Close your eyes. Pretend you’re standing in your favorite spot in Hanover. Four months to go until we gather again and in just about two short weeks you can firm up your plans to attend our 25th reunion, scheduled for Thursday through Sunday, June 12-15. “Her Spell on Them Remains” is our theme. Registration begins online on March 1. Look for all the details in your mailbox. Sign up to attend and make sure you secure a place to stay. Bring the whole family or come alone. What matters is having as many ’89s as possible to help us mark this important milestone in our class history. If you register before April 15 you will be eligible for our class raffle. One lucky winner will have their registration fee paid by the Dartmouth Co-Op. 


A fall visit to Hanover brought the perfect time to connect with Paul Sawyer, a minister in Hartland, Vermont. Paul will help us remember the classmates we’ve lost, presiding over our memorial service at reunion. Paul spent a number of years as teacher and about a decade ago decided to pursue his true calling and attended Harvard Divinity School. We spoke about how 25 years provide us with the opportunities for new beginnings as a class—new friendships with classmates and opportunities to connect. So many of us perceive that others are more connected, but it’s simply not true. 


Speaking of new beginnings, a hearty congratulations to a beaming Ed Barker, who recently got engaged to Sara Kurz. Ed is the executive director at Land’s Sake, an educational farm in Weston, Massachusetts.


I’ve recently had the good fortune to run into two classmates. Sharon Barnes came to D.C. for a Dartmouth on Location event involving Pulitzer Prize-winner Annette Gordon-Reed ’81. Reed is a Dartmouth trustee, a professor at Harvard and author of The Hemingses of Monticello. Sharon lives with her husband and two children in Columbia, Maryland. I also ran into Jeanne De Sa, senior vice president of public policy and strategy at United Health Group. Jeanne previously spent many years in the U.S. Congressional Budget Office.


Two ’89s are notably making a difference this year, although of course there are so many more of you out there. Sara B. May, an emergency physician in Seattle, was one of three Dartmouth alums who traveled to the Philippines as part of a medical mission, in the wake of the devastating typhoon. NBC Nightly News captured their efforts and Sara could be seen hard at work in one of their reports.


And congratulations to Connie Britton for receiving a ChangeMakers Award for her work with the African Children’s Choir.


I wind up my last column written in 2013 as I usually do, sitting here by a roaring fire in the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts, looking out at the birch trees and the snow coming down. A mountain hike brought me back to those cold Hanover winters, walking out to the golf course to see the ski jump at Winter Carnival. The giant trestle, built in 1922, slipped into history a few years after we graduated. But there is a fantastic new movie produced by the class of 1965 called Passion for Snow about the history of Dartmouth skiing. If you’re interested, you can order the movie at www.biggreen65.com


As we head into 2014 I’m also thinking ahead to all the reunion planning left to do and wondering how many of you will make the trip to join us. Looking forward to seeing you in just a few short months.


—Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com