreen tree with plaque in their memory on the lawn across from the Hopkins Center. Visitors will note the tree disappeared years ago. One of Chud’s childhood friends noticed the tree was missing and reached out to several people, including Beth Hobbs. Beth, channeling Jessica Fletcher, located a replacement tree and plaque that have been placed east of Bartlett Hall, across from Topliff. If anyone has been trying to visit the original tree, please know that it has been moved to a new site.”
Additionally, we learned that classmate Jay Dautcher passed away in August 2018. His family has a memorial website, “The Amazing Life of Jay Dautcher” (lynjeffery@wixsite.com), and there are also other remembrances of him online, including “Notes from the Ethnoground: Women Have Hair, Men Have Nicknames: Remembering Jay Dautcher.”
Why not take the time to fill out your own Green Card? You and others will be glad you did!
—John MacManus, 188 Ringwood Road, Rosemont, PA 19010; (610) 331-6417; slampong@aol.com; Rebecca Blake Osborne, 42 Olive St., Newburyport, MA 01950; (603) 381-4164; rosborne29@comcast.net