Class Notes 1989

As we approach the close of this eventful year, the afterglow of our 35th reunion continues to bring smiles.

After reunion Stacy Higgins and family spent two weeks in France and Italy pre-Olympics. She shared why they’re still able to corral their adult daughters to join them on family trips. “I’d like to think it’s because they love spending time with us, but I think it’s mostly because we still foot the bill!” On return their oldest returned to the University of Georgia as a second-year veterinary student and their youngest started her senior year at Emory.

If your travels bring you to North Carolina reach out to Dawn McLaren. She works as a chief people officer, connecting with community-focused nonprofits that keep her engaged and challenged. She’s also engaged in launching her kids: a college graduate celebrating her first-real-job-one-year-anniversary and a son navigating the crazy world of college applications. Dawn’s summer travels included 26 college tours, during which she appreciated uninterrupted time with her son.

Ellie Loughlin’s daughter recently attended the wedding of Ted Henderson and Bonnie An Henderson’s son in Vermont. Congratulations to the Hendersons! Ellie also reports mini-reunions with Kara Kelly Milner and Betsy Johnston Scheffel as well as ’89 sightings on Martha’s Vineyard of Tanya Crossley, managing director covering media and telecommunications for Credit Agricole CIB; Leslie Timothy, who is working in advancement for Dartmouth; and Pamela Wheeler Streeter, chief diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging officer at NFP, an Aon company. All three live in New York. Speaking of N.Y.C., when you’re in town check out a band called the Sweet Police. The lead singer is the daughter of Martha Boss Bennett! Martha also has a junior on the lacrosse team at Dartmouth.

In other Big Green news, Peter Lurie shares that Nancy Fitz was recently inducted into the USA Rugby Hall of Fame! Nancy earned this well-deserved honor playing with the Washington D.C. Furies and the U.S. women’s national team and later serving as a coach and referee. Read more about her career at www.usrugbyfoundation.org/hall-of-fame-members/nancy-fitz.

Ken Horton and Ned Ward are excited to lead ’89 mini-reunions and hope to see a lot of you at Dartmouth Night for Homecoming this year! Ned will also schedule an L.A. mini-reunion soon. Please reach out if you’d like to help host or have ideas for a mini-reunion in your area.

Finally, remember to help us make Dartmouth history! As I’m sure you’ve heard, a group of anonymous classmates has committed $10 million toward the construction of a new residence hall. We need to raise the final $5 million by December 31—for a total of $15 million—to complete the building and name it the Class of 1989 Hall. Classmates who contribute a minimum of $89 will have their names added to a wall of donors. Please consider giving more if you can. The class of 1989 will also contribute from class funds to ensure that the names of deceased classmates will join the others. Please contribute whatever you can at https://dartgo.org/1989residentialgift.

—Robin Byrd, P.O. Box 660553, Arcadia, CA 91066; (951) 269-9213; robinwinters@msn.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, 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

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

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

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

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

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 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 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

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


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


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


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



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


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


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


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


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


“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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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