Dear classmates, by all accounts, our 35th reunion was a banger! The turnout was high at nearly 400, the eagerness to connect across green lawns and dinner tables was palpable, and the exchange of mobiles and Instagram accounts (for those still on social) seemed constant. We raised more than $7 million for the Dartmouth College Fund, the most by any class. If you did not make it, just start planning to come for our 40th now—no excuses later.

And allow us to introduce ourselves, your new class secretaries Robin Byrd and Candace Locklear. We want to thank Ned Ward for his decade of service and his willingness to guide us as we step in. We will alternate the exciting task of reaching out to shake detailed updates from you to craft this compelling bimonthly column, so expect to hear from us.

From Candace: It was my third reunion and worth all the effort to fly from Oakland, California, to Hanover, thanks to the strong encouragement of D.D. Danforth Burlin and Libby Carrier. I saw Brooks Entwistle, who came from Singapore, and Dave Tamman, who traveled from London! Many shared they sought out folks they didn’t know that well during school, which made for some new connections. Over breakfast with a group I had the chance to talk to Anton Anderson, who was in a special program for minorities with me before college. With a prompt, he shared how Dartmouth opened doors for him as a Black man and how he overcame his fears to walk through them—one for the newsletter. It also turns out sleeping in the dorms ain’t so bad! One crew smartly set up a speakeasy with alcohol in a suite of dorm rooms, which allowed for more intimate conversations over Campari and sodas.

From Robin: It is always refreshing to be back home on the Hanover Plain. The nonstop laughter while catching up with besties, the sweet memories elicited by the senior year film, and seeing our names in Dartmouth Hall among other alumnae supporters made my cross-country trek worth repeating. Baker Tower at dusk and other familiar sights were as inspiring as the new developments. Sharon Geary Barnes was excited about the reimagined Hop taking shape and how the College will elevate the arts. A favorite moment for Stacy Higgins was honoring our beloved professors King and Pease by inviting them to share their perspectives on the College and teaching. We hope it was touching for them to see the impact they had on so many of us.

We are at the age where many people are retired or about to be. We thought this may be the right time to pose a “Big Question” for the next column, so consider this, dear readers, and we will bug you for answers via email: “Since graduating 35 years ago how is your ‘second life’ starting to take shape?” Whatever your response, please sound off and we will print the best we can hustle from you.

Robin Byrd, P.O. Box 660553, Arcadia, CA 91066; (951) 269-9213; robinwinters@msn.com; Candace Locklear, 5829 Colton Blvd., Oakland, CA 94611; (510) 292-8216; candace@mightypr.com

Huge kudos to Antonia Rutigliano Nedder and team for our best Reunion yet! Robin Byrd is our new secretary, and you’re in great hands. Thanks for all your emails and updates!

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

I’m writing this at the end of February, but by the time you read this we’ll all be at our 35th reunion in Hanover! I can’t wait for June 13-16.

Reunion has a lot going on for our classmates; I’m excited about helping to put together an alumni band that will play on Friday night. There’s no shortage of great musicians in our class and in the ’88s and ’90s, but right now the band will include myself, Eric Berlin on drums, Brad Drazen ’90 and Rob Crawford ’90 from Second Hand Jam, Alison Berger ’90 on vocals, Matt Greene ’90 on guitar, and Tim Burger ’88 on bass, Sue Abraham ’88 on vocals/guitar, Wayne Weil ’88 on bass and guitar, and Derek Pew ’88 and Andy Winslow ’88 on keyboards, vocals, and drums from the NRO band during our years. It will be odd doing mostly virtual practices, but we’ll be playing songs we all know. Regardless, it will be a blast! We also have two student bands playing, so it’s a great Friday afternoon.

Speaking of music, I recently drove out to Tucson, Arizona, to pick up a guitar amplifier and tried to see if I could grab lunch in Phoenix on the way back either with Anne Gazzaniga, Fred Miner, or Jacqueline Allen Tierney, but on short notice all were booked—totally understandable. Anne did mention a great place, Tacos Chiwas in Mesa—where she had taken Alec Scott and Karin Willinski when they visited—it was really good and will get added to my #nedsgoodeats list. I’m always looking for suggestions….

With reunion coming, please make the time to reach out to friends or reconnect with those you haven’t talked with.

Let me know one best thing you experienced at reunion to have a full recap in our column after—or feel free to send restaurant recommendations. I’m not picky!

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

It’s the end of December as I write this, and we’re six months out from reunion! We have a lot of classmates who are interested and I’m hoping to see many of you in Hanover June 13-16!

This has been a challenging year; we lost two classmates in the past several months. Brian Frazier passed away on October 31, and Robin Buzby Galambos passed away November 30. Both of their obituaries will be on the 1989 “In Memory” page by the time you read this, and I encourage classmates to leave your thoughts in the “Class Reflections” section for each of them or email to me.

I’m also dealing with the loss of Ed Gray ’88, who passed away November 25. Many of you knew Ed from Marching Band or just him being around campus. I knew Ed from seventh grade, and we stayed in touch long after—he was the best man at my wedding and was truly my best friend for 43 years. I was lucky enough to be able to visit him in Half Moon Bay, California, every quarter for the past two to three years. Despite all his health challenges, he was still Ed and had that same great outlook on life. Ed had a living celebration of life on November 18, and it was heartwarming to see so many Dartmouth alums there, including John Van Hooser, Jim Mills, Betsy Heafitz, Peter MacDonald, Bill Ruhl ’86, Roth Herrlinger ’90, Laura McEntee Bierwagen ’90, Dave Owens ’88, Becky Owens ’91, Joel Allison ’88, Derek LeLash ’88, Catherine Craighead Briggs ’88, Robin Joy ’88, Dana Beard ’88, Amanda Hanson ’88, Jeni Anderson ’88, Dan Estabrook ’88, Julie Pelkan ’88, and Kristen Steck ’88.

With reunion coming, please make the time to reach out to friends or reconnect with those you haven’t talked with. Losing a best friend such as Ed is making me cherish friendships and connections even more, and I really appreciate hearing from all the ’89s I reached out to—hoping to see as many of you as possible in June in Hanover.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

We’re a year out from our next reunion—35th! The theme is “Where the ’89s Are” and I can’t wait. We’re sharing it with ’88s and the ’90s, so stay tuned for more information. Antonia Rutigliano Nedder is our reunion committee chair and already people are excited to return to Hanover June 13-16—mark your calendars! If you’re interested in volunteering, let me know—happy to connect you with Antonia or the committee groups.

What am I looking forward to at reunion? I’m eager to connect with other ’89s as well as ’88s and 90s; see the renovation progress on the Hop and the newly renovated Dartmouth Hall; enjoy good authentic Thai food at Tuk Tuk Thai (in the basement where 5 Olde used to be—it’s on my #nedsgoodeats list); some version of the different bands reuniting on the Green between Second Hand Jam, NRO, and The Distractions; try the maple vanilla soft-serve with maple sugar crumbles at McNamara Creamery; and see the wildflower plantings our class sponsored. That’s just a small amount of what I’m looking forward to—what are you looking forward to?

We’re about to be empty-nesters, with our younger daughter off to University of California, Davis, in September. I’m looking forward to traveling more, both to New Jersey to see my mom and to Tokyo to see hers, as well as friends in between. What have you ’89s who are now empty-nesters done with your free time? Enquiring minds want to know.

Please continue to reach out to other ’89s to connect, share stories, or tell me you’re coming to reunion in June!

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Summer’s here and while Summer Carnival is kicking up at Hanover, I’m enjoying the marine layer here in Redondo, California. It’s been great being back here with the family full-time in our L.A. office.

Linda Salzhauer Swenberg shared the Mercury News story that our own Lt. Gov. Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis announced her bid for governor of California in 2026! Eli would be the first woman elected governor in state history! Eleni responded that she’s excited, and she’s still in touch with Julie Jordan Gunn, Patrick Munoz, Alec Scott, and a handful of alums from other classes here in San Francisco.

Lisa Collins, who’s been teaching art history, Africana studies, and American studies at Vassar since 1998, just published a new book, Stitching Love and Loss: A Gee’s Bend Quilt. Lauded by National Book Award-winning author Tiya Miles as an “achingly beautiful story of artistry, family, community, and place,” the book traces the story of a Gee’s Bend quilt to illuminate the perseverance and creativity of Black women quilters in a rural, Black-belt community. Gee’s Bend quilts are considered among the most important Black visual and cultural contributions to the history of art in the United States. The quilt in the story is currently at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where Lisa recently spoke in conjunction with the exhibit Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South. Lisa shared “I’ve been teaching at Vassar since 1998. My partner, Lee, teaches history nearby at SUNY New Paltz. We live in the funky river city of Kingston, New York, in the gorgeous Hudson Valley. Memphis, our oldest son, is a sophomore psychology major at the College of Wooster near Cleveland (where I’m from), and our youngest son, Sasha, is an electric guitar-playing ninth-grader at Kingston High School. All of us are looking forward to a summer full of art, music, and shows: Buddy Guy, Dead & Company, Alex G, Big Thief, Pixies, and (for the New Jersey-born and raised among us) Bruce. Personally, I’m secretly hoping for a chance to see Steve Lacy and Dijon!”

Yanna Yannakakis has published another book, Since Time Immemorial: Native Custom and Law in Colonial Mexico, from Duke University Press. It’s a fresh look at how customs were made and changed through time and by external colonial forces. Yanna said, “Thank you for your good wishes about my book—I am really happy that it is finally out. I am doing well, enjoying my work at Emory, playing pickleball (my new passion!), and reveling in springtime in Atlanta, which is hard to beat. My husband, Aiden, and I have two daughters, Marianna (20) and Maeve (15), and they keep us on our toes. We are currently in the middle of Maeve’s high school lacrosse season, which is a blast. We hope to travel to Greece this summer and see family after a long hiatus during Covid. I am in regular touch with Chris Gates, Anne Moellering, Liz Eilender, and Martha Boss Bennett—teammates and friends for life. I was last in Hanover in September 2021 with many of my former teammates to celebrate the endowment of the women’s lacrosse coaching position in Josie Harper’s name. It was an incredible weekend: an alumni game (hilarious) and a swim across the river afterward on an unusually warm fall day.

We’re a year out from our next reunion—35th! This one will be with the ’88s and the ’90s, so stay tuned for more information. Antonia Rutigliano Nedder will be chairing our reunion committee—stay tuned for opportunities to help make this the best reunion ever.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

I want to thank again all the ’89s who wrote to me after reading my column. Thank you—the connection between all of us is truly special. Please be sure to reach out after reading this to your freshman dorm roommate, first-year trips people, or just anyone to see how they’re doing.

I’m sitting in the apartment I rented in Rogers, Arkansas, for the past six months with it packed up and will be driving back to L.A. I’m still working for Walmart, but they have opened an office in L.A. so I can commute and come out to Arkansas a few days a month. Excited for me and my family and to be able to do fun stuff such as my band again.

One of the people I heard from was Liz Kraus. She had interviewed with Walmart in D.C. and she got the job! Liz will be coming to Bentonville, Arkansas, a couple of times a year! It would be great if it syncs up with when I’m going back—and two ’89s at Walmart! Soon we’ll be gaining on Jody Warden’s Dartmouth gang at Target.

I also heard from Jeanette White, who is still a pediatrician up in Mill Valley, California, and remembered me doing a rap to Chaucer in one of our English classes—sadly, that rap, like some of Chaucer’s work, has been lost to time, probably for the better! Jeanette still keeps in touch with Karen Sprole, Christine Whalen, K.K. Lam, Jilann Spitzmiller Rogerson, Susan Morrison Lucey, Bonnie An Henderson, and Victoria Dalgliesh Kanaley.

I talked with Susan Leong Yates to ensure she was okay following the natural damage in the North Island in New Zealand (she lives in the South Island). Their landline is working again and power is on too; no cell coverage. She phoned June Ying Ping the other day and talked about how she, June, and her friends “always put our hands up and volunteer to make things happen and better for others.”

We’re a year out from our next reunion—35th! This one will be with the ’88s and the ’90s so stay tuned for more information.

Again, thank you for connecting with me and please continue to do so and reach out to other ’89s to share stories, check in, or just say hi.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

It’s the week before New Year’s and it definitely doesn’t feel like the holidays. I wish I were in the spirit and have tried—we made five gallons of my family’s eggnog recipe to give away to friends, but spirits were dampened by the death of my father and other challenges.

I know many other ’89s lost family members this year as well, and I share in your grief and sadness. I’m incredibly grateful for the outreach from classmates and especially our ’89 Cares group, which is ready to help out classmates in need.

Facebook instant messages continue to be a provider of content for my columns. I got a suspicious one from Dana Wakiji, and emailed her directly. Dana shared: “I lost both my stepmom and stepdad last year, plus my aunt and mother-in-law this year. It’s a tough thing being this age as we lose so many people. The good news is I am all right after dealing with breast cancer this year. They caught it early fortunately. I’m still looking for a full-time job. It’s kind of a Catch-22 since they want to fill sports jobs with young (read: cheaper) people and public relations and other communications jobs want you to have direct experience in those roles.” If you know, you know—Dana is an amazing sports writer whose career included covering the Detroit Red Wings, among other teams.

Speaking of hockey, Jeff Rosenthal emailed me “between periods of watching an Islanders game.” (I’d expect nothing less). “My wife, Jennifer, and I just became empty-nesters this fall. Both our kids turned their backs on Dartmouth with my daughter now a senior at Swarthmore and my son a freshman at Yale. Homecoming 2021 was my last shot to convince him to go green and yet, despite having an amazing time hanging out with a bunch of ’89s and seeing an exciting football overtime win over Yale, he decided a few weeks later to apply early to the losers of that game. I don’t see many ’89s that often (I always want to go to more of the N.Y.C. events) except Alex Simpson. We coached Little League baseball together for years and remain close. We bond nowadays over the fact that his kids also both decided not to go to Dartmouth (both of his are at Duke) and our never-ending heartbreak of being Mets fans.”

Did you know about our class of 1989 pollinator project, which since the spring of 2021 has planted more than 12,000 square feet of plants for pollinator species? There’s a great article in The Dartmouth that explains it more in detail here: www.thedartmouth.com/article/2022/11/class-of-1989-pollination-project-b....

Our class received an award during the fall Volunteer Officers Experience meeting for the pollinator project and its multiyear commitment to enriching the Dartmouth environment and community. Huge props to our class VP, David Hammond, and our service committee for all the energy they put into creating and spearheading this effort that is a lasting gift with not only an aesthetic but also an ecological benefit to the Dartmouth campus and surrounding Upper Valley.

Kathy Apruzzese Sherbrooke has written a new book, The Hidden Life of Aster Kelly, which is inspired by the true story of Kathy’s mother and her past as a model in 1940s Hollywood, with timelines from Los Angeles to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. It’s available this April.

Send me your news, updates, or even fake Facebook instant messages—it would be great to hear from you.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Happy New Year to all. This column is short as I’m still back in 2022, and my father passed away mid-September after battling dementia for five-plus years, including two in memory care. I finally got Covid, and once better, drove down to Bentonville, California, where I am commuting back and forth. There’s a lot going on in my life and I’m trying to deal with it, even when it’s tough. Would love for you to share your stories—whether it’s great or heartbreaking—and know that our ’89 Cares team is available for all classmates. I’ve used it and it’s helped immensely. Keep connecting with classmates, family and other loved ones—and I’ll try to keep connecting with all of you.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

I’m writing this in August, but by the time it comes out I will have been commuting from Bentonville, Arkansas, for my work in Walmart marketing back and forth to Redondo Beach, California. I figured commuting was better than moving the family during my younger daughter’s senior year in high school—I didn’t want the That Dad Award. I brought my mountain bike thanks to Winnie DelliQuadri, who told me how she and her son road-tripped to Bentonville to go mountain biking from Steamboat—yep, it’s that good.

David Hammond recently shared in our class officers meeting about our class service project—planting wildflowers on campus and around the Upper Valley. David shared, “There are currently 11 sites around the Upper Valley—five around campus, downtown Hanover, three in the Old Dartmouth cemetery, a big hillside at the organic farm, and one at a White River Junction, Vermont, elementary school. The 11th site will be planted this fall at Anonymous Hall. If you go to Dartmouthservice.org you can see a Google map and images of the sites already planted.” It’s a great service project for our class that David spearheaded and leaves a lasting mark on the campus for our class. Take a look!

Neil Abramson played football at Dartmouth and now his son, Parrish ’26, will be as well—also under Coach Buddy Teevens ’79 and also as a defensive back! Back at the end of August Neil said, “Very excited for my son. We’re taking him up next week and looks like I’ll be visiting campus a bit more in the next four years.”

I also talked with Andy Wells, who shared, “My wife, Loey, and I moved to Alexandria, Virginia, three years ago, and I’m a director of the advanced manufacturing program at the National Science Foundation, making tens of millions of dollars in grants to people doing fundamental research on everything from semiconductors to 3-D printing to metal cutting. Loey is starting up a business as a personal coach, and our daughter lives nearby in D.C., where she’s a Congress and politics reporter at USA Today. I’ve been happy to see Tim Burdick a couple of times in the past year, as he’s traveled here for meetings from his home in Lyme, New Hampshire, where he and his wife, Kristin, are doctors at DHMC. I’ve also (virtually) run into Sarah Konrad at work, since she’s building scientific research communities in Wyoming when she’s not skiing, biking, or making beautiful art.”

If you’re on Facebook, sometimes you get random instant messages from friends that you realize didn’t come from them. Such a message appeared to come from Cathy Lee, and I reached out to her on email to let her know. Cathy said, “There are positives in getting hacked. I heard from you and Betsy Heafitz, whom I haven’t talked to in ages. We’re hoping to get together later this summer when she comes back to Massachusetts to visit with family. So there’s a silver lining! I’m almost an empty nester. I switched to a different investment advisory firm late last year. I’m mostly remote, enjoying the work and the people. My oldest is adulting in New York City. He’s a theater lighting person hoping to work his way up to being a theater lighting designer one day. My youngest is a rising senior at UMass Amherst studying mechanical engineering.”

So the next time you see what looks like a spam message on Facebook, email your classmate to let them know and catch up. And you never have to wait for a suspected spam from me to let me know your news. Happy holidays!

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Debra Roberson has now published four books available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and worth reading! They include Listen and You Will Hear: Book of Short Stories and Poems; By F.A.I.T.H.: A Memoir; Flowers of the Ark-LA-Tex; and Cane River Chronicles: Surviving on the Prayers of Our Ancestors, which I read. Kudos to Debra!

I’ve now been working for Walmart in marketing for more than six months, and the work is challenging and the people are great. It’s fun to go into any store and being able to talk to people there about new stuff I’m working on—big entertainment property marketing, such as Jurassic World Dominion, Netflix’s Stranger Things—and more. Fun fact: Classmate Ray Prado did the storyboards for Stranger Things in the first season, back when it was a “weird 1980s sci-fi show” that he told me about. And yes, I do have to watch all these shows on Netflix. If you have favorites, let me know. I won’t judge. So the job is a fun mix of my toy background and entertainment background with a very healthy dose of digital marketing. It’s always interesting, never dull.

What keeps you busy—and happy? Who are you meeting up with? What’s on your iTunes or Spotify playlist? Class of ’89s want to know—email me!

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

And just like that…two months have passed by since my prostate surgery, and recovery has been pretty swift. I’m super-grateful for my family and friends. Again, please get a PSA blood test with your next physical. It’s that easy and easily treatable if found early.

Dennis O’Connor wrote to tell me that in September he fought in his first boxing match in front of a crowd of 350, winning a three-round fight via technical knockout. Dennis also has volunteered to become the president of the Dartmouth Club of the United Kingdom and is working to relaunch the club there, which has died in the past several years.

Alec Scott also wrote to share, “I’m a freelance writer based in Oakland, California, where I live in a small bungalow with my husband, David. Since moving here from Canada (for his work) I’ve been contributing to The Guardian, Sunset, the The Los Angeles Times, and Smithsonian magazine. A recent magazine piece had me learning how to play pickleball, and one of the people showing me the ropes was, by happenstance, the husband of another ’89, Kendra Ellis. This spring my first novel, Until It Shimmers, is being published by Ace of Swords. It focuses on a young Canadian who moves to Thatcher-era Britain, to London to come out into the thick of the AIDS crisis. A second one is to follow and looks at the younger brother of the one in the first. At the outset he heads to Dartmouth in the late summer of 1985 to join his freshman hiking trip through the Presidentials. The Freshman Book it’s to be called.

Looking forward to catching up with some of you on our monthly Zoom (first Saturday of the month) or on Facebook.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Still opening holiday cards, and our holiday card this year looks good, complete with me in my 30th reunion ’89 vest. It’s great to see cards from friends and classmates and reconnect.

This is a short column, as I’ve had other things on my mind the past several weeks. My father, who has dementia, caught pneumonia and Covid, and I’m 3,000 miles away and feeling powerless. I know my mother and sister are there, but still wish I could do more for him besides thinking positive thoughts. I’m also going in tomorrow (December 29) for prostate removal surgery. Thanks to annual checkups it was detected early through nothing more than regular bloodwork; this is a plea to get checked as part of your annual physical. I’m grateful to have detected this early and to go into this with the love and support of my family and friends.

I’ll have plenty of time lying around the next few weeks to write and make calls to family, friends, and classmates, and I’m looking forward to catching up with some of you on our monthly Zoom (first Saturday of the month) or on Facebook.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

It’s still fall here in Southern California (as much as it can feel like fall when it’s in the mid-70s) and I’m still a marching band roadie for my high school daughter. Unlike Dartmouth’s band, they actually do formations, move around, and have big percussion and electronics that need to get rolled on and off the field. Lots of fun; I can add driving a 26-foot box truck to my list of useful skills. But our 30th reunion bag is my go-to in the truck for snacks, USB power, etc. Our class has the best reunion swag!

Fresh off his re-airing on 60 Minutes I had lunch with David Frey on his recent trip to L.A. Great to catch up, as I hadn’t seen him in person since our 30th. David still leads the West Point Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

I had a great catch up with Kelly Jackson King. She is an obstetrician-gynecologist, as is her husband, and they now live in Atlanta, where they moved with their two kids after having lived in Las Vegas. Kelly went to Dartmouth Medical School after Dartmouth, but was an English major—as a premed, Kelly said how she was looking for balance rather than majoring in biology or chemistry. We realized we probably had multiple classes together—fun stuff! Kelly also helps small businesses to find advocates, legal counsel, financial planning, etc. Kelly still keeps in touch with Audrienne Walters Jordan, Damien Jordan, Melodee Armstrong ’90, and Sara Burbine Potter ’91.

Give a rouse to Lenora Brown, who was named an Encore Network Champion. Encore Network brings together organizations and individuals focused on building more equitable communities and a global culture where older adults are vital contributors. As they said when giving her the award, “Lenora is transforming ideas about the value of older adults’ experience as a senior fellow with Cleveland Leadership Center and the director of Advanced Leadership Institute, inspired by Carl and Louis Stokes. Lenora launched and manages those programs that engage experienced leaders in civic issues and projects to drive long-term change that improves Cleveland and northeast Ohio. She brings an unusually varied skill set to her role, including nonprofit leadership, public-private partnerships and theater. Lenora serves on the Encore Network Leadership Council with a focus on communications.”

I’m grateful in 2022 for more connections with our classmates, whether it’s the monthly Zoom meetings (first Saturday of every month), our Facebook page, or just meeting up with classmates in person. Feel free to drop me a line—it’s always great to catch up with ’89s!

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

It was great to be back on campus in July visiting our daughter during her Sophomore Summer. I saw Ray Prado (who’s working on storyboards for multiple new projects, but I’m sworn to secrecy) and his wife, Gesine, and am hoping that by the time you read this I will have seen many more ’89s at Homecoming this October.

On that East Coast trip I had coffee with Barbara Krautheimer in Amherst, Massachusetts, and it turned out she and my wife had colleagues in common—small world! Barbara is now the dean of the college of the humanities and fine arts at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I had tried to connect with Chris DeFrancis, Andrew McCallum, and Kyoungho Koh, but hope we’ll connect next trip.

Our own Connie Womack Britton starred in the HBO series White Lotus. It’s a great look at what happens at a high-end resort in Hawaii and—no spoilers—worth a watch.

I heard from John Sveen several months ago: “All is well. I live outside of Syracuse, New York, on Skaneateles Lake. My wife, Anne, and I have three daughters, Sarah (23), Mia (19), Lily (11). I’m an ophthalmologist and my wife is a pediatrician specializing in dermatology. Sarah will be starting Boston University dental school this summer, Mia is a sophomore at Colgate, and Lily is my little fifth-grade buddy. I reconnected with Chris Bailey and Deanna Emberley Bailey a few years back and we’ve had several nice summer visits. We are hoping to visit them one day in Bali now that they’ve moved! What a fun surprise to see my old roommate Dave Frey on 60 Minutes a week ago [on a segment about Camp Ritchie, the World War II military intelligence training center]! Super cool. Hoping he and Beth Wood Frey will stop by one day when they are visiting their daughter at University of Rochester Medical School!”

I caught up with Greg Williams on our biweekly Zoom meeting; he recently spent two years running the nonprofit Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. Greg moved back to Seattle as his daughter wanted to finish high school there and is living in the CHOP neighborhood. He still keeps in touch with his sister, Laura Williams Gal ’91 and her husband, Christian Gal ’91; his sister-in-law, Bridget McCaffrey ’88; Jeff Zarse; Dave Heisterkamp; Marcus Weiss ’90; andLaurie Adams ’88, who is the CEO of Women for Women International, a nonprofit that is doing incredibly important work for the women in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

I asked on our ’89 Facebook page what was one thing people were hoping for this fall, and Kelley Busby Tiemens shared: “For the pandemic to get under better control, for people to be kinder to one another and for real stepping up, individually and collectively, around the climate crisis. It’s now or never.”

What are you hoping for in 2022?

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Our weekly Zoom meetings are now the first and third Saturday each month at 4 and 11 p.m. EST. Check our Facebook page for more info.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Justine Klineman put on a one-woman workshop (aka a work in progress) performance of solo show I’m An Asshole, and So Are You! April 3 on Zoom and it was great! In Justine’s words, the show “is about bringing our big human family together by liberating anger and conflict to access joy, connection, and accepting each other.” Jamie Heller and Kate Saunders Grove also attended. I talked to Justine and she talked about her path into acting, going back to doing a Meisner conservatory for two years and an apprentice program at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Justine is most proud of her first one-woman show, Dancing with My Father: Tales of A Late Bloomer, which Justine wrote and directed as a way to deal with family, loss, and self-acceptance.

Kathy Apruzzese Sherbrooke has a new book out, Leaving Coy’s Hill, based on the life of pioneering feminist and abolitionist Lucy Stone. I’ve read an advance copy and it’s great—interesting how Kathy delineates Lucy’s friendship and then distancing from Susan B. Anthony. Worth a read!

DAM featured the annual Pow Wow in the last issue, with paintings by our own Mateo Romero from the Dartmouth Pow Wow Suite he did for the Hood Museum years ago. This got me to asking classmates for their memories of the Pow Wow. Tito Basu says, “I remember feeling the drumming was so slow compared with back home in India. But then you get drawn into the slower rhythm and the spirit of it and the beautiful colors of fabric and feather and a feeling of something old and true.” Lenora Inez Brown says, “It was one of the few times I ventured to that area of Dartmouth’s property. I remember being in awe of so much.” Debra Roberson “I loved the Pow Wows and I still attend them today. We have Adai-Caddo Indians near where I live. I fell in love with fry bread and I embrace the Native culture, as my grandmother was Native Indian. I love the artwork that Mateo Romerodoes. I’m so glad I own some of his work.” Amala Devi says, “I attended a few times and always left feeling awestruck and also with a feeling of lacking of my own culture. The incredible depth of the experience—the intensity of energies, the potent concentration and absorption of the dancers, the sounds—I loved it. And I would feel ‘culture-less.’ I feel this way often here in Hawaii and also when I would attend dances on the pueblos of New Mexico.” Dave Heisterkamp says, “Two favorite memories are watching the dancers seek out the campus police officers and bring them into the dance circle freshman year at Occom Pond and watching Siobhan Wescott’s awesome dance moves in full regalia the year the Pow Wow was moved into Thompson Arena because of rain. The [May 14, 1988, Pow-Wow poster] has hung in my office for 27 years. Pow Wow is an attitude, not a physical location. It’s all about the interaction.” Dan Parish says, “I remember seeing Siobhan Wescott dance as well. My fondest Pow Wow memories came during my time in admissions when my colleagues Beth Paap ’87, John Sirois ’91, and Jarrid Whitney each danced or played a role in leading the dancers into the circle. The other great thing was that John Sirois successfully convinced the College to move the Pow Wow to the center of the Green—to the heart of the community—where it belonged!”

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

By the time you read this, we will have been holding our weekly ’89 Zoom meetings for more than a year; we started them on the 89th day of 2020 as a way to celebrate our class, and through the pandemic they have been a great source of comfort for me and other ’89s to connect for a part of the day and see how we are doing, regardless of where we are in the world. I’m hoping that these Zoom meetings will continue, and I’ll try to be there every weekend at the afternoon and evening ones. If you’ve attended one of the Zoom meetings or you’ve never attended, feel free to come in for five to 10 minutes or stay longer whenever you want. All ’89s are welcome and it’s always great to see new and familiar faces.

While I was back in New Jersey I did get to split some firewood and also replenish the supply in my parent’s garage; we had a year when we heated our house in New Jersey with only firewood, and that task consumed most weekends. I was talking to Ken Horton and Tim Derrick about this, as Ken reminded me that Tim’s dad was a wood-burning stove dealer in Vermont and Tim had to split wood throughout high school. Tim shared this update: “After returning to California (via reunion) from our world travels last year, we moved up to our cabin in the mountains near Truckee and have been here ever since. It has been an already socially distanced place to weather the Covid storm and I have had to rediscover my wood-stove roots and the wood-splitting experience that Ken and I shared during our summer at Moosilauke and the College Grant. We will use five cords in our wood stove this winter (that’s a lot!) and I have loved it (while my back may not agree with that statement)! Otherwise, all good on our side—family is healthy and I have been working on some wind projects in Nevada and (remotely) on my solar business in New Zealand, though it has been impossible to get back there at present. We may move the family to New Zealand for a couple years if and when the borders open up.”

Congratulations to Betsy Johnston Scheffel and Heidy King-Jones ’04, who joined the Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB) board of directors/advisors in November. GBFB, the largest hunger-relief organization in New England, responded to historic levels of food insecurity in 2020. For more information, you can visit GBFB.org.

I regret to inform the class that Verona Dorch passed away on February 24. Verona’s full obituary is on our 1989 class page and you can send me any remembrances of Verona to add to her page.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Before iTunes, before Spotify, we had two Dartmouth radio stations—WDCR 1340AM and WFRD “99 Rock FM.” Here are stories from fellow ’89s who brought us amazing music, news, sports, promotions, and events.

Mark Wachen says, “We had an absolute dream team with the Seths [Rosenblatt and Skolnik] as general managers, Carolyne Allen doing wonders with WDCR, Jennifer Avellino spearheading an incredible news department, Dave Kramer in sports, and everyone else too. Our weekly staff meetings were like having your 50 best friends all in one room, eating EBA’s, hanging out in front of that incredible mural of our logos that Catherine Truman painted.”

Seth Skolnik says, “I went into Robinson Hall to sign up as a WDCR freshman trainee and made it my last stop before heading out of town in June ’89. For many of us the stations were where we chose to spend a significant portion of our time at Dartmouth.”

Seth Rosenblatt says, “The radio station was my fraternity, and we will always have that bond. A bunch of us went to the local arcade over weeks and months playing those games where you collected tickets to ‘buy’ the station its first CD player. There’s not much I remember about many of my classes at Dartmouth, but I sure remember Dartmouth Broadcasting.”

Jennifer Avellinosays, “More than 90 percent of my radio time on WDCR and WFRD was doing news and I did a small amount of DJing on 99 Rock. Other news folks included Geeta Anand.”

Dave Kramer says, “WDCR was the ‘Voice of Dartmouth Sports,’ responsible for airing dozens of athletic events every year from all across the country. Because of the tremendous announcers and producers and countless MacGyver moments with equipment salvaged from middle school AV clubs, we somehow pulled it off.”

Peter Zinman says, “Our senior year winter WFRD did a remote broadcast at Ascutney Mountain. An 11-year-old boy and his friend approached me and asked, ‘Are you Pete Zinman? Can I have your autograph?’ I signed both of their lift passes and gave them a pair of 99 Rock bumper stickers. I have never, before or since, felt so famous as I did at that moment.”

Carolyne Allen says, “Some guys from a local band that often played the Tabard used to come into the station to try to get us to play their music. I don’t know if we ever did. That band was Phish.”

Jeff Gerst says, “I interviewed Don McLean; halfway through Seth Skolnik walked in and I madly motioned for him to switch the tape reels. I got Don to do all sorts of deep-cut stuff like chord structure on songs, inspirations, and a ton of IDs for the station. When we finally finished, I went to play back the tape and, unfortunately, it was blank!”

Mark Wachen remembered Karl Olguin: “I had trouble finding someone to be on-air during the Sunday 9 p.m. to midnight shift, and Karl was a metal fanatic. We came up with the ‘99 Minute Nightmare,’ where Karl could run wild. He relished that show and so did a fanatical following in the Upper Valley.” Carolyne Allen added: “Karl also did a Sinatra show! Such diverse music tastes.”

Apologies if I’ve missed any ’89s who worked on WDCR or WFRD—please email me your stories!

Min Kocher has a new book out, Staying Out of Trouble in Pediatric Orthopaedics. As Min said, “The book is a different type of medical textbook. Really more the ‘art’ of medicine than the ‘science.’ Tips, tricks, advice, support to stay out of trouble.”

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Congratulations to Geeta Anand, who was appointed dean of UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism! Previously she had been interim dean. Congratulations also to Scott McElhaney for being selected for inclusion in the Thomson Reuters 2020 Super Lawyers list as well as the 2021 Best Lawyers in America list.

During Homecoming we held our weekly Zoom call but made it into our ’89 mini-reunion, and had numerous classmates from around the world, including Michael Ballard in Israel (who reminded us that Tecmo Bowl on the Nintendo NES is celebrating its 40th anniversary) and Margo Miller in London, where she’s been now for 21 years. We heard from class president John Van Hooser, who has been volunteering doing mountain search and rescue during all of the fires in northern California. Linda Salzhauer Swenberg has been providing dyslexia intervention since 2009 after one of her children was diagnosed; she decided to take on the tutoring program herself and saw so much improvement that teachers started referring students to her. Andy Wells has a new job in Washington, D.C., with the National Science Foundation, giving money to companies in advanced manufacturing. Kristen Dillon shared that after 20 years living with her husband, Paul Blackburn ’88, in Hood River, Oregon, they moved to Washington, D.C., where she’s a health policy fellow. Per Kristen, “It’s been a wild year; we may go back to Oregon at the end of the year and we’ll take it from there! Back in Oregon Andy Wells lived 60 miles away and now we’re only 10 miles apart!” Wendy Mogan Phillips lives with her husband in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and has a freshman at Dartmouth (apologies, as I’m sure there are other ’89s with ’24s).

We also had multiple New York ’89s on the Zoom, including Peter Lurie, Diana Haladey, Russell Wolf, Bobby Jaffe (who has dogs named Nugget and Baker after Dartmouth places), and Alex Simpson. From Massachusetts we had Antonia Rutigliano Nedder and Joe Nedder, Ken Horton, Tracey Coleman, Laura Bordewieck Rippy, and Michael Conroy.

Kerry Kisiel Jones is an educator in Hartford, Connecticut, in this brave new world. She started a summer doctoral program at UPenn. Interesting factoid: Kerry was the principal for one of Mike’s kids’ principals for three years! We also heard from Laurie Fanger Reed and her neighbor Carolyn Gardella. Laurie is a teacher and Carolyn is a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of Washington.

Nicole Conte lives in Vermont, where she started working in a local elementary school when a preschool teacher didn’t want to go back. She’s enjoying working with 3-year-old children with masks on. Lenora Brown has been back in Cleveland for 10 years, working as senior fellow at the Cleveland Leadership Center, where she educates people on civic issues in the county and city and works to create partnerships to improve the city. Michael Hafner is living in Houston, enjoying hanging out with friends and grilling food. We also heard from Bridget Hust and Winnie DelliQuadri that D.D. Danforth Burlin has a Facebook Live cooking series—will have to hear more about this next issue!

Speaking of staying tuned, look for the next issue to cover the crazy story of ’89s who were left to run two licensed radio stations (WDCR and WFRD—99 Rock) and some of their tales from back then! If you have news, please feel free to send it to me!

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Jeanne Shea has published an edited volume, Beyond Filial Piety: Rethinking Aging and Caregiving in Contemporary East Asian Societies, focusing on aging and caregiving in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and Korea; it examines emerging cultural meanings and social responses to population aging. Hardcover and e-book editions are available at www.berghahnbooks.com/title/SheaBeyond.

Many ’89s who started knitting at or before Dartmouth are finding it’s still relaxing. Linda Salzhauer Swenberg taught herself back in Hanover from an encyclopedia. “I started with a bang (three sweaters) but now I’m knitting something completely mindless.” Bridget Hust knit a sweater for Dave Baldinger in exchange for a pair of skis; she feels Dave got the better deal! Anne Boardman Pohnert: “I tried to learn to knit a scarf for my dad once. It ended up as a cape for my Barbie doll.” Kris Pol-Williams: “I might have knit a bit on a random cotton thing [during lockdown]. I sell American brands of yarn here in the Netherlands via a small webshop, www.Woolly.nl, strangely named, as most of the yarn I sell is an acrylic or cotton blend.” Taraneh Azar: “I learned how to knit at age 5 from my paternal grandmother. During my language study abroad term in Germany, I knitted six sweaters. I remember Marie Polakowski Stimers learning how to knit that term. During the pandemic I dug out some old yarn and started a ‘patchwork’ sweater. I find knitting therapeutic. It relaxes me. Knitting has taught me patience and persistence. I also think knitting has improved my dexterity and creative abilities and has made me a better surgeon than I would have been otherwise.” Robin Byrd Winters told me, “Taraneh Azar taught me how to knit freshman year in New Hamp. I’ve made many sweaters since then. I’m inspired now to pick the needles back up. My daughter just learned to crochet this summer. Perhaps I’ll teach her to knit.” Tracy Coleman: “My grandmother taught me the basic stitches when I was young and I churned out a healthy supply of teddy bear scarves and Barbie doll blankets during my childhood. My freshman year undergraduate advisor, Molly Holt ’88, taught me how to read knitting patterns and I’ve been at it ever since. Siobhan Wescott and I knit coordinating Icelandic sweaters for Katharine Gagne and Geof Hobday as part of a wedding present! I have found knitting to be a great way to relax. I have definitely been knitting more during the last six months with the extra time at home.” Harmeet Dhillon: “I learned to crochet from my grandmother. When I came to Dartmouth I needed something to occupy myself on the long nights and weekends. I taught myself how to knit using a book. My college projects were mainly very nice scarves. I only began knitting for myself when I knit my husband, Sarv, two sweaters before we were married. In 2012, because Sarv really wanted a sweater made from local Sonoma County [California] sheep, I embarked on a multiyear project that involved negotiating with the shepherd to buy the year’s shearing, then getting it made into yarn in a local mill, some of it blended with softer California alpaca in different natural colors. I have a very stressful and all-consuming job as a trial lawyer and head of a firm. I’m also very actively involved in politics and run a civil rights nonprofit that I founded in 2019. I try to knit a little every day for sanity and to satisfy my creative urge.”

What are you doing to relax, besides reading our Class Notes? Drop me a line to let me know.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

By the time you read this in late August, some students will be preparing to return to Dartmouth and some will be preparing to take classes virtually. We still don’t know at this writing how it will be decided, but for ’24s, their first year will be radically different than our first year in Hanover. It’s unclear how first-year trips will be made up, but I’m hoping that Homecoming can happen October 2 safely for students and alumni by then.

I’m writing this at the end of June and so much has happened since May 2, when I submitted our Class Notes for July/August. We were only 45 days into Covid-19 lockdown and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were still alive. Suddenly, posting pictures of our kids, what I’m grilling, or cars seems less important. I know that fellow ’89s are hurting, and I want to understand and help. I want to listen and learn.

Our 30th reunion theme of “Many Roads, One Spirit” seems incredibly pertinent, now more than ever. Our diversity and ability to respect the different roads classmates took to get to Dartmouth as well as the roads they have traveled afterward are all valid, we are united as one under Dartmouth. Our voices may be different, and it’s worthwhile to respect other voices and also understand how our words may affect others.

Our own ’89 Cares group has been there for fellow classmates suffering from individual or community loss, and I want to reiterate that ’89 Cares is here to assist any of our classmates in need. You can reach it on our class site at 1989.dartmouth.org.

Again, I know I don’t have the answer, but I’m willing to be in conversations that may be uncomfortable, because I know my discomfort is slight in comparison to others. I look forward to our Saturday Zoom calls to have many conversations—difficult or not—with all of our classmates together. I’ll continue to post the details in our class Facebook page and class emails from time to time. The frequency may have changed by October, but I think the need will still be there to connect with classmates around the girdled earth, and we will make it happen.

I regret to inform the class that Dennis Donnelly passed away on June 5. Dennis’ full obituary is on our 1989 class page and you can send me any remembrances of Dennis to add to the “Class Reflections” on his page.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

When I started to write this, I was asking fellow ’89s what were two words that would describe Summer Carnival, but the coronavirus epidemic hit and suddenly that seemed less important.

I’ve been heartened to hear of all of our classmates who are on the frontlines helping patients and fighting Covid-19. Thank you to every ’89 and Dartmouth alum who is working against this. With almost all of us sequestered to our homes, connection is the one thing I crave, as I’m sure many of you do. And although we can’t meet for a cup of coffee or lunch, our weekly Zoom calls have been a great way to connect with classmates around the world, from Europe, across the United States, and over in Asia. And we’re happy that our girls are both home with us—we’re passing the time baking pretzels, making different dishes, and reaching out to family and friends way more than we used to.

I look forward to when we can get back together in person, visit family in different cities, go back up to Dartmouth—or even more than around the block. Whenever that is, I’m looking forward to it and in the meantime will be on Zoom every Saturday at 4 and 11 p.m. Hanover time.

I talked to Frank von Hippel recently, as he has a new book that should be out in May, The Chemical Age: How Chemists Fought Famine and Disease, Killed Millions, and Changed Our Relationship with the Earth. Frank is teaching at Northern Arizona University, where his “research is in the area of ecotoxicology, primarily working with vulnerable communities impacted by pollution.” Frank also hosts a monthly podcast called the Science History Podcast. Frank also related, “My wife, Cathy Compton von Hippel, is also a member of our class. We have three kids. Our oldest, Max, is a first-year Ph.D. student in computer science and math at Northeastern; our daughter, Sophia, is a sophomore at the University of Arizona; and our little guy, Sam, is in sixth grade. I’m a close friend of Harvey Fracht, who is now a corneal surgeon in Pennsylvania.”

Kathy Appruzzese Sherbrooke has also finished a new novel, Leaving Coy’s Hill, and “the opening has been accepted into the spring issue of Embark Literary Journal, an online journal dedicated to showcasing select unpublished works of fiction. I’m thrilled to share it with you!”

I regret to inform the class that Jay Warden passed away on March 1 due to complications from influenza and pneumonia. Jay’s full obituary is on our 1989 class page, and you can send me any remembrances of Jay to add to his page.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Apologies for the shortness of the column; more to come next issue. But give a rouse! Adam Lehman was named president and CEO of Hillel International! He had been the chief operating officer for four years.

Next column: Sophomore Summer—what two words best describe it for you?

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

It’s the week before New Year’s, and it’s been great having my daughter, Maia ’23, home from Dartmouth; we flew out to Boston to get her and then drove down to New Jersey to have Thanksgiving with my parents and sister before flying back to California. Nowadays, winter break goes from the week of Thanksgiving to the beginning of January, so it’s extended—and makes more sense than when we’d have Thanksgiving off and some classmates would go home and some would stay. Since she’s been back, we’ve gone through all the Harry Potter movies, almost all of the Bond films. Will miss her when she goes back to Hanover in a week.

Speaking of my daughter, Mike Sowa now lives up in Quechee, Vermont. I saw him at our 30th reunion, and he emailed me this past fall saying he ran into Maia, who helped him with tickets at the Hop! Small world. Mike said, “Too funny seeing the next generation in operation on campus.”

Fiona Bayly emailed to let me know that for the third year in a row she won the USA Track & Field 15K Masters National Championship! Fiona Bayly is also the current Masters women’s age division 50-54 world champion in the half marathon and the new American record-holder in her age division for the road mile as of August, timed in 5:23 while racing in Flint, Michigan.

Tanya Timms Egenolf emailed and let me know, “We are just keeping busy in Oceanside, California, with three kids—17, 14, and 12. Starting to look at colleges and trying to keep them on the West Coast! I keep in touch with Stacy Higgins, Harriot Cato Pinkerton, Robin Byrd Winters,and Cortney Worrell.”

Hoping again to see many of you in my travels, and if you make it to southern California, let me know! If you have news to share, email me and I’ll include in our next edition.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Winter Carnival—that time of year when, 30 years ago, it seemed like buses of uninvited guests, or “randoms,” would show up and expect a place to sleep. But we had cool ice sculptures, both on the Green and around campus; we also had canoe and lunch tray sledding on the golf course. Here’s what some of our classmates said in a few words what Winter Carnival meant to them. I’ve loosely clumped them together where they made sense. Mitchell Dauchy, “Where the wild things are”; Anne Boardman Pohnert, “Tradition on ice!” and “Where the tiled things are”; Heather Killebrew, “Wild thing”; Michelle Erin Johns Flanagan, “Wild rumpus”; Beth Robischon, “Posters”; Michael Ballard, “Theta Delt snow slide”; Michael Conroy, “Ski jump”; Bobby Jaffe, “Skiing”; Linda Salzhauer Swenburg, Russell Wolf, Jim Mills, Gwendolyn Mogan Phillips, “Keg jump”; Tom Avril, “Downhill canoeing”; Nancy Obler Kaufman, “Sledding on the golf course on [Thayer] trays”; Diana Haladey, “Snow sculpture”; Andy Camp “Random visitors”; Katie Shubert Sawrey, “Jump randoms”; Libby Carrier Doran, “Random Invasion”; Jay Lott, “Randoms sleeping in hallways and lounges”; Anne Davis, “Outta dodge”; John Mitcham,“Damn cold”; Catherine Baggia Duwan, “30-below wind chill.”

Nicole Waldbaum Moser’s reply was, “Off term. I spent two summers at Dartmouth and avoided two winters; one on the foreign study program to Toulouse, traveling all over Europe with Gesine Albrecht, Julia Powell O’Brien, Kate Enroth, Yanna Yannakakis, and JillAnn Spitzmiller, to name a few, and then winter of 1987 working in Al Gore’s Senate office as a Rockefeller Center intern when he ran for president the first time around, living in an apartment complex with a ton of ’89s, including Julia Powell O’Brien, Heather McLelland, Dan Rivers, Dennis Morgan, and Tom Hogan. Essentially Dartmouth on location in D.C.—a much milder winter!”

On a serious note, I regret to inform that our classmate Geri Toyekoyah passed away October 12. Classmates remember Geri as a “sweet, caring, smart, funny, amazing person, devoted mother of three, loved by many. She was a treasure to all who knew her. I’m so sad that she’s left us.” We have updated our 1989.dartmouth.org “In Memory” section to include Geri; if you have any thoughts or remembrances of Geri to add to her class reflections, please send them to 89secretary@gmail.com and I will update the site.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Short one this month; my daughter, Maia ’23, will have left on the night of Labor Day to fly to Boston and then take the Dartmouth Coach up to Hanover for her first-year trip and then the start of her new year! She and my wife, Noriko, just spent the weekend in Yosemite National Park. Can’t believe we have six more days with her here!

Speaking of Yosemite, give a rouse to Phil Ginsburg, who earlier in August was appointed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to the California State Park and Recreation Commission. Phil has been general manager of the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department since 2009 and was Newsom’s mayoral chief of staff from 2006 to 2008.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Wow. I’m still in awe of the connected feeling from our 30th reunion; it’s been two weeks, but it still has a hold on me. What a great time, and to experience it through my 13-year-old’s eyes was even better. She loved the Hop and all its music rooms. Baker Tower again did not disappoint—and the small discussions we had throughout Dartmouth Hall were powerful and seemed almost to be jumping-off points where we need to find a place to continue those discussions and not wait another five years. I loved that we were able to celebrate the lives of all 16 classmates who are no longer with us in a truly memorable experience; for those who want to read the words spoken on the Bema for each person, they are in the “In Memory” section of our 1989.dartmouth.org website. I know that it took a literal village of volunteers from our class to pull this off across multiple areas, but I have to thank our three reunion chairs for having the vision for our 30th and then recruiting people and in the end pulling it all together. Ken Horton, Shannon Reid, and Meg Wade, thank you so much for your commitment, determination, and enthusiasm, which made the 30th so memorable for so many of us.

And thanks to everyone who showed up—some for their first or second reunion and some lucky ones who have been to all six reunions. Here are just a few ’89s summing up our reunion in one word: Andy Camp, “Silent-Disco”; Zach Levine, “Happy”; Ed Barker, “Short”; Alex Simpson, “Inclusive”; Tressa Munoz, “Reconnection”; Antonia Rutigliano Nedder, “Warm”; Everett McCassey, “Caring”; Millie Bahn, “Unexpected”; Lenora Brown, Jen Lois, “Rejuvenating”; Catherine Baggia Duwan, “Heartfelt”; Michael Ballard, “Friendship”; Russell Wolff, “Enduring”; Anne Boardman Pohnert, “Meaningful”; Paul Mahoney, “Vibrant”; Linda Kelly, “Nostalgic”; Shannon Gorrell Reid, “Glowing”; Beth Robischon, “Delightful”; Mike Conroy, “Crepe-tastic”; Tim Brody, “Surprising”; Evan Betzer, “Thrilling”; Jennifer Block Cromheecke, “Restorative”; and Martha Boss Bennett, “Verbose.” Mine would be “Connection.”

Since this issue is coming out in the fall, I, along with 17 other ’89s, have incoming freshmen who will have already done their first-year trips, eaten green eggs and ham, and will be partway through their first term of classes. I’m super dad proud of my daughter for getting in and can’t wait to see what her Dartmouth experience is, as I know it will be different from ours, though there will be some things that are the same. I’m looking forward to having those talks with her, as I’m sure many of you are with your children regardless of where they go—it’s not just what are they doing, but how are they doing. It will be a big adjustment, both for our kids and for some of us as well.

At reunion I promised that when I was traveling, I’d reach out to ’89s in that area and try to connect. True to my word, I’m in Minneapolis this week for meetings and reached out to fellow ’89s Joe McCrae, Betsy Aldrich, Bridget Hust, Libby Carrier Doran, Kara Benson Barrow, Bill Dean, and Rob Albright—even though I’d seen many of them in Hanover!

Such is the bond of our class. I hope that as you travel this summer, either for fun or work, that you do the same to reach out to classmates—whether you know them well or not. Really, we all share the Dartmouth experience.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

I’m writing these Class Notes 45 days before our 30th reunion, but by the time you read this, we will have had an amazing 30th reunion with all of our classmates. Really looking forward to taking my youngest daughter with me so that she can experience Dartmouth with her own eyes.

Two weeks ago I attended the Los Angeles Dartmouth Call to Lead presentation, and it was amazing—they really brought Dartmouth to L.A., complete with the wilderness, canoes, and a cabin! It’s a massive road show tour, but was well worth attending. It was great to see, albeit briefly, Anton Anderson, Jan Brzeski, Adam Glick, Rich Reilly, and Seth Skolnik. I was excited that my wife and older daughter, who is a ’23, were able to attend and meet other ’23s from the area as well as hear from President Hanlon and the amazing stories from Dartmouth grads and how they collaborated with their professors.

As we get ready for our oldest daughter to go to Hanover for first-year trips and her freshman year, I wonder what her Dartmouth experience will be like? What will be the same as mine and what will be different? It’s already different in terms of the dorms; she won’t get to live in South Fayer first year. I know I have my own Dartmouth experience, and I’m excited for her to have her own Dartmouth adventure with classmates, roommates, and professors. I just have to figure out how many times we’ll be visiting Hanover this year, which is always a nice problem to have.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Greetings from in-flight reunion writing! It’s been a whirlwind two months and, by the time you read this, we’ll be a month away from our 30th reunion! There’s still time to sign up, and the reunion committee has done an excellent job of working to make it the most inclusive reunion we have had.

I heard from Beth Frey, who wrote me about herself and her husband, David Frey, who will both be at our reunion June 12! “We have lived in Cornwall, New York, since 2004. I teach social studies (primarily AP U.S. history) in a public high school nearby and David is now a full professor of history and the director of the West Point Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS). David absolutely loves his job teaching and mentoring cadets at West Point and he is also very busy developing educational programs and working on projects as director of the CHGS. His work on mass atrocity prevention has led him to make many meaningful connections at West Point, across the nation and around the world—it continues to be an exciting journey. Our three children (ages 22, 20, and 17) are now all out of the house and we are at that empty-nest moment in time when we need to develop a new rhythm. I’m trying to embrace the situation, but I’ll admit it isn’t my favorite. After 22 years of focusing primarily on the kids, it has been interesting to take some time to ponder what I personally want out of this next phase of life. I’m trying some new activities both at work and in the community to see which direction I want to take—I hope I will have my ‘aha’ moment soon!”

Quick plug for Jan Brzeski, who manages the Bartlett Tower Society. We are just four people shy of our class setting a new record for Bartlett Tower Society membership before our 30th reunion. Joining is easy—it takes only five minutes when you log into your IRA or 401k account page. I’ve joined, and it was simple! If you have any questions, visit our class website for more info.

In reaching out to so many of our classmates to see if they’re coming to reunion, I know that many cannot make it—whether it’s timing, expense, or other reasons—but I urge you to visit our class page, 1989.dartmouth.edu, to enjoy reunion from wherever you are. It may not be the same as being in Hanover, but I hope it sparks the idea to reconnect with old classmates. Hope to see many of you in Hanover—I’ll be the guy wearing something green!

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Our 30th reunion is June 13-16—just around the corner! Your reunion co-chairs Ken Horton, Shannon Reid, and Meg Wade are busy working to make this reunion inclusive for everyone, whether it’s your first reunion back in Hanover or you’ve been coming every five years! By the time you read this I hope you will have been contacted by one of our participation committee members. I’ll be there with my younger daughter, Saya, and looking forward to seeing everyone!

––Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

The year 2019—our 30th reunion and the 250th anniversary of the College—coincidence? Reunion is June 13-16, and reunion co-chairs Ken Horton, Shannon Reid, and Meg Wade are asking everyone to save the dates. Details are on our class of ’89 Facebook page and our ’89 class website (www.1989.dartmouth.org).

In this issue you see the 25 most influential Dartmouth alumni as voted by the faculty. But who were your most influential alumni? Steve Blank: “Ted Geisel ’25, Bob Keeshan ’42 (a.k.a. Captain Kangaroo), and Fred Rogers ’50.” Himraj Dang: “Mike Colby ’84. We share a deep common interest in environmental economics.” Lenora Inez Brown: “Jerry Zaks ’67. Knowing his theater background made it all the more possible.” Heidi Reich: “My answer is always Jeff Hoover ’88.” Maryann Mungovan Murphy: “My brother, John Mungovan ’86, and Dan Driscoll ’86, for introducing me to my husband, Tim!” Susan Allen Cera: “The Perry family, my next-door neighbors growing up. Father was Fred Perry. Three boys all went to Dartmouth in the late 1970s and early 1980s.” Catherine Baggia Duwan: “I applied early decision because I saw a picture of Charlie Winslow ’82 on the cover of a Men of the Ivy League calendar. Never met him, but his brother, Jon Winslow ’87, married Nellie Huang!”

Karyn Olivier wrote, “Things are super hectic here, but great! I am an associate professor and program head of the sculpture department at Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia. I was awarded the Rome Prize, an 11-month fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. My work often intersects and collapses multiple histories with present-day narratives. (I’ve completed two public works this past year that engage these complex histories—The Battle is Joined in Vernon Park in Philadelphia and Witness at the University of Kentucky.) Rome is the ultimate site to continue this investigation into multiple and conflicting histories. The end goal is to fabricate artworks that are in dialogue with my researched public artworks and sites. I am still very much in touch with Anita Hamilton in N.Y.C., Donielle Howard, Adriane Harris, and, of course, my twin, Karla Olivier!”

Colette Ellis writes, “My coaching business, InStepConsults, is my primary focus these days. Now living in Brooklyn Heights, N.Y.C. Happy times this summer were times I made it out to Rockaway Beach. I went up to Dartmouth last July when I was invited to speak for the Young African Leaders Initiative Mandela Washington Fellows Program that the College hosts every year.”

Julia Powell O’Brien writes,“We had a great Hartford mini-reunion with Kerry Kiesel Jones, Catherine Baggia Duwan, Mike Blechner, Jason Lobo, and Russell Wolf. I am in touch with Jen Large Bowman, Gesine Albrecht, Nicole Moser, Bridget Fawcett, Mary Kay Caricato, Laurie Sammis, Martha Boss Bennett, Heidi Briggs Buonanno, Kate Enroth, and Jen Block Cromheecke. My husband and I have lived in West Hartford, Connecticut, for 22 years and we have three great kids. I am the VP and general counsel at BL Cos. and it continues to be a lot of fun.”

On a sad note, I regret to inform everyone that Chesley Adler passed away September 21, 2018. Chesley will be remembered for her spirit, humor, passion, and grace. We will honor and celebrate Chesley and our other classmates who are no longer with us at our reunion in June.

It’s sad to write in this column about two classmates passing in the same year. I urge you to reach out now to connect—or reconnect—with your fellow ’89s.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

I heard from Lisa Rabbe, who with her husband, Francis Power, moved back to the United States after 20 years in London. “We are based in Marion, Massachusetts. I took some time out to press the career reset button. I have done a career and personal pivot from in-house corporate life to small startup life and from London to Massachusetts. I launched my own political risk and public policy-regulatory consultancy with tech, financial technology, and financial-sector clients on both sides of the Atlantic. I work on policy and regulatory challenges for 21st-century financial services companies, market infrastructure, and products including artificial intelligence, block-chain, and crypto assets. My company website is www.stratosphere-advisors.com. Francis and I have a small sailboat and are enjoying our new life in Marion, population 5,000, after many years of fun but intense life in London. Most recently, Francis and I just attended Professor Pease’s great lecture on Moby Dick on Nantucket, Massachusetts, this past weekend, where we caught up with Brian Freyermuth and Amy Holden. I also connected with Emily Glasser while on the island. I’m reconnecting with many old ’89 friends and new ’89 contacts on this side of the Atlantic and am keen to connect with more.”

Tracy Benchley Turner and I connected; we had been on our freshman trips canoeing, so it was great to catch up. “My husband, Chris, and I have lived in Rye, New York, for 15 years now, which is very hard to believe. Even crazier, our kids are almost all adults—our oldest, Will, 21, is a rising junior at Georgetown; our 19-year-old daughter, Cate, is a rising sophomore at Johns Hopkins University; and our youngest son, Michael, 15, is about to start high school. I see lots of ’89s, some frequently, some once in a while—Emily Glasser, Kristen von Summer Waldorf, Russell Wolff, Laura Fitch Mattson, Jen Large Bowman, Barbara Kuck Close, Jamie Heller, Leslie Timothy, Bobby Jaffe, D.D. Danforth Burlin, Sara May, Libby Carrier Doran. I’m a social worker by training and have been helping run bereavement groups for kids ages 5 to 18 who have lost a parent or a sibling, as well as simultaneous adult groups for the parents. It sounds rough, but it’s actually really wonderful and rewarding—the kids get so much out of the groups—just knowing that they’re not alone is the biggest gift.”

Marnie Curry and her family are back in Alameda, California, after their multi-year adventure living in Peru. “We enjoyed our South American adventures tremendously. We were fortunate to travel extensively throughout Peru and enjoyed visits to Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, and Colombia as well. Our biggest thrill was returning with two bilingual boys. I’m looking forward to returning to Hanover next June and reconnecting with other ’89s. I’ve been blessed this year to spend time with Nancy Felix Bernard, who moved to Pittsburgh near where I was raised. My other Dartmouth connection is the DOC of Northern California cabin up near Truckee (www.dartmouth.org/clubs/docnc/cabin.php). My family just spent a few days up there savoring the blue skies, star-filled nights, and beauty of the Sierras. It’s so impressive that a group of alums has managed to maintain this cabin for so many decades.”

On a sad note, I regret to inform that our classmate Marvin Masterson passed away July 17. I know that he touched the lives of many of us while at Dartmouth and afterwards as well. We will be honoring and celebrating Marvin as well as our other classmates who are no longer with us at our reunion in June.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Fall is here, which means students are back at Dartmouth, the leaves are changing, and I get to go back up to Hanover for Class Officers Weekend. And stock up on maple syrup from Mac’s Creamery. In the summer it makes its own maple syrup ice cream, and it’s amazing. Thanks to Ray Prado and his wife, Gesine, for introducing my family to it. I may stretch the carry-on limit coming back….

Clint Stinchcomb was named president and CEO of CuriosityStream, the award-winning documentary streaming service founded by John Hendricks (founder of Discovery Channel.) There, Clint is tasked with “building on the success of the streaming service, home to world-class original documentary films and series exploring science, technology, history, nature, health, and more.” Clint joined CuriosityStream as chief distribution officer and has been in traditional and digital media for more than 25 years.

Our own Geeta Anand is joining the faculty of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism as acting professor of reporting, teaching students of differing experience levels in the school’s foundational reporting class. Geeta will also offer strategic guidance for the overall reporting curriculum, serve as a master’s thesis advisor for second-year students, and take part in school governance as a member of the school’s senate faculty. Geeta has been involved in journalism now for 27 years, with a career spanning The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, where she spent the past 10 years as a foreign correspondent in India.

By the time you read this, my oldest will be in the throes of her college applications, and we’ll be supportive of any school she wants to go to. Fiona Bayly responded to my column asking for favorite covers (hers are “Running Down a Dream,” “Got It Made,” “Broken Wings”) and then, as we went back and forth, Fiona remarked that “the ultimate endurance event is being a good parent.” Wow. That’s good stuff. What to you makes a good parent, aunt/uncle, or even a mentor? Would love to hear back from you all. We are now less than a year away from reunion, and I’m already getting excited. Mark your calendars for June 13-16. Thankfully, our oldest daughter’s high school graduation is not that weekend…so I know I’ll be there. I’m hoping that as many ’89s can make it as possible.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Wow, what a whirlwind trip we had just a week ago, hitting 15 colleges and universities throughout all of New England. We heard from a lot of ’89s, but didn’t have time to meet with most (even though I wanted to), as I had to honor my daughter’s trip to find the school that fits her best. Stay tuned as I continue on this journey.

Michael Herring is the new lacrosse coach at Blue Ridge in Virginia and has been busy since the fall working to change the way the team plays, both on offense and defense. “The way we do things is very different from how they’ve done them in the past, so it has been a challenge for the boys,” Michael says.

David Groff was named in-house legal counsel for the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls! Before this David was chief deputy for 10 years in the Klamath County district attorney’s office, and he is also an adjunct professor at Oregon Tech in the humanities and social sciences department.

My mom is an orthoptist, which is an eye muscle therapist who works with ophthalmologists. We have several ophthalmologists in our class, but wanted to start off with Kristin Casale and Tara Sweeney. Here’s what Kristin had to say: “Tara Sweeney and I were both premed at Dartmouth and did a summer working at my dad’s office in the Bronx. We were technicians, and the office staff gave us all the patients that no one else wanted to deal with. We didn’t know any better so we saw them all. Tara loved it, and I was kind of ‘meh’ on the whole idea of ophthalmology as a career. I was more into pediatrics or biology—or so I thought. Tara graduated a year ahead of me and went into ophtho. She told me I would be crazy not to go into it and inherit my dad’s practice. She loved it, and she still does. We are still holding out as a single-doctor practice. She and I each work a few days a week and are essentially one full-time doctor. We have two people who work for us, and it’s great. Anyway, I’m the social one, and Tara does all the surgery. She’s sticks to the eye pathology and gets them in and out. So we are a good team. I see the patients with dry eye and blepharitis who need to talk, and she fixes the people with cataracts and glaucoma. It works pretty well.”

I hope in a future article we’ll get to hear from Bonnie An Henderson, who was just named president of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery and is a clinical professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, as well as from Lisa Gamell and Francis Mah.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Wow, how the time has gone! By the time you’re reading this, we’ll be 12 to 13 months out from our 30th reunion. I can’t wait and looking forward to seeing as many ’89s as possible. More to come over the next months from the team, but I’m excited.

I’m lucky in that, with my travels, I had two mini-reunions in New York, first with Carrie Luft and Josh Adler, and then Chris Baldwin and Mike Ballard two nights later. Chris was my sophomore roommate, but I don’t think we had seen each other in 25 years. It felt great and wonderful to connect with these four alums while I was in New York for the annual Toy Fair.

At the end of that same week, we had our annual Los Angeles ’89 mini-reunion, hosted by Rich Reilly and Christie Neuberger Reilly at their home. It was a great Saturday night to hang out inside and talk with Anton Anderson, Eric Bunting, Jan Brzeski, Andy Camp, Chris Di Mauro, Sonya Ooten Frisina, Adam Glick, Justine Klineman, Matt Ridenour, Tammy Krutchkoff Saunt, Kim Buresh ’90 and Winnie Huang ’92. It was fun but colder in L.A. than it had been in New York the same week!

While you may not have seen her on TV, our own Sarah Konrad, two-event Olympian at the Torino games, was in Pyeongchang behind the scenes, helping out the Team USA biathlon team as part of the massive team Dartmouth presence at the winter Olympics. She was looking forward to some powder skiing in Japan afterwards. She wasn’t able to connect with Cliff Bernstein this time, but perhaps her next trip.

Congratulations to Deanna Emberley Bailey, who was named director of education at the Vermont Energy Education Program, or VEEP for short. Deanna previously had worked there and is currently working on her doctoral degree from the University of Vermont. She and Chris Bailey live in Huntington, Vermont.

Tom Cody was recognized recently for his work in helping with the capital campaign for Children Inc., whose mission is to fight poverty through high-quality education experiences for children and by supporting families through multi-generational approach.

I also heard from Jeffrey Thomas, who wrote, “Our two oldest are in school right now (including a ’19). My steptwins started school this fall—Marquette and U of San Diego. We also have 9-year-old twins in fourth grade, so we are still deep into the kid business. I am involved in a variety of education businesses, as CEO, chairman or director. They are distributed around the United States—including in N.Y.C.; Raleigh, North Carolina; Chicago; and Oakland, California—which keeps me moving! My wife has her own student travel company, Quo, which is coming along nicely.”

Who will you run into on a business trip? It’s worth connecting with fellow ’89s, either on our Facebook page or by email and letters. I can guarantee you that reaching out and having coffee, lunch, etc., with fellow ’89s is totally worth it. By the time you read this in April, I’ll have gone on a Northeast college trip for our oldest daughter (yikes!), and hope to have more news on ’89s we met on our college road trip. And, yes, Dartmouth is definitely one of the planned stops!

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Fiona Bayly wrote in to let me know she is the 2017 National Masters Champion in the USA Track & Field 15k Championships that were held in sub-freezing weather in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in late October. Fiona finished the year undefeated in her age group and turned 50 this summer, “trying to keep at it, as so many of us are, with just normal life stuff too!” Fiona remembers a tradition from Dartmouth fondly that she misses—“the daily ‘run’ to the Hinman boxes!”

I’ve been in bands since grade school—actually in eighth grade with Eric Berlin. We still play out in bars and are always looking to add songs to our list that could make people get out on the dance floor and have fun. So without further notice, here’s some picks from the ’89s who responded to the question, “What three songs would you want to hear a so-so cover band playing in a bar?” Coincidentally, this gives us a head start on the playlist for the tent for our 30th reunion in June 2019! Alex Selby picked Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil”; Anne Boardman Rohnert, Billy Joel’s “Downeaster Alexa,” Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ “Come On Eileen,” Steve Earle’s “The Galway Girl,” Eric Clapton’s “Lay Down Sally” and “I Shot the Sheriff,’ Paul Simon’s “Graceland” (Anne was on vacation and heard a great band playing and sent more suggestions mid-vacation); Bob Jaffe, Grateful Dead’s “Bertha,” Steve Miller’s “Dance Dance Dance,” The Band’s “The Weight”; Bridget Hust, anything NRBQ; Carolyn Allen, The Replacements’ “I’ll Be You,” Weezer’s “Buddy Holly”; Chris Baldwin, INXS’ “Don’t Change,” Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl”; Chris Drew, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” Steve Miller’s “Jungle Love”; Eddie Barker, Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing,” Earth Wind & Fire’s “September,” Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like An Eagle”; Eric Berlin, “all the songs our band played in eighth grade, plus a lot of Led Zeppelin”; Ken Horton, Foo Fighters’ “Learn to Fly,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing,” Spencer Davis’ “Gimme Some Lovin’ ”; Lenora Brown, Deep Purple, Journey’s “Stone in Love”; Martha Boss Bennett, Old Crow Medicine Show’s “Wagon Wheel,” Tears for Fears’ “Shout,” Three Dog Night’s “Shambala”; Meg Sommerfeld ’90, Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi,” Pretenders’ “Middle of the Road,” Tom Cochrane’s “Life is a Highway”; Todd Timmerman, Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.”

Thanks again to everyone who gave me suggestions. There are some songs on the suggestion list we already do, and others, well thank you for thinking more of our abilities. And now I’m curious what your three songs are—are they ones still around from when we were at Dartmouth? Are they ones you’ve picked up since then or from your kids? I’m finally realizing my girls know more about new music than I do, which is great. I teach them about the classics (anything pre-2004), and they keep me up to date on the new stuff. Here’s to continuing to learn, whether it’s from family, friends, classmates or any other sources.

Feel free to email me, snail mail me, Instagram me your news, updates or even top three song picks. I can’t promise I’ll be able to play them, but will definitely take them for a spin.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Happy New Year! My New Year’s resolution: Meet up with more ’89s on my trips ’round the girdled earth. What’s yours?

Barbara Krauthamer was recently recognized by the Association of Black Women Historians. She and her husband, Noah (Columbia ’90), live in Northampton, Massachusetts, and says, “I spend the better part of my weekends shuttling from gymnastics meets to lacrosse games and tennis tournaments and also cheering for my husband, who started competing in triathlons. Somehow in the midst of all of this I manage to write books on African American history and made my way up the academic ladder to my relatively new position as dean of the graduate school at UMass Amherst. I see Joanna Morris from time to time as our sons are the same age. I try to keep in touch with Lisa Collins, Aaron Straight and Andy Fields. I talk to Kristin Roth pretty regularly. She lives in London, where she teaches Russian history at University College, which gives me a great excuse to do research in the British Library and U.K. National Archives at least twice a year!”

Congratulations to Siobhan Wescott, assistant professor of public health at North Dakota State University, who received a four-year National Science Foundation grant for diabetes research. As Siobhan said to me, “In Fargo. And, before you ask, no one says, ‘Yeah, sure, you betcha’ except in jest. And usually it’s me! Keeping ridiculously busy on the board of directors of the Association of American Indian Physicians and as its representative to the American Medical Association. Still researching vitamin B12, so if anyone has stories or questions, please ask them to contact me at siobhan.wescott@ndsu.edu.”

Laura Bordewieck Rippy LinkedIn with me, saying, “Lots of good things going on here. Happy healthy kids who are pushing all our buttons as they are 11, 13, 15. (Maybe that’s why my husband and I are now hooked on yoga.) I just started a new job (stay tuned as I don’t have LinkedIn updated).”

Jamie Heller wrote “I’ve become The Wall Street Journal’s business editor and people can feel free to call me with tips. Meanwhile, I’ve been enjoying hosting and attending ’89 mini-reunions.”

Steve Savage wrote, “I had a nice trip recently to N.Y.C., where I hooked up with Mike Herzig, Scot Bateman, Eric Heaton and Bill Smith and then a couple of days later saw Leslie Timothy and Andrew Erlichson, the most ’89s I’ve seen since our reunion. Tammy Morse Savage ’91 and I just sent my daughter, Chelsea, off to Davidson College. We still love it here in Charleston, South Carolina.”

I checked in with as many ’89s as possible with the recent storms in Houston and Florida. In Houston Michael Hafner emailed, “Perfect timing to move home [from London]! Chris Herron is also here in Houston and is fine.” Others safe included Evan Betzer, Rob Jones and Adrian Harris Arnold, who emailed, “watching the water rise was simply heartbreaking…the support and concern that has been pouring in from around the country has been truly uplifting.”

In Florida Brett Divers wrote, “We had just returned last Thursday night from dropping our kids (’18 and ’21) in Hanover—not exactly how we hoped to start the empty-nest phase of our lives but I guess it is a distraction that doesn’t make us miss them so much.” Others checking in safe included Jeannine Laz-Hall, Matt Garber, Brian Klett, Brendan Lesch, Marc Farraye, Todd Timmerman and Lisa Gamell.

Hope you’ll make a resolution to get in touch with more ’89s this year—I know I will be!

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Winter time! I was bummed hearing that the College may close the golf course, as I remember sledding down the hills in one of the aluminum DOC canoes. But I’m guessing that sledding on the golf course has been gone for many years. As old traditions fade or change, new ones get made.

Back in early January I was in Hong Kong for work and met up with Greg Dinges on his way back to Japan. Greg is head of international with Cole Haan and just announced a long-term distribution agreement with Sitoy Retailing in China, so he’s moving back to Hong Kong in September. Here’s hoping I’ll see him and other ’89s in Hong Kong in January.

My travels also took me to Minneapolis in late January and I had dinner with Jody Warden, Bridget Hust and Kathy Heafey ’90. Jody was in ski patrol back when I was a ski instructor at the Dartmouth Skiway; she moved back from D.C. to Minneapolis about a year ago and is still working for Target. Coincidentally, Bridget Hust was on the ski team while at Dartmouth; she now is running her own law firm. I also got to have an early breakfast with Libby Carrier Doran. Libby is principal at LymanDoran, an executive search and consulting firm. Great catching up in Minnesota!

As part of clearing out my parents’ house of clutter, I sent three Winter Carnival posters (1973, 1985, 1990) to Catherine Baggia Duwan, who will be adding them to the Dartmouth bar in her home, which has a “great collection of Dartmouth glassware and a vintage tin and lightbulb Dartmouth sign, which remains lit during the countless pool games and pong matches on my 8-foot handmade pong table.”

Catherine writes: “This past year my family and I were lucky enough to spend a month in Italy touring around the northern half of the country, staying in various Airbnb apartments for a few days at a time each. The incredible journey culminated in a stay on the north coast of Lago di Garda, where we went sailing in a boat skippered by my teenaged son, Christopher. We made a very special visit to Carisolo, a ski-resort town at the foot of the Dolomite mountains and the hometown of my beloved late grandparents, Caterina and Rocco Baggia, who were born two days apart a few blocks away from each other back in 1897. I took countless photos sporting the Dartmouth swag at every photo-op locale. It was fantastic to spend so much time in off-the-beaten path places where my older son, Connor, and I spoke nothing but Italian since nobody understood English.

“Back in Connecticut I recently enjoyed a visit from my dearest roommate, Dr. Carolyn Gardella, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle who also runs a clinic at the Puget Sound Veterans Affairs division. We got together with my neighbor Mike Conroy, who described ‘getting the posse back together’ as a too-infrequent event, much to the equanimity of local law enforcement. I continue my work as an admissions ambassador and as a board member of the Dartmouth Club of Hartford and recently joined the Bartlett Tower Society. After all that, work as a corporate lawyer is too boring to talk about!”

So what Dartmouth traditions do you miss or are glad are no longer there? What traditions are you keeping or creating with family and friends? I want to hear your thoughts on this, what you’re up to and I hope if I’m in your town, we can catch up in person!

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Where the heck does the time go? By the time you’re reading this, summer will be in full swing. We had a conference call yesterday with our class president Antonia Rutigliano Nedder and the rest of the class officers, and it’s crazy to think we’re two years away from our 30th reunion. Mark your calendars!

Connie Britton finished up on her TV show Nashville, but on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert did not rule out coming back as an evil twin!

The ’89 L.A. mini-reunion was held Saturday, April 22, at Christie Neuberger Reilly and Rich Reilly’s house in Beverly Hills, California, and ’89s came out in force from all over Los Angeles, including Anton Anderson, Jan Brzeski, Eric Bunting, Andy Camp, Chris DiMauro, Sonya Ooten Frisina and Chris Frisina ’88, Adam Glick, Patrick Munoz and Matt Ridenour as well as Kim Buresh ’90 and Winnie Huang ’92. Great seeing this many ’89s and other alumni in L.A. in one place!

Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis is running for California lieutenant governor. You may remember that Eleni was appointed by President Obama to be our ambassador to Hungary and was the first Greek American female ambassador in U.S. history–best of luck to Eleni on her campaign! Eleni and her husband, Mark, live with their teenage sons in San Francisco.

Ken McDonald just released a book about digital marketing, How to Acquire Your First Million Customers, available on Amazon. Ken lives in Boulder, Colorado, and I caught up with him to ask about the experience. He said, “The book was definitely an adventure. I never thought I would write a book, especially when I was struggling through freshman English. I am still chief growth officer at TeamSnap, a sports app with 15 million users. On the side I coach two basketball teams of 8-year-olds. I also take advantage of the Colorado outdoors by skiing and mountain biking every chance I get. I was on the board of the local Dartmouth alumni club for 15 years, but I recently retired from that so I haven’t been as plugged into the Dartmouth scene lately.” You can see Ken’s book on Amazon here: amazon.com/dp/B06Y3ZLKQ3/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491604756&sr=8-1&keywords=first+million+customers.

If any of you follow me on Instagram (nedorama, if you’re really bored), you know that my feed consists of family, food, guitars and cars. Lots of cars. I happen to love lots of different cars, and have fixed up my own—a ’67 Pontiac Lemans convertible. Totally impractical in most of the United States, but in L.A. it’s a four-season car. Drove Clay Nichols to the airport and I think he’s now sold on it being better than Uber, although I’m still waiting for my five-star rating. But enough about me. Other ’89s who’ve been bitten by the car bug include Bryan Roberts, who restored a 1966 Ford Mustang with his son, and Jeff Pearce, who is currently in the middle of a nine-year restoration of a 1968 Ford Mustang Sprint 6. Jeff’s first car was a ’68 Mustang. Just to round out the Mustang talk, I still remember Justine Klineman’s blue 1971 Ford Mustang convertible driving around Hanover. I’m sure there are other ’89s out there who are in love with their cars, old or new—let me know! You never know, I may decide to make a road trip out to your next cars and coffee.

I want to hear what you’re up to, who you’ve connected with from our class and anything and everything you’re passionate about so I can share it with our fellow ’89s. I’m on the road a lot with my job, so don’t be surprised if I show up in your town for a mini-reunion!

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Eric Korenman—theformereditor of the Aegis, radiologist, pro photographer—is now the owner of a Synclavier synthesizer? To back up in time, in 1989 this was a million-dollar piece of recording equipment that people such as Sting and Stevie Wonder owned, and now Eric has joined that lofty group! In the last issue I wrote about people seeing things on Facebook or Instagram—Eric saw a picture of my Synclavier manual and other gear from my Music 55 class in spring 1988 with professor Jon Appleton and sent me a pic of the synthesizer he had just bought. I immediately sent him everything I had. Eric is having the Synclavier restored to original condition and I can’t wait to hear it!

I also heard from Gretchen Kindel, who lives in Cincinnati with her husband and stepchildren. “After 15 years in San Diego I moved back to Cincinnati to be close to my parents (while they were still healthy) and two of my siblings. Hard to believe I’ve been here 12 years now. I’m a tax lawyer, or more accurately litigator, with (shh, don’t tell anyone) the IRS. It’s a good lifestyle and interesting cases. My cases involve large corporations so I learn some interesting things. I just settled a case involving a generic drug manufacturer. Last year I had a case with a medical device company.”

Loss can be a good thing—as when after my 50th I realized I needed to lose weight—a little more than the freshman 15…. So I worked with an acupuncturist, stuck to a diet and had a ton of support from my wife. I dropped 60 pounds in three months and I’m keeping it off. And what was with me every day throughout this journey? My Dartmouth reunion lunch bag, of course, for every meal at work—once again, the power of our reunion swag! But loss can also be difficult and challenging, and sometimes we don’t know where to turn for support. My family and I realized that my father was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s in early May. It has been especially tough on my mother, but also on me, as I don’t get out to New Jersey enough to see them daily and help out. Now I’m working from New Jersey a week per month, but was losing sleep over wondering what else I should be doing.

Which is when I reached out to our very own 89 Cares group—all volunteers from our class who can offer help on numerous subjects. In no time I had a flurry of emails and then calls from ’89s to talk about things to be thinking of, as well as to commiserate with them for going through the same challenge. I know that this will be a difficult challenge, but knowing that 89 Cares is there for all of us is a wonderful gain, and I know I will be writing down all that I’ve learned so that I can help others in our class who may have to deal with similar issues.

How to get in touch with them? Go to our class page (1989.dartmouth.org) and click on the “89 Cares” link on the far right. The number of topics covered by classmates is invaluable, and there are too many ’89s to thank, but thank you sincerely to everyone I talked with who offered advice, shared their stories and gave me tools to help get through this challenge. You’re not alone—contact them today.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

I love when one contact turns into multiple touchpoints; in this case, one email to me about a classmate’s promotion turned into a “so who are you keeping in touch with?” question that showed how strong these Dartmouth bonds are 31 years after we arrived in Hanover freshman year.

I recently caught up with Michelle Dauchy, who was also a classmate of my wife at Kellogg business school. Michelle is now the chief marketing officer for Mercury Marine, after having spent almost 20 years at S.C. Johnson. (She keeps in touch with Allison Polley Hirsch,who is still in Boston with her family, including children Matthew and Sarah.) “I joined a startup organization that helps students who were in foster care graduate from college, a strategic planning committee for local community organization and various stints with Community Consulting Teams (M.B.A.s doing pro-bono consulting work for nonprofits). I’m heading up to Dartmouth later this week for the Tuck advisory board, which I have also been part of for the last few years. Love to see anyone if they are in Boston for work or college visits!”

Michelle and Allison also keep up with Ariel Tabor MacTavish, who has been in medical device marketing for almost 20 years—15 years for Johnson & Johnson (in Florida and then New Jersey) and then for the last four years in Colorado with Medtronic. “My daughter is 14, just started high school and requires much ‘ferrying’—gymnastics is her thing. It was fun to move to Colorado after being so long in one place—I feel like we used to move a lot and then we didn’t. We are outside of Boulder, which is truly God’s country. I was lucky enough to have Michelle and Renee Snow visit a couple years ago, and then in the last couple of years I have seen Renee when I have been out to visit my daughter at her summer camp in New Hampshire. Bryan Cooper is also out here—we actually live about four miles apart so we see him every few months. I also see Sue Shons Luria, Meredith McCredie Winter and Lindsay Brace Martinez at least once a year—our kids have grown up together like cousins.”

I also heard from Renee Snow, M.D., who wrote: “I am just amazed at how much time has passed since we were up at Dartmouth. It still feels so tangible and memorable. I have been a part of a number of organizations and universities during the past 25 years, and the connection and persistent sense of belonging to Dartmouth and our class is incredibly meaningful—even if I don’t manage an update very often! I am based in Andover, Massachusetts, just north of Boston, with my husband and daughter. It has been wonderful to connect with Ariel and her family and I am hopeful we can see her family as well as Michelle’s this year. I also see fellow ’89 Shannon Roy Hartnett on occasion with her three grown daughters and husband here in Andover from time to time.”

Himraj Dang wrote in, saying, “I am still working here out of Delhi, which is a miracle, as I believe younger people are more industrious and even smarter. My elder daughter applies to colleges this year, and that has been somewhat stressful for us both. I do not meet ’89s or Dartmouth alums here where I live, but do exchange emails regularly with Jennifer Avellino, Rob Eleveld (freshman roommate), Geeta Anand and Brooks Entwistle as well as Paul Wlodkowski ’88, Jeff Crandall ’88 and Mike Colby ’84.”

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Our annual Class Officers Weekend was just a few weeks ago in September (yes, I know it’s January when you’re reading this, please time travel with me) and saw a slew of ’89s, including Tom Beecher, Lenora Brown, Nancy Bernard Felix, Nicole Waldbaum Moser, Antonia Rutigliano Nedder, Andy Thompson and our special guest, Dan Parish. I also got to see Ray Prado and his wife, Gesine, both of whom I hadn’t seen since San Diego ComicCon several years back. Ray makes a mean cappuccino when he’s not storyboarding our favorite new Netflix show, Stranger Things.

Got an email out of the blue from Eric Berlin, asking me if I wanted to have dinner. I jumped in the car and picked him up, since Eric and his wife, Laura Hartwell Berlin, live in the Chicago suburbs, but he was presenting in L.A. at a conference. Eric has spent most of his career at Jones Day, litigating bet-the-company cases, particularly on antitrust or heathcare issues. Classmate Ted Chung is in the office right next to Eric and is the practice leader for the investigations and white-collar defense practice; Sharyl Hirsh Reisman is in the New York office and is the firm-wide chair of recruiting.

Eric’s legal career has taken an interesting turn. As an extension of his advocacy and fundraising for digestive diseases (he’s the president of the University of Chicago’s gastrointestinal research foundation), Eric spent several years advocating, pro bono, for patients’ safe, legal access to medical cannabis. He worked with members of state general assemblies and other stakeholders to help create the Illinois medical program and more recently to revise and help get passed the Ohio bill. With these experiences and as demand for his paid services grew, Eric has become one of the nation’s leading cannabis law lawyers. He now represents multiple clients in or impacted by the cannabis industry, including large companies that sell into the industry, private equity interests devising financial and other solutions for the industry, hospitals and other healthcare organizations and cultivation centers in various states. Amazing stuff, and great to see Eric leading this charge.

I heard from Kari Draper, who lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband, Thomas Manning. They met on the language study abroad to Arles (I wonder if they still call it “LS-Play”?) sophomore spring and have two daughters, 15 and 17 years old. Kari writes, “Thomas is an attorney and does mainly commercial litigation. I am the medical director of a large urban outpatient pediatric clinic (31,000 patients) of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where I have been since completing residency. In addition to seeing patients, I also teach residents and U Penn medical students. I ran into Adam Glick this summer on a college tour in Maine (Bowdoin College). His daughter was on her way to Dartmouth soccer camp and our daughter was on her way to Dartmouth crew camp—small world! It is always great to be back at Dartmouth (although it was not as attractive as usual this summer since both the Green and Baker were under construction).”

I just got back from Hong Kong, and had emailed Cathy Lee to see if I could catch up with her while I was there for a trade show for a week. She emailed back to let me know that she had moved back to Boston, “working in financial planning with a local advisor for the last few years. Raising two teenage boys who have just started driving. Needless to say, sitting in the passenger seat has increased my number of white hairs.”

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com
 

I’ve been traveling on a combination of work and retailer visits that also saw us visiting Princeton and Cornell in August at my older daughter’s insistence that she see more than Dartmouth and Smith. Chris Baldwin saw my Facebook post of the Princeton pictures and replied simply, “No.” My Dartmouth hat was the only one I had with me so, yes, I was that dad. I was wearing that hat while watching Abbey D’Agostino ’14 help another runner up during the race, truly exemplifying the Dartmouth and Olympic spirit.

Closer to home, I finally got to have a beer with Clay Nichols in Venice, California. Besides running Dadlabs, Clay is also running marketing for Smartypants Vitamins, a company started by his sister. It was great to catch up with him and Jon Ruhl ’91 as an added bonus.

It was great to see our classmate Harmeet Dhillon opening the second night of the Republican convention. Harmeet is now RNC national committewoman from California for the next four years. Her 12-person law firm celebrated its 10th year this fall.

I was up in Seattle for a day trip and Heather Killebrew commented on my Instagram post of Safeco Field on a sunny day. Heather works at a law firm. Heather said, “Husband Pete Pulliam and I have a 5-year-old daughter, Ruby, and we enjoy living near and hiking in Seattle’s Discovery Park. Now that Ruby is beyond toddling, I’m looking forward to getting up into the mountains more often.”

Travel then took me to Minneapolis the next week; on the plane I read Kathy Appruzzese Sherbrooke’s new novel, Fill The Sky. It’s a great read and I’m super excited for Kathy—the book will be out by the time you read this. Kathy writes, “We have been in the Boston area since 1996 and our boys are very close in age to your girls, 10th and seventh grade. I still can’t get over the fact that my child is 6 feet tall and that they are both such wholly individual, independent people. Life is a crazy thing.” Kathy will be doing events on her book tour, and if you want more info (including the story behind the book), go on over to kasherbrooke.com. Kathy says she is “more than game to go to book groups (in person or by Skype) and have a bunch of free stuff online for groups to make the book group discussion a little more interesting than the norm. People can sign up right on my website.”

I had drinks and dinner with Bill Dean and Betsy Aldrich at Betsy’s house in Minneapolis. Bill is now doing trade marketing for Post Holdings and Betsy is director of golf tour operations at Women’s Golf and Travel, where she leads groups of women on amazing golf vacation tours all around the world.

Mateo Romero was awarded a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) for his work in visual arts in painting. To learn more about the National Artist Fellows and NACF’s work—nurturing the passion and power of creative expression—visit nativeartsandcultures.org. So whenever you’re traveling, either for work or fun (or both) take the time to reach out to fellow ’89s. I still remember meeting Missy Neubert Steffins at the L.L. Bean factory when we were on vacation in Maine eight years ago. Just let me know about these fun reconnections or anything else you’d like to share. And next time I’m in your town, I’ll try to let you know. Happy holidays!

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Fellow ’89s, I apologize for brevity, but I will have an online version available when this arrives in the mail.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave. #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

What inspires you to do the impossible? For Dave Nerrow, I saw an Instagram pic celebrating his 25th consecutive Boston Marathon. Dave’s been running since senior year at Dartmouth; along with 25 Boston Marathons, Dave “couldn’t count the number of races, but probably 50 marathons, a bunch of 50s and one 100. Turned to long-distance cycling and lots of triathlons, maybe 10 Ironman races and all that nonsense.”

Staggering, right? But then I thought—who else in our class runs that much? Here’s a fraction of the responses I received.

For Jeff Kauffman, “I set a goal senior year to go for a run for 365 straight days and only missed by a handful. That year Larry Miller and I ran the first ever Vermont City Marathon. Jeff went on to focus on trail and mountain running, including the Mount Hood to Oregon Coast, Big Sur and many more, snowshoe running and then triathlons as he got older, as well as the 50-mile run and climb Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim or running up Mount Washington.”

What inspires Carrie Luft to run? “It’s quantifiable. In a race your time is recorded. The field I entered is defined by subjectivity; more often than not you receive no feedback as to why you weren’t cast or your script was rejected.”

In 1994 Dan Parish, Brian Lenihan, Bob Reetz, Tim Clark ’88, and Rich Beaver ’90 ran the Maine marathon together. Nowadays Brian Lenihan only does “trail running, mostly longer races (marathon, 50K, 50M relay).” Brian ran the Boston Marathon several times, including running with Dave Nerrow in his very first. Bob Reetz finished eight Boston marathons and seven others in the 1990s. Bob shared, “A bunch of us track and cross-country alums (and Dave Nerrow) ran in the early 1990s Hood to Coast and I ended up competing four times. I still get immense satisfaction from completing a 90-minute run through the Blue Hills in Milton, Massachusetts.”

David Aman is another cross-country and track alum, but didn’t run his first marathon until after age 40. “I’ve run five (including Boston twice). I’m a software developer at the medical school and live in Hanover.” Clay Nichols started at 40 to set an example for his kids and to get outside regularly. Clay’s run five marathons to date, quitting the sport after every one. But New York is in November….

Tracy Dike Shackett has run a dozen marathons and a few half marathons; she started running “pushing my kids around in a buggy. My first marathon was in Burlington, Vermont, in 2005. I have run Boston six times.” Tracy has three kids and now runs races with her 17-year-old daughter. Tracy and her family live in Alabama, where she’s director of marketing for Bridgeway Diagnostics, a diagnostic imaging company.

Paul Mahoney ran the 1993 Boston Marathon as an unregistered runner, wearing a Dartmouth “GREEN” shirt. Jeanne Lucich Dwyer ran the Chicago Marathon in 2009; Josh Adler ran the N.Y.C. Marathon in 2009. Elizabeth Doherty ran the Boston Marathon in 1996, and was one of the reasons Bobby Jaffe started running and has since done several marathons and Ironmans. “[I was] in awe of Elizabeth Doherty and her running. It was amazing to me that she could just get out and fly.”

Let me hear what you’re passionate about to dedicate this kind of time and energy, whether it’s running, writing, cooking, music, whatever. Chances are, other ’89s share your passion.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

It’s May when you’re reading this, but I just celebrated my 49th birthday in late February and have already had trade shows this year in Vegas, London and New York—far less glamorous at a startup. However, while in London I did get to have a few beers with Michael Hafner and catch up with him. Michael has been in London now for a while with UBS and I hope to see him again next time I’m over there.

Susan Allen Cera emailed me on LinkedIn. She’s worked for the past 10 years in admissions at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, living in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. Susan wrote: “Loved your write-up in the alumni mag. I thought I was the only one who had new roommates all of the time! I’m now working with classmate Jeff Thomas at Stratus Prep, leading up the M.B.A. admissions counseling business.”

I had gotten in touch with Lenora Brown several years ago when my band was playing in the finals of the Fortune magazine’s Battle of the Corporate Bands, which takes place at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio; I wanted to not only invite her to the show, but also find out where the good eats were in Cleveland, and we’ve been in touch ever since. Lenora has already been published, but she has a new book out, New Play Development: Facilitating Creativity for Dramaturgs, Playwrights, and Everyone Else. It’s available on Amazon, of course. She has been working closely with the Cleveland branch of the Center for Arts Inspired Learning. Lenora says, “The Cleveland branch has truly set itself apart and is a national leader in diversity of programming (we cosponsored a public school dedicated to digital arts!) and has begun to introduce a system that ensures that our teaching artists are well trained.”

I travel a lot with my job, so if any other ’89s have a local eats they don’t mind sharing with me (or the whole class), let me know! Plus if I’m in your town, I’ll reach out to try to meet.

And here’s a tale of two ’89s, both of whom are biology professors and in New Mexico: Tim Wright and Ken Whitney! Ken is an associate professor at University of New Mexico and Tim is an associate professor at New Mexico State University! More info coming from them in the next issue, but Tim works with Brook Milligan ’78 and Ken works with Seth Newsome ’99. As Ken said, “We are trying to get a lock on the whole state. Just a few more retirements.”

I would love to hear about ’89s who are in the same industry, even the same company, living close to one another—or if you work for the same company in different areas—let me know! And please send me your updates and news, no matter how small.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

It’s mid-February when you’re reading this, but we’re still pre-New Year, in a topsy-turvy year where it’s colder in L.A. than it was back east! Maybe it was the fact that my daughter discovered my Dartmouth ski school instructor Patagonia jacket and now proudly wears it to school and around, despite never having gone skiing. That would be all on me, and yes a bit ironic. I’m still adjusting to the fact that I have a freshman in high school and a fifth-grader—they’re growing up and soon we’ll be doing the college tours, like we all did 25-plus years ago. Which makes me think of my freshman roommates and beyond. Let’s turn back time to early September 1985: Craig Morton and Dave Irwin were my freshman roommates, South Fayer 302. We had a blast during our first year. Craig, of course, went on to amazing things in football, but I was excited to see him at Reunion where he’s a pastor at the Wellspring Worship Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire; I also saw Dave at our 25th and it was great to reconnect. He’s still up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, working for Fiserv.

Sophomore year I went into the housing lottery, as many of us did, and ended up roommates with Chris Baldwin and Phil Singh in Mid-Fayer—same room number! They were my roommates for only a term and then moved on. I then had Tim Osby as a roommate. Tim was our goalie for the hockey team and has moved down to Atlanta, where he’s the owner of Wahoo Docks, one of the largest residential dock companies around. Spring term I can’t remember—it’s not the fault of my roommates, but more that it’s been 25-plus years. I do remember being a health coordinator for Dick’s House, which meant people came when they wanted aspirin, Tylenol or other things.

Junior year: Ripley, and Harry Bernieri was my roommate. Odd twist: We had played football against each other in high school, when I was at Pingry and Harry was at Poly Prep. My senior year Poly whipped us 42-2, and several years later, we were roommates! Harry has been at teacher now at Poly Prep since graduating.

Senior year Zach Levine was my roommate and we had a blast. I got to see the budding romance between Zach and Jennifer Avellino (she lived across the hall) and still remember our Friday night social hours.

What about your roommates through your years at Dartmouth? Have you kept in touch with them? Were you able to reconnect during reunion? If not, you can reconnect via email, Facebook, snail mail—these are people who shared part of your Dartmouth experience and it’s worth reaching out if you haven’t. Even after 25 years it’s still a great time to reconnect. I enjoyed all of my roommates over the years and learned and benefited from all of them. I hope they did as well from me.

Quick update: I had mentioned change and how my family was moving up to northern California for my new job. I’m still at my new job (thanks to all the ’89s who bought Dash and Dot robots during the holidays) but due to the nature of startups, we didn’t move. I’m still commuting a week a month handling marketing and sales, but our roots are still in Redondo Beach, California, for now. I say for now because I know that the future may be in southern California or it may be in other areas of the United States or international; we’re excited for the adventure either way.

Would love to hear from roommates that have reconnected after all these years—let me know! And please send me your updates and news, no matter how small.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

 

Happy New Year! It’s sort of getting colder in California, but not like back East, where I see pictures of the leaves turning in Hanover and Dan Parish splitting wood with his dad for what must be a wood-burning stove.

I caught up briefly with Libby Carrier Doran, who saw one of the many Facebook ads our company has out there (our user acquisition maven is quite good) and got to catch up with her. From Libby: “Life in Minneapolis is terrific. We relish the four seasons, and fall this year has been incredible—70s and sunny until this week. It’s unheard of. Hockey season is firing up, which makes me smile. Our baby—first grade, total surprise caboose—will march to a different drummer. His sport this year is hip-hop dance.”

Kris Moller Henley has been in England for 25 years now—she lives in Guildford. Kris writes, “How refreshing to be only one time zone away from one of my oldest friends, Rob Lasser, who now lives in Basle, Switzerland. My daughters and I spent Thanksgiving 2014 with him and his family, and Rob returned the favor by making sangria and pigs in blankets at my July 4th bash this summer here in Guildford. The party ended up being the kind of melting pot that evokes our great nation itself: four Americans, two Brits, a Swede, an Indian and a host of dual-nationality children running amok through the flowerbeds. I rounded off the summer with a rooftop reunion with Dick Manuel ’88 on the roof terrace of the Hilton Trafalgar Square, watching the sun set over the London skyline—like the final scene in Skyfall, but with pink clouds, space heaters, tomato juice and a tragic lack of Daniel Craig.”

David Foulke just became a published author! His book, DIY Financial Advisor: A Simple Solution to Build and Protect Your Wealth, is out on Amazon, both in hardcover and Kindle editions. Congrats, and who couldn’t use a little sage financial advice from a fellow ’89?

I’m about one-quarter of the way through Yanna Yannakakis’ latest book, Indigenous Intellectuals: Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Culture in Mexico and the Andes, available on Amazon. It’s very well written—no surprise—and it’s great to delve into a culture I know little about, but is explained incredibly well.

Quick movie plug: Rent or watch Sicario to see our own Hank Rogerson! It’s still in theaters as I write this, but by the time you read this, it will be on Netflix or video on demand or HBO, etc.

I want to hear from more of you: how you’re doing, what you’re doing and if you’ve met up with other ’89s, either ones you see every weekend or someone you haven’t connected with in years. It’s always great to get emails, Facebook messages, texts—heck, I’ll take Tweets and Instagram messages (nedorama for both)—send me your news! Even mailed letters work. Just no Snapchat, thanks.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Happy holidays! It’s the last DAM ’89 notes of 2015 and I wanted to continue with a part two of the ’89s who made music their career, as well as other ’89 news.

I touched on Tammy Krutchkoff Saunt’s career briefly, but wanted to give more detail. Tammy has worked in artist management for years, managing talent from Backstreet Boys to Ziggy Marley to Korn and Limp Bizkit—about as diverse a range of musical styles as you can get! Now her company, Rain Talent, keeps her busy managing film and television composers, music producers and music editors. You can see their client roster at www.raintalent.com.

Ralph Santana has been executive vice president and global chief marketing officer of Harman International since April 2013. Harman makes musical gear both for consumers and for professionals who care about quality sound. Ralph was in L.A. at its Northridge headquarters and gave me a tour of the facility, which included a subwoofer test room where you could see and feel your pants flapping from the sound waves! Ralph had been at PepsiCo for many years and then Samsung as its senior vice president and chief marketing officer. When he had the chance to lead a consumer electronics company that invests so much in research and development to get quality sound, he couldn’t resist. Note to self and kids: always wear ear protection at concerts!

Jilann Spitzmiller and Hank Rogerson shared their latest film Still Dreaming at the Loew Auditorium in Hanover back in June. Jennifer Avellino’s review: “a truly wonderful, funny, poignant documentary about a group of retired actors at the Lillian Booth Actors Home putting on a Shakespeare play. Read about the film here, www.stilldreamingmovie.com, and I really urge you to go see it if you can!”

Susan Leong Yates came to Dartmouth from Hawaii, and after Dartmouth moved to New Zealand—quite the journey! From Susan: “I had a vision of the place when I was on language study abroad in Blois, France. Then I saw it on a business trip in New Zealand driving from Franz Josef Glacier to Mount Cook. We bought the 65-acre property. Built a lodge—regardless of what the bank account said. I learned how to clean and cook in Wanaka while it was being built. And now I live in the most beautiful place in New Zealand—and pretty good compared to the rest of the world. Living on the edge and loving it.” Check out her lodge at www.silverpine.co.nz.

Laurie Sproul Stearns wrote in about her work: “I took one wood sculpture class while at Dartmouth, then continued on in education and oceanography until statistics did me in. So I fell back on my carving. My website, http://lauriesproul.com, shows results of a skill I developed from the seed planted by Fumio Yoshimura at Dartmouth. My recent work is very intertwined with climate.” It’s worth checking out her site—her woodworking is amazing.

As many of you know, Chris Bailey and Deanna Emberley Bailey lost their sons in a tragic fire in 2009; as part of trauma therapy, her therapist suggested Deanna do something creative while thinking about the fire from the boys’ perspectives. While hesitant at first, after two months she sat down and couldn’t stop writing. After seven months Deanna self-published her book, Crossing the Horizon, in February of this year. Deanna’s book was not only a way for her to cope with her family’s tragic loss, but also a way for others to cope with their own losses. The book is available at Amazon at http://amzn.to/1Ks59tb.

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Back to school! Students are returning to Hanover, some arriving for the first time. I’m writing this at the end of June and it’s great to see all of the ’89s on social media celebrating that all of our classmates’ marriages are now equal.

I love playing music, but we have numerous ’89s who have made music their career. Here’s a few highlights from some of them.

Carolyne Allen said, “My first job in the music business was at Diamond Time, just as hip hop was blowing up in the early 1990s, and I was clearing samples, a brand-new industry due to the Biz Markie lawsuit, but a genre I knew very little about, being mostly a rock person coming out of Dartmouth radio. That led me to Atlantic Records, working in business affairs, and BMG Video as a director of business affairs. I had a great mentor who encouraged me to go to Fordham law school while working full time. I currently work for a boutique firm representing artists, producers, labels, managers, touring and festival work, including the Electric Zoo Festival. At this point I have worked with almost every genre of artist and music there is. It’s been interesting. I’ve been on both the artist and label side and they are very different.”

David Jacoby is senior VP of business and legal affairs at Sony Music. “I have been at Sony for about 15 years. I mainly manage litigation for the company, which entails both bringing lawsuits to protect our artists’ works from unauthorized use, all well as defending Sony from all types of claims. Lately I have concentrated in trying to help grow the digital business and ensure that our labels and artists are fairly compensated for their risk and investment. It is extremely rewarding to make a small contribution to an artist’s success. Coincidentally, I work very closely with three other Dartmouth grads—Andrea Finkelstein ’77, Jeff Walker ’84 and Deirdre McDonald ’86. I recently went to my 30th high school reunion, where I saw our classmates Alex Selby and Robbi Smith. I also was thrilled to recently attend the bat mitzvah of Andrew Ward’s daughter in Scarsdale, New York. If anyone is ever around Sony (550 Madison Avenue) in New York and has any desire to see some cool pieces of music history, get some free CDs or just want to catch up, I’m at david.jacoby@sonymusic.com.” David and Carolyne have seen the massive changes technology has brought to the industry, first from physical to digital and now from downloads to streaming. Carolyne added, “If you looked at any record contract from 1952 to 2002 they were basically the same. Now all bets are off and the law can barely keep up.”

Tammy Krutchkoff Saunt has worked for many labels—Tuff Gong, EMI—and she recently cofounded Rain Talent, representing composers, musicians, score producers, mixers and music editors for film and TV. I want to tell more about Tammy’s journey and other ’89s in the music industry, but I’ll save that for an upcoming column.

Catherine Baggia Duwan reports she had a fantastic 10-day spring break trip to California, meeting up in San Francisco with Brian Bone, Berkeley with adopted ’89 Tim Orr (Wesleyan exchange student), Palo Alto with Matt Holleran, Pasadena with Paula Zagrecki ’88. In Los Angeles Catherine unexpectedly ran into her college roommate and maid-of-honor Nancy Obler on Venice Beach!

On May 25 Ed Barker and his wife, Sarah, welcomed Phoebe Emerson Barker into the world. “She weighed in at 6 pounds, 13 ounces, and she’s eating like a champ. Life is good otherwise, with a move to Belmont, Massachusetts, planned for July and some time at the beach in August. Any tips and survival strategies are welcome, if you can remember that far back!”

Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Moving forward—how are you embracing the call to action that the College is undertaking throughout academic and social aspects of the Dartmouth experience?


This fall Mattel and I parted ways after 20 years. Suddenly things I took for granted were no longer there. How would I provide for my family? What the heck do resumes look like nowadays? What marketing jobs were there in L.A.?


Just as many of us did for the swim test before the freshman canoe trip, I jumped in feet-first (although 30 years later, not from the 10-meter board). I started NW Associates and I started getting work—shooting and editing a video for a kids sports company, consulting for a friend’s company in Xiamen, China. I came close to landing a job in Washington, D.C. Third round and it was down to another candidate and myself and the question my would-be boss asked me hit me. “I know you can do this job, but do you want to do it?”


And the answer was no. I didn’t want to run partnerships for a nonprofit that I wasn’t wholeheartedly in love with. I was doing it out of fear of supporting the family. So as fate would have it, the other candidate got the job. However, I was able to have dinner with Jennifer Avellino and Zach Levine, so I think I got the better part of the deal.


A few weeks later a friend called and asked if I was planning on building out NW Associates or if I was interested in talking to a cool new company—and that’s how I got my new job as vice president of marketing at Wonder Workshop, making robots that help kids learn how to code and learn problem solving. It’s a 34-person startup. Our family is moving from Redondo Beach up north to northern California (somewhere I hope within an hour of my San Mateo office) in July so we’re packing up, cleaning up and getting ready for some big changes. During all this I’m commuting up Monday through Thursday and loving it. We’re definitely moving forward.


So as I sit here with a panoramic view of the fog rolling over the hills on one side and the bay on the other, I want to stress a few things that most of my fellow ’89s are probably doing, and if not, they may make sense.


First, always be moving forward and looking for what you want to do—don’t settle for what you can do. I can’t tell you how much happier I am here at my new job than I was in the last eight years of my old job. 


Second, seek out and embrace change, even if it means leaving a 20-year job, selling your house and moving up north, like Josh Adler, who landed a fantastic job as director of individual giving at the Actors Fund in New York. And, yes, for those classmates who have moved around the world, like Susan Leong Yates, I realize that a 377-mile move seems inconsequential. Unless you’ve been at your place for a while, which leads me to the final thought.


Pretend you’re moving forward every three years. Seriously. We’ve been in our house for 15 years and the amount of stuff you accumulate with two kids is staggering. Figure out what you really need and donate and give away the rest to a local charity or church or friends. ScanDigital.com was founded by two Dartmouth grads—they will scan any media so you can enjoy and share it on something that doesn’t say Kodak on the side.


So, how are you moving forward? 



Ned Ward
, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Back in November Jennifer Avellino ran into Susan Shons Luria in Hanover. Susan is chief strategy and development officer of Quality Electrodynamics (QED), a research, development, design and manufacturing company serving the healthcare industry, where she works in partnership with the CEO and senior management team in the areas of business development, organizational design, marketing and strategic initiatives. She has a background in early-stage venture development, mergers, partnerships, operational integrations and expansion activities. In addition to her work at QED Susan is a partner in the North Coast Angel Fund, an early-stage investment fund, and a board member for two early-stage ventures.


At Dartmouth Susan was captain of the equestrian team and involved with numerous programs in a leadership capacity at the Tucker Foundation, with a particular focus on literacy. Upon graduation she served as Tucker’s volunteer coordinator for two years. Susan has continued her involvement with Dartmouth ever since, serving as the president of the Dartmouth Club of Northeast Ohio, an alumni interviewer and a member of the Alumni Council and its trustee and leadership nominating committee—as well as being a mentor to many students along the way. Susan is also on the Tucker Foundation’s board of visitors. Great to see another example of a truly dedicated ’89!


Susan’s other community engagement includes significant involvement in the field of economic development, working to secure business and government investment into the State of Ohio with a focus on long-term job creation. Susan received her M.B.A. from Case Western Reserve University and resides in Cleveland, Ohio, with her husband, Neil, and their two daughters.


Tom Avril wrote in and shared this great story of finding fellow classmates all around the girdled earth. “My teenage daughter is starting to visit colleges, and I thought that on our swing through Chicago what better way was there to experience Northwestern University than with a calculus class taught by Eric Zaslow. Afterward Eleanor and I agreed: The guy can teach. But then I already knew that, as he got me through linear algebra during junior year. We also got to see Derek Kamper, who uses his biomedical engineering skills at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. This was in October, and Derek’s kids were looking forward to an American-style Halloween after missing it the year before when he had a temporary position in Switzerland. Poor, deprived children!”


Sometimes I get mail from classmates I talk to regularly, and then sometimes I get emails from classmates going all the way back to September 1985—and DOC trips (what we remember as freshman trips)! Jean Robertson Getraer and I met on our canoeing trip, and it was great to hear from her. Jean writes, “Andrew Getraer ’86 and I live in Highland Park, New Jersey, where he is the executive director of Rutgers Hillel and I work at a Jewish Montessori school. My oldest son, Sandy (21), became an Israel citizen after spending a gap year there after high school. He is currently a commander serving in the Israel Defense Forces. In October he married Shifra Steiman, the daughter of the family that adopted him as a soldier. Our other two sons graduated from high school last spring and after a gap year in Israel will attend Princeton. Keeping the home life exciting are our two daughters.”


So that’s it for this write-up—please send me your stories of what you’re up to or classmates that you’ve recently seen. Enjoy the start of summer!



Ned Ward
, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

With the new year comes changes, resolutions and new beginnings. For me, it means starting a new career chapter after more than 17 years at Mattel. I couldn’t be more excited about the prospect of change, and I’m writing this from Xiamen, China. Stay tuned for more. But enough about me—on with ’89s with news!


Sports is something many of us did at Dartmouth, either on intramural, junior varsity or varsity or even after Dartmouth. Below are just a few who have kept up with sports, but would love to hear from other ’89s who are still involved in sports.


Fiona Bayly has been a runner since her days at Phillips Exeter; she’s kept up that passion and recently won a gold medal at the Aquathlon World Championships in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The event took place August 27 and was a swim-run: a 750-meter open-water swim in Hawrelak Park Lake and a 4.6-kilometer run (on land!). Fiona says, “I wasn’t the fastest swimmer, but made up time on the run and even did pretty well in the transition, which is a timed portion. I snagged the fastest run-split of all the age-group females, from teenage on up and my run-split ranked among the pros. The whole thing was a thrill.” Fiona is now the 2014 World Champion Aquathlete female in her age group! In addition to running aquathlons, Fiona also keeps busy with a job at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.


Pamela Streeter Wheeler is the first woman ever to lead a professional sports union in the United States and, as director of operations for the Women’s National Basketball Players Association, she has negotiated the first four collective-bargaining agreements for WNBA players. Wow! More info available at http://m.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2014/09/15/Game-Changers....


You may remember Chris Rorke as a quarterback when he was a student; Chris is putting those skills to work now as the assistant coach, quarterbacks, and passing game coordinator for Dartmouth football. I briefly saw Chris up in Hanover during Class Officers Weekend and he is doing great.


Pier Kooistra has been an English teacher at the Lawrenceville (New Jersey) School for a decade. Pier says, “I coach ultimate disc and team handball and teach sophomore and junior English, as well as senior electives on war fiction, personal essay-writing and award-winning contemporary fiction (Nobel, Booker, Pulitzer, etc.).” It seems like only yesterday Pier and I along with others were singing “23 Verns in a Van” on our way back to Hanover from Cambridge in fall of 1985, but that’s another column.


Scott McElhaney was recently selected as one of Jackson Walker’s 2015 Best Lawyers in America. Since it was first published in 1983 Best Lawyers has become widely regarded as the definitive guide to legal excellence. Corporate Counsel magazine has called Best Lawyers “the most respected referral list of attorneys in practice.” Scott specializes in labor and employment litigation and has been living in Dallas since graduating.


Well that’s it for this issue. Coming up in future issues: Let’s hear from ’89s involved in music, whether you’re creating it, managing it or just playing for fun. It can be professional, your job or just a strong hobby. And yes, I may use this info to help recruit a band for our 30th reunion in 2019.



Ned Ward
, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

I can’t believe I am writing my first Alumni Magazine column, taking over from Jennifer Avellino, who has been our incredible class secretary for more than 15 years! I hope that I live up to her great performance, and look forward to writing about as many of you as possible during the next five years.


Mid-September we had our first Class Officers Weekend in Hanover with Antonia Rutigliano Nedder in her new role as class president! The crisp fall air was a welcome change for me, and it was great to see the freshman ’18s on campus.


In reaching out to fellow classmates for our reunion attendance calls and emails, I got some great updates from some of our fellow ’89s. Reunion is always a great time to get back in touch with old roommates, so I was glad to hear from Harry Bernieri as well. Harry has been teaching at Poly Prep in Brooklyn, his alma mater, since graduation. The school threw him a party for his 25th year back in June. At reunion I bumped into Craig Morton and David Irwin. Craig is still the pastor of the Wellspring Worship Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Dave is working at Fiserv in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and has been there for 12 years with his wife and two kids, Henry (11) and Lucy (9). I also caught up with Phil Singh, who is now at Kellogg’s in Battle Creek, Michigan.


Lisa Colby Crawford wasn’t able to make reunion, as she was busy celebrating her 10-year wedding anniversary with a long weekend of golf and sun—congratulations! Lisa is still living on the North Shore of Boston with her husband, Tom, and children Malcolm, 8, and Cate, 5. Joon Hin Ooi also wrote that he hasn’t been able to go to reunion since graduation. Joon moved back to Asia from New York in the mid 1990s and spent some time in Hong Kong before settling in Singapore, which is now his adopted home. If you make it out there, Joon can be reached at joonhin@yahoo.com.


Pat Giersch is a history professor at Wellesley College, specializing in China and inner Asia. Pat and his son were up in Hanover this past winter for a ski race. Kyoungho Kim Koh emailed a few months ago and has been keeping busy: By day she handles operations work at Novartis and in the evenings she is following her passion, having begun her massage practice. It has been about 15 years since Kim started to use her Korean name of Kyoungho.


Kate Saunders Grove told me about a great ’89 run-in: She brought her older daughter, Anna (16) to a college admissions orientation session at Dartmouth run by our own Dan Parish in the fall. It was great! 


Sonya Ooten Frisina has a very cool new venture called the Original Bex—they are DC Comics-licensed graphic add-ons that you can put on your sneakers or even in hair braids! Perfect for kids and the kid in you as well. Check them out on Instagram with the hash tag #theoriginalbex.


So that’s my first column. I want to hear from as many of you as possible as you roam around the girdled earth, either on your own, with your family or with other classmates. Wishing you and your families a wonderful holiday season and happy new year!


Ned Ward, 2104 Graham Ave., #B, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; ned@nedorama.com

Just a few weeks left to participate in our 25th reunion book if you haven’t yet been inspired. Complete your entry by September 15 by going to our class website at 1989.dartmouth.org. This book is not only for reunion-goers, but for every member of the class of 1989. Submit a photo and write your reflections on anything you choose.


As summer prepares to make its exit, one of my favorite memories will be looking out on a sea of faces on Baker lawn during our reunion class dinner, inspired by the presence of more than 500 classmates and spouses. There were so many experiences that we shared together—the class photo, the rain, the mud, and eventually the sunshine, the hugs, the smiles, the walks down favorite paths in our memories, old friends and new ones. I found myself thinking over the summer of all the conversations at reunion and wishing I could play them back. I wanted to overhear the thousands that I missed—the walks around Occom Pond, the hikes up Bartlett Tower and Baker Tower, the mini-reunions, spontaneous and planned and the chance, for some of us, to share Hanover with our children. 


Now, many thanks. To Ellie Mahoney Loughlin, our class president and my sounding board. To Laura Fitch Mattson for her spectacular work helping to raising more than $8 million for the College, smashing the old 25th reunion-giving record. To Antonia Rutigliano Nedder, our communications and registration chair and our next class president. To Jilann Spitzmiller for producing those fun videos on our website promoting reunion attendance. To Eric Berlin for keeping the attendance committee on track. To Linda Salzhauer Swenberg for the great reunion swag that seems to turn up around the girdled earth. To Shannon Gorrell Reid for handling our food and drink, to Todd Timmerman for paying the bills, to Zach Levine and Ned Ward for iPod tunes in the tent, to Jennifer Large Bowman for our logo, to Jennifer Downs O’Shaughnessy for our table decorations and to her and Nicole Conte for organizing all the kids’ fun during our Saturday family lunch. And a special thanks to the Rev. Paul Sawyer for setting such a welcoming tone at our very moving class memorial service.


To our panel moderators, Russell Wolff, Debbi Wilgoren and Clay Nichols, who embraced (or put up with) my expectations of what these panels could be. To the panelists—Sara B. May, Brooks Entwistle, Margo Miller, Geeta Anand, Phil Ginsburg, Vanessa Baird-Streeter, Ed Barker, Chuck Wooster, Ray Prado, Mateo Romero, Connie Britton and Jilann Spitzmiller—for sharing their insights and their angst. I’ve promised A.J. Lutz he can have his own panel next time. 


Finally, it was at our 10th reunion that I saw a signup sheet in the tent and thought that I might toss my name in the ring for class secretary. I didn’t think I would be asked to do it, much less that I would be here 15 years and almost 100 columns later. You’ve heard me talk about journeys and this has been a grand one, getting to chronicle the lives of my classmates. What an honor. There have been sad moments and very joyous ones. And as I head over to my new role on the Alumni Council, I am thrilled to be able to turn this column over to Ned Ward, Mattel toy master by day, rock and roll band guitarist by night. I definitely promise you more fun ahead.


You can find him at ned@nedorama.com although he’ll probably find you first. I won’t be going too far and I promise to see you around the bend.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

As you read this, our 25th reunion will be a memory. Hundreds of classmates gathering to reflect, renew friendships and make new ones. “Those hours that pass like dreams,” as the song says. The class of 1989 is now scattered back to our various corners of the girdled earth, far from the Hanover Plain and from each other, at least for another five years.


There’s still time left to add your submission to our 25th reunion book, whether you joined us in Hanover or not. Go to our class website, 1989.dartmouth.org, and click on the link for the book. Add a photo and your reflections on whatever you choose. There is a space carved out for every single ’89 who wants to participate. The book will be published in the fall of 2014 and will include photos from reunion. If you attended, it was included in your registration cost and you’ll automatically receive one in the mail. They’ll also be available to order for those who couldn’t join us in Hanover.


For now, as I write this in the final days of April, the long winter has finally turned to spring. In lieu of actual reunion details, which will follow in the next issue, I’ll share some classmate news.


Jason Lobo, formerly a supervising assistant attorney general for the State of Connecticut, is now Judge Lobo, sworn in as a Superior Court judge last spring by Gov. Dannel Malloy. The judge told a local news website at the time, that, “This is the culmination of a lot of hard work, and I hope to be doing this for quite a long time. It’s been a wonderful ride getting to this place.” And of course the website noted that the former Dartmouth basketball player is believed to be the tallest Superior Court judge in Connecticut history, with his wife, Gundi, adding that a custom-made robe was being tailored for his 6-foot-11-inch frame.


Long-time runner Fiona Bayly is now one of the United States’ top-10 masters-age-group road runners. Rankings by Runners World and Running Times list Fiona close behind former Olympians and world champions, reflecting her high-level competitive achievements through many years. She is a former New England Cross Country Individual Scholastic Champion, repeat Runner of the Year for N.Y.C.-tri-state regional road running and current member of TeamUSA for triathlon and aquathlon. Her next aquathlon world championship event takes place in Edmonton, Canada, in August.


Congratulations to Bonnie An Henderson on her new book, Essentials of Cataract Surgery, second edition. Bonnie also serves on the board of overseers at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. And in other medical news, your class secretary’s spouse recently caught up with Rich Kang, a hand surgeon in Berlin, Maryland. He has three children and in his free time shoots competition-match handguns.


That’s all for now. Full reunion details in our next column—or least I promise as many as I can squeeze into 600 words.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Registration for our 25th reunion from June 12 to 15 goes live in March. Reunion housing is separate, so look for that mailing, too. Join our class Facebook page and our new 1989 LinkedIn page to stay connected. Nine reunion classes will share Hanover with us during the long weekend so it should be a fantastic time and our planning committee is hard at work.
Fall brought many of our classmates to Hanover for Homecoming, Class Officers Weekend, Alumni Council and other activities. The Wentworth Bowl changed hands at Convocation 2013, as former presidents James Wright and Jim Kim passed the College’s leadership to new Dartmouth President Phil Hanlon ’77. Hanlon greeted the incoming class of 2017, which included the sons and daughters of Mateo Romero, Jim Katzman, Craig Morton, June Park and Ellie Mahoney Loughlin and Phil Loughlin.
You can hear from President Hanlon about the College’s priorities ahead, as he travels to meet Dartmouth alums in the coming months in London, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle and Denver, with past events in California and on the East Coast.
Congratulations to Wall Street Journal reporter Geeta Anand, one of the winners of the 2013 Daniel Pearl Award, given by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for her examination of the spread of drug-resistant TB.
The New York Time’s Tokyo bureau chief Martin Fackler was scheduled to lecture at the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth in early November about his experience covering the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster and the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011.
Award-winning documentary filmmakers Hank Rogerson and Jilann Spitzmiller are gaining attention for their new film, Still Dreaming, which follows a group of older people at an actors retirement home as they prepare for a reading of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hank was quoted in The Huffington Post as saying that Shakespeare understood “what it was to be human in all stages of life. He has a remarkable ability to connect through time. His plays have relevance today in very significant ways.” Jilann and Hank are known for their previous documentary, Shakespeare Behind Bars, about a group of prisoners taking on a production of The Tempest.
Chris Rorke is back in Hanover, working for head coach Buddy Teevens as the quarterback and passing coach for Dartmouth football.
Julie McColl-McKenna and David McKenna, who live in Sudbury, Massachusetts, and have four children, are building a house in Quechee, Vermont, where Julie is the parent manager of the youth ski program. David is a managing partner at Advent International, where he’s worked since 1992.
Bill Dean lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Christine, and their 3-year-old twin boys, which must keep them plenty busy. Bill has been at General Mills since graduation, which just might be a class record.
Allison Polley Hirsch is at Deutsche Bank in Boston and living in Back Bay with her husband, Andrew Hirsch, and their two kids Matthew and Sarah.
Matt McDonald is the associate director of upper school admission at Buckingham, Browne and Nichols in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He’s also an assistant coach for the varsity soccer team and teaches ninth-grade history. He and his wife, Sarah, live in Belmont with their daughters Molly, age 5, and Annie, age 2.
And finally, Neil Abramson, an attorney in New Orleans, continues as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, where he’s served since 2007. He and his wife, Kim, and their sixth-grade son Parrish have headed north the last couple of summers for time with classmates and a vacation on Nantucket, Massachusetts.
See you in June.
—Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

There is no way to capture the experiences of more than 600 people who descended on the Hanover Plain to celebrate our 20th reunion. I’ll try to take you back there for a few moments or at least give you a taste of what you missed.


Many of us traveled to Hanover in a rainstorm, but by the time we gathered again the weather decided to cooperate. A stormy forecast forced us into Leverone for our Friday night dinner with the ’88s and ’90s, but for the rest of the weekend we celebrated under open skies. We sat on the porch at Collis for Lou’s eggs and crullers, under the bell tower for our family picnic on Baker Lawn and enjoyed that bucolic walk out to the DOC House for our memorable class gathering on Saturday night. We hiked up mountains, over trails, down old pathways of our memories and of course made the trek down the row at least once, either to point it out to children or during the late-night hours to recapture a small part of ourselves. Many of us attended lectures, rowed on the river, climbed the bell tower, wandered in the Hop, swam in the pool or just spent hours catching up with old friends. It seemed rather magical this time, but all too short.


Classmates traveled from the wide world—Margo Miller and Michael Hafner from London; Jonathan Burnham from Paris; Brooks Entwistle from Mumbai, India; Susan Leong Yates from New Zealand; and Stephen Matlin from Madrid. Others came from up and down both coasts from California to Washington State and Florida up to Maine. Class of ’89s also traveled from Texas, Illinois, Arizona, Minnesota and Michigan to join us for the weekend.


And there were children, more than 200 of them, many sporting those “’89 kid” hats. Some were just learning to toddle and others were practically as old as we were 20 years ago, getting ready to contemplate their own futures. What a treat it was to look at a nametag and then up into the eyes of a child to search for some familiar features.


Special thanks to David Hammond, who provided our class with the delicious wine for our Saturday evening dinner. He and his brother own the winery in California where the wine is produced, and host wine-tasting parties around the country. You can find more information about them at www.rocknrollwine.com.


Thank you to Anton Anderson for coordinating our souvenirs and Nicole Conte Stevens and Catherine Baggia Duwan for their work on our family picnic. And special gratitude to Zach Levine, my spouse, who designed our reunion logo, helped with our reunion Web site and arranged for the fantastic Saturday night band, Wherehouse, that kept many of us dancing and socializing into the wee hours.


Now we push on, as an incredibly strong class that set the 20th reunion-giving record, raising $1.5 million for the College during these difficult economic times. Thanks to our head agents Bobby Jaffe and Todd Timmerman for their dedication and hard work, along with our reunion-giving chairs Bridget McDonald Fawcett, Bill Dean and Jim Katzman.


For the next five years Bobby and Todd continue as head agents; Tom Beecher will again be class treasurer. Ellie Mahoney Loughlin will continue on as president, while her departing co-president Laura Fitch Mattson will oversee mini-reunions with Matt McDonald. Eric Berlin will be our new vice president; Kristen Daly Schneider will continue to do our newsletters, joined by Cat Baggia Duwan; and David Aman will work on our Web site. Finally, I’ll be continuing on as your class secretary, writing this column, so I’ll look forward to hearing from you.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

David Spindler’s adventures during the past 20 years are difficult to sum up in such a short column. The New Yorker took 10 pages to tell his story in the 2007 piece, “Walking the Wall: Can One Man’s Obsession Unravel the Mystery of an Ancient Structure?” He started hiking the Great Wall of China in 1994, when he was the only American studying for a master’s in history at Peking University. He did a stint at CNN Beijing and McKinsey & Co. and attended Harvard Law School. But the wall kept drawing him back. David has become one of the wall’s leading historians and has hiked countless miles on it, working full time as an independent scholar since 2002. He has yet to publish any work in English about his research. But you can get a glimpse of his efforts if you live in New York by visiting the Rockefeller Brother’s Fund, which is exhibiting “China’s Great Wall: The Forgotten Story,” a series of large-scale, historically based photographs, a collaboration between David and a California-based photographer. E-mail Leona Hewitt at lhewitt@rbf.org for information about visiting the exhibit.


Martin Fackler also has made Asia his home for many years, living in Shanghai and Beijing while working for the Associated Press and now covering Japan and the Koreas for The New York Times, where he is the Tokyo bureau chief. He previously covered economics in Tokyo for the Times and The Wall Street Journal and began his journalism career in Tokyo in the late 1990s after getting an M.A. in history and studying journalism and economics. In recent months he’s covered such diverse stories as the Japanese elections, the decline of Pacific bluefin tuna and the dying tradition of a sacred Buddhist temple inside a dormant volcano, where Japanese visitors hope to commune with the dead.


Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis also has the world on her mind these days. In October she was named U.S. ambassador to Hungary by President Obama. In recent years she has been a prominent Democratic fundraiser and is the president of AKT Development Corp. in Sacramento, California. As of this writing no word on when Senate confirmation hearings will take place.


Hank Rogerson and Jilann Spitzmiller, award-winning documentary filmmakers, have turned their attention to helping others hone their craft. They’ve launched Documentors—a Web site to help others make their own documentary films. You can check it out at www.documentaryhowto.com. Hank and Jilann, the founders of Philomath Films, have been making documentaries together for more than 20 years. They’ve won dozens of prestigious awards and their films, including Shakespeare Behind Bars and Homeland, have been shown around the world.


For all you cyclists out there, Jeremy Rider has debuted a new invention called the Sipstream, a bike-mounted hydration system that is available in the D.C. area through Hudson Trail Outfitters or online at www.sipstream.com. You can find other stores nationwide on the Web site. When he’s not presumably hitting the road on his bike, Jeremy lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Jill, and three children,


During my September visit to campus I finally had the chance to visit Rauner Library, formerly known to most of us as Webster Hall. Rauner houses Dartmouth’s Special Collections and archives and the renovated space is stunning, with a glass book refrigerator several stories high at the center and a giant Cat in the Hat to welcome you. You’ll also get a glimpse of a large Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, whose creator was Robert May ’26. Drop in for a visit if you’re back in Hanover.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Many of us have interesting family tales. And then there is our classmate Sean Hemingway, who has been able to turn his own family drama into something of a literary challenge. Sean is the grandson of Ernest Hemingway and the editor of the restored edition of one of the most famous books of the 20th century—A Moveable Feast, a memoir of the author’s early life in Paris, published after his death in the early 1960s. Hemingway’s fourth wife edited the original edition and scholars have long debated the contents, pulled together from an unfinished manuscript. The new edition, published this past summer, is made up of 19 chapters that Ernest Hemingway wanted to include, in the order he had placed them. Ten others chapters are contained in a separate section called “Additional Paris Sketches.” Sean is an associate curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He previously edited a collection of his grandfather’s writings titled Hemingway on War, as well as a separate anthology on hunting. For A Moveable Feast he worked with manuscripts housed in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in Boston. 


Political aspirations have hit our Dartmouth generation. Many of us know Charles Wheelan ’88, the economics professor and author who ran for the vacant U.S. House seat in Illinois in last spring’s Democratic primary.


And of course there is U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand ’88, named to replace Hillary Clinton by New York’s governor. She faces a 2010 election to hold the seat. Both returned to Hanover in June to socialize with old friends at our joint reunion. And now our own classmates are getting into the act. Doug MacGinnitie has served on the city council in Sandy Springs, Georgia, since 2007. Last winter he filed papers to run for Georgia’s secretary of state in 2010. And Neil Abramson, elected to Louisiana’s House of Representatives in 2007, serves the city of New Orleans during its great season of challenges, four years after Hurricane Katrina.


Finally, on a lighter note, our classmate Clay Nichols sends his regrets for missing reunion, which took place over Father’s Day weekend. He has, perhaps, the best excuse: Fatherhood is Clay’s business. And I’m not just talking about his own three children, who are ages 11, 8 and 5. Clay is the co-founder and chief creative officer for DadLabs, a company with a very big sense of humor, which is helping dads “take back paternity.” Check out their Web site (www.dadlabs.com) for a really good laugh. As many of you who know Clay can guess, there’s nothing serious about this venture, other than the fact that it has been extremely successful. Clay was scheduled to appear on MSNBC during our final day of reunion to promote the company’s new book, DadLabs Guide to Fatherhood: Pregnancy and Year One, which was released that day. Clay and his partners previously produced an award-winning DVD and are in the process of developing a TV show based on the company. Clay has also written more than a dozen plays for adult and younger audiences that have been produced around the country.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

It’s a story worthy of Hollywood. Newspaper reporter writes a series, which gets turned into a book, which gets optioned for a movie, which actually gets produced with major stars in the lead roles. All true for Wall Street Journal writer Geeta Anand. Her front-page series detailed a father’s efforts to find a cure for Pompe disease, which was killing two of his children. Her book, The Cure, was published in 2006 and in January Extraordinary Measures hit the big screen, starring Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford. Geeta and her family were planning to travel to the premiere in Los Angeles from their new home in Mumbai, India, where they moved in July of 2008 after many years in New York City. Geeta still works for The Wall Street Journal, now covering Indian healthcare, education and the country’s environmental challenges. She and her husband, Greg Kroitzsh ’87, have two daughters who’ve learned to speak Hindi and have many friends in their new home. Geeta attended Dartmouth after growing up in Bombay and worked for the Rutland Herald and the Boston Globe before joining the Journal, where she won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002.


Raymond Prado and his wife, Gesine Bullock-Prado, traded Los Angeles for the mountains of Vermont five years ago. Here’s what an entertainment blog said last year: “You just don’t find men like Ray Prado in Vermont—motion picture director, storyboard artist, animator, music video producer, college football player, wine connoisseur and retailer, and that’s just for starters.” Ray and Gesine met on a movie set. A graduate of University of Virginia and law school, she ran her sister Sandra’s production company and they lived a sort of Hollywood life. But what she really wanted to do was bake. So they moved east and opened the successful shop, Gesine Confections, in Montpelier, Vermont. This fall saw the publication of her book, Confections of a Closet Master Baker. They recently closed the bakery and moved to Hartford, Vermont, near Woodstock, where they are renovating an old tavern, built in 1794, by Hanover native Freegrace Leavitt. They’ll be shooting a TV show from the new place, which they hope to open in 2010. But that’s not all. He just returned from three months in southern China scouting for a movie and is storyboarding another in Montreal. He has also been second director in recent years on such major Hollywood films as The Proposal and Ray. And he somehow found the time to animate an amazing music video. Check it out on his blog, Everyday Ray, at raymondprado.blogspot.com.


Candace Locklear writes from the Bay Area, where she is loving life and thriving as the director of the mobile practice at her PR agency, Sparkpr. She works with lots of iPhone developers and reports that the mobile Internet is finally coming to life! In late December she was planning to take friends to the rustic, newly renovated DOC cabin in Tahoe, California. The cabin, which can only be reached by snowshoe, is perched on a frozen lake and adjacent to downhill and cross-country skiing. She encourages other alums to join the San Francisco Dartmouth Club and use the cabin!


Finally, as I close this column on Christmas Eve, a joyful e-mail from Chris Kagy and his wife, Rachel, who spent part of the day at the U.S. embassy in Moscow getting a visa for their newly adopted son Alexander Roman Kagy, age 2 1/2, who joined the family in time to ring in the New Year.


My best to all for 2010.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

David Spindler, featured in this column in the last issue for his amazing work as a scholar of the Great Wall of China, has a new production to report. He and wife K.C. welcomed daughter Samantha Dorothy in November. 


Sue Shons Luria writes from Shaker Heights, Ohio, that she’s training for the Boston Marathon, scheduled to take place in April. Sue must really love running since this is her 14th marathon. But she says that her daughters Margot, 7, and Elena, 6, are her true joy. While not running or being Mom Sue works as a consultant in the bioscience industry, developing early-stage companies. She also serves on the Dartmouth Alumni Council, which she humbly neglected to mention. Sue also reports that Jeff Ustin recently moved to Cleveland, Ohio, from Massachusetts with his wife, Pauline, and three kids. Jeff is a trauma surgeon who works with new technologies involving medical robotics.


Anne Boardman Pohnert, who lives in Vienna, Virginia, says that it’s been a good winter for cross-country skiing in the D.C. area. She says it reminds her of skiing around the golf course in Hanover. Anne is a family nurse practitioner and manager of operations for 20 CVS Minute Clinics in Virginia. Anne has recently been singing with the Vienna Choral Society, which performed at the Kennedy Center in December, leading more than 1,500 people in the Messiah Sing-a-Long. In January they were scheduled to perform at Lincoln Center in N.Y.C., singing “The Armed Man for Peace” Mass on Martin Luther King Day. Anne says she sang in the Handel Society for a few years at Dartmouth and enjoys getting back to making music.


Catherine Baggia Duwan says she was disappointed to miss reunion last year, but that she’s been dealing with an acute case of Lyme disease. She says she’s doing much better now and she continues to be active as an alumni interviewer in the Princeton, New Jersey, area, where she lives with her husband, Paul, and boys Connor and Christopher. Catherine also had the chance to visit with Mike Conroy last fall and says he and his family are doing well in Simsbury, Connecticut, where Mike is a trial attorney and partner in a Hartford law firm. She says Mike still enjoys playing lacrosse in a recreational league.


Lenora Brown reports that she is excited to be appointed to the international advisory board for the 2011 International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People (ASSITEJ) World Congress and Performing Arts Festival, to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Malmo, Sweden, in May. ASSITEJ is an international organization that includes a network of thousands of theaters in about 80 member countries. Lenora recently left DePaul University in Chicago, where she was a professor of dramaturgy and dramatic criticism, and she’s on the hunt for her next great adventure in the performing arts world. Lenora got her M.F.A. at the Yale School of Drama.


Finally, as many of you know from our e-mails, our classmates Deanna Emberly Bailey and Chris Bailey suffered the utterly tragic loss of their two sons Solon and Liam in a Kentucky fire on Christmas Day. Close to 800 people turned out for the boys’ funeral in their hometown of Barre, Vermont, in January. Donations can be sent to the Beauregard Foundation: Solon and Liam Bailey Memorial Fund, c/o Chrysalis Ventures, 101 South 5th St., Suite 1650, Louisville, KY 40202. The fund will be used for nonprofit children’s education programs in Vermont. A class memorial is also in the works.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Geological events have left classmates stranded around the globe in recent months. Lisa Tucker McElroy and her husband, Steve, enjoyed a fabulous week, white-water rafting on the Futaleufu River in Patagonia, Chile. They were preparing to head home to Wallingford, Pennsylvania, when the magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck near Santiago, hundreds of miles north. Information was scarce, other than that the airports were closed. They eventually made it home from Buenos Aires after almost a week, following a 12-hour bus ride to Argentina over unpaved roads. When she’s not planning her next big adventure Lisa teaches law at Drexel University and is mom to 9-year-old Abby and 10-year-old Zoe, a competitive figure skater. Lisa has also written a number of biographies for children about famous Washington figures, including Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Sandra Day O’Connor, as well as Ted Kennedy, Alberto Gonzalez and Nancy Pelosi.


Margo Miller and family enjoyed a volcano-extended vacation in the Algarve, in southern Portugal, unable to get home to London for a few extra days, thanks to the Icelandic volcano that halted air travel throughout Europe.


Kris Moller Henley has lived in London for 19 years and says she’s astonished to be mistaken for a Brit when she travels back to the States. She enjoyed a mini-reunion in Quechee, Vermont, last summer with Lisa Colby Crawford and family, including new baby Cate. They enjoyed lunch at EBA’s and a trip to the Co-op for baseball caps. Kris says, “Life in England is good; the family (Olivia, 11, and Victoria, 7) is thriving. Although I am married to an impecunious criminal barrister, free education and free healthcare (including the orthodontist!) make being constantly in the red much more fun. Also, we are now blessed with the most wonderful dog in the world, our English pointer Lucky Jack, and the two best kittens ever, Cleo and Chester.” Kris also enjoyed a visit last spring from Rob Lasser, who came to London on business and joined her family for an afternoon in Guilford. Kris says she loved hearing all about his partner, Bernie, and their son David.


Candace Locklear writes from northern California that she was deeply involved with the launch of the iPad, working with Trudy Muller ’96, who manages the PR for apps at Apple. She says, “I do the PR for electronic arts, and its Scrabble game was a no-brainer for the iPad. I really believe the iPad is a game-changer (pun intended). The new category is simply: family computer. It is so intuitive it will appeal to all ages as the perfect ‘edutainment’ device. Wondering if any alums are working on iPad apps? Lemme know. I am sure Andrew Erlichson is at it right now!”


Finally, congratulations to Andrew Shue, who tied the knot in February with Amy Robach, the co-anchor of NBC’s Weekend Today. Probably not a coincidence, then, that Andrew found himself sitting in for a vacationing Kathie Lee Gifford as co-anchor of the fourth hour of the Today Show. He interviewed Gene Simmons from KISS and chatted with his co-host about everything from the Hollywood gossip of the day to his public service work with Do Something and Café Moms to his ugly feet from years of soccer, to his feeble attempts to make stovetop stuffing. Now that he has five kids in the house (his three and her two), someone please send that man a cookbook!


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Thank goodness for Facebook. How else would I know that not one, but two of our very own classmates entered the online video competition to replace Oprah Winfrey, who’s giving up her talk show after a 25-year run. Lisa Tucker McElroy, featured here recently as a law professor and children’s book author, would call her show, Legal Grounds: Coffee and Conversation with Lisa. Justine Klineman also threw her proverbial hat in the ring, proposing a show called The World of And… with Justine Klineman. Not sure if you’ll still be able to vote by the time you read this column, but you can probably view their audition tapes at myown.oprah.com.


Siobhan Wescott is a woman on the move! She sent New Year’s greetings from Kauai in late December, where she was enjoying the beautiful tropical weather for the holidays. She wrote, “Alaska still holds an irresistible pull on me and I’m working on starting a healthcare consulting company in Anchorage. Plan on traveling a great deal, however. I’m working on creating a standard code alert in hospitals, since the current system of a different code alarm in each hospital is inefficient.” In June she checked in again, this time from Big Timber, Montana, while in the middle of driving from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Alaska. Along the way she stopped in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, to visit David Baldinger. After spending time as a coach for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association in the 1990s David has been a realtor in Steamboat Springs since 1993, specializing in second homes. His helpful vacation home buying tips appeared in Outside magazine in March.


Josh Adler lives in Hoboken, New Jersey, with his wife, Jessica, and almost-5-year-old daughter Ryan. After 10 years as a voiceover agent for Abrams Artists in New York City, Josh decided to call it quits in 2008. He wrote, “I’d burned out on the business and although it was great to work with some amazingly talented actors and celebrities I felt it would be better to change careers at 40 than at 50.” So Josh began a new career as a development officer at Rutgers University’s School of Arts and Sciences. He says the switch has been inspiring, rewarding and a real trial-by-fire to learn the fundraising business during a recession! He’s also become a serious runner, completing his first marathon in N.Y.C. last November in 3:25:13, but missing the qualifying time for the Boston Marathon for our age group by just five minutes. So, what better than a challenge? Josh plans to run the ING N.Y.C. Marathon in November and try again.


Josh and his wife also attended Dartmouth’s Stephen Mandel ’52 dinner in New York in the spring, where our very own class president, Ellie Mahoney Loughlin, received an award from President Kim for her work in helping our class set new fundraising records.


As I write this, the hot summer days are upon us, but as this magazine lands in your mailbox, I’ll be getting ready to head to Hanover for the changing leaves and another Class Officers Weekend. Hope to hear from many of you in the coming months.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

So many of us have been touched by the illnesses of friends and loved ones. I suppose we can only hope to handle adversity with the grace and humor of Carla Zilbersmith, a stand-up comic who recently died of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Carla was the sister-in-law of Allison Moir Smith and the subject of a well-received new film called Leave Them Laughing. Kelley Busby Tiemens worked on the film, which won a special jury prize and was a top 10 audience favorite at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto. The film was scheduled to have its U.S. premiere in October. You can find out more at leavethemlaughingfilm.com/blog.


Jill McClain writes to share some milestones. She recently finished her Ph.D. in nutritional epidemiology and now works as a postdoctoral fellow at Wake Forest University, researching obesity and cardiovascular disease. She’s also a proud new mom. Charlotte Elizabeth Nortman was born on August 10 and Jill writes, “I’m thrilled to finally have her. I guess my milestones are more like those of the class of ’99 than ’89, but better late than never, no?” Recent news also arrived of Karla Cohen’s third child, a son named James.


Eric Rovick, who lives in England, tells of an enjoyable family trip to Enfield, New Hampshire. They spent time in Hanover playing tennis, watching fireworks on the Green, visiting the Hop and eating Ben & Jerry’s. The best part of the summer vacation, says Eric, were the Dartmouth sailing club lessons on Lake Mascoma for the whole family, including their kids, “who enjoyed capsizing the boats a bit too much!” Eric highly recommends the experience for those who get up to Dartmouth in the summer.


Sydney Williams also hit the outdoors for a summer trip to Moosilauke, climbing the mountain with all four of his children, ages 9, 7, 5 and the 2-year-old on his back. Great fun was had by his whole family, including his non-Dartmouth wife, Beatriz, during their two-night stay at the Ravine Lodge, and Syd says the summit views were spectacular. Beatriz’s debut novel will be published in the spring by Putnam. Rights to the book, called Overseas, have already sold in Germany, the Netherlands, Russia and Spain. The book is set during WW I and modern-day Manhattan. After Dartmouth Syd rowed competitively for the New York Athletic Club and worked in Berlin for the government agency privatizing East Germany. After business school he was with Deutsche Bank for nearly 11 years, half of it in London. They now live in Greenwich, Connecticut, where Syd grew up. His firm, Lyceum Associates, now in its sixth year, builds executive roundtables to share insights about the healthcare industry. He also recently chaired Deerfield Academy’s 25th reunion, a class that included Chris Pollard, Chuck Berwick, Dennis O’Connor, Adam Greenberg and Chris Bailey. Syd says much of the reunion was about supporting Chris and Deanna Emberly Bailey after the tragic loss of their boys last December.


Finally, Nancy Bernard Felix moved to London last January with her family. She’s continuing to work for Dartmouth half-time in the development office as a senior philanthropic advisor. She also published a book earlier this year called Oh My, Au Pair! A Complete Guide to Hiring and Hosting an Au Pair. Nancy says it was fun to write and hopes her experience with 14 au pairs will help others.


I’m off to Hanover in a few weeks—a full update next time.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Just a few weeks to go until we gather in Hanover to mark 25 years since we got up early on a Sunday morning in June, donned our black robes, listened quizzically to poet Joseph Brodsky telling us to embrace boredom and headed out into the wide world, diplomas in hand. “Her Spell on us Remains,” as we make our reunion travel plans for June 12-15. There’s so much to draw us back and still plenty of time to register if you haven’t already. Start at our class website, 1989.dartmouth.org and email me with any questions.


We’re also hoping that all ’89s will participate in our 25th reunion book, regardless of whether you join us in Hanover. Please share your reflections at our reunion book site. Go to 1989.dartmouth.org and click on the link. You’ll have the opportunity to submit your reflections on whatever you choose. The book will be organized alphabetically by classmate and you’ll have your own section that can include a combination of a photo or text. The book will be published in the fall.


Steve Blank writes from St. Paul, Minnesota, wondering if he’ll have the youngest kids at reunion. He and his wife, Rebecca Slisz ’95, welcomed their second child, Chelsea, last May. She joins her older brother Jordan, who is 3. About 10 years ago Steve and Rebecca moved to Minnesota, where Steve works as a sourcing manager at GE’s power and water business.


As reunion approaches our thoughts this spring turn to the 14 classmates no longer with us. One year in April since the passing of Jamie Kershaw. And in January we learned that Rick Bartlett passed away in New York after battling a rare lung disease. He was on the waiting list for a transplant at the time of his death. Rick and his wife, Loring, made their home in Rye, New York, with their children Jack, Cole and Caroline. Rick came to Dartmouth from Hudson Falls, New York, and earned varsity letters in football and in track and field as a pole-vaulter. He majored in computer science and was a member of Beta Theta Pi. Rick had a successful career on Wall Street at Citigroup that spanned more than two decades. Since 2007 he served as the head of equities for North and South America. Many ’89s spoke at Rick’s funeral service and reception, including Paul Prentice, Tim Parrott, Michael Luther and Tyler Dickson, who worked with Rick at Citi for many years. In a memo to its staff Citigroup wrote, “Rick was a man of immeasurable character. He always held himself to the highest of standards. Yet with others Rick showed compassion, a mentor who always found, in the midst of difficulty, a teaching moment. People were drawn to Rick. How could they not be? He was thoughtful and charismatic. He was inspiring, seemingly always one step ahead. He put others first, himself thereafter. In Rick you found someone invested in everything he did, everyone he came across.” In early December as Rick waited for the lung transplant that would never come, he wrote, “As many of you know, my favorite phrase is ‘Keep Calm and Carry On.’ That is how I approach each day and it seems to be very appropriate during this difficult time.” 


We will have the opportunity to memorialize Rick and our 13 other classmates immediately following our Saturday lunch at reunion. The service will take place outdoors in the Rocky Courtyard and we hope it will be a welcoming and moving experience for all who can participate.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Close your eyes. Pretend you’re standing in your favorite spot in Hanover. Four months to go until we gather again and in just about two short weeks you can firm up your plans to attend our 25th reunion, scheduled for Thursday through Sunday, June 12-15. “Her Spell on Them Remains” is our theme. Registration begins online on March 1. Look for all the details in your mailbox. Sign up to attend and make sure you secure a place to stay. Bring the whole family or come alone. What matters is having as many ’89s as possible to help us mark this important milestone in our class history. If you register before April 15 you will be eligible for our class raffle. One lucky winner will have their registration fee paid by the Dartmouth Co-Op. 


A fall visit to Hanover brought the perfect time to connect with Paul Sawyer, a minister in Hartland, Vermont. Paul will help us remember the classmates we’ve lost, presiding over our memorial service at reunion. Paul spent a number of years as teacher and about a decade ago decided to pursue his true calling and attended Harvard Divinity School. We spoke about how 25 years provide us with the opportunities for new beginnings as a class—new friendships with classmates and opportunities to connect. So many of us perceive that others are more connected, but it’s simply not true. 


Speaking of new beginnings, a hearty congratulations to a beaming Ed Barker, who recently got engaged to Sara Kurz. Ed is the executive director at Land’s Sake, an educational farm in Weston, Massachusetts.


I’ve recently had the good fortune to run into two classmates. Sharon Barnes came to D.C. for a Dartmouth on Location event involving Pulitzer Prize-winner Annette Gordon-Reed ’81. Reed is a Dartmouth trustee, a professor at Harvard and author of The Hemingses of Monticello. Sharon lives with her husband and two children in Columbia, Maryland. I also ran into Jeanne De Sa, senior vice president of public policy and strategy at United Health Group. Jeanne previously spent many years in the U.S. Congressional Budget Office.


Two ’89s are notably making a difference this year, although of course there are so many more of you out there. Sara B. May, an emergency physician in Seattle, was one of three Dartmouth alums who traveled to the Philippines as part of a medical mission, in the wake of the devastating typhoon. NBC Nightly News captured their efforts and Sara could be seen hard at work in one of their reports.


And congratulations to Connie Britton for receiving a ChangeMakers Award for her work with the African Children’s Choir.


I wind up my last column written in 2013 as I usually do, sitting here by a roaring fire in the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts, looking out at the birch trees and the snow coming down. A mountain hike brought me back to those cold Hanover winters, walking out to the golf course to see the ski jump at Winter Carnival. The giant trestle, built in 1922, slipped into history a few years after we graduated. But there is a fantastic new movie produced by the class of 1965 called Passion for Snow about the history of Dartmouth skiing. If you’re interested, you can order the movie at www.biggreen65.com

As we head into 2014 I’m also thinking ahead to all the reunion planning left to do and wondering how many of you will make the trip to join us. Looking forward to seeing you in just a few short months.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

What is your favorite freshman trip memory? A lot of our classmates had fun answering that question on our class Facebook page recently, all part of a walk down memory lane that we’ll take together over the next year, as we look back a quarter century and ahead to Dartmouth’s future with new college president Phil Hanlon.


Our 25th reunion is just eight months away and the planning is moving ahead full steam for Thursday-Sunday, June 12-15, 2014!


Reunion starts a full day earlier, on Thursday, for our 25th, so mark your calendars. By now you should have probably received our first official reunion letter. All of the following reunion communications and registration will be by e-mail only. So now is the time to make sure that our reunion committee knows how to get in touch.


E-mail alumni.records@dartmouth.edu or you can e-mail me at the address below. If you don’t recall getting any e-mails from our class or the College in the past year, we don’t have your e-mail.


Here are some of the folks missing from our filees: James Bastone, Fox Benton, Isabelle Blasio, Scott Bonz, Emily Brewster, Heather Caldwell, Ashley Chadowitz, Lisa Collins, Kevin Cooper, Lisa Colby Crawford, Dennis Donnelly, Demetrius Eudell, Scott Garber, Nancy Katz, Doug Kroll, Steve Lehman, Jennifer Lois, Chris Maher, John Mahoney, Bill McIlwain, Maryann Murphy, Dana Pilson, Jennifer Pinkas, John Rhee, Katie Bigelow Sawrey, Eric Stambler, Laurie Stearns, Amy Beard Vachris, Martha Wadleigh, Brad Wilder and Jeff Zarse. Many more to come in the next column.


Please also consider joining our Dartmouth “Class of 1989” Facebook page, where we’ll link to lots of reunion information. We’re up to 382 members and counting. We’ll also have a reunion homepage up and running by later in the fall.


In other news, Antonia Rutigliano Nedder has launched her own blog, “Inspirational Sweets: Dessert reviews paired with inspirational, feel-good stories!” You can find her on blogspot.com. Antonia successfully blends nostalgia, life lessons and love of desserts, all rolled into a short blog post that’s worth a read.


Barbara Krauthamer, an associate professor of history at UMass Amherst, has published two books this past year. Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South (UNC Press) is the first full-length study of slavery and the lives of enslaved people in the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations. Barbara says the book examines the ways slavery shaped Native American life and also influenced U.S. policy toward Native peoples in the Deep South from the early 1800s through the end of the 19th century. She also co-authored Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery (Temple University Press). Barbara says it features more than 150 photographs of enslaved and freed black Americans, and focuses on many photographs made by prominent African American photographers, including Augustus Washington, who attended Dartmouth in the early 1840s.


Meredith McCredie Winter enjoyed her annual summer get-together in northern Maine with Sue Shons Luria,Ariel Tabor MacTavish and Lindsey Brace Martinez. They have seven kids among them, all within a four-year age span, and the agenda contains plenty of hiking, swimming, kayaking and fun. Meredith writes, “As the kids get older, we find more time to hang out and catch up with each other instead of mediating squabbles or organizing activities.” 


Sounds like a perfect plan for our 25th reunion too. The College will organize the activities and programs for your kids, if you want to bring them. And you’ll get plenty of time to catch up and reconnect with old friends. 


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

“Was it a slow day at the office or a truly sub-par attempt to sue a client that inspired lawyer Stephen B. Kaplitt to write what is possibly the greatest response to a cease-and-desist letter ever?” So wrote The Huffington Post about Steve’s response to the township of West Orange, New Jersey, on behalf of his pro bono client. The town attorney accused the client of confusing readers about the ownership of his website. Steve wrote, in part, that since his client “had not previously encountered a humorous lawyer, he actually thought your letter may have been a serious effort by the township to protect its legitimate interests. Rest assured, I’ve at least convinced him that it was certainly not some impulsive, ham-fisted attempt to bully a local resident solely because of his well-known political views. After all, as lawyers, you and I both know that would be flagrantly unconstitutional and would also, in the words of my 4-year-old, make you a big meanie.” The entire letter made me laugh out loud and it went viral worldwide. Luckily, since it’s probably too late for a comedy career, Steve has found success working in international finance and government at the State Department, USAID and later Beacon Financial. He’s now an independent attorney in New York City and lives, no surprise, in West Orange, New Jersey.


Much to my great surprise, Nellie Huang and her husband, Jon Winslow ’87, live around the corner from me in Bethesda, Maryland. They moved back to the states from Hong Kong in 2011 and have 7-year-old twins Jack and Chloe and 9-year-old daughter Kate. Nellie is senior associate editor for Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, after years of writing for The Wall Street Journal, Money magazine and SmartMoney magazine.


Sydney Williams launched the first alumni sprints rowing regatta in Greenwich, Connecticut, in April. The event welcomed more than a hundred rowers from 14 colleges and universities. Dartmouth’s Ever Green boat club won five events, and the rowers included Syd and Marc Monplaisir. Alex Simpson helped on the administrative side and Syd says he has contributed enormously to the growth of the Ever Green Boat Club.


Warmest congratulations to Barbara Kuck Close, who married Paul Swerbul in Darien, Connecticut, in June. In attendance on the beautiful day were Pam Peedin, Elizabeth Eilender, Shannon Reid, Erin Flanigan and Susan Kuran Lodge. Barbara’s first husband, Steve, passed away in 2008.


Finally, a heartfelt thanks to the classmates who stood for all of us at Jamie Kershaw’s memorial service at Dreamworks in Los Angeles in May. Anton Anderson spoke on behalf of our class, surrounded by Linda Salzhauer Swenberg, Caroline Luft, Alec Scott, Allison Moir-Smith, Patrick Munoz, Adam Glick, Katy Beierle Klinkenberg, Julie Livingston, Catherine Atwell, Kim Hall, Anne Gazzaniga, Karen Berlin Cooperstein, Seth Skolnik and Jennifer Downs O’Shaughnessy, who delivered a moving eulogy. Jamie, she said, was already a legend after five minutes of freshman year. She recalled his voice, his smile and that fabulous evil glint in his eye. She remembered a brilliant intellect and a pure light, which, “when it shone on you, you just felt so grateful.” She concluded, “In honor of Jamie, I will be game—I will jump on the trampoline with my children, I will dance to Barry Manilow and I will try to shine a bit of that light on anyone who needs it. Remember the glee and the twinkle and that open-mouth hug and share it with someone else.”


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Glorious weather marked my return to campus in May for Alumni Council and a few packed days of activities. Along with attending the dedication of the Geisel School of Medicine and a spectacular performance by the Dartmouth Aires, I toured the new Class of ’78 Life Sciences Center, a “green” building at the north end of campus. Its innovative heating and cooling systems allow the College to save resources, and the modern teaching and research spaces encourage a more collaborative approach to science. The rooftop greenhouses are worth a visit, along with the rooftop rain garden.


President Kim also delivered his farewell to the council, saying he’s filled with terrible and wonderful emotions as he leaves Dartmouth. He says his primary mission is to serve the poor and he just couldn’t say no to the opportunity to lead the World Bank. But he says Dartmouth people exhibit a kind of passion that he’s never seen before and never expects to see again. “As painful as it is for me to leave,” said Jim Kim, “please know that I will (serve the world) as the 17th president of Dartmouth.” 


Gretchen Shufelt Stoddard travelled to Alaska during the summer after graduation and she’s lived there ever since, along with her husband and son. She works for Hilcorp Energy, which owns offshore oil and gas platforms near Anchorage. She writes, “I know jokes about Russia are now an Alaska cliché,” but in fact her husband travels to the Russian oilfields north of Japan several times a year and their son spends half his school day learning in Russian in the local public school. Hockey is a year-round sport and parents travel with extra pucks and down clothing at all times. At the time of her writing, Gretchen was looking forward to long Alaska summer days of sunshine and family time at a lake 70 miles north of Anchorage.


Ed Barker has a new job as executive director at Land’s Sake, a community-based farm and sustainable agriculture organization in Weston, Massachusetts. He writes, “After a highly satisfying and totally re-energizing nine-month sabbatical, I’m psyched and ready to take on this new challenge. 


“Land’s Sake has been connecting people to the land and the food system since 1980. Its school-based and other educational programs complement the farm’s production of a wide range of healthy, local and organically grown crops. Last year Land’s Sake served more than 200 community-supported agricultural members, donated more than 20,000 pounds of produce to regional food banks and charities and ran a successful farm stand and pick-your-own produce. It’s well poised to become a center for regional discussions about community-based agriculture, local and regional food systems and ‘sustainability on the plate.’ ” Ed is offering tours for any ’89s in the Boston area who visit the farm and hopes that all of us will stop by our local community farms this summer, “buy a bunch of greens and feel virtuous.”


Finally, congratulations to Brigid Dotterer Herrick on the publication of Birth Happy: The Savvy Woman’s Approach to a Satisfying Birth, which she co-authored with her midwife. She writes, “Birth Happy is truly special in that it provides the perspective of both a healthcare provider and a fellow mom—and with a healthy dose of humor!” Brigid embarked on writing the book after giving birth to her fourth child. The Herrick family, who live in Leesburg, Virginia, also welcomed their fifth child, Quincy, on Super Bowl Sunday 2011. Her website www.savywomanbirth.com was expected to launch in July.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Greetings from Siobhan Wescott, columnist pinch hitter, having resumed frequent traveling after graduating medical school three years ago (no longer tethered to a pager for long hours helps significantly). These travels brought me in contact with a surprising number of married ’89 couples, starting in D.C. with our (underappreciated) columnist Jennifer Avellino and Zach Levine, a neurosurgeon. Over Zach’s famous chili, another ’89 couple, Kurt Moser and Linda Kelly, and I indulged in a little nostalgia on Homecoming Weekend.


Also in the D.C. area are Katharine Gagné and Geof Hobday, who recently celebrated their 21st anniversary and have three daughters. Indeed, Geof is severely outnumbered. Katharine is a health insurance manager and recently collaborated with writer-producer Paul DeVeaux ’88 on his newly released full-length film, Adams Morgan: The Movie. Carolyne Allen did PR work and Lionel Harris did PR and fundraising for the film. Geof is an attorney investigator at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission focusing on curbing Enron-like market manipulation. The best part of the job is apparently the badge in a leather case, which he can dramatically present at energy companies. 


Trips to the Boston area brought me close to two more ’89 couples, including my former North Mass roommate and our class president, Ellie Mahoney Loughlin and hubby Phil Loughlin, who spent the month of June traveling through Asia with their teenagers. 


When Ellie, Katie Willard, Tracy Coleman and I gathered for dinner, Katie shared the big news that after more than 20 years in the Boston area, her family is relocating to St. Louis, Missouri, where her husband, John, will be managing finances for recording artists. Katie does not have immediate plans for another novel after penning Raising Hope in 2005, in which she managed to faithfully portray the woes of human nature while still finding the best in people. Please write more! I caught a performance of her daughter Zoe at the Boston Ballet’s up-and-coming talent night. Tracy’s career at State Street Bank continues, and her 3-year-old twins are adorable. We explored the aquarium, my favorite pastime from a brief childhood period lived in Boston. Tracy and husband Ken Truesdale led the twins around as they alternated between fascination and fear with the marine life.


Brian Freyermuth, Esq., and Amy Holden, an integral part of MIT’s media lab, added home ownership to their married life last year. This year they’re learning fly-fishing (now that ski season is over). Following in Jennifer Block Cromheecke’s childhood footsteps, I’m spending the summer on Martha’s Vineyard, living in Aquinnah, Massachusetts, next to the Wampanoag tribe, and loving it. Looking forward to more Dartmouth folks coming to the island, too.


Okay, back to your sponsor now. Jennifer here. Thanks to Siobhan for the guest appearance. She’s too modest to brag about her own accomplishments, but Siobhan has a master’s in public health from UCLA and an M.D. from Harvard. She’s served as a cancer educator and a co-editor of two books on children with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), in addition to serving on the board of directors for the National Organization on FAS. 


Finally, our very own Ned Ward will be competing in the finals of Fortune magazine’s Battle of the Corporate Bands on September 30 and October 1 at Cleveland, Ohio’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Since 1995 Ned has been a fixture in The Toys, along with other fellow employees of Mattel. Find Ned on Facebook and follow the band—and he welcomes any classmates to turn out in Cleveland to cheer them on!


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Brian Frazier has been an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami since 2000. His tenure has included serving as the prosecutor on U.S. v. Jose Padilla, the case of the U.S. citizen who trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Padilla was convicted in 2007 and Brian’s team won the Attorney General’s Award, the Justice Department’s highest honor. He later went overseas as the Justice Department attaché to the United Arab Emirates and worked in eight Middle Eastern countries on terrorism and proliferation issues, returning to the U.S. attorney’s office in 2011. Brian splits his time between Miami and Clinton, Louisiana, where he’s been working on an old house, circa 1840, which he calls “the proverbial money pit. The countryside there is beautiful,” he says, “and the town has lots of eccentric, Southern charm, with a touch of the gothic. It’s where HBO films True Blood. By coincidence, the house was built by a Dartmouth man, class of 1837, who came south to seek his fortune, but lost the property in 1842 and died of yellow fever two years later. I have every intention of faring much better!”


Bonnie An Henderson serves as an overseer at the newly named Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. An internationally recognized expert in cataract surgery, Bonnie is an ophthalmologist who has lectured around the United States, Europe and Asia. Formerly at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, she’s now in private practice, but continues teaching. Her husband, Ted Henderson, is a managing director at Schooner Capital in Boston. They have a 16-year-old son, Tiger, and 12-year-old twins, Skye and Sienna. Ted plays semi-annual golf matches with Mars Bishop and Paul Mahoney and Paul was kind enough to share loads of news. He and his wife, Eloise, live in Providence, Rhode Island, and their daughters Maddie (14) and Liza (12) play ice hockey, which makes Paul very happy, because he plays twice a week. When not on the ice he’s a law partner at Edwards Wildman Palmer, with a focus on private equity and mergers and acquisitions. Eloise is an art teacher at an independent middle school for disadvantaged boys, where Paul serves on the board and mentors students.


The Mahoney family had a lot of fun with Jon Lubow and his wife, Jessie ’92, at their home on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, in August. Jon trades options on futures and is an avid paddle tennis player, competing in national tournaments. There’s a very funny “bag check” video of him on YouTube that’s worth watching. Jon and Jessie live in New Jersey with their daughters Caroline (11) and Katie (9).


Paul also sees Mars and his wife, Felicia Hwang Bishop ’90, who live in Barrington, Rhode Island. They participate in triathlons and Mars is hoping to redouble his training efforts to get on the podium as often as Felicia! They have three children, Mars, Tea and Lachlan. The senior Mars has an investment management firm called Blue Fin Capital and Felicia has her own home furnishings business. 


Paul and Mars also had fun during a spring visit from Ted Young, who lives with his family in Wilton, Connecticut. His wife, Cyndi, is a dentist, and Ted is a corporate development consultant at Eagle Ocean Transport, an international shipping company. They have three children, John Arthur, Cate and C.J. Ted is also active with USA Wrestling as a coach. 


Paul also recently caught up with his old senior-year roommate, Ted Chung, during a Chicago visit. Ted is a litigation partner with Jones Day. He and his wife, Lydia, have two sons, Max and Cameron.


Jennifer Avellino, 5012 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

This July marked the second Emmy nomination for Connie Britton, for “Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.” Connie was nominated two years in a row for her role as Tami Taylor on the show Friday Night Lights, which recently ended its run after five years on the air. She’s currently working on a movie called The To-Do List.


Charlie Williams is busy settling his family of five in their new Italian home. In June they left North Carolina, where Charlie was a professor at Duke’s Business School and where he taught a Ph.D. seminar jointly with Milan’s Bocconi University, his future employer. Charlie says they were sad to leave their friends and neighborhood, which included 30 miles of mountain biking and hiking trails, but were ready for their new adventure. The move was exhausting, especially since it involved bringing the cat and their Great Pyrenees dog! But, Charlie writes, “Here we are, living in a fifth-floor apartment two blocks from my university, frequenting Ikea for wardrobes and chairs and learning Italian at the dog park and gelateria. Big city living means busy traffic, noisy streets and music from the pole-dancing studio blaring on our balcony. But it also includes a fresh market with fish and figs and tomatoes to bring tears to your eyes. Yesterday the older kids rode their ripsticks from the cathedral to the castle. So I suppose we are adjusting little by little.” 


Bobby Jaffe completed his first full Ironman triathlon at Lake Placid, New York, in July, calling it truly about the journey and experience, putting yourself and your training to the test. The race is a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run. Bobby writes, “My day started with the voice of Ironman saying, ‘Go out and have the best day of your life.’ It’s a very emotional start, which within seconds turns into a 2.4-mile swim—a bit hectic at first, but it turns out to be very cool to be swimming with 2,400 other athletes!” Bobby says it’s a challenge and a huge time commitment but “anyone can do this, even at our age.”


Dan Rivers has an important question: What do you want your legacy to be? His own answer prompted him in 2008 to found Nexus Alliance, a network of professional black men in Massachusetts dedicated to community service, mentoring and fostering business alliances and civic leadership. One of Dan’s projects involves mentoring inner-city kids and he says that when kids see a black doctor or lawyer, they can see an alternative to being in a gang. Dan has a long history working in business and finance and recently founded his own boutique investment bank. He lives in Medford, Massachusetts, with his wife, Kim, and their six children, including 5-year-old twins and a 2-year-old. 


Tim Derrick took his wife and children on a swing through New Hampshire and Maine during the summer, which included his first trip back to Hanover in more than 10 years. After Dartmouth Tim spent six years in the U.S. Army and later coached the U.S. Olympic biathlon team at the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan. He went on to work in wind energy at Enron and GE after business school, and in 2007 co-founded a solar energy company in southern California, Axio Power, where he’s currently the CEO. Tim and his wife, Veronica, live in San Clemente, California, with their 13-year-old son Grant and daughters Charlotte, 3, and Aurora, 2. 


Finally, congratulations to Heather Killebrew and husband Pete, who welcomed baby Ruby into the world on June 1.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Michele (Dogin) Hernandez Bayliss turned 46 in spectacular style this winter, hiking the last of the “Winter Adirondack 46” with a 17-mile, 12-hour hike over three difficult peaks. Fewer than 600 hardy souls have braved these 4,000-foot-plus peaks in frigid temperatures, and Michele seems invigorated by the experience. She writes, “I feel privileged to have the chance to get out in winter and see such beautiful sights. It was in the 1-10 degree range all day, so a cold but exciting finish.” Although there’s no technical climbing, you have to be prepared with crampons, snowshoes and a heavy dose of mental grit. She’s also checked off all 48 of the White Mountains and has a few left in Maine to finish all 115 4,000-foot-plus peaks in the Northeast. She’s become a winter gear expert along the way and, despite all the high-tech wicking material available, she says there’s nothing like good old-fashioned wool. Michele lives in Weybridge, Vermont, and has a 15-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son. When not on the trail she’s better known as the founder of Hernandez College Consulting.


After working in Dartmouth’s development office as a senior philanthropic advisor, Nancy Bernard Felix has moved on to share her talents with the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), joining the USOC in July, just in time for the London games. On her first day in London she was introduced to her new intern, Carolyn Sussman, who turned out to be the daughter of Emily Glasser. Nancy and Emily were able to catch up later that day. Nancy is based in New York and gearing up for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. She’s looking forward to meeting future Dartmouth Olympians. The only ’89 Olympian, Sarah Konrad,made history as the first U.S. female athlete to compete in two different sports at a Winter Olympic games—biathlon and cross-country skiing. She was the oldest member of the U.S. Olympic team in Torino, competing in 2006 at the age of 38. Tim Derrick, former U.S. biathlon team member, helped coach the U.S. team in Nagano in 1998.


Brian Otley returned to Hanover this fall for the 44th annual Dartmouth Relays in Leverone, which also served as a mini-reunion for the 4-year-old alumni group, the Lone Pine Track Club. Brian is one of the group’s founders, along with Dan Ford and Brian Lenihan. Alumni from around the country made the trip to compete in masters division events and cheer on Dartmouth’s men’s and women’s track teams. Brian says the goal is for athletes to have a lifetime connection to the track program through the club so that they stay in touch and meet new people from other eras of the program. They support Dartmouth’s current track program in spirit and through alumni giving and provide an affiliation for older athletes who compete in the masters division. 


Seth Leopold checked in from Seattle, where he’s a professor of orthopedics and sports medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He’s still teaching and doing joint replacement surgery, but he’s taken on a second job as editor-in-chief of the specialty orthopedic journal, Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research. Seth says he loves thinking about science, along with reading and editing, so despite the steep learning curve he thinks the job will be a good fit. He’s been married to his wife, Jill, for more than two decades and they have two middle school-age daughters, Dagny and Amelia.


Finally, the count down is on! One year until our 25th reunion. Mark the dates in your calendar for June 12-15, 2014.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Our very own Phil Ginsburg is a real-life Amy Poehler, whose fictional TV character stars in the NBC sitcom, Parks and Recreation. Phil manages the entire recreation and parks department for the city of San Francisco, and truly sounds like he loves his work.


He says the challenges place him right in the middle of a living laboratory experiment for making 21st-century government work. He’s responsible for 1,100 employees and 230 parks, playgrounds and open spaces, including a marina, multiple golf courses and the famed Coit Tower. When Phil took the job in July of 2009 his boss, then San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, called Phil a “skilled manager and natural leader who loves this city and our parks.”


Phil previously served as the mayor’s chief of staff, as well as head of the city’s human resources department and a labor union lawyer. His wife, Emily, is an anesthesiologist and they have daughters Grace and Sarah, in sixth and third grades. They live near Golden Gate Park, where Phil runs every morning and gets to keep an eye on one of the many beautiful city treasures under his watch.


Seth Rosenblatt moved to the West Coast for a temporary assignment in 1994 and never looked back. He and his family live south of San Francisco in the town of San Carlos, where Seth is in his second term on the school board and currently serves as its president. He has also run his own consulting company since 2009, following many years in marketing, strategic planning and business development, including leading two software company startups. He and his wife, Sara, a pediatrician, have 12-year-old son Benjamin and 10-year-old daughter Mia.


Joanna Morris is an assistant professor of psychology at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. She describes her research as lying at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience and linguistics, with the goal of figuring out how people process language. Joanna got her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, following a linguistics degree at Oxford during her Rhodes scholarship. Her almost-5-year-old son Dominic is getting ready to start kindergarten.


Congratulations to Peter Converse, a first-time author. HarperCollins published his book for teens, Subway Girl, last year. It’s the story of the connection between two teenagers, despite their language barrier.


Andrew Erlichson,last seen in this column exploring the Galapagos Islands with his family over the holidays, lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife, Bari Anhalt Erlichson ’91, and their kids Emily, 12, and Matthew, 9. Andrew studied electrical engineering at Stanford. He recently sold his Internet photo-hosting company, Phanfare, to Carbonite, a Boston-based company, and joined them as vice president for Carbonite Labs. Bari is assistant commissioner of education for the state of New Jersey.


Finally, for those of you who saw the 2012 Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, you may have missed the jewelry worn by the cover model. Time to go back and check out the picture, so you can see the fabulous necklace designed by Sonya Ooten Frisina. The “collage” necklace is a pave diamond star, South Sea pearl and two pyrite beads on a gold chain from Sonya Ooten jewelry’s limited collection. Sonya lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Chris, two daughters and a son. Her jewelry has appeared in numerous fashion magazines from Vogue to Glamour and is available at many high-end stores, including Barneys New York, Neiman Marcus and Saks. Her flagship store, Sonya Ooten Gem Bar, opened in L.A. in 2005.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Every fall for the last seven years at Tuck’s orientation Russell Wolff has given a speech to students about dream jobs, a perfect description of his own life since he graduated from Tuck in 1994. Russell worked at MTV, directing sales and marketing for that network and a number of others, including Comedy Central. In 1997 he jumped to ESPN, where these days he’s Executive vice president and managing director, overseeing 46 networks outside the United States. He’s responsible for all of ESPN’s international interests and spends about 65 percent of his time traveling around the world. The programming on these networks is tailored to local interests and when we spoke, Russell was getting ready to head to India for the Cricket World Cup. When not globetrotting he lives in Mamaroneck, New York, with his sons Michael, 9, and Spencer, 7, and his wife, Patty, who recently retired from PepsiCo as a VP. Russell even finds a bit of time to keep playing ice hockey and he serves on the board of Tuck, helping business students pursue their own dreams for the future.


Elsewhere in the wide world of sports Tom Paskus checks in from Indianapolis, Indiana, where he works for the NCAA as its principal research scientist. Tom has a Ph.D. in quantitative psychology from UVA and previously taught at the University of Denver. His job sounds pretty complex and he says family and friends want to know if it involves ticket distribution, which it doesn’t! It does involve analyzing the academic and athletic success of students from more than a thousand colleges, universities and athletic conferences that belong to the NCAA. Tom also looks at the data about their lives outside sports and beyond college to look at trends and the role that sports plays in their lives. Tom is married with two children, Molly, 8 and Grant, 5. He hasn’t run competitively for many years, but says he stays in shape and enjoys visiting with Dartmouth friends on his travels, including a number of former track guys.


Alex Simpson lives in Manhattan, where he’s general counsel of Reis Inc., an online commercial real estate information company. He has two children, Shae, 9 and Austin, 7, and his wife, Lisa, is a partner at Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe. Alex and Marc Monplaisir are helping to organize and encourage Dartmouth alumni rowers to get back in the game at alumni and masters events. For more information go to www.evergreenboatclub.com, and head out to cheer them on at the Head of the Charles next October.


Erich Fischer writes from D.C., where he’s a partner at Booz & Co. He married Hallie Henderson last September at his house on Nantucket, Massachusetts, and they honeymooned in the Maldives and Kenya in December, after getting engaged in the hills of Tuscany. Erich says he still finds a bit of time for playing and writing music and for sailing on the Chesapeake and elsewhere. He happened to be in New York City on business in February and joined close to 20 classmates and spouses at the ’89 cocktail party.


A hearty thanks to Jennifer Kochman Marrus, who hosted the party at her Tribeca loft, complete with ’89 napkins and Dartmouth cookies. Among those attending were Russell, Alex, Marc and Erich, who are mentioned above. Others included Josh Adler, Jamie Heller, Kristen von Summer Waldorf, Bridget Fawcett, Brian Meyer, Catherine Baggia Duwan, Tim Brody, Kevin Braker, Dennis Morgan, Nancy Obler and of course our mini-reunion chair Laura Fitch Mattson. If you’d like to host a mini-reunion in your city, let us know!


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Spring is around the corner, but this column was written in the middle of an old-fashioned New England snowstorm, on the cusp of a new year, as giant flakes fell outside my lakeside window in the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts. I opened Yankee magazine to see a picture of a wintry Occom Pond, a reminder of seasons past. Eric Korenman, a radiologist at the nearby Berkshire Medical Center and still an avid photographer, wrote that his son’s ski practice was cancelled because of the heavy snow. He and his family have resided in Massachusetts since 2000.


One of the great pleasures of this job is hearing from classmates around the globe, especially after an absence of many years. Thokozani Xaba writes from Durban, South Africa, where he is the dean of the University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Built Environment and Development Studies. He is married with five children, including a 22-year-old daughter who recently completed her medical degree and wants to be a marine biologist. Thokozani and his wife, who is a teacher, also have four sons, ranging from ages 6 to 14. He visits the United States about once a year for American Sociological Association Conference or the African Studies Association Conference, and writes, “Believe it or not, I have become a bureaucrat. I enjoy my visits to the United States because they are one of the few reminders and places where I can still pretend to be an academic.”


Now, onto part two of the David Irwin update. He reports that last spring he drove up to the Wautoma, Wisconsin, farm of Rob Albright for a day of turkey hunting. “For three hours on a Sunday morning,” he writes, “we sat in our tent under a 40-degree rain, watching several toms strut around, 30 to 50 yards out of range.” Rob reports much better luck on their pheasant hunting expedition in the fall. Rob lives in Edina, Minnesota, and works at Alternative Strategy Advisors, the investment firm that he started a few years ago with Randy Jacobus ’88. Rob and Carolyn have a son and a daughter. Dave also caught up with Peter Lurie in New York and reports that Peter has been working in strategic partnerships at American Express.


Ted Chung recounted to Paul Mahoney not too long ago, that he ran into Brooks Entwistle in the customs line at the New Delhi airport last summer. Brooks was headed back to Singapore and Ted back to Chicago. Ted reports that Brooks is the “head honcho” (aka chairman) of Goldman Sachs Southeast Asia, after being the chairman in India. Every summer Brooks and his wife and children fly to Canada from the Far East to spend time at a summer place around Toronto.


Zach Levine, otherwise known as your secretary’s spouse, has a new position as the chair of neurosurgery at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland. He specializes in cranial-based surgery and surgery for movement disorders, including Parkinson’s. He recently had the chance to catch up with his old fraternity brother John Shaw and John’s wife, Elizabeth, at their lovely house during a trip to San Francisco. A Chicago neurosurgery meeting also allowed him to cross paths with his freshman-year roommate Chris Ames, a neurosurgeon and the head of spinal deformity and spine tumor surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. Chris did his residency at the University of California, San Diego, followed by a fellowship at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Arizona, before he settled in San Francisco. Chris is married with three children—Pearson, Sebastian and Scarlett—and has taken up photography in his spare time.


Finally, congratulations to Scott McElhaney, who has been elected president-elect of the Dallas Bar Association.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

In the waning days of 2011, as I write this, our classmates are round the girdled earth. Andrew Ehrlichson in the Galapagos Islands; Todd and Jennifer Block Cromheecke in Keystone, Colorado; Andrew Klein in Paris; Rob Hollister in Denver from his home in Shanghai; Sonya Ooten Frisina in Maui; Carolyne Allen in Las Vegas; Jamie Kershaw in Key West, Florida; and more. May the year 2012 bring us all much happiness. Jamie, who lives in Los Angeles, is starting a new career at Hulu, following nine years at DreamWorks Animation. Fiona Bayly has a new job at Black Umbrella, a company that provides emergency preparedness plans for families. Fiona works with the owner Catherine Hooper and her fiance Andrew Madoff, who recently released a book about his family’s troubles. Fiona says both are delightful and very dedicated to their work.


The holiday season brought the now famous Dartmouth Aires to Washington, D.C., to meet the president and sing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. A few hundred of us were fortunate to hear their post-White House concert, which proved to be a good chance to catch up with some fellow ’89s. Linda Kelly showed up with news of her new job at the association of corporate counsel. Tressa Munoz joined the fun. Paul “Forno” Cachion brought his wife, Sylvie, and daughters Mia and Zoe. His daughters were excited to meet the Aires in person, and must have been wowed to see dad relive his singing days when he had the chance to join his old group for “Dartmouth Undying.” Paul thought the Aires sounded great, but said it was amazing how some things never change. A couple of the jokes were the same from our undergraduate days and Paul says they even did the exact same choreography on “Shama Lama Ding Dong!” These days Paul works at the Securities and Exchange Commission, after a number of years at the Corporate Executive Board.


A November Boston gathering brought together a number of old friends, including Amy Beard Vachris, Allison Polley Hirsch, Karen Hunter Korn, Tori Stevens, Dawn Lavallee Seiple, Martha Wadleigh, Elizabeth G. Doherty, Julie McColl McKenna, Ellie Mahoney Loughlin and Kristen Daly Schneider.


For those of you venturing to the Hanover Plain, the Hanover Inn is closed for renovations through the spring and will reopen with a street-side restaurant and an updated interior. Meanwhile, the snazzy new Six South Street Hotel is a good place to hang your hat.


Finally, as I close my first column for 2012, I ask you to keep Randi Engle in your thoughts. She continues to wage war on pancreatic cancer with a determined and upbeat attitude while keeping her disease in check and her humor intact. Her outlook should be an inspiration to us all.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

On a stunning fall day in early October, I drove up a tree-lined Vermont road to the White River Junction farm of our very own Chuck Wooster.


He bought the place in 1998 and has transformed it into my idea of what might lie at the end of a rainbow. On his 98-acre hillside he raises more than 50 varieties of vegetables, as well as sheep, pigs and chickens. Much of his land is wooded, but from about 20 acres of usable farmland he helps feed more than a hundred families through something called Community Supported Agriculture. The farm-to-table movement around the country has convinced many of us to buy at least some of our food, directly from the source. Chuck’s families visit Sunrise Farm weekly in the summer to pick out their edibles and enjoy the farm’s beautiful flowers and long mountain vistas.


As you read this during these cold months Chuck might be sitting at his desk in his restored yellow farmhouse, perhaps writing an article for Northern Woodlands magazine, where he’s an associate editor. Maybe he’s reviewing the seeds he’s starting for the months to come or eyeing his sugaring house, planning for the boiling of the sap from the maple trees as soon as the days begin to warm. You can find a full profile of Chuck and Sunrise Farm on our class website, www.dartmouth89.org, one of a series of occasional profiles that we hope to bring you about the lives of our classmates.


In other news, Mark Filimonov writes from Nevada City, California, north of Sacramento. His new business, www.thegrantfarm.com, helps entrepreneurs, businesses and public agencies apply for public funding for transportation and renewable-energy projects through writing grants. Mark says since early 2009 he’s helped to raise about $15 million for startups and others in the clean transportation and renewable energy sectors. He was also recently engaged to be married and spends his time managing his freelance writing work and raising his two daughters, ages 16 and 11.


Rani Sellers lives in White Plains, New York, with her husband, John and 6-year-old son Spencer. She is in her fifth year as an associate professor in the department of pathology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She loves her job and says working in the Bronx is quite an experience. I’m a little unsure if that’s why Rani decided to take up tae kwon do, but she is apparently quite good at it, since she has a black belt and is working toward getting to second dan.


Catherine Baggia Duwan writes that since her kids are now in middle school she’s joined the legal department of Princeton, New Jersey-based Church & Dwight, a consumer goods conglomerate best known for Arm & Hammer brands. She sounds quite happy to be back to work and says Professor Rassias would be proud that she’s putting her Spanish, French and Italian to good use writing the fine print for contracts around the world.


Jennifer Byrnes Brower lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her husband, Dave, and their three kids: Jacob, 12, Cecelia (“Cece”), 10, and Samantha, 7. Jennifer is the executive VP for programs and operations of the International Neuroscience Network Foundation, where she runs brain-related international science projects on Parkinson’s, motor research and other areas. She also does K-12 science outreach—trying to get kids interested in science. And Jennifer is a principal scientist with Prometheus Inc., a small female-owned software and engineering firm that specializes in applied mathematics, where she works on everything from preventing the detonation of improvised explosive devices to finding and identifying cancerous tumors.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Class of ’89s are making lots of waves in Dartmouth Alumni Magazine these days, which seems just about right to me. I’m hoping you caught the profiles in the May/June issue of Harmeet Dhillon, the new vice chair of the California Republican Party, and Chuck Wooster, Vermont farmer and writer. If you missed the articles, go dig up your magazine or find them at dartmouthalumnimagazine.com. Ellie Mahoney Loughlin and I were lucky enough to drop in at Chuck’s farm in early April for a delicious taste of the maple syrup that had just finished boiling away in the sugarhouse. 


Dan Parish and I had the chance to catch up with Geeta Anand, who traveled from her home in Mumbai for the Greenways weekend—the 40th anniversary of coeducation at Dartmouth. Our Pulitzer prize-winning classmate still works for The Wall Street Journal as a senior writer and has been based for the past five years in India, where she lives with her two teenage daughters and her husband, Greg Kroitzsh ’87, who recently opened a brewpub in Mumbai. Some of you may remember that Geeta’s book, The Cure, was turned into a Hollywood movie starring Harrison Ford.


Finally, I write this at the end of a difficult week in late April. Despite the riot of spring colors all around, it has been a week to mourn. Four people killed and more than 170 wounded in the horrific Boston Marathon bombings and its aftermath. Many of our classmates were locked in their homes during the manhunt for the bomber.


But the April 15 bombing also came just hours after news of the death of our beloved classmate, Jamie Kershaw. Here are some of the words used to describe Jamie on the 1989 Facebook page: humor, energy, warmth, intense brightness, a shining light, smart, funny, spreading love, a heartbreaking loss of a wonderful man.


I’ll leave you with this description from Alec Scott. “Jamie Kershaw was a small-town boy from upstate New York, an IBM brat, who set Dartmouth on fire. He was struggling to figure out how to be gay. He was friends with everyone, the crew gods, the protesting shanty dwellers, the Kappa Kappa Gamma girls, involved in everything. His day-by-day was utterly chock filled, and maybe he could squeeze you in for lunch next Tuesday. You’d see him all over campus walking backwards, leading tours. In the fraternity system, he struggled to find his place, eventually settling on a co-ed house. He was so busy that you had no idea how he got those great marks—Phi Beta Kappa. He performed ‘I Got You Babe’ at Collis, with Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis, the future ambassador to Hungary, as Sonny to his Cher. He was warm and sweet and complicated. The funniest person I’ve ever met. After Dartmouth he went to Stanford law, acing that also. Casque & Gauntlet, paddling the Connecticut to the sea, he loved to ‘Carol Merrill’ major sites—do that display thing that the Price is Right woman would do—and so there were great shots of him Carol Merrill-ing the Great Pyramids, while he was in the Middle East on an Arabic language study abroad. I just caught up with him in L.A.…still the funniest person I’ve ever met.”


A fuller obituary will appear on the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine website.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Paul Sawyer lives in a log cabin in the woods in Hartland Four Corners, Vermont. He’s the minister for the Unitarian Universalist church in Hartland, which he says is a growing, lively, friendly group of people. He and his wife, Katy, have two children—Emma, 11, and Aidan, 4. Paul writes, “We just began homeschooling Emma and one of her first requests was to ‘just go into the library at Dartmouth and be around all those books!’ I’ve been teaching her about researching in Baker/Berry, but I think what she really wants to do is just sit there and look at the books and read. You should have seen her face when I first took her into the Tower Room. I think she thought it was heaven or Hogwarts, and either way she just wanted to sit and soak it all in.” Paul says he has some good friends among the many other alums in the Upper Valley, including Hartland’s other minister, Lucia Jackson ’84, and says it’s nice to have the connection of being part of a Dartmouth pastor team, serving the community together.


Congratulations to Martin Fackler, The New York Times’ Tokyo bureau chief, who was a finalist this spring for a Pulitzer Prize, along with his colleagues, for their reporting on the Japanese government’s failure to disclose information on the radiation spread following last year’s devastating earthquake and tsunami.


I tracked down Tina Richardson Miller, my old freshman-year hall-mate, when I noticed that she had joined our class Facebook group. (Hint to the rest of you to join us there too! We have 318 members and I have to believe there are more of you out there.) Tina is a long-time Alaska resident, living in Anchorage, where she is an engineer with the local water/wastewater utility. Water for the 291,000 people who live in Anchorage comes mostly from a glacial lake. But the infrastructure needed to distribute it involves more than 1,500 miles of underground pipes! The area of Anchorage covers 1,800 square miles, but only 121 of those square miles are populated. The rest is vacant, state park or national park land. Tina has three children, who are 14, 16 and 18. The oldest, Anna, is headed to Hanover this fall as a member of the class of 2016. Tina returnedlast year for the first time since graduation and hiked Moosilauke with Anna, so obviously that sealed the deal.


Finally, our deepest condolences to Ken Horton, whose wife, LeeAnn Agnelli Horton ’87, passed away in February after a six-year battle with cancer. Our thoughts are with Ken and their children Katie, Sophie and Andrew.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Sarah Nilsen writes in from Vermont, where she’s an assistant professor at the University of Vermont in film and television studies, focusing on race and ethnicity, screenwriting and Disney! She’s currently working on a cultural history of The Mickey Mouse Club and another history of hip-hop culture in film and television. Her book Projecting America: Film and Cultural Diplomacy at the Brussels World’s Fair of 1958, will be published this summer. Sarah lives in Shelburne with her husband, Mike Ashooh, and their children Josh, 9, Lena, 7, and Samara, 4. She recently had time for a quick N.Y.C. reunion with Julie Minkow Forstner, a radiation oncologist in Grand Rapids, Michigan.


Jeff Kauman has left California behind after almost nine years in Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, moving to Dutchess County, New York, with his wife, Uschi, and 2-year-old daughter Heidi to be closer to family. Jeff, who did his medical training at Cornell and the Hospital for Joint Diseases in New York, is joining a large group of orthopedic surgeons. While his wife and daughter did the journey by plane, Jeff enjoyed a cross-country adventure, driving east from California with their dog Maggie, stopping along the way to snowshoe and visit old friends.


John Van Hooser has been living in the San Francisco Bay area for the last 16 years with his wife, Tracey, and their children Jack, 8, Scott, 7, and Kate, 4. John left his private equity firm two years ago and raised a small high-yield specialty finance fund with a new business partner. He says he’s having fun running his own business and greatly enjoying not traveling as much, giving him time to coach soccer and baseball for his kids. He gets back to Hanover with his family every summer since his parents live in Norwich, Vermont. Trish and Todd Timmerman and their son Ryan checked in with John’s folks during their recent visit to Hanover during the 100th Winter Carnival. 


Amy Herrick marks 20 years residing in Lisbon, along with her husband, Luis, and their children Ana and Lou. She writes, “I’m very lucky these days to be based here in this beautiful country, but telecommute to Colorado to help out at our family office. If it weren’t for the time difference, it would be perfect!” In Portugal she’s involved with a technology company called Ydreams and is helping to get a new international baccalaureate school, where her children have graciously agreed to be among the first year’s guinea-pigs, off the ground. She invites any Dartmouth friends passing through Portugal to get in touch.


Finally, for all you Sudoku fans out there, a note from George Heineman, associate professor of computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, about his new book from Sterling Publishing, Sudoku on the Half Shell. He writes, “I’ve designed a variation of Sudoku called Sujiken. Imagine a Sudoku board cut in half to form a triangle and all standard rules apply except now no digit can repeat diagonally in any direction. I’ve also developed a Facebook application that allows online playing of a set of Sujiken puzzles.” You can visit www.sujiken.com for all the details. George recently spent a week in Florida and had chance to watch the space shuttle launch along with his wife, Jen, and two children.


Have a great summer everyone!


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Get out your calendars. Only 18 months to go until our 25th reunion! Thursday to Sunday, June 12-15, 2014, are the dates. More to come, but feel free to e-mail me if you want to be involved in the planning.


The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin featured our own Eric Berlin, a partner at Jones Day in Chicago, who recently ran his first marathon in five years, raising about $16,500 for the Gastro-Intestinal Research Foundation, where he serves on the board. Eric gave up running in 2007 because of a flare-up in his long-term battle with Crohn’s disease. But through trying new medications and therapies, he was able to come back to the sport he loves. Remarkably, Eric finished the marathon in three hours and three minutes. He told the Law Bulletin, “I really wanted to be out there and just be mindful of what I had overcome to get there and of all my friends’ kindness in contributing to my charity run.” Eric also hopes his efforts will help others with digestive diseases believe that they can get back their normal lives.


Congratulations to Connie Britton on her great new show Nashville, which airs Wednesday nights on ABC, and for her third Emmy nomination, this time for her work in American Horror Story.


David Irwin and his wife, Kim, recently passed the 10-year mark living in Elm Grove, Wisconsin, outside Milwaukee. Their children Henry and Lucy are 9 and 7. David works at Fiserv, a technology company focused on banking, payments and other financial applications, where he oversees the global service division. His business includes a large center in Costa Rica, where David and family spent a great six-week adventure last year. They also had the chance to visit Michael Hafner and his wife, Sam ’92, while they were in London last spring, and David reports that Michael ran him to exhaustion in his regular jog around St. John’s Wood. Michael works for Deutsche Bank as head of energy banking for Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He and Sam have three boys—Callum, Duncan and Allistair—and David reports that they haven’t adopted British accents yet!


Fred Miner writes from Phoenix, Arizona, where he practices labor and employment law at Littler Mendelson. He and his wife, Lilly, have twin 7-year-old daughters Devon and Reese.


Jeremy Rider visited Hanover during the summer for the first time in 20 years, taking along his sons Bo and Jessie. Jeremy and Bo, now a sixth grader, also recently completed a two-day Face of America charity bike ride from the monuments of Washington to the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. They rode with a number of wounded warriors who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of them riding hand-cycles and recumbent bikes. The entire event raised more than $400,000 for charity.


Catherine Baggia Duwan reports that she had the pleasure of attending Jacqueline Allen’sJune wedding to James Tierney and that Jacqueline is retired from practicing law and living in Scottsdale, Arizona. 


Finally, we remember Randi Engle, who passed away October 26 after a two-year fight with pancreatic cancer. Her perseverance in fighting the disease was remarkable—both on a personal level and in the larger arena of raising money for research and the search for a cure. She leaves behind her husband, Tom Kuhn ’88, daughters Becca and Gwen and many colleagues and students at the University of California, Berkley, Graduate School of Education, which is now accepting donations for the Randi A. Engle Student Innovation Fund. A larger obituary will appear on the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine website.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

A recent Hanover trip gave me the amazing opportunity to see The Dartmouth Pow-Wow Suite, 10 portraits created by artist Mateo Romero, currently on view in the Hood Museum of Art. Mateo traveled to Hanover for the 2009 Dartmouth Powwow, and photographed Native students and dancers, including author Louis Erdrich ’76 and her daughter Aza Erdrich Dorris ’11. The Hood commissioned the almost-life-sized works, which were created in Mateo’s New Mexico studio using his signature technique of over-painting the photographic prints. Mateo returned to Hanover to speak at the exhibit’s opening ceremonies in October and the work will remain on display through January. 


Our class vice president, Eric Berlin, is a partner at Jones Day in Chicago, specializing in anti-trust, healthcare and civil litigation. Although he has successfully run marathons, Eric’s recent triathlon efforts ended with painful results. “The cross-training was fun until gravity prevailed and I crashed my bike. Those who knew me in college will not be surprised to hear that having my broken jaw wired closed for a month was not enough stop me from talking.” Luckily for us, Eric has plenty to say. He reports that Matt Garber, a pediatrician in Columbia, South Carolina, is getting married in March. And during a recent business trip to Seattle he saw Laurie Fanger Reed, who is getting a teaching degree and has been active in literacy advocacy. And he updated us on his better half, Laura Hartwell Berlin, who serves as president of the board of trustees for the Alcuin Montessori School in Oak Park, Illinois. She recently oversaw a fundraising campaign that resulted in 100-percent parent participation. Eric sees D.D. Danforth Burlin and her husband, Johannes, at pee-wee hockey games, since their sons are on the same team. Eric also fondly recalled his days as the drummer in Ned Ward’s first band, in seventh grade! Ned’s current band, Mattel’s The Toys, placed third in the national corporate battle of the bands, which took place at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. You can follow them at www.facebook.com/thetoysband. Ned and his wife, Noriko, live in Redondo Beach, California, where their 10-year-old daughter Maia is a budding guitarist and 6-year-old Saya is in first grade.


Now to notes from Ellie Loughlin, updating us on some Boston-area classmates. Matt McDonald and his wife, Sarah, added baby Annie to their family last February, joining 3-year-old Molly. Matt and Sarah work at Buckingham Browne & Nichols (BB&N) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is the associate director of admission for the upper school, a history teacher and boys soccer coach. Ellie also works in the admissions office at BB&N, after recently getting a degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.


Amy Beard Vachris works in admissions at the St. Mark’s School in Southborough, Massachusetts, where her husband, David, is the dean of students. Phil Loughlin, who ran into Amy at a school cross-country race, reports that she has a daughter who is a junior and two younger boys.


Julie McColl-McKenna and Dave McKenna just celebrated their 20th anniversary and have four children—Taylor, Matthew, Amelia and Sarah. They live in Sudbury, Massachusetts, outside of Boston and Dave is a managing partner at the equity firm Advent International.


Allison Polley Hirsch works at Deutsche Bank and lives in Back Bay, Boston, with her husband, Andrew, and children Matthew and Sarah. Ellie says they’re the nicest people ever because they didn’t even mind that she and Phil showed up for a drink recently at 9:30 and left their house at 2 a.m.!


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Our classmate Pam Peedin is heading back to Hanover. She’s been appointed the chief investment officer for Dartmouth, effective February 1, overseeing the investment office and leading the management of the College’s $3 billion endowment. She graduated from Tuck in 1998 and during the last 12 years has advised many nonprofit organizations on investment strategy, first as managing director at Cambridge Associates, then as the CIO of Boston University. At BU she delivered an impressive 12.7 percent return for the university’s endowment during 2010. Pam and her husband, Paul Rebuck, have two boys, Matt, 10, and Charlie, 8.


Betsy Barnett writes in from the small town of Talent, Oregon, where she and her husband, Kalesh Weaver, live on a 23-acre farm filled with mountain views. Betsy taught yoga for 10 years in New York City and since 2000 has traveled extensively with Mata Amritanandamayi, a Hindu spiritual leader and teacher, supporting her humanitarian activities around the world. Betsy says she spends about seven months out of the year away from Oregon and that India is her second home.


Greg Dinges spends part of the year at his home outside Portland, Oregon, and the rest at his house on the beach in Phuket, Thailand. He worked for PepsiCo all over the world for a dozen years and then did a few more with Nike. Then he moved to Russia to be the CFO of a large investment bank but fell victim to bad timing, starting just 90 days before the 2008 financial meltdown. “Landed safely,” he writes, “but exited earlier than planned.” Now he’s doing some consulting, investing and pondering about what’s next. He invites any classmates living or traveling through Asia to look him up.


Lionel Harris reports an excellent summer of travel, in a brief message sent from his new IPad. “Went to Cape Town for the World Cup, some hiking, shark-cage diving and touring the wine country. Just arrived back from mountain biking and whitewater rafting in Keystone, Colorado.”


Chris and David Hammond welcomed Griffin Hammond into the family this summer. He says, “Now with a total of four little ones (Sarah, 9, Logan, 7, Trevor, 5, and Griffin, 2 months) we are a power forward away from fielding our own basketball team.”


Randi Engle writes in from northern California, where she is an assistant professor in the graduate school of education at UC Berkeley, studying cognitive science and the social context of learning. She and her husband, Tom Kuhn ’88, have two daughters, Becca, 14, and Gwen, 8. Randi says “I am so fortunate to have a career where I get to research things that interest me while supporting students’ learning both near and far.” Randi wanted to make sure that I update everyone on the positive things in her life right now, because she also found out in August that she has pancreatic cancer. She had major abdominal surgery and is now undergoing chemotherapy, as well as a clinical trial for a new kind of vaccine. She has also launched a fundraising drive for pancreatic cancer research and you can make donations online at www.firstgiving.com/raisethecureforrandi. Randi writes, “Basically, the only chance that I or anyone else with pancreatic cancer has for a cure is that we can extend our lives long enough so that research can eventually catch up to actually have a cure.” You can join Randi’s e-mail update list by sending a request to friendsofrandi@gmail.com and, of course, we will all keep her in our thoughts.


Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com

Portfolio

Plot Boiler
New titles from Dartmouth writers (September/October 2024)
Flight Patterns
Daniel R. Sheldon ’99 explores bird “mysteries.”
In Her Element

Each summer, Alaskan Jill Fredston ’80 heads out to explore thousands of miles of rugged Arctic coastline in her oceangoing rowing shell.

Caroline Pott ’02
A conservation biologist on life in the middle of the Pacific

Recent Issues

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