Class Note 1978. Our Sophomore Summer was 50 years ago. I asked you what were the high points: taking a new course, finding love, skinny-dipping off the Ledyard docks? As always, you delivered.
Bill Dexter sent haiku: “Took science fiction/Found a love of that genre./Ledyard docks? Of course!”
Mitchell Cohn played one-on-one basketball with professor David Kastan to determine his final grade in a Shakespeare course. “I beat him,” Mitchell writes, “but what I laugh about now is how I perceived this 30-something man as being old!”
Brooks Clark, struggling with an English paper, dropped in on professor Donald Pease in Sanborn and found him in cutoffs, eager to dispense advice. “I got my first A,” Brooks said. “The lesson of office hours!”
Jim Vailas says he “learned how to play lacrosse and play better football and to train to play at varsity level. And I figured out what I should major in: science!” Jim became an orthopedic surgeon with a subspecialty in sports medicine.
Celia Chen took phycology, the study of algae, with professor Hannah Croasdale, “a great role model, inspiring teacher, and, eventually, wonderful friend,” Celia writes. “If it weren’t for that course I am pretty sure I wouldn’t be a scientist.”
Tom Alexander met his future wife. So did Marty Cole, who writes: “My Theta Delt roommate Curt Oberg introduced me to Terri Taylor (University of New Hampshire ’76).” Marriage in 1979, three children, and seven grandchildren followed.
David Shoemaker was waiting in the Hop costume shop to be measured for his Summer Repertory gear when “my eyes fell on one of the sexiest, most beautiful, most exotic-looking women I’d ever seen.” He screwed up his courage to ask her to dance at the cast party on opening night. “We danced till the party was over—and we’ve been dancing ever since.”
It was also the summer of the U.S. bicentennial and the Montreal Olympics. Mark Jacobson and Ken Tucker trekked down to Schaefer Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, to see Elton John on July 4. Melinda Kassen and I made the same drive three weeks later to see Boz Scaggs, Fleetwood Mac, and the Eagles.
Scott Riedler day-tripped to Montreal for Olympic basketball with Phil Flink, Lou Duff, and Steve Cohen. “I remember nothing of the game we saw or who played but that was secondary anyway to the adventure of the trip.”
Ralph Blanchard and his dormmates in McLane found their late-night, car-headlight-illuminated volleyball games interrupted by complaints from the U.S. Olympic crew team, which was lodging next door in French. “We were not impressed,” Ralph writes. “Night volleyball was sacred to us.”
Dan Galyon lent his 1960 MGA convertible to Peter Reissman for a film course. Peter shot a Super 8 movie starring Dean Kellogg ’77 taking organic chemistry and having “bizarre, sleep-deprived dreams featuring professor Tom Spencer, mixed with fantasy action shots featuring the car.” After filming, the crew went tubing on the White River with beers and Professor Spencer.
Dan tells it with a sigh: “It all happened just yesterday.”
Happy summer—please send news!
—Anne Bagamery, 13 rue de Presles, 75015 Paris, France; abagamery78@gmail.com; Rick Beyer, 1305 S. Michigan Ave., #1104, Chicago, IL 60605; rickbeyer78@gmail.com