In this issue I have lots of news to pass on from classmates who contacted me with their big career moves. 


On January 8 of this year Mark Hurlbert became the assistant district attorney in the 18th District of Colorado. Mark writes, “In Colorado the assistant district attorney is the second in command at a district attorney’s office. Although it will mean moving from the mountains where I grew up to the Denver area, I am excited to be running the largest district attorney’s office in the state and working with the prosecution team on the case against the Aurora theater shooter. Although my wife, Cathy, and kids Jack (12) and Cydney (10) are going to miss being so close to the ski areas, they are also excited for the new challenge.”


In mid-January J.D. Optekar returned to Hanover for the Dartmouth Relays and to attend alumni activities for the track and field team. “Nice dinner and reception with a chance to connect with alums (lots of ’89s). Diana Cadeddu Ruhl was the only other ’91 to make it up to Hanover. We had fun racing each other in men’s and women’s Masters 4-by-200-meter relay.” J.D. plays guitar with a band called Tweed Funk, creating music their website describes as “wrapping together blues, soul, funk and elements of hip-hop in show-band style.” You can see him featured on the cover of the October 2012 issue of RockWired magazine and profiled in the article “25 Guitarists You’ve Gotta Know!” He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and you can see Tweed Funk perform all over the Midwest, with upcoming performances in Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan. Check out their website at www.tweedfunk.com.


David Martosko wrote in to let me know that he was the editing half of a team that recently won a prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for journalism. According to David, “The award honored ‘The Horse Soldiers of 9/11,’ a story by war reporter Alex Quade about the first U.S. servicemen to enter Afghanistan—on horseback—after the 9/11 terror attacks. A statue memorializing them now rests at Ground Zero in New York City.” Until recently David worked as executive editor of The Daily Caller in Washington, D.C., but as of March 18 he has joined the Daily Mail as U.S. political editor. 


Keep sending your updates!


—Sara Burbine Potter, 108 Hillcrest Road, Fairfield, CT 06824; sara_burbine@yahoo.com