Hope everyone had a great holiday! As you read this it’s mid-February and here in the East we are experiencing the “crunch of feet on snow,” in the immortal words of one of my favorite songs, “Dartmouth Undying.” If you were in the Glee Club, the Aires or Distractions you sang these words more times than you care to remember and they are in our muscles and our brains! I hope by now many of you read our recent class newsletter online, compliments of our newsletter editor Bob Leach and our class webmaster Eric Nelson. We’re working hard to get class news and information out to you online. It’s not too early to start thinking and planning for our 35th reunion in 2012. Soon Amy Camaan Cholnoky will put out a class questionnaire online, so be sure to look for it and respond, as there will be options as to when our reunion will be held. 


If you can’t get to Hanover for our reunions (and we hope you can) one way to stay in touch is through mini-reunions. Information will be forthcoming about CarniVail, a Dartmouth reunion held annually in Vail, Colorado. But I heard from one classmate who has kept a group of friends together through the years with their own mini-reunions! Wes “Chainsaw” and Martha Chapman, who reside in Hanover, organized a Salmon River canyons raft/kayak trip in August, attended by fellow Theta Delt brothers Tom “Tadpole” Barnico with wife Katie, Rory “Bodacious Buffalo” Laughna, Orville “Ornery Orv” Lunking with wife Angie and children Garrett and Vienna, Gary “Hoss” Rodgers with wife Jill ’78, Don “Zulu” Thomas and Pete “Peilican” Volanakis with wife Cathy. This was a reprisal of a 50th birthday tour of the White Mountains that this same group did five years earlier. On the third night out the group celebrated Wes and Martha’s 32nd wedding anniversary, collaborating on their version of the theme from Green Acres. Quite a creative group! On a more serious note, in October Wes, Gary and Jill and Pete climbed Mt. Whitney, a 1,449-foot peak in the Sierra Nevada range in California. Mt. Moosilauke is a piece of cake compared to Whitney!


One classmate I can always count on to keep in touch is John T. Bird! As you may know, John is single-handedly responsible for getting the great Pittsburgh Pirates ballplayer Bill Mazeroski into the Baseball Hall of Fame. This past September Pittsburgh’s ballpark, PNC Park, dedicated a statue to Bill Mazeroski on his 74th birthday and John sent me a picture of the statue, knowing the big baseball fan that I am. John wrote what is considered the authorized biography of Mazeroski, titled Twin Killing: The Bill Mazeroski Story. John noted, “Maz has raised millions for charity since his 2001 induction into the Hall of Fame and it’s a continuing honor to be his biographer.”


Keep your news coming—nothing too big or small for us to share!


—Kathy Kelley Cimina, 6 Martins Road, Newtown Square, PA 19073; (610) 356-4685; cohasset73@comcast.net