Classes & Obits

Class Note 1987

Issue

Nov - Dec 2010



Susannah Drake writes: “It has been a good year on the professional front. I have a project called New Urban Ground at the Museum of Modern Art in the rising currents exhibition. It deals with a proposal for how to manage sea level rise and storm water as a result of climate change. The project was positively reviewed in The New York Times in March.” Susannah was published in a number of leading journals and received many awards of the past year. She is now an adjunct visiting professor at Harvard.


Brian J. Foley is leaving Boston after teaching for two years at Boston University School of Law; he’s returning to Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville. Last year he took up stand-up comedy and performs all around Boston. “I wish I’d taken up comedy much earlier,” he said, “but if I had, now I’d probably be acting out my midlife crisis by applying to law school.” Brian’s wife, Marilyn Piety Foley, took up figure skating a few years ago. At her urging, and in keeping with his interest in comedy, Brian started skating. He can do all the single revolution jumps and is working on the axel (a 1 1/2 revolution jump). Brian said that when he’s not trying to get people to laugh at him—“after spending my life trying to avoid being laughed at”—he’s involved in a commuter marriage to Marilyn (a philosophy professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia) and teaching and writing about criminal and national security law and doing pro bono work to prevent juveniles from being sentenced to life without parole.


From John Flaherty: “I’ve been something of a mystery ’87 and missed the 20th reunion, but I hope to make it to the 25th. My wife, Virginia, and I own and run a small outdoors company called Central Coast Outdoors. We are based in San Luis Obispo County, California, and do kayak, bike and hike tours locally as well as long distance bike tours down the California coast. We started the company in 2003 and now employ about 10 guides, although most of them are part time. We also adopted our daughter Kinley in 2003 from China. She’s 8 years old now and enjoys violin and gymnastics. We live in Los Osos, California, which is a small town right on the coast.”


Laura Gasser does telecommunications regulatory work as an attorney for the California Public Utilities Commission here in San Francisco. She shares: “My husband Marc and I have two boys, Max (6) and Isaac (2), and it probably won’t surprise anyone to hear that in the midst of the typical get-everyone-out-the-door-to-school-and-work chaos, none of us felt a Bay Area earthquake this morning!”


Angie Erdrich shared a tidbit: The documentary co-directed by Ricki Stern, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, is getting excellent reviews. I enjoyed the premiere in Minneapolis, Minnesota—a very clever movie.


Kevin Donovan sent news: “We are loving life in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I am senior assistant dean for career services at UVA Law. I resigned from the partnership at Morgan Lewis last July after almost 20 years. Not missing the practice too much. Recently visited classmates Mike Portland and Rob Engelman in Chicago. None of us can believe that we have kids old enough to be looking at colleges.”


From Mary Felley: “This year I will be leaving Countryside Conservancy, a northeastern Pennsylvania land trust I led for the past seven years, and moving to the Philadelphia area. I hope to get into work in the environmental or China fields.”


Wendy Becker, 2 Kensington Gate, London, England, W8 5NA; wendy.becker.87@alum.dartmouth.org; Melissa Wallshein Smith, 77 Benedict Hill Road, New Canaan, CT 06840; melissaj@ optonline.net