Sylvie (Hogg) Murphy, Kate (Knaus) Galston, and Abbey Doolittle enjoyed catching up over a weeklong Roman holiday in early February. Along with spectacular art and architecture and even some urban spelunking by the Colosseum, they enjoyed good weather and outdoor pasta and pizza meals with plenty of Franciacorta. The group met up with classics professor Roger Ulrich and his wife, Imogen, who live part-time in the Italian seaside town of Anzio. They all enjoyed a lovely day, complete with a decadent seafood lunch, a walk along the beach (home to ruins of an imperial Roman palace), and reminiscing about the 1997 classics foreign study program.

Jasson Walker Jr. was spotlighted by the Microsoft Partner Network for its 2022 Black History Month campaign. The initiative selected Jasson for his work as president and CEO of cFocus Software, which provides information technology services to federal government agencies.

Chris Houpt and son Lucas made the front page of the local newspaper for their team’s finishing first in robot design at the Hudson Valley (New York) First Lego league qualifying tournament. Chris coaches Lucas and five other sixth- and seventh-grade boys in building and coding a Lego robot to solve challenges. Chris also skied for only the second time since his Dartmouth Skiway days and found it more challenging than he remembered. Finally, Chris reported that, while he has not seen a ’98 in-person in a while, he keeps up with Kenji Hosokawa’s bouldering exploits on Instagram.

Jaime (Staples) King wrote that she, her husband, James King, and their two sons (8 and 12) moved to Auckland, New Zealand, last year. Jaime took a job at the University of Auckland as the John and Marylyn Mayo chair in health law. Jaime and family have been loving life in a faraway land. They have traveled to the Cook Islands, as well as Queenstown and Wanaka on New Zealand’s South Island. Jaime and James have kept up with ’98s via Zoom and FaceTime and welcome folks to visit once the borders open.

I previously reported on Mary Hollendoner’s travels and the book she wrote about her family’s three-year road trip. Marc Lewinstein cited Mary as inspiration for recently completing a six-state, eight-resort ski trip out west in a Sprinter van with his girlfriend, daughter of Michael O’Neill ’71, and Marc’s dog. While the adventurers had issues with running water, heat, and even basic hygiene, they enjoyed great snow and good times, especially visiting three national parks. Aside from shearing the air conditioning unit off of the van’s roof, they managed to return the van in otherwise working order. Last May Marc and Greg Vadasdi climbed Denali, North America’s highest mountain. It was Greg’s second time up Denali; this time fulfilling his ambition to ski off of the summit. The expedition presented challenges, including violent stomach troubles and mild frostbite brought on by an unplanned bivouac in a storm on the way down. Marc is also due to appear shortly as an extra in the HBO series The Gilded Age. He wrote, “If someone with a full beard and wire-rimmed spectacles standing behind Nathan Lane seemed familiar, you’re correct.”

—Gabe Galletti, 4000 Utah Ave., Nashville, TN 37209; galletti@gmail.com