Class Note 1989
It’s a story worthy of Hollywood. Newspaper reporter writes a series, which gets turned into a book, which gets optioned for a movie, which actually gets produced with major stars in the lead roles. All true for Wall Street Journal writer Geeta Anand. Her front-page series detailed a father’s efforts to find a cure for Pompe disease, which was killing two of his children. Her book, The Cure, was published in 2006 and in January Extraordinary Measures hit the big screen, starring Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford. Geeta and her family were planning to travel to the premiere in Los Angeles from their new home in Mumbai, India, where they moved in July of 2008 after many years in New York City. Geeta still works for The Wall Street Journal, now covering Indian healthcare, education and the country’s environmental challenges. She and her husband, Greg Kroitzsh ’87, have two daughters who’ve learned to speak Hindi and have many friends in their new home. Geeta attended Dartmouth after growing up in Bombay and worked for the Rutland Herald and the Boston Globe before joining the Journal, where she won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002.
Raymond Prado and his wife, Gesine Bullock-Prado, traded Los Angeles for the mountains of Vermont five years ago. Here’s what an entertainment blog said last year: “You just don’t find men like Ray Prado in Vermont—motion picture director, storyboard artist, animator, music video producer, college football player, wine connoisseur and retailer, and that’s just for starters.” Ray and Gesine met on a movie set. A graduate of University of Virginia and law school, she ran her sister Sandra’s production company and they lived a sort of Hollywood life. But what she really wanted to do was bake. So they moved east and opened the successful shop, Gesine Confections, in Montpelier, Vermont. This fall saw the publication of her book, Confections of a Closet Master Baker. They recently closed the bakery and moved to Hartford, Vermont, near Woodstock, where they are renovating an old tavern, built in 1794, by Hanover native Freegrace Leavitt. They’ll be shooting a TV show from the new place, which they hope to open in 2010. But that’s not all. He just returned from three months in southern China scouting for a movie and is storyboarding another in Montreal. He has also been second director in recent years on such major Hollywood films as The Proposal and Ray. And he somehow found the time to animate an amazing music video. Check it out on his blog, Everyday Ray, at raymondprado.blogspot.com.
Candace Locklear writes from the Bay Area, where she is loving life and thriving as the director of the mobile practice at her PR agency, Sparkpr. She works with lots of iPhone developers and reports that the mobile Internet is finally coming to life! In late December she was planning to take friends to the rustic, newly renovated DOC cabin in Tahoe, California. The cabin, which can only be reached by snowshoe, is perched on a frozen lake and adjacent to downhill and cross-country skiing. She encourages other alums to join the San Francisco Dartmouth Club and use the cabin!
Finally, as I close this column on Christmas Eve, a joyful e-mail from Chris Kagy and his wife, Rachel, who spent part of the day at the U.S. embassy in Moscow getting a visa for their newly adopted son Alexander Roman Kagy, age 2 1/2, who joined the family in time to ring in the New Year.
My best to all for 2010.
—Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com
