Class Note 1983
Issue
May-June 2026
Class Note 1983. Hello everyone, Jim Sterling here. Walter Foster and Martha Gerhan, our class co-presidents, have asked me to step in for Wendy (Nelson) Kauffman as class co-secretary. Wendy says: “My retirement has increasingly focused on my family, now ranging from age 2 to 85. My mom was diagnosed with dementia, so I moved her from Texas to Connecticut to care for her. Twice a week I babysit my granddaughter. This new journey is teaching me a lot about myself as well as living in the moment and enjoying life to its fullest.” Thank you, Wendy, for your service to the class and good luck juggling a busy family life.
We are very sad to report that Rob O’Neal passed away after a nearly four-year battle with cancer.
Mary Fairbanks wrote in: “I retired as a family physician in December 2024, and we moved from Bisbee, Arizona, back to Arvada, near Denver, to be closer to our daughter and her husband (and two grand-dogs and one grand-kitten.) Our original plan was to snowbird but quickly found many challenges in maintaining properties in two states and gave up. We are land rich and money poor—since our main house in Bisbee is still on the market and we have a rental property there to sell. I had not planned on spending the first year of retirement moving. But there it is.
“We are looking forward to getting all our stuff in one place and hoping to do more traveling and catch up on reading. Bisbee, an historic mining town with a thriving arts scene, was a lovely sojourn. I enjoyed working at the Federally Qualified Health Center there and wish I had had more time to explore all the wildlife areas and hike more, but we can always go back to visit! So, if anyone wants a vacation home in southeast Arizona in the mountains, I have a lovely place to sell you.”
Tom Bain shared that he spent almost four decades working in technology and risk management roles, primarily in financial services in Manhattan. He last worked at BlackRock, where he was part of its growth from a small, 120-employee boutique firm to a global service provider. He led the technology team and later founded four departments (information security, business continuity, technology risk management, and internal audit). He retired in 2023.
Tom has been active with Scouting America since he was a Cub Scout (known as Boy Scouts of America before it became fully coed). He moved back to Manhattan after Dartmouth and became a Scoutmaster of the same troop where he was an Eagle Scout. Since then he has had local, regional, and national volunteer roles, including in governance, training, camping, and the Scout’s honor society, the Order of the Arrow. He met his future wife, Pat, when he asked her if he could come to her Cub Scout pack to recruit for his troop. Since retiring, most weeks he spends more than 40 hours a week on various Scouting roles, with breaks for trips with Pat and family.
—Jim Sterling, 108 E 4th St., #17, New York, NY 10003; jsterlnyc@gmail.com; Shanta Sullivan,1541 North Sierra Bonita Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90046; shantaesullivan@gmail.com
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We are very sad to report that Rob O’Neal passed away after a nearly four-year battle with cancer.
Mary Fairbanks wrote in: “I retired as a family physician in December 2024, and we moved from Bisbee, Arizona, back to Arvada, near Denver, to be closer to our daughter and her husband (and two grand-dogs and one grand-kitten.) Our original plan was to snowbird but quickly found many challenges in maintaining properties in two states and gave up. We are land rich and money poor—since our main house in Bisbee is still on the market and we have a rental property there to sell. I had not planned on spending the first year of retirement moving. But there it is.
“We are looking forward to getting all our stuff in one place and hoping to do more traveling and catch up on reading. Bisbee, an historic mining town with a thriving arts scene, was a lovely sojourn. I enjoyed working at the Federally Qualified Health Center there and wish I had had more time to explore all the wildlife areas and hike more, but we can always go back to visit! So, if anyone wants a vacation home in southeast Arizona in the mountains, I have a lovely place to sell you.”
Tom Bain shared that he spent almost four decades working in technology and risk management roles, primarily in financial services in Manhattan. He last worked at BlackRock, where he was part of its growth from a small, 120-employee boutique firm to a global service provider. He led the technology team and later founded four departments (information security, business continuity, technology risk management, and internal audit). He retired in 2023.
Tom has been active with Scouting America since he was a Cub Scout (known as Boy Scouts of America before it became fully coed). He moved back to Manhattan after Dartmouth and became a Scoutmaster of the same troop where he was an Eagle Scout. Since then he has had local, regional, and national volunteer roles, including in governance, training, camping, and the Scout’s honor society, the Order of the Arrow. He met his future wife, Pat, when he asked her if he could come to her Cub Scout pack to recruit for his troop. Since retiring, most weeks he spends more than 40 hours a week on various Scouting roles, with breaks for trips with Pat and family.
—Jim Sterling, 108 E 4th St., #17, New York, NY 10003; jsterlnyc@gmail.com; Shanta Sullivan,1541 North Sierra Bonita Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90046; shantaesullivan@gmail.com