Class Notes 1995

As I write this column, we are days away from celebrating the dawn of a new year, so I asked our classmates what they look forward to in 2024. As a mom of two teenaged girls, I can say that I look forward to lots of special time on the sidelines of softball fields and volleyball courts this year, as well as special visits with friends and classmates who become more dear to me with each passing year.

Matt Riley looks forward to “three major milestones and celebrations coming up in my house in 2024. First, I’ll catch up and turn the big 5-0 in June. In August I am getting married to my most fantastic fiancé, Matthew DiBattista, in beautiful Hood River, Oregon. In October my son will turn 21 and I will have successfully kept him alive to adulthood!”

For Michelle Seldin, “My eldest son is graduating from Princeton Day School in June and just got in early decision to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, to study biophysics. His two moms couldn’t be any more proud!”

Allison Krasnow’s answer? “Graduating this spring with my doctorate in educational leadership and my husband opening his brewery in Oakland, California, which he has been working on for years.” If you’ll be in the Bay Area, check out Brix Factory Brewing and you might just run into Allison!

And our adoptive classmate and fellow 1995 graduate Craig Sakowitz ’93 joined the fun and shares that he is enjoying his time as president emeritusof the Dartmouth Outing Club of Northern California aside his beautiful wife, Sharon Karlsberg ’96. Their sons, Wyatt and Zachary, in middle school and high school, respectively, were instrumental in rebuilding the famous Bernal Heights Tiki bar in San Francisco this past summer. “You are all invited to stop by for a drink! We’ll show you the real San Francisco that is still as magical as ever.”

I hope as you read this that you are finding joy and satisfaction in whatever 2024 is bringing your way. Keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

It has been a joy hearing about so many of our classmates’ 50th birthday celebrations during the last few months. If you were able to make the ’95 Homecoming tailgate birthday bash I hope you had a ball. Thanks to our mini-reunion chair, Tara Gulla for organizing the party!

I don’t know about you, but one thing that strikes me about 50 is how many different 50s there are. It’s such a big milestone and yet it can mean so many different things. Some of us are retired from fruitful careers, some of us are venturing into new professional chapters after years of staying home with kids. Some of us are empty-nesting and some are just starting our families. Some of us have become caregivers to our aging parents and some of us have survived cancer. What does your 50 look like? Write in and let me know for our next column.

One 50 that I’m particularly enjoying is the 50 that is taking kids on college tours across the country. Living in the Boston area with its many options in higher ed means I’m getting some wonderful surprise visits from classmates. This summer I got to see Kisha (Teaney) Weiser, who came up from Baltimore with her twin girls, Sophie and Rose, who are looking at programs in the classics and fine arts, respectively. Kisha still practices medicine in Indiana and she and her husband, Dan, are beginning to think about what (and where) empty-nesting will be for them. I also had dinner with Candice Chao, whose older son is looking at schools from Tufts to UCLA. She now lives in San Diego and loves sunny southern California. If you find yourself visiting colleges, there are lots of classmates to reconnect with on your travels. Take a look at the class 25th reunion website or the online directory before you plan your trip and take advantage of the chance to see an old friend between tours.

For those parenting a slightly younger set, check out Phyllis (Steinberg) Fagell’s new book, Middle School Superpowers: Raising Resilient Tweens in Turbulent Times. Phyllis brings her years of expertise as a school counselor, therapist, and journalist to the challenges middle schoolers face and, as the mom of an eighth-grader, I ordered my copy today.

I’ll close with a 50th birthday resolution to consider. When’s the last time you updated your information with the College or checked out a club, affinity group, or Greek house you belonged to when we were in school? Go to alumni.dartmouth.edu/directory to confirm that your record is accurate and check out alumni.dartmouth.edu/connect/find-group to learn more about groups you can affiliate with now. Life is short, stay connected!

And keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

My younger daughter, Kristi, and I were up on campus and I was delighted to take her into the newly renovated (and now fully accessible!) Dartmouth Hall. I was even more delighted to see so many ’95s on the donor wall and point out all my classmates who helped make this beautiful renovation possible.

What inspired our classmates’ generosity? Lou Spelios notes:“When I saw the plans for Dartmouth Hall, I felt a deep sense of excitement and obligation. It’s where I ventured outside my comfort zone to learn Russian, attended numerous lectures, and also where we congregated as alumni volunteers to brainstorm about the College and future engagement. It defines ‘sense of place’ for me in Hanover.” For Rose Hughes, “I associate Dartmouth Hall with the German department and my major. The professors in that department had a huge impact on my time at Dartmouth and my life after. I dedicated my donation to my parents, whose hard work and sacrifice allowed me to attend my dream school!”

Tamara Busch recalls a “freshman fall ‘Philosophy 1’ final exam in the large basement room, where we were squeezed in like sardines with those little foldout desks that make airplane trays seem massive!” She recently spoke at the Dartmouth women’s summit in New York about estate planning. Tammy moved to her hometown of Greenwich, Connecticut, around the time of the pandemic, and her two girls are now 7 and 4. “I’ve done a good job brainwashing them to love winter, and they say they’re sad when the snow starts to melt. We even took our first ski trip together this past winter, and now they too keep talking about going back to Canada!”

For Wendy (Jastremski) Smith, “It’s just iconic Dartmouth, is all. I miss those simpler times!” Wendy recently traveled to Houston with her town’s high school robotics team that she mentors. Her son is a sophomore on the team, which competed in the FIRSTRobotics world championship.

While on campus I ran into supporter (and Alumni Council president) Laurie Shapiro and her family attending admitted students weekend with their daughter, Ella, who will be a ’27. Congratulations! They live in Larchmont, New York, where “Jon works in finance while I’m doing independent consulting in the recruiting space. We have two older kids in college (a Cornell ’23 and Trinity ’26) so empty-nesting is on the horizon.”

Erica Ruliffson wasinspired to give for two reasons, “As a Spanish and Latin American major, I spent a lot of time there and have fond memories of great class discussions in Dartmouth Hall. And the fact that the effort was led by and funded by a broad group of Dartmouth alumnae … what an incredible opportunity to make our mark and celebrate the women of Dartmouth.”

Abbey Nesius Ahearn contributed “in honor of all of the strong, smart, inspiring alumnae I met while a student or in the years since, most of whom are making significant contributions to their communities, their professions, or society at large. Most buildings are named after a single individual (usually a man) or family and, while there are any number of Dartmouth women who are deserving of their own building, I thought it was cool to have a building—perhaps the College’s most iconic—honoring Dartmouth women collectively. It was symbolic to me of all that we have fought for and accomplished. I can’t wait to take my own daughter one day so she can endure me getting all teary-eyed and trying to find the single seat that I donated—ha ha!”

Keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

Nat and Jen (Chapman) Schindler and Ken and Christy (Horner) Gordon have kids who are Dartmouth-bound this fall. Way to go, Devon and Julia!

I reached out to hear more of our classmates’ plans for the big 5-0 and Pam Brockmeier responded: “Your email was the first jolt of reality I’ve felt that I’m turning 50 this year. And it made me smile (see the wrinkle lines?). Whatever I do, it will be a celebration. Not everyone gets to turn 50. Thanks for the reminder…can’t let it sneak past! As for what turning 50 means to me: It means it’s time to get serious about crafting my eccentric second half-century. I intend it to include salt water, fresh water, bicycles, and a lot of color.”

Kenneth Harker celebrated his 50th birthday by running the Chicago Marathon. “My wife, Jen (Sims) Harker ’96, son James (11), and my dad all joined me on the trip. I took up running in 2014. Before then I had never run a full kilometer nonstop. Running has changed me significantly.” Congratulations, Kenneth!

Jess Gregory, professor and interim chair of educational leadership and policy studies at Southern Connecticut State University, has no idea how she’ll mark her big birthday in July, but expects it will be with friends and family and very chill. Brian Greenberg will celebrate his 50th with friends and family on Lake Mary in Tahoe, California, at the Dartmouth Outing Club of Northern California cabin. He looks forward to a “weekend of food, music, canoeing, fishing, and good times.”

Daisy Florin celebrated her 50th by publishing her first novel, My Last Innocent Year, out from Henry Holt on February 14. “Some might say 50 is old to be debuting anything but I think the timing is just right. Here’s to second acts for us all!”

Shiamin Kwa also is celebrating a new book, in her case an academic publication from Rutgers University Press, Reproduction and the Contemporary Comic. Shiamin is an associate professor of East Asian languages and cultures and comparative literature at Bryn Mawr College. She is also the author of Regarding Frames: Thinking with Comics in the Twenty-first Century for the Comics Studies (RIT Press, 2020).

Gonzalo Lira recently reached out from Kharkov, Ukraine, where he has lived since February 2022. He has a YouTube channel called The Roundtable with 110,000 subscribers and about 80,000 to 130,000 viewers per broadcast.

Keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

Well, with our 25th reunion finally in the books, our 25th reunion book is now complete. I hope you enjoy perusing the digital pages and seeing what our classmates are up to and what they remember most affectionately from our time at Dartmouth. Remember, you can also use it to search out our classmates, so whether you want to find your fellow lacrosse players or see who else works in marketing, the reunion book is a great resource. Here are a few stories from its pages.

Josh Stein lives in Menlo Park, California, with partner Jenny and his two kids, Jackson and Charlotte. Josh has been in venture capital since 2004 and leads a company called Threshold Ventures, an active investor at the Series A stage with five funds under management. His favorite college memories? “Great friends, long walks from the River Cluster to, well, really anywhere was a long walk from the River Cluster. Zeta Psi from sophomore to senior year. Great games of Magic: The Gathering with Naval Ravikant late into the night. Teaching snowboarding at the Dartmouth Skiway.”

Nadia Bowers fondly remembers “taking African dance classes at Collis, rowing and rugby (briefly), being a part of the Untamed Shrews, foreign study program to France, my Tucker fellowship at Rosie’s Place in Boston, lots of dancing, stellar friends, getting deep in nature within minutes, working at Rosie’s coffee shop, discovering my love for theater.” She is a professional actor, working mostly in theater, with some television and film. She’s also a writer and her piece, “Dear Dealer” was featured on This American Life in 2018.

Davis and Katie (Woodcock) Kitchel still live in the Upper Valley, where they are raising their three boys, Owen, Liam, and Sebastian, who are busy with theater, speed skating, mountain biking, Nordic skiing, music, and rowing. Davis is a cofounder of Strava (strava.com), an online network where runners and cyclists can record their activities, compare performance, and compete with their community. He wrote the prototype while in Hanover and Provence, France. Davis’ favorite memory of college is rowing, “specifically winning Eastern Sprints twice and trips to Royal Henley Regatta with the team.”

Rowing also ranks high among Hillary (Agnew) Cecil’s college memories, particularly rowing on the Connecticut River at dawn. She also enjoyed running around Occom Pond, volleyball and basketball games with her Kappa Kappa Gamma sisters, and her study sessions (and naps) in the Tower Room and Sanborn. Soon after graduation Hilary moved to Denver and never left. “After teaching middle school English for several years, I moved into publishing and then went to business school for my M.B.A., where I met my husband, Adam. We have four amazing kids ages 9-16, two Bernedoodles, and a travel trailer, which we took on two separate six-week sabbaticals through many of the national parks when the kids were little. Still enjoying increasingly crowded Colorado and all our friends here, although we fantasize about a slower pace and easier access to all things outdoors in my home state of Montana. Maybe someday. For now, life is good!”

Shameem Abassy and her husband, Imtiaz Javed, live in Edgewater, Illinois, with their two children, Aydin and Zarah. Shameem’s favorite memories are “from my time spent in Berlin and London during my two foreign study programs. I also remember fondly the excitement of making lifelong friends my freshman year. I spent countless hours senior year in the basement of the Hop’s practice rooms at all hours of the day and night.”

Find more at dartmouth.bright.crowd.com/1995. Keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

After more than 20 years of teaching math in both Oakland and Berkeley, California, and some time overseeing instructional technology in the Berkeley Unified district office, Allison Krasnow became a vice principal in 2021 at Alameda High School, overseeing math, special education, and schoolwide technology. “In addition to the new job, I also began an Ed.D. program in educational leadership at UC Davis. I somehow find the time to get all of this work done from the back seat of my van, where I have created a tiny office to work in during my son’s water polo practices many nights a week.”

Ray Wadlow is pleased to report that his daughter, Emily, will matriculate with the Dartmouth class of 2026 this fall. Congratulations! And Brian Eyster recently began a new chapter in his career as a senior software engineer for EF Go Ahead Tours. “After 16 years with Planet Bluegrass the timing feels right for me to embark on a new career adventure. And I’m beyond excited for all the interesting new challenges and wonderful new friendships that lie ahead.”

Amy Dixson is on faculty at the UC Davis School of Medicine, where she is vice chair for clinical services. She also runs a state-funded project for firearm violence and suicide prevention through the California Center for Firearms Research at UC Davis. “My oldest daughter is a senior and will be heading to University of Oregon in the fall, and my other daughter is a junior. We continue to spend lots of time with friends from my days living in Yosemite and Dartmouth friends in the Tahoe region.”

Now for more sophomore summer memories to whet your appetite for our 25th(ish) reunion, coming up July 22-24. Pam Quinn remembers having a huge birthday party in her River apartment, “which was especially fun and special because as someone with a summer birthday I’d never gotten to celebrate while school was in session before that or ever since.”

Jane Anne (McCoy) Tucker started dating Louis Tucker during sophomore summer. “This September we will celebrate our 25th, so that’s definitely a top memory! I also took one of my favorite classes—Allen Koop’s class on 20th Century Europe—and, wow, it is as relevant as ever.”

Evelyn Brady has 1994 and 2019 Sophomore Summer memories: “I spent the ’96 Sophomore Summer living on campus, working at a local summer camp, and falling in love with my now husband, Drew Brady ’96. My next favorite Dartmouth summer experience was Parents Weekend during daughter Ashleigh’s Sophomore Summer. It was fun and we were happy to see that she was having her own Dartmouth experience that differed from ours. We attended her graduation in June 2021 on the football field (Covid protocol) just like our 1995 graduation (Clinton secret service protocol). The ’21s had much better weather!”

Evelyn is happy to report that Ashleigh is working on her art and will attend graduate school this fall in architecture. Drew is enjoying work and serving as VP of the class of 1996 executive committee. “We still have our teenage son at home who is enjoying his sophomore year and more importantly having his license to drive (with a parent riding shotgun until July) as he gears up for baseball and Camp Motorsports this summer. I am keeping busy being Dartmouth admissions district enrollment director for Delaware, serving on our class executive committee, and with my advocacy work on behalf of voting and reproductive rights and many other political and nonprofit activities. I look forward to seeing you all soon in July!”

Me too! Keep your news coming.

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

Bonjour, Beth Webster! At the end of July Beth and her family moved to France for a three-year diplomatic assignment. “My husband is working at the U.S. embassy in Paris, where our kids (Nathaniel, 14, and Eleanor, 12) will live primarily and go to school at the American School of Paris. I am assigned as the U.S. consul for western France, based in Rennes and covering Normandy, Brittany, and the Pays de la Loire. So far we’ve been able to see each other three out of four weekends and during school holidays.” Regarding the pandemic, Beth reports that France has instituted a system in keeping with much of the European Union, where people have to either register their Covid vaccinations or negative Covid tests taken every three days in order to get a health pass to enter most restaurants and stores. “The system works well and has allowed the economy to start back up in a way that feels almost normal. People still have to wear masks when not eating or drinking, when inside public places, but it’s very sane. I hope that any ’95s heading through France will drop me a line—websterew@gmail.com—especially if you’re heading to western France!”

Congratulations to Daisy Florin, who recently sold her first novel. “It’s called My Last Innocent Year and is forthcoming from Henry Holt in 2023—the same year I turn 50, which feels about right. Writing has always been my one true love, so this is pretty much a dream come true. The story might appeal to Dartmouth readers: It takes place on a college campus not unlike Dartmouth in the late 1990s against the backdrop of the Clinton sex scandal.” I can’t wait to read it, Daisy.

That’s it for this month. As I was writing this column in the last days of 2021, Kent Dahn checked in to say that he was in New York City during the holidays and able to catch up with Teru Bower Clavel “on Madison Avenue after a nice walk through Central Park. Back to Los Angeles tomorrow morning.”

Share your stories of classmate catchups and keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

Congratulations to Aya Kamaya on the recent publication of the second edition of her 2015 book, Diagnostic Ultrasound of the Abdomen and Pelvis. Aya has written four books on the topic of ultrasound. She is a professor of radiology at Stanford University, where she is chief of the division of body imaging. Aya is also a course director for the Winter Imaging in Beaver Creek conference from CME Science. Calling all radiologists out there, you can get your continuing education points and ski with Aya this January!

David Yuan may be interested. He’s a radiologist at Kern Radiology in Bakersfield, California. David went to medical school in Syracuse, New York, where he met his wife, Ellen. David did a fellowship in musculoskeletal imaging and then moved out to California. He has three kids, the eldest of whom is applying for colleges and hopes to go to Dartmouth.

Amy Barnhorst, an emergency and inpatient psychiatrist,is on faculty at the University of California Davis School of Medicine and is director of the BulletPoints Project for the UC Firearm Violence Prevention Center. “My wingwoman on this project is Rocco Pallin ’13, and our project, funded by a generous grant from the State of California, is the first of its kind in the nation, though certainly will not be the last, given the interest it has generated.” Amy and Rocco are nationally recognized experts in gun violence prevention and the role of healthcare providers in prevention of firearm injury and death. The BulletPoints Project, which provides clinical tools for preventing firearm injury, has attracted interested collaborators and funders from across the nation, ranging from healthcare organizations such as Kaiser and Northwell to research organizations such as Affirm to advocacy organizations such as Moms Demand Action and the Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence. Interested in learning more? Check out their website, bulletpointsproject.org.

I end this column with the devastating news of two classmates’ deaths in August. The bells of Baker Tower ring for Michael Chen of Hong Kong, who died of cancer, and our class Empathos committee co-chair Brenda Rangel, who passed away unexpectedly from Covid-19 in Texas. They both will be terribly missed. To quote Henri-Frédéric Amiel, “Life is short. We don’t have much time to gladden the hearts of those who walk this way with us. So, be swift to love and make haste to be kind.” I will add to that, remember your classmates. If there’s someone you were close to during our college days whom you miss or wonder about, reach out to them; call, text, arrange to meet in Hanover (perhaps at our July 2022 reunion) or somewhere down the street. You can use the alumni directory or search our class reunion book (dartmouth.brightcrowd.com/1995) and reach out. It’s one special way to honor the memories of Mike, Brenda, and all those we’ve lost.

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

One silver lining of our remote world is that we can raise a glass with classmates around the girdled earth in a single party! As Susan Boyd said, “For those of you attending the 95th day mini—how fun was that?! I strongly encourage other classmates to jump on the next one.” Since graduation Susan has moved around a lot, from Boston to San Francisco, and is now in Plano, Texas. “Four years ago I moved here for a job with PepsiCo. I miss the mountains (and even hills!) and with Covid I especially miss being so far from family on the East Coast. That has not stopped me from making 1,300-mile car trips across the country. With family I’d suggest building Legos together. There’s nothing better than a 7-year-old telling you that you are ‘really slow’ building a small Lego set!”

Scott Thompson tuned in from northwest Washington, D.C., where he lives with his wife, Rebecca (a fellow lawyer), son Henry (10), and daughter Eva (7). Scott recently celebrated eight years working on international policy issues for Samsung. He’s been enjoying playing tennis and coaching his kids’ soccer lately, “all somehow socially distanced, of course!”

Andrew Kim still lives in west Michigan with his wife and three kids (14, 10, 8). “I’m enjoying simple pleasures, including biking, taking walks, and watching my kids’ soccer games. I’ve also been improving my skiing skills during the last few seasons. Workwise, I’m a human-centered design researcher at Steelcase with the WorkSpace Futures group exploring the future of work, learning, and healthcare experiences and leading the digital prototyping practice. Recent projects have included thinking about a hybrid world and envisioning how artificial intelligence, sensors, and immersive experiences might impact the built environment. At Steelcase I’ve worked with Carlos Costa ’91 and Julia Huebner ’20. It has been great to hear how things are at Dartmouth today from Julia.”

After a nearly seven-year hiatus from marketing for companies such as American Girl and Ghirardelli Chocolate, Adrienne (Kim) Clarke is working in communications for Sayre School, where her ninth-grade daughter and first-grade son attend. “Stop by if your travels bring you to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail! We need all the friends we can get since the majority of our household degrees are from Duke (my husband is a double Dukie—undergrad and business school, where we met) making it difficult around so many UK fans.”

Shawn Attakai says ya’at’eeh [greetings] from Phoenix. “I go back and forward between here and Crownpoint, New Mexico, on the reservation. After graduation I attended law school at Arizona State University. I’ve been working as a Navajo Nation lawyer for almost 20 years in the area of federal Indian law. I am married with two children (8 and 4). I live in two worlds—American and Navajo. On the Navajo side, I have been studying my traditional pre-Columbian ways for several decades now and have achieved medicine man status. It’s almost like going to grade school again and graduating from graduate school with my major in hozhooji [blessing way], and I still have a ways to go. I have been volunteering for Dartmouth and am now co-president of the Native American Alumni at Dartmouth. We are currently working with the Women of Dartmouth to cosponsor a Covid information panel, among other projects. It was great to see my fellow ’95s again at the mini-reunion.”

It was great to see you too, Shawn. I hope to see you all at the next Zoom mini-reunion and even in person one of these days. Until then, keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

As I write this column, 2020 is coming to a welcome close. A year that began with excitement for our 25th reunion and other adventures certainly turned out differently than any of us could have predicted. If you summed up 2020 in 12 words or less, what would you say? My take: “Disruption brought awakening, appreciation, invention, reinvention, and a need for better wi-fi.” Alexandra Love wrote: “I realized I really like spending time with my family.” From Lou Spelios, “Working from home is the best! The best Jerry—the best!” Lisa Catmull “wrote three novels and self-published on Amazon. Thank you, free time.” And from Pam Brockmeier Armstrong: “Never has asking ‘How are you?’ felt so important, fraught, or ludicrous.” So true.

I realize that most of our 2020 journeys require more than 12 words. Shara Frase shared that the pandemic prompted her to make a big leap and (more or less) go into business for herself. “Right after the new year I will join Boersch & Illovsky, a small partnership in Oakland, California. Still doing all the stuff I love—criminal defense, internal corporate investigations, and a teaspoon here and there of civil litigation—but steering my own ship, so to speak. My kids, Bobby (3) and Shana (1), are somehow managing to thrive despite the many lockdowns and playground closures. We look forward to the end of this insanity and, I hope, all three of us coming to the next reunion.”

Sean McSweeney found a significant silver lining during the pandemic. “I had been in Los Angeles since the late 1990s, but when the pandemic broke out my wife and I decided to throw all of our stuff from the house in storage and got out of town. Since the kids are doing virtual school and our work is essentially also virtual for now, we figured we can be just about anywhere. We got an Airbnb on five acres in the woods around Shasta, way up in the northern part of California for four months and now we are in the central coast wine country for the next six months, basically hiding out during the pandemic. We’ll head back to L.A. when things get back to normal. In the meantime, we have had a chance to spend an incredible amount of time in the national parks, surfing at the beach, going to vineyards, going rock climbing, and doing other things that we just couldn’t have done while in L.A. We are doing work Zoom meetings from the beach sometimes or working half day and then heading to the mountains in the afternoon.” Sean is running a healthcare startup called Apache Health.

Sara Wasserbauer’s 2020 reflection: “My medical office employs about 20 people, and it became clear that most of these people were the main breadwinners for their families. We had to find a way to keep things going when everything was just shutting down.” Her silver lining? “Spending time with my children and realizing how much I miss seeing people! We were blessed and we didn’t even know it. I started regularly meditating—it has been wonderful! Plus, I got another dog.” And she most looks forward to “escape rooms, which is paradoxical in that I am looking forward to escaping to an escape room.”

Whatever you look forward to, I hope you find it in 2021. And keep an eye out for Big League Chew. If there’s a dog on the label, it may be Moose Fagell, Steve and Phyllis Fagell’s pet and now Big League Chew’s dog of the year!

Keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

Happy fall! As promised, here are some updates from other members of our new class executive committee. Vil Ramos currently lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts, with his wife, Daphne, and his daughter, Gabi (10). He enjoys kayak fishing for striped bass and learning the ukulele with his daughter, among other hobbies. For work, he is a founding partner at the private equity firm, Constitution Capital Partners. He enjoys going back up to Hanover for Dartmouth and Tuck reunions whenever he can and is excited to be part of the executive committee to stay connected with friends and classmates.

Jonathan Weinberger is in Connecticut and has been (except for a few years) for two decades. “I work for a French bank in New York, but 2020 has taught me that the home office is great. Once we get a handle on Covid, I’ll resume my best efforts to spend as much time in the mountains as I did when we were all in Hanover.” Steve Tseng is also in Connecticut, where he lives with his wife, Anne, and son Ethan (13). “We moved to Connecticut in 2013 after spending four years in Europe and eight years in Asia as expats.” Steve is a super Dartmouth volunteer! “A couple of highlights of my recent Dartmouth engagements include serving on the Alumni Council and organizing our class mini-reunions in New York City with Tara Gulla at the American Museum of Natural History. Currently, I am serving on the board of advisors for the Hood Museum at Dartmouth. I chair the Asia Pacific Council for Tuck as well as serve on Tuck’s board of advisors. I also co-chair the Asia regional campaign committee for A Call to Lead. Look forward to reconnecting with as many classmates as possible!”

Lisa McGill is the founder and principal of a philanthropy consulting firm. She lives right outside of Chicago with her dog, kid, and spouse, and reflects: “Dartmouth has always been one of my favorite places, so this was a great opportunity to reconnect.” In Los Angeles, Kent Dahn works at GfK, “where I’m responsible for identifying global sales opportunities and servicing the research and consumer data analytics needs of leading technology and media clients (such as Google). Married to a Yalie and have a doggie.”

Ray Wadlow still lives in Fairfax, Virginia, with spouse Jessica ’96 and three children: Emily (16), Colin (14), and Grace (10). “Last month I left my private practice and took a job as a gastrointestinal oncologist and hematology-oncology fellowship program director at the Inova Schar Cancer Institute.” Susan (Warhover) Buckheit moved to Colorado on a whim in 1996 with Hillary Agnew Cecil and another friend and 24 years later, she’s still there (aside from a two-year stint in Boston for graduate school). “I am a part-time freelance manuscript editor, and I love to keep busy with what my state has to offer: outdoor fun and good people. My husband and I have three kids: boy-girl twins, age 12, and another girl, age 9. We consider ourselves exhausted and lucky. I think back on my time at Dartmouth and marvel at all of the adventures I had there, and I’m excited to join the class of ’95 executive committee to give back some time to a superb group of people.”

If you’d like to give some time to this superb class, there are plenty of opportunities: writing content for the class newsletter, organizing a virtual (or in-person when safe) mini-reunion, planning a public service project, guest-writing this column, and more. Email me to learn more, and keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

April 30 marked the 100th anniversary of the Ledyard Canoe Club, a very special place. Jen Hee recalls “canoeing with Kate Chamberlain and Anitra (Auster) Birnbaum, paddling around and singing songs in three-part harmony. They always sounded most amazing under a bridge! Kum by yah, my friends!” Eric Waters loved “going down to the river after classes to take out a kayak or canoe and relax.” I will always remember summer pancake paddles with Brian Greenberg.

Brian was one of the cohort who participated in the Trip to the Sea, the epic journey down the Connecticut River that is a Ledyard senior tradition. Ten minutes into the multi-day trip, he remembers thinking, “How are we going to keep this up for a week?” But after a day or two, it became almost meditative. “We wouldn’t see other humans for hours at a time. I remember our makeshift sailing rigs fashioned out of tent flies and canoe paddles, multiple capsizing events with Joe Berger, composing lyrics for our limerick, and of course the famous paddle through Hartford with construction workers hooting and hollering from the shoreline.”

Gillian (MacLean) Growdon describes it as “an exclamation point in my Dartmouth experience! I’ll never forget the large canoe going under the bridges in Hartford with eight naked people in it—what a view.” The trip was a senior year highlight for Brian Wall too, who was amazed by how fast Walker Weed ’40 could paddle, the strongest of them all. Brian lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and works in data analytics at Asurion. No canoeing, but he enjoys family rafting trips!

Trip leader Justin Wells recalls: “We paddled a fleet of two-person canoes and the ‘war canoe,’ a huge, heavy craft built by Ledyardites decades prior. It took a dozen paddlers and boosted the party atmosphere all the way down the river.

“The stuff-of-legend story from our trip? Near the end of the otherwise perfect week on the river, Mark Andrews doubled up with a violent stomach flu, eventually curling into the bottom of the war canoe, shaking and sweating and scaring the hell out of us. We pulled ashore in Middletown, Connecticut, where an ambulance backed down to the edge of the Wesleyan University crew dock and they took Mark out on a stretcher.

“At that moment, Morgan Drmaj came walking around the boathouse, a duffle slung over his shoulder. Morgan had had to back out at the last minute. As we journeyed down the river, he worked like mad back in Hanover, submitted his thesis, and decided to join us after all.

“Morgan had nothing but a printout of our itinerary and some bus money. Alternately running, hitchhiking, and catching buses, he made his way along the banks of the Connecticut River looking for a flotilla of canoes. In downtown Hartford, when Morgan asked some construction workers if they had seen us, he got cackling in reply: ‘They came under this bridge a couple hours ago—buck naked.’

“So as the ambulance took Mark away, Morgan walked up and cried, ‘I found you!’ It seemed preordained. Someone handed him Mark’s paddle. The flotilla pushed off to resume our trip to the sea.

“The next day we turned the corner of the river mouth and triumphantly landed on a Long Island Sound beach, 200 miles downriver from Hanover. After loading canoes onto trailers and paddlers into vans, we swung by the Middletown hospital, grabbed Mark—still wearing a hospital gown but with color back in his cheeks—and returned to Hanover with one more paddler than we started with.”

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

As the saying goes, “Hindsight is 2020,” so now that we’ve entered the year of 2020, I asked classmates to look back and think about what they would have done differently at Dartmouth. Ann Thompson responded: “I really wish I had taken advantage of the mountains and skiing and hiking that surround Dartmouth.” D.A. Gros wishes that he had taken more history and language classes. “Being premed at the time, the sciences seemed key, but today it’s the broader liberal arts aspect of our education that I remember more.”

Alex Smith would have taken fewer computer science courses (“never got that minor anyway”) and more creative writing, which was always nearer to his heart and ended up being a major part of his career. Alex spent 20 years working as a Japanese-English translator. He recently left his career to write full-time for Moon Studios, an Austrian video game developer. “It was a leap of faith, but I’m happy where I landed and learning something every day.”

The arrival of 2020 also means that our 25th reunion is coming up quickly! I’d like to take a moment with this column to thank the members of our executive committee for their service to our class and to the College during the last five years since our 20th reunion. Thanks especially to our officers: president, Jen (Sopko) Hee; treasurer, Corey (Fleming) Hirokawa; vice president, Marie (Weiss) Berg; newsletter editor, Sandy Paul; mini-reunion chair, Tara Gulla; social media coordinator, Pam Quinn; webmaster, Raj Shrestha; head agent, Lou Spelios; and gift planning chair, Lara Morse. It’s been such a pleasure working with all of these talented and devoted classmates!

Officer terms conclude with our reunion in June, so that means there are many opportunities to get involved if you’re interested! It’s incredibly rewarding serving in our class leadership. Whether you’ve volunteered in the past or are thinking about it for the first time, I hope you’ll consider joining our executive committee or taking on an officer role (class secretary is up for grabs too, if writing a column is something you’d enjoy…). Feel free to reach out to me at the email address below if you’d be interested in learning more. I’d love to hear from you!

Keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

Phyllis (Steinberg) Fagell’s first book, Middle School Matters: The 10 Skills Kids Need to Thrive in Middle School and Beyond—and How Parents Can Help (Hatchett), was published in August. This will be a must-read for many of us! “It’s a nonfiction guide to a phase that is typically misunderstood or neglected. I draw on my experiences as a school counselor, therapist, parent, and journalist—the book is loosely based on my columns for The Washington Post.”

Gregory Nemet’s book, How Solar Energy Became Cheap: A Model for Low-carbon Innovation (Routledge), also came out this summer and is available on Amazon. Gregory is a professor of public affairs at University of Wisconsin-Madison. For the book, he interviewed 75 people in 18 countries to understand how solar energy became so cheap and why it took so long.

Allison Markin Powell is a Japanese literary translator and writes: “As it happens, three books that I translated will be published this year, the third one in November. They are The Art of Simple Living by Shunmyo Masuno (Penguin Books), The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami (Europa Editions), and Parade by Hiromi Kawakami (Soft Skull Press).”

Jaha Cummings wrote in as he made his way to Venice, Italy, for the Venice Production Bridge Book Adaptation Rights Market. “I am one of two American publishers invited to the Venice International Film Festival to meet with gold-accredited producers and directors attending the festival to share their book catalogs in hopes of having them adapted into feature film, television, and virtual-reality content. Films adapted from books are generally the most successful, so the European film market decided to create a creative space where publishers, producers, directors could collaborate naturally. Four years ago, they created the Venice Production Bridge at the Venice International Film Festival, because it is the oldest of the big three international film festivals—Venice, Berlin, and Cannes—and features more ‘literary’ films.” On his way to Venice, Jaha stopped in Montreal. “When at Dartmouth I loved going to Montreal for poutine. I get to relive a Dartmouth memory!”

This summer Jaha got to see Kwame Simms in Orlando, Florida. “He was there for an IRS convention and I was in Orlando for the Florida League of Cities annual conference. I’m in my second term on the Punta Gorda City Council. We were able to hang out and catch up that Thursday night.”

Summer’s a great time to reconnect with classmates. From ’round the girdled earth, ’95 Sigma Nus Jon Belk, Alex Nikas, Matthew Riley, John Jones, Scott Meacham, and Joe Berger gathered in Virginia, where they rented a waterfront house and enjoyed BBQ and seafood, a few beers, and reminiscing about the Dartmouth days. Walker Richmond wrote in after a fantastic weekend spent with Brigg Noyes at Ryan and Jennie (Bailey) Nalley’s Rowayton, Connecticut, home. “We watched birds from the porch, swam in Long Island Sound, feasted on clams and lobster while lightning danced in the evening sky, and did lots of reminiscing about good times in Hanover.” Ryan is enjoying work at an innovative software firm that focuses on crisis management response, and Jennie has been thriving as a dermatologist for the past dozen years. The light of their lives is their two growing boys Jack (12) and Sam (8), who are passionate about basketball and music. Brigg owns the Salt Lake Relationship Center, a group therapy practice in Salt Lake City, Utah. His three kids, ages 16, 13, and 10, are all doing great and he recently celebrated his 19th anniversary with his wife, Deborah.

Keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

There is lots of exciting news this month. I hope you’re reading this from a dock, beach, or swimming pool somewhere warm!

Teru Clavel’s first book, World Class: One Mother’s Journey Halfway Around the Globe in Search of the Best Education for Her Children, will hit shelves (and Amazon) in September. She writes: “In a nutshell, I went back to school for a master’s of science in comparative international education while I was living in Shanghai and Tokyo with my three kids. This led me to work in journalism and television journalism focused on international education. And because I always put the kids in the local public schools where we lived—Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo—when we returned to the United States and were in Palo Alto, California, for two years, I knew I had a book. I’m now back in my hometown of New York City and couldn’t be happier to be home after 12 years of global adventures.” Simon and Schuster’s imprint Atria will publish Teru’s book, which she describes as “50-percent memoir and 50-percent research and takeaway, with a good dose of humor.”

David Leonard was recently in the news for a life-saving procedure he performed on a toddler at Ranken Jordan Pediatric Bridge Hospital in Maryland. An ear nose and throat surgeon, Dave reconstructed a trachea for a little boy who had been born so premature that his lungs weren’t fully developed at birth. The successful surgery allowed this child, who had lived full-time in the hospital since his birth in 2016, to finally go home this spring. The chief medical officer at Ranken Jordan who worked closely on the case was fellow Dartmouth alumnus Nick Holecamp ’82. Well done, Dave and Nick!

Congratulations to Rukmini Callimachi for her recent honors. Rukmini’s New York Times story, “Caliphate,” won a 2018 Peabody, an Overseas Press Club award, and was a Pulitzer finalist (Rukmini’s third). Rukmini is a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and, as of this spring, also a mom! Amadeo Mickael Callimachi was born April 27, and Rukmini and her husband, Mickael, couldn’t be happier.

Congratulations also to Charlotte Shropshire, who was promoted to partner of Sofinnova Investments in Menlo Park, California. She is responsible for investor relations, marketing, corporate communications, and fundraising for both Sofinnova’s public and private equities strategies.

The countdown is on to our 25th reunion! Mark your calendars and make your plans to return to Hanover June 18-21, 2020. Rebecca Slisz and Candice Jimerson are our enthusiastic reunion chairs (thank you)!

There are lots of ways to get involved with the planning, so please email rebeccaslisz@gmail.com or cjimerson2004@yahoo.com if you’d like to help make this the best reunion yet.

Keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

As promised in the last issue, here’s more from some of our international classmates. Rob Milbourne writes from Brisbane, Australia, “where I’ve lived with my family for the last 11 years (I was in Brazil for three years before). I have three boys, one at Brown University and another preparing to go this year (fingers crossed for green). I am a lawyer and practiced in Washington, D.C., then Brazil, and then was sent as a ‘Brazilian’ expatriate to Australia! I work in international law and the mining and natural resources sector, and was a partner of two international law firms before starting my own global mining consultancy two years ago. Mining is one of the largest global industries, cutting across critical issues in business, politics, finance, and human rights. I’ve had the joy of working on projects in more than 30 countries and now deep sea mining through the UN and developing countries in the international seas. I’m passionate that if we use minerals and metals, then we must know where they come from and how they are produced, take responsibility for our consumption, and understand the ethical, social, and environmental consequences from their production. Much of current mining is unacceptable. The United States has 500,000 abandoned mines, and that legacy is spreading to other parts of the world. Mining can and should be a force for good. We all like our phones and cars and the metal needed for them. Australia is a major global mining country with expertise and innovations that have made it a good home base. I learned a lot about ethics and sustainability from Dana Meadows at Dartmouth, which has carried through my career. I was back at Dartmouth last year to take my son. We had five blissful days on campus and I was thrilled so many of my mentors were still there and happy to meet for lunch or coffee! I’d love to connect with any other Dartmouth alumni in Australasia!”

Deborah (Smith) Children moved to London in 2000 after law school with a plan to work there for about three years and then go home. Eighteen years later…“I’ve worked in London, Paris, Singapore, Dubai, and now have moved back to the United Kingdom. I live in Kent with my British husband, our 3-year-old son, Alexander, and our 1-year-old twins, Theodore and Penelope. I live in the gorgeous British countryside, but commute into London for work, so get a bit of city and country life. One thing I think people would find interesting is the whole Brexit fiasco we are currently going through. The government has yet to agree on an approach to exiting the European Union with a fast-approaching March deadline. This is especially acute for our family, as both my husband and I work for investment banks that are currently scrambling to put in place contingency plans for all possible scenarios. Nobody knows exactly what the future will hold and, unfortunately, the future is just around the corner. We visit the United States a couple times a year (which has become more challenging with three small children!) but my whole family is there so we wouldn’t have it any other way. We were last in Hanover two years ago, when we put my son in a hiking backpack and hit some sections of the Appalachian Trail. I got to introduce my husband to EBAs before it shut and had a lovely stay at the Hanover Inn. We hope to make it in 2020 to reconnect with people at our reunion!”

Next issue: Asia! Whether near or far, keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

Earlier this year Alison Moll, Julie Weller Scott,and I joined dozens of Glee Club alumni on a pilgrimage to Hanover to celebrate the retirement of our director, Louis Burkot. It was a weekend full of song and memories, and it got me thinking about the many ways music was a part of our college years and how for me it has shaped my life after college, as I still sing regularly in the Boston area. It was time to reach out to some of the other singers in our class to see what they were up to, and here’s what I learned.

From Erik Vaveris: “I have been singing with the Bach Choir of Heidelberg (‘Bachchor Heidelberg’) in Germany for the last year. Connie Tromble Eyster and Brian Eyster visited us in Heidelberg with their son, Birch, last spring. Among many adventures in the area, they were able to come to our concert of Bach’s Mass in B-Minor. After two-plus years of living in Germany, my wife, Jane Petrof, daughter Gwen, and I are moving back to the Chicago area this fall.”

Connie and Brian had a visit this summer from Owen Gottlieb and his wife, Abigail Bellows, in Boulder, Colorado, where Owen completed his Wilderness First Responder certification. Owen’s team at the Rochester Institute of Technology Media, Arts, Games, Interaction & Creativity Center had two board games from its Lost & Found series featured at the Smithsonian American Museum of Art this year. The team has also built a mobile phone prototype of the first game for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), featured at the 50th anniversary of the NEH, and is busy at work on a new module on Islamic law and another project on interactive media and healing.

Jennifer Lien wrote from Minnesota: “My favorite Glee Club memories are many, but they all happened on that tour bus during three spring breaks. Those tours cemented friendships and gave me a sense of belonging to Dartmouth that has not wavered. Oh, for those innocent youthful days again! Glee Club got me started in the singing business, and I am still singing today. I just performed two Poulenc operas in Singapore this year—the one-woman opera La Voix Humaine with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s chamber series and led the nuns to the guillotine in Dialogues of the Carmelites with New Opera Singapore. This fall I begin a part-time gig teaching voice at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota, bringing me back full circle to my earliest days studying voice in Hanover. Although I received my doctor of musical arts degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015, I’ve been so busy with parenthood (daughter, 8, and son, 5) that music had to take a backseat for several years. In my spare time I sit on the board of a Montessori school I helped start here in Duluth and work on diversity, equity, and inclusion at the school and elsewhere in our community.”

James Mahoney chimed in on Facebook about his “first-ever gig at Tabard singing ‘Waiting for the Man’ with the short-lived band Hamlet Machine.” And Eric Waters answered that his favorite music memory was “singing ‘Brown-eyed Girl’ with the Dodecaphonics. It’s how Michelle Waters ’96 first noticed me and was the first step toward falling in love and marriage. I have continued singing, first as a graduate student at Yale and for the past 17 years as a Lutheran pastor. Michelle, our six kids, and I have moved to Texas. I’m the senior pastor of St. John Lutheran in Boerne, Texas, about 30 miles north of San Antonio.”

Keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

Class of ’95s celebrated 45 in style on (or near) April 5—the 95th day of the year—across the country with gatherings in Boston, Washington, D.C., Austin, Texas, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Thanks to all the hosts for putting together such a range of events, from house parties to museum tours!

Sandy Paul reports from D.C.: “Our mini-reunion featured meticulous recreations of the late, great EBAs chicken sandwich. John Jones hosted a joyous gathering of nine alumni from our class cluster. The homemade Portuguese muffins were among the many highlights that made the event memorable.”

Lisa Mortell and her husband, Jake ’94, hosted in Denver. She writes, “Eric Howard and his wife, Lisa, made the trek up from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Eric will have two kids in high school next year and is keeping busy with his law practice. Bo Brukstern and wife Amy brought their lively crew of five kids, ranging in age from 1 to 16. Bo travels frequently with his company, LendIt Fintech. Cynthia Kelmenson had a night off from her busy job as an emergency room physician. She and her family live in Golden, Colorado. Brett Reece, a cardiac surgeon at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, also joined our crew and shared tales from the front line as a father of three. Rob McLennan and wife Beth recently moved to the Denver area. He was lured back by the Pro’s Closet Inc., where he serves as chief financial officer.”

A nice group of us gathered in Boston. Carol Gilchrist McIver, Rebecca Slisz, Jen Sopko Hee, Catherine Bednar, Vil Ramos, Vikram Srimurthy, and I were joined by Leah and Larry Brekenridge, who came down from New Hampshire for the occasion. Many of us sported vintage college T-shirts, including Cabin & Trail and freshman trip favorites, and we all enjoyed catching up and reminiscing.

András Petery sends us “Saladus y abrazos from the 95th day reunion in San Francisco at Rosa Mexicano! Rahul Mathur and his fantastic family represented the South Bay, and he’s offered to organize an event on the peninsula in the future. Jake Hobson is doing great things with Tipping Point to support northern California wildfire relief. Andrew Housser and I are involved in a fun project to bring professional soccer to San Francisco with SF City Football Club. Anyone interested in learning more, hit me up on Twitter!”

Steve Tseng organized a special gathering at New York’s Museum of Natural History, where he is a trustee. Classmates enjoyed private tours of the North American mammals exhibit and the fourth-floor fossil hall before-hours. The group then saw the day’s first showing of the Dark Universe space show. Afterward everyone explored the museum and a few families had lunch at Uno’s with make your-own-pizza and ice cream for the kids. It was great to have New York-based classmates Cindy Chu, Judi Flynn, Lara Morse, Nelli Black, Nancy Brosterman, Michael Kubersky, and Christopher Timmel and their families together for all the festivities.

Sadly, the following 15 classmates did not live to celebrate 45 with us: Cicely Bomar, Matthew Fornari, Paul Hung, Curtis Jones Jr., Hareesh Khurana, Marina Lakhman, John Lee, Keith Kai Li, Alicia Pommerening, Daniel Martone, Paul Miklis, Amy Naparstek, Nicole Redhorse, Andrew Swanson,and Murray Youngbear.I’m working on a special tributefor all of them and I need your help. If you were close with any of our classmates listed above, please be in touch to learn more. Together we can gather stories and photos that will help keep their memories alive and enrich our 25th reunion memorial service. Thank you, and keep your news coming.

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

Did you know that more than one in 10 of our classmates work in some aspect of healthcare? Brian Spence practices at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, where he is an anesthesiologist and elected physician trustee of DHMC.“It has been a real privilege to help steer a $2 billion-a-year healthcare system through a very tumultuous and disruptive period. It astounds me that as the richest nation in the world we still fail to provide quality healthcare to all. It is the national enigma that our generation will need to solve if we are to remain the democratic and humanitarian society we claim to be. There are personal and emotional costs associated with the medical profession; however, I have never regretted my decision to enter the practice of medicine. The clinical care of patients is a joy and a privilege for me that cannot be easily erased by legislation, bureaucracy or technology. The healthcare provider-patient relationship is the fundamental core of healthcare, and it is that relationship that keeps me engaged and what I find most fulfilling in my daily practice.”

Becky Liddicoat Yamarik, internist and palliative care physician,writes: “I’m currently working at the Long Beach Veterans Hospital as a hospitalist and clinical ethicist. I’m also involved in a randomized controlled trial looking at telephonic vs. in-person palliative care for patients in the last one to two years of life. These patients need a lot of support and assistance as they enter this final phase of life, so it’s wonderful to be able to try to improve their lives. Medicine has been a wonderful career for me. I majored in history and was very ambivalent about whether med school was the right fit. Luckily, working in palliative care, I use a lot of the communication skills and interest in people and their lives that I loved from studying history. The human interaction with patients is very rewarding, as is the ability to constantly try new things and new ways of delivering care. I have worked in home hospice, in hospitals and training nurses to assist patients over the phone. It continues to be an intellectually stimulating and rewarding profession. I particularly love working with medical students and residents. Their youth, altruism and enthusiasm keeps me invigorated and positive.” 

Matt Riley, a pediatric gastroenterologist in Portland, Oregon, reflects: “The things I enjoy most about my vocation are assisting children and families through some of the most challenging times they may ever face, as well as the opportunity to constantly learn about my field and myself in the process. Medicine is a field where some of the most basic American values play out on a daily basis. Many of us want quick, external solutions to relatively small sufferings. Simultaneously, we expect the most vulnerable of us to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, even if their shoes are worn and lack laces.”

Finally, Michael Kang writes from Manhattan,where he is an orthopedic surgeon specializing in hip and knee replacement affiliated with NYU-Langone Medical Center. He is married to Gina and has two children, Griffyn (16) and Sydney (14).Michael’s take “Healthcare is at a crossroads. In terms of orthopedics, we are going down the road of medical advancements that must be cost responsible. Due to increased costs, we will have to change our healthcare model. It may become a more socialized model. In terms of my career, I am in a clinical practice with responsibilities to a fellowship. A busy clinical practice while also teaching doctors in training has made my professional career fulfilling.”

Keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

Did you see the eclipse? Matthew Riley, a pediatric gastroenterologist in Oregon, watched from the roof of his building in downtown Portland, where he saw the sky dim over Mount St. Helens and the freeways empty as the city stopped to stare at the sky. Mariann McKeever stepped out of her Chicago office to watch with her colleagues as the city experienced 89-percent coverage.

Kevin Fleming spent the eclipse day (a.k.a. his 45th birthday) with Guy Dixon, searching the bottom of a lake for his wedding ring, which he had lost while swimming. Guy and his wife, Julie Kline ’96, hosted a group of Dartmouth alumni spanning classes from ’86 to ’97 at their Virginia home to celebrate Vuyi Radebe and his family visiting from South Africa. Among the group was Ray Wadlow, visiting from D.C. “We never did find the ring, but we did catch a glimpse of the eclipse and I’m determined to visit again to find it. In the meantime, Guy is investing in an underwater metal detector.”

Rob McLennan recently moved to the Boulder, Colorado, area, where he is CFO of the Pro’s Closet, the world’s largest online used bicycles dealer. The night before the eclipse his family drove to Medicine Bow National Forest in southeast Wyoming, where you can pull off the road and camp anywhere in the forest. They watched from a clearing with wide-open views of the mountains to the west and a valley to the east. “My wife was the most excited of any of us, but our three girls enjoyed watching the moon eat the sun. The light began to change to an eerie dusk-like hue and it got noticeably cooler. At the moment of totality we took off our glasses and looked at the otherworldly black hole in the sky, with the sun’s corona clearly visible around the edges. I felt like I was standing on another planet—one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. Worth every minute of the seven-hour traffic jam we suffered through to drive home that afternoon….”

Peter Ellman drove from Pinehurst, North Carolina, to Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, with his wife, Sarah, and their twin 14-year-old boys, Will and James. “Immediately it got dark and cool. Hundreds of people started yelling and cheering. The glasses came off and to be honest, I was not really prepared for what I saw. It was truly one of the most surreal, soul-stirring and spectacular, if not the most spectacular, things I have ever seen. Where the sun used to be was a black spot in the sky with a white halo (the sun’s corona) clearly visible around it. I have not yet seen a picture that does it justice because it looks alive. I took my eyes off the eclipse just for a moment to look around and all around us the sky was a dark pink. You could see stars. There was a slight breeze and pretty much all the hairs stood up on my body from the electricity of the moment. And then the diamond ring (the bright spot of the sun blasting out from around the moon as it continues its celestial course) and it was over. All I can say is it is really something that should be experienced at least once in your life—even worth traveling very far for. I felt very blessed and lucky to be able to make the time to see it and to see it with my family.”

2024 Montreal eclipse mini-reunion perhaps? In the meantime, keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

As promised, there’s news of additions to our growing ’95 family. New mom Shara Frase welcomed baby Bobby (formerly known as “WIP,” short for “work in progress”) in May and the two can be found strolling around San Francisco. Down in southern California the Drmaj clan has grown by one with the birth of beautiful Emma to parents Morgan Drmaj and Cher Hawrysh.

And Chris Foley will have lots of new material for his next one-man show now that he is a dad. Eammon was born to Chris and his wife, Courtney in Atlanta in May. Congratulations all. Enjoy every minute, even the sleepless ones!

It is hard to believe, but after 38 years EBAs has shuttered its doors and gone the way of Panda House, Five Olde and Ben & Jerry’s into alumni memory. Many of us will miss most the quintessential chicken sandwich—best eaten after sitting in foil in the back of an EBAs delivery vehicle for at least 30 minutes—and their amazing chocolate chip cookies.

Class of ’95s loved their delivery service. That they would deliver a single pint of Ben & Jerry’s blew Pam Quinn’s mind, and Lori Korpan Hurley remembers ordering ice cream and Diet Coke during finals with Jennifer Apgar, “because two blocks was so far to walk.”

Grant Czerny would get them to deliver not only from EBAs, but from Stinson’s too. As John McKelvy commented: “Talk about a privileged existence!”

Melissa Trumbull Mitchell recalls: “Our first year my roommates and I ordered so much stuff fall term (including Diet Coke, cigarettes and insane amounts of pizza, pasta and butter and cookies) that on the first day of winter term they brought us a gift basket: two six-packs of Diet Coke and a whole bunch of chocolate chip cookies.”

I once came down on the wrong side of the law with EBAs delivery service. I was walking from fraternity row back to my dorm and campus police stopped me. It turns out I matched the description of a suspect who, seeing an EBAs delivery car sitting empty and running in front of Fayerweather, had decided to skip the walk to Chi Gam and take the car instead. Ha! When I shared this story with EBAs delivery man Craig Sakowitz ’93, he laughed and said it was a risk of the job, because you knew if you turned off your car while delivering pizzas, it might not start up again. Who knew that EBAs delivery service was good for joy rides too?

Grant remembers swim team outings for all-you-can-eat pasta: “Let me tell you that EBAs lost money on that one. But we loved them and I am sure they came out net positive big time.” Sandy Paul was “always amused that at 1 a.m., the phone was inevitably answered this way: ‘EBAs. Please hold.’ ”

And who will ever forget the jingle that embedded 643-6135 in our heads more firmly than the quadratic equation? Deborah Smith certainly won’t: “My extension freshman year was x6135, which meant I got a lot of really late-night phone calls asking me for pizza or chicken sandwiches. I started out always explaining to people that they had failed to dial externally but at some point I got a bit tired of it and just started ‘taking orders’ and promising people the food would be with them soon. So apologies to everyone all these years later if I was responsible for you missing those late-night munchies!!”

Keep your news coming (and if you figure out the recipe for the chicken sandwich, be sure to share that too)!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu; Natalie Herring, 1911 Rex Ave., #41, Joplin, MO 64801; (417) 553-7419; 1995dcn@gmail.com

Ah, the exciting, confusing, exhilarating experience of a ’shmen. Twenty-five years ago we were welcomed to Dartmouth: We learned the alma mater, danced the “Salty Dog Rag,” discovered Full Fare (bring on the “Freshman 15”!) and met roommates, undergraduate advisor group members, classmates who would become our best friends for a week or perhaps a lifetime. Who do you remember first meeting when we all walked on campus for the first time that fall?

Brenda Almaraz met Gillian Jacob in front of Robinson: “I thought I was a long way from home (Texas), but she was from Trinidad and Tobago. Minutes later I met Akwele Bortei-Doku from Ghana! For me, these ladies really put distance and feeling homesick in perspective. I need to look them both up!” Though Itir Sayin Clarke doesn’t remember exactly who she met first, she does recall “looking around and wondering what to do with myself, when Laura Broughton offered to take a group of us to the Hop for dinner. I will never forget her kindness.”

Lori (Korpan) Hurley’sfirst encounter was a bit surprising: “Eric…can’t remember his last name. We got put into a quad in the new dorms as roommates, which both of our parents handled surprisingly well! I think we were roommates for about 40 minutes until the housing department figured out their error.” James Budd remembers Gile Hall neighbor Brian Wheelan: “I know he went to Harvard Business School but don’t know much beyond that. It was an odd coincidence because I already knew his older brother, Pete.”

Hillary Agnew Cecil met Laurie Stucker Halligan, still a “dear friend.” Baryona Billington met one of her best friends to this day, Candace Howell. Nat Schindler met Gillian (MacLean) Growdon, who all these years later only lives a few blocks away. And lucky Phyllis (Steinberg) Fagell, well, she first met Steven Fagell “and I married him!”

Interested in reconnecting with any of those fellow ’shmen from days gone by? Try a pop-up mini-reunion! In the spring Steve Tseng was in Hong Kong for a Tuck advisory meeting and tracked down Mike Chen to catch up. Last summer Charlotte (Flower) Streidel had an impromptu mini in Los Angeles with Sharyn Steele and Tia Maggini. If you’ll be traveling and would like to know who’s in the area, or if you would be interested in organizing a gathering in your own backyard, our mini-reunion chair can help. You can reach Tara Gulla at taraleighgulla@gmail.com.

A couple of our classmates are on the move. Eric Waters has been called as senior pastor of St. John Lutheran Church in Boerne, Texas, just outside of San Antonio. And Chris Foley has left New York City for Alpharetta, Georgia, where he is continuing his acting career. Chris was married to Courtney Brown in September (congratulations!). Courtney is originally from Kentucky and is a classical pianist and piano teacher. Katherine Kaneko hasn’t moved, but is moving smoothly. Sherecently graduated from the Kripalu Center of Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, as a certified yoga teacher, having completed a 200-hour yoga training.

Sadly, I must close with the news of another classmate’s passing. The bells of Baker Tower toll for Hareesh Khurana, who passed away in August. Hareesh once recalled his favorite memories of Dartmouth for the column and I share them again now: “Embers of the bonfire at 6 a.m., afternoon pong on the back porch, spontaneous trips to wild places with friends that ended up being brothers from other mothers.” Hareesh, you will be missed.

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu; Natalie Herring, 1911 Rex Ave., #41, Joplin, MO 64801; (417) 553-7419; 1995dcn@gmail.com

Anitra (Auster) Birnbaum and her husband, Julius, welcomed their third child in February. Samantha Louise joins older brothers Aaron and Jeremy and, according to Anitra, is the easiest of the three and “a real sweetie.” The Birnbaums make their home just outside of Baltimore, where Anitra currently has her hands full as a busy stay-at-home mom.

Alexander (Sandy) Paul joined the commercial real estate firm Newmark Grubb Knight Frank in 2015, after 13 years at Delta Associates. As managing director, Sandy has led his team in creating a national conference series called BenchMarks that brings together public servants and the development community to discuss key areas of cooperation and how to tackle major policy challenges, including transportation infrastructure and affordable housing. Last November Sandy moderated a panel discussion including the Washington, D.C., mayor, Muriel Bowser, for an audience of 700. In May Sandy delivered the keynote address that served as a catalyst for a panel discussion featuring San Francisco and Oakland, California, mayors Edwin Lee and Libby Schaaf. Sandy and his wife, Leslie, live in Arlington, Virginia, with their two wonderful kids, Emma and Daniel.

In May Sandy and Leslie connected with Brian Greenberg and his wife, Christina, for breakfast in San Francisco. Sandy also serves as vice president of communications for our class and enjoyed seeing the robust turnout at our 95th day of the year mini-reunions in April. If you would like to volunteer to help re-engage fellow ’95s with our class activities and project, please contact Sandy at sandy.paul@gmail.com.

Jaha Cummings writes: “Last year I cofounded a consultancy, Guardian Today LLC, that provides domestic and international law enforcement agencies with training and technical assistance in changing their organizational culture to that of community-oriented policing. We provide training from the police academy-level to executive leadership in diversity professionalism, the competency of understanding and responding with sensitivity to diverse populations served by the department, including a range of diversity from race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs and veteran status. We have particular expertise in assisting agencies build community trust in communities that they serve. We do so by facilitating dialogue between the community and law enforcement agencies, and having them jointly perform a community needs assessment to identify root issues that negatively affect the community and identify courses of action that will address these issues. This collaborative approach restores cohesiveness within the community and with law enforcement as a part of the community. This spring we also created a professional journal, The Guardian Today: The Journal of Best Practices in Community Policing and Corrections. In addition to this work with law enforcement agencies and communities, we also train juvenile and adult corrections agencies in our nationally recognized holistic cognitive behavior therapy-based recidivism reduction system and school districts in creating optimum learning conditions for poor and caste minority students.”

Alexander O. Smith writes: “I’ve been living with my wife, Yukiyo, and two children in lovely seaside Kamakura, Japan, since moving here from Vermont, where we helped my parents prepare to put their family inn (highlandlodge.com) on the market. My daughter, Kiya (12), and son, Yakumo (10), have been enjoying attending the local elementary school and brushing up their Japanese and Kiya is off to international school in Yokohama next fall to keep her English up to speed.

“Work-wise, I continue my 18-year career localizing Japanese video games (kajiyaproductions.com) and translating novels (32 and counting), with some script writing for games and publishing (bentobooks.com) on the side!” Alex gave a talk on his work at Dartmouth this past April.

—Natalie Herring, 1911 Rex Ave., #41, Joplin, MO 64801; (417) 553-7419; 1995dcn@gmail.com; Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

Happy April! As you know, April holds a most important day for our class, the 95th day of the year. Let’s be thankful for very generous classmates who made mini-reunions in Austin, Boston, D.C., Los Angeles, N.Y.C., San Francisco and Shanghai possible: Tara Gulla, Patrick Boyd, Kaja Fickes, Judi Flynn, Shara Frase, Peter Jolicoeur, Blaine LeGere, Sandy Paul and Steve Tseng. Additional thanks to all who attended.

In addition to joining the ranks of class leadership in the role of co-secretary, I have also begun a new venture professionally as vice president for enrollment management at Cottey College and am happy to report that I have been a presenter at the National Association for College Admission Counseling annual Guiding the Way to Inclusion conference as part of a session I proposed: using minority recruitment as leverage to a senior leadership role. The conference will take place immediately after a very small mini-reunion happening in Martha’s Vineyard for Evelyn (Waters) Brady, Candace Howell and myself. If you will be on the vineyard July 16-23 let me know so I can schedule a Dartmouth photo-op. In more Brady news, I witnessed Evelyn’s daughter, Ashleigh, finish her volleyball tournament 6-2 in Las Vegas. You know you’re old when the most exciting thing about Vegas is 200 girls’ volleyball teams: so much fun.

In entertainment news, Brian White, an actor seen most recently on Shonda Rimes ’91 Scandal, played “George” in an episode of the new USA Network series, Colony. In social butterfly news, Baryona Billington spent Valentine’s Day with comedian Mike Epps as an audience member in his Don’t Take It Personal tour, tapped into her inner artist at Mimosa and a Masterpiece and continued her mission to live in Indianapolis, Indiana, and reside everywhere else with a jaunt to Puerto Rico.

Finally, we’d like your help building up the community already begun on the Dartmouth College Class of 1995 Facebook page. Right now we are at 458 members, and I would like to encourage us all who are members to reach out to classmates who have not yet joined the group. 

—Natalie Herring, 1911 Rex Ave., #41, Joplin, MO 64801; (417) 553-7419; 1995dcn@gmail.com; Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

When you’ve come to the end of a great week, what is it that has defined greatness? For Itir (Sayin) Clarke it is “learning something new and retaining it.” For Charlotte Flower Streidel, “having a good money-making week or achievement of another goal.” For Derek Pollard, “perseverance,” and for Matt Riley, “finding compassion outward and within.” For Melissa (Trumbull) Mitchell, simply “making it to the weekend,” and for our adopted classmate Craig Sakowitz ’93, “lack of death.”

As Craig lives to see another week, he writes: “This is my first report to my adopted class of 1995 and so I have a lot to report. I’m living in the San Francisco Bay Area with my delightful wife, Sharon Karlsberg ’96, and two boys. I have been heavily involved in the Dartmouth Outing Club of Northern California, which supports an amazing cabin in the High Sierras. Founded in the late 1930s and early 1940s this West Coast version of the DOC built on what was happening at Mount Moosilauke around the same time near Dartmouth. As for the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge, the Dartmouth powers that be have determined that the Moosilauke Lodge needs to be torn down and replaced. I am spearheading a campaign to save Moosilauke. All you have to do is look up on the web or Facebook for ‘SaveMoosilauke’ to help save this historic structure for all of us and future generations.”

Peter Jolicoeur posted a happy photo from China on our class Facebook page this fall with Steven Tseng and Gen Kanai and wrote: “Steven is visiting briefly for a global corporate conference, and had he not left Shanghai for New York three years ago, this week would have been his 10th anniversary in China. (Of course, you’re welcome to move back anytime!) Gen is a new arrival, having moved with his family from Tokyo a few months ago, and is quickly getting accustomed to Shanghai life as well as the business development and entrepreneurial scene. I am continuing to work as an aviation and airport development consultant and am pleased to announce the birth of our second son, Nathan, born on September 2.” Congratulations, Pete. Congratulations go out to Kevin Lapin as well, who welcomed his second son, Raphael “Rafi” Gerressu, in September.

Rebecca (Slisz) Blank is on the move. She has taken a new job with Neurometrix and is moving back to Massachusetts after more than a decade living in St. Paul, Minnesota (looking forward to having you back in the Bay State, Rebecca!). My new co-class secretary, Natalie Herring, has also taken a new job in a new time zone. She recently became vice president for enrollment at Cottey College in Nevada, Missouri, and now lives in Joplin. Cottey is a women’s college, founded in 1884. The school is transitioning from a two-year to a four-year college, so the work promises to be very interesting. She writes: “Evelyn Brady celebrated the sweet 16 of her daughter, Ashleigh Marie, and Baryona Billington just celebrated her birthday in the hometown of her and her company, Eli Lilly, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Be warned in Delaware, both mom and daughter are driving new cars! The Bradys and I summered together at Walt Disney World and at the Jersey Shore in preparation for our separation for my new gig. Evelyn and I remain hetero lifemates. Happy to be back in my native Midwest.”

Once Natalie gets settled, you’ll hear from her in these pages, so stay tuned and keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

Wow! What an amazing 20th reunion. More than 300 classmates gathered in Hanover to celebrate, reminisce and catch up. We had incredible weather and Dartmouth pulled out the stops with lectures, tours, live entertainment and fireworks on the Green. Thanks to everyone on the reunion committee for all their hard work. From the delicious meals and great parties Friday and Saturday night, to the little details like double-sided nametags and tablecloth clips, you thought of everything and made the weekend really special.

At our reunion we elected new officers who will serve our class until our 25th reunion in 2020. Congratulations (and thank you) to Jen Hee, president; Sandy Paul, vice president, communications; Marie Berg, vice president, class projects; Natalie Herring, co-secretary with yours truly; Corey Hirokawa, treasurer; Judi Flynn, newsletter editor; Tara Gulla, mini-reunion chair; Lou Spelios, head agent; and Raj Shrestha, webmaster. If our reunion inspired you and you’d like to help out—plan a mini-reunion in your community, write an article for the newsletter or a guest column, learn more about our class project, etc.—please be in touch with Jen at jenhee29@hotmail.com. The more, the merrier!

I heard from a couple more educators in our midst since the last column deadline. Since November 2008 Allison Moll has been working as an internship coordinator, academic advisor and research grants administrator (“an odd combination—but it works for me!”) at UMass Boston (UMB). “About 59 percent of UMB undergrads are first-generation college students, including immigrants, young parents and military veterans. It’s a dynamic population and I feel that I’m making a difference in helping students achieve their economic goals and professional dreams. In 2009 I married Fred Benjamin, who comes from a proud Dartmouth family. Our dreamboat son Micah—truly a miracle baby—was born in September 2014.” I met Micah at reunion and he is adorable!

Since 2013 Amy Szczepanski has been working at Art of Problem Solving, a math education company in San Diego. “We produce textbooks, online classes and other resources for kids who are looking for more of a challenge than their local schools provide. We also train the best students in the country to compete at the highest levels of math competitions. I know of at least one ’95 whose child takes classes with us. We’re growing fast, and Duncan Gilles ’06 will start working here later this year. We’d love to have more folks from Dartmouth join us so that we can try to outnumber the M.I.T. alumni on staff!”

Chris Foley’s one-man show, Off the Desk (Tales of a Mediocre Stockbroker), will play Saturdays from late September through early November off-off-Broadway. Stay tuned, New York City alumni, there may be a mini-reunion for this one! And Homecoming is October 9-10.

Keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu

Reunions are just around the corner…have you registered? If yes, have you called five friends to encourage them to register too? Let’s make this a record-setting 20th by getting as many ’95s back to campus as possible. If you need help tracking anyone down, drop me a line and I can help.


Before reunions Alyse Kornfeld Streicher will represent our class at the 210th session of the Alumni Council the weekend of May 14-16. This will be the first meeting of the council since the Moving Dartmouth Forward report was released, so I’m sure there will be a lot of valuable and informative discussion of the plan. Alyse also serves on the honorary degrees and professional development committees. If you have any questions or concerns you would like voiced, please contact Alyse at alyse.streicher@yahoo.com.


Thanks so much to our dedicated reunion committee and class agents who combined will make this a reunion to remember! A few volunteers have been in touch lately with news. Marcus Motroni, co-chair of our reunion giving effort, works at Mount Kellett Capital Management and lives in Short Hills, New Jersey. He writes: “I play chauffeur, driving my three girls to their dance, gymnastics and swimming practices. My oldest starts high school in the fall and is being groomed to attend Dartmouth. She is torn between attending our 20th reunion and having the chance to meet Brian White of Stomp the Yard fame (one of her favorite dance movies) and her middle school graduation parties.” Another reunion giving co-chair, Adriana McGrath Clancy writes: “I’m still living in New York City with my husband, Mike, two daughters (Ellie, 4 and Olivia, 4 months) and Gus the pug (6). I just passed 10 years at Corbin Capital, where I am responsible for selecting and monitoring hedge fund investments. I’m thrilled to be a part of our class’s fundraising effort and even more thrilled to be getting up to Hanover in June!”


Wendy Jastremski Smith from the reunion committee looks forward to seeing everyone and especially plans to spend time with Cynthia Kelmenson, her husband and kids there. “I did just start a new job, working as a consultant to help push through energy-efficient and renewable energy projects on low-income family housing in Hartford, Connecticut. I’m still volunteering a lot in the schools, including work to bring robotics programs to the elementary kiddos. Feeling blessed and happy.”


Wendy is organizing the memorial service for our classmates who are no longer with us. While in Hanover we’ll take time to remember and celebrate Cicely Bomar, Paul Hung, Curtis Jones, Marina Lakhman, Keith Li, Daniel Martone, Paul Miklis, Amy Naparstek, Nicole Redhorse, Andrew Swanson and Murray Youngbear. If you have any remembrances or photos you would like to share, please contact Wendy at wmj@alum.mit.edu. 


Living just south of Boston, I thought a lot about the “Hanover Winter Song” this February, staring out my window at nine-foot snowdrifts and three-foot icicles. It will (I hope) be bright and warm in Hanover when we gather in June, but I leave you with the following verse and, with it, an invitation to make the trip, to gather and reconnect, with our classmates and the campus that launched our adult lives 20 years ago.


Oh, here by the fire, we defy frost and storm


Ha, ha we are warm and we have our heart’s desire


For here, we’re good fellows, and the beechwood and the bellows 


And the cup is at the lip in the pledge of fellowship


Of fellowship.


—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu


New Year’s Eve, 20 years ago…I was on campus, back early for rehearsals for a show and celebrating with fellow Glee Clubbers at somebody’s apartment. The ball dropped and 1995 flashed everywhere and we just looked at each other and said, “It’s here!” Our year had arrived, the year that had been on our acceptance letters to Dartmouth and attached to our names ever since, now shared with the world and signaling the beginning of the end of our college years. There were cheers, there were goosebumps and then Hootie and the Blowfish took the stage on Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve and Darius Rucker was wearing a Dartmouth sweatshirt. Magic! 


What’s your Dartmouth magic? Here are a few memories shared by ’95s via our Facebook page. 


Itir (Sayin) Clarke: “Glee Club backrubs, biking across the bridge to the breakfast place on the other side of the river, getting my physics book wet while ‘studying’ on the docks at the river, doing a handstand on the moving Glee Club bus.”


Charlotte Flower Streidel: “Taking my daily study-nap-tea time in Sanborn, my first bouncy-bounce on Green Key weekend, teaching ’shmen how to ski at the Skiway, my Saturday morning radio show.”


Hareesh Khurana: “Embers of the bonfire at 6 a.m., late afternoons in the cemetery, afternoon pong on the back porch, spontaneous trips to wild places with friends that ended up being brothers from other mothers.”


Alexandra Lesk Blomerus: “Tea in Sanborn and filling the blackboards in Dartmouth Hall at night with hundreds of Greek words until they were memorized. Walks around Occom Pond in duck boots, midwinter, to go tobogganing on the golf course. Craig Sakowitz’s basement apartment lit with crazing lights. Oh, oh, singing Dartmouth songs in front of Dartmouth Hall and hearing the echoes across the campus.”


Jennifer (Sopko) Hee: “Practically living in the Hop (Chamber Singers, Dodecs, ushering). Walking across the Green at 4 a.m. to pick up a paper at Kiewit that I spent the whole night writing, hopped up on Mountain Dew.”


Kristen Foord: “The crazy blur of running around (and touching) the bonfire my freshman year, Tubestock and late nights with good friends in the Rip-Wood-Smith lounge.”


Marie Weisse Berg: “The peace at the lab where I worked, even when dyeing my hands yellow with acid there; late nights in front of my tiny Mac Classic screen writing papers which I still think about (though they were probably fairly mediocre!); watching bad TV on the Delta Gamma couch with some of the most wonderful women I have ever met; watching the sunrise with my now husband on the roof of his house.”


Jason Duty: “Sitting on the river at 9 on a Saturday morning. The water is flat as glass. It is fall and the leaves are changing. The mountains and the sky perfectly reflecting in the water. We all feel bad disturbing the beautiful sight before us, but we know that neither the 26-mile row nor our coach in the boat next to us will wait for us to daydream. As we row up the river toward Lyme, the only sounds we hear are the buzz of the coaches’ launch, the oars moving in and out of the water and the occasional command from the coxswain. It is a moment in time that I will never forget.”


Her spell on us remains in so many ways. When the ball drops on 2015, think about your classmates and start making plans for our 20th reunion June 19-21. Keep your news coming (and your memories too!).


—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu


Having just returned from my town’s Fourth of July fireworks extravaganza, it’s a bit odd to wrap my head around a column that will hit the newsstands when the leaves are changing, kids are heading back to school and Homecoming is on the horizon (October 17-19, by the way!). I hope everyone had a wonderful summer. Congratulations to James Budd and his wife, Kelly, on the birth of their son, James Jr., in June. Congratulations also to Melissa Norton on the birth of her son, Thomas, in March. And best wishes (I think that’s the proper etiquette) to Rukmini Callimachi on her marriage to Mikhael Lafarge in Dakar, Senegal, this spring and her new position as foreign correspondent with The New York Times. What an amazing year you’ve had!


I ran into Deb Thomas at a professional luncheon this spring, and she followed up on our conversation as a fount of news: “My husband, James (Thomas ’94), and I live in Hamilton, Massachusetts, with our daughter, Elin (7), and our dog Owain. James is a lawyer in Boston and I ‘retired’ from the practice of law in 2008. Since then I have been enjoying volunteering. I work with the Center for Women & Enterprise in Boston and am chair of the board of trustees at Harborlight-Stoneridge Montessori School in Beverly, Massachusetts. I’m learning a lot about fundraising and nonprofits and enjoying it.


“We get up to Hanover twice a year or more; always for the Covered Bridges Half Marathon and Homecoming. We usually meet up with Jeff Munson and his wife, Johanna, at the half marathon, although I have no hope of keeping up with either on the course. They live in Norwich, Vermont, with their boys, Ethan and Gavin.


“I keep in contact with a few other ’95s. Jodi Walker and I get together once a month. She’s another happily ‘retired’ lawyer and she and her husband, Jeff Crisan, live in Belmont, Massachusetts, with their two boys, Nate and Tommy. We also see Steve Vanourny, his wife, Krista, and their kids, Jack and Emily. They live in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and every summer we finagle an invitation to their place at Lake Winnipesaukee, where we always have a great time. Last fall we met up with Bart Rountree and his wife, Lisa, in Vermont, where they were taking a break from their very busy lives in Virginia as parents (they have a daughter, Riley Grace) and professionals (he’s a doctor, she’s a corporate executive). Also far away from Boston but close to my heart are Deb (Nathanson) and Scott Cushman. They moved from Massachusetts last year when Scott graduated from medical school and matched to a residency program near Buffalo, New York. I hear his first year is going well, but I miss them! We will get together this summer with Deb and their kids, Abby and Seth, while they are in Massachusetts visiting family.


“We also plan to see Kim (Worboys) and Jeff Olson this summer when our vacations in Wales overlap by a few days. We have family in Wales and we go every summer, so after years of hearing us rave about it, Kim and Jeff finally decided to see what the fuss is all about. Kim and Jeff are physicians in St. Paul, Minnesota, and have three boys, Chris, Charlie and Henry. I dearly hope those boys like castles, meat pie and sheep or else I’ll feel responsible for a miserable vacation!” 


Thanks for all of the updates, Deb! Hope to see you all at reunions in June, if not before (Homecoming, perhaps?). Keep your news coming!


—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu


Morgan Drmaj writes: “In August 2012 I married the lovely and wonderful Cher Hawrysh (a fellow Canuck) with a number of family and friends in attendance, including Justin Wells and David Gonzales. About six months later Cher and I moved from Toronto to Los Angeles and we’re now living in the fabulous Hollywood Hills. After completing a stint helping a small Los Angeles business quadruple in size, I took a summer sabbatical. Even though I’m living in Hollywood I’ve left the entertainment business behind and am focusing on entrepreneurship and business consulting—and very psyched about it! Some of my favorite sabbatical activities? A silent meditation retreat, traveling all over the continent and attending Burning Man for the first time.” 
Kent Dahn hosted Henry Soo Hoo, Tony Choe, Vil Ramos and Tim Weaver and their families at his Hollywood, California, home last summer. “We had a blast swimming, BBQing and sharing old stories of our glory years.” Kent was at Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles working in marketing and business development through 2011, then worked at Sony Pictures on a new cloud-based digital locker platform through 2012. Last year he joined Milyoni, a social video startup company. Tony is a healthcare attorney in the Washington, D.C., office of Morgan Lewis and recently moved to Potomac, Maryland with his wife, Ashley, and daughter Adrienne (4). Vil is a partner at Constitution Capital, a private equity firm focused on middle market buyouts. He lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts, with his wife, Daphne, and daughter Gabriella (3). Tim is an anthropology professor at the University of California, Davis. He lives in Davis, California with his wife, Teresa, and daughter Anna (3).
Derek Pollard says hello from Atlanta, where he is a neuroradiologist. He has become an avid triathlete and in November competed in his second full Ironman at Ironman Florida. Otherwise he is busy with sports for his three kids: Forest (9), Lexi (7) and Hayes (5). Donell Thompson lives in Owings Mills, Maryland, with his wife, Elena, and their children Tessa (8) and Ellis (6). Donell teaches and directs service living at Gilman School, a small private day school for boys in Baltimore, Maryland.
Bjorn Kilburn writes from Seattle: “It is the best place for raising a family with fantastic activities for kids, lots to do outdoors, fresh mountain air, snow-capped mountains. It is an amazing place.” Bjorn has recently made an exciting career move: “After a bit of self actualization and the somewhat late realization that there is no do-over in life, I decided that I needed to leave HTC to pursue a backlog of dreams I’ve been building up over the last few years. If there is one thing that I know about myself, it is that I am happiest when I am building something so I am now working from home, building prototypes of some new product concepts and hoping that one of them will be compelling enough to start a business around. At the very least I will learn something, and in the best case I’ll build something that changes people’s lives for the better. In the words of Howard Shultz and Robert Frost, here’s to moving Onward and the Road Not Taken.”
Sadly, I conclude this column with news of the passing of two of our classmates: Keith Li of Hong Kong and Curtis Jones Jr. of Morgantown, West Virginia. The bells of Baker Tower toll in their memory and they both will be sorely missed. Please visit our class website for more about Keith and Curtis and to share your remembrances. 
—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA, 02043; kaja@alum.dartmouth.org



I love the Internet. Recently I was reading an interesting Slate piece on Forest Hills Gardens, Queens, and it mentioned the Russell Sage Foundation. I thought, “Hmm, did Russell Sage go to Dartmouth?” and checked out his Wikipedia page. (Answer: No.) My curiosity piqued, I searched “Russell Sage Dormitory Dartmouth” and came upon a fascinating Web site: www.dartmo.com. It’s the brainchild of Scott Meacham and has an amazing amount of information about the College and its history. Scott has a book out on the same topic, but in case Dartmouth College: The Campus Guide isn’t on your shelf yet, dartmo.com is an accessible, captivating read. And it’s a wonderful alternative to refreshing Facebook for updates or reading gossip Web sites.


Enough of my musings! What’s going on with our classmates?


Well, Brice Brown is the publisher and editor of The Sienese Shredder, an annual volume of art, design, literature, poetry, music and culture. Find out more about the third volume, which came out this February, at www. sienese-shredder.com. For those for whom the word “Sienese” doesn’t ring a bell, www.dictionary.com provides the helpful information that it pertains to “the style of painting developed in Siena during the late 13th and 14th centuries, characterized by a use of Byzantine forms and iconography modified by an increased three-dimensional quality, decorative linear rhythms and harmonious, although sometimes ornamental, color.” Or an inhabitant of Siena, Italy.


I heard that Melissa (Hochman) Papke has been elected a fellow in the American College of Mortgage Attorneys. Melissa is a partner in the real estate group of Varnum, a 150-lawyer Michigan law firm, and focuses her practice on corporate and real estate matters. Melissa is only the ninth attorney in Michigan to be selected as a fellow in the college and only the third outside of the Detroit metro area.


In other lawyering news Kai (Singer) Falkenberg and Dan Glazer both spoke on the media and entertainment law panel at this year’s Dartmouth Lawyers Association annual meeting in New York. Kai is editorial counsel for Forbes and Dan is counsel at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler in New York, where he focuses on intellectual property and technology-related transactions.


Congratulations on everyone’s accomplishments! Know how you can find out even more about your classmates? (Wait for it….) By attending our 15th reunion from June 18 to 20! You can find out about the plans in progress at www.dartmouth.org/classes/95, indicate whether you anticipate attending and see who else is coming. Volunteers for reunion preparations and other class functions are still being eagerly sought, so just let me or Natalie Herring, our class president, know if you would like to help out. My e-mail is below and Natalie can be reached at 1995dc@gmail.com.


I hope everyone’s year is wrapping up well!


—Alex (Morgan) Mareiniss, 100 Lancefield Road, Baltimore, MD 21209; alexmareiniss@yahoo.com


Let’s get right to the news, shall we? Melissa Trumbull Mitchell had a big year! In September she and Duncan Mitchell were married in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, with lots of Dartmouth friends and family in attendance. The class of 1995 was well represented. Debbie (Rosenberg) Rosenbaum and Alison Yobage were in the bridal party and other ’95s in attendance included Ken and Rachel (Wasserstrom) Scheer, Jen (Evers) Shakeshaft, Geoffrey and Susan (LoCurto) Willison, Chase and Nicole (Palczer) Arnold and Ion and Gigi (Widham) Freeman. There were also two members of the class of ’66 in attendance—Melissa’s dad, George Trumbull, and Chuck Sherman. Rounding out the Dartmouth contingent was a Dartmouth history professor, Melissa’s brother George Trumbull IV.


Melissa also worked on passing first-in-the-nation school reform legislation that amended the Illinois school code to include opportunities for schools to transform into centers of communities and meet children’s holistic—rather than test-related—needs. Illinois leads the nation in this kind of education reform and this legislation sets a precedent for other states to follow. It was also an exciting year to be doing this work, given the political situation in Illinois!


Melissa and Duncan are still in Chicago, where they see a lot of Debbie (Rosenberg) Rosenbaum, her husband, Jason, and their sweet little boy Max. They also see Jen (Evers) Shakeshaft, her husband, Tom ’89, and their darling girl Julia. And Meghan (Sherlock) Welch ’96 and her husband, Terry, live just a few blocks away. Melissa also just got to spend some time in New York with Alison Yobage, who is missed since she left Chicago.


Speaking of Chicago, I also received some news on Sam Gussis. He joined the real estate practice group at Baker & Daniels LLP as a partner in the firm’s downtown Chicago office. Before joining Baker & Daniels Sam practiced at Shaw Gussis Fishman Glantz Wolfson & Towbin LLC in Chicago. Sam’s practice is focused on real estate finance and development.


Finally, this time on the other side of the country, I heard from Tiffany Brooks Bernal. Tiffany, her husband, Pablo, and their son Sammy Bernal happily welcomed the arrival of their daughter and sister Gabriela Bernal, born this November 14. The family resides in Bellevue, Washington, just outside of Seattle.


Congratulations to everyone on their good news. Please keep in touch, and I hope to see everyone at reunion in June!


—Alex (Morgan) Mareiniss, 100 Lancefield Road, Baltimore, MD 21209; alexmareiniss@yahoo.com


Thanks to Gigi (Widham) Freeman for writing in—otherwise we wouldn’t have any news this column! Gigi and her husband, Ion, welcomed their first child this spring. Brooks Larkin Freeman was born at 2:45 a.m. on Thursday, March 11. He weighed in at 7 pounds, 15 ounces, and 20 inches in length. Everyone is healthy and doing great and Gigi reports that she and Ion “are thrilled to be parents!”


Gigi is on maternity leave from RiskMetrics group, where she has worked for the past four years. The family lives in Brooklyn Heights, N.Y.C.


Congratulations and please keep the news coming! We’ll have a new class secretary after reunion, but I’ll be sure to forward her or him any news I receive after my last column later this summer. Sniff, sniff.


—Alex (Morgan) Mareiniss, 100 Lancefield Road, Baltimore, MD 21209; alexmareiniss@yahoo.com


First, a shout out to some new buds on the ’95 family tree! Rachel (Wasserstrom) Scheer writes: “My husband and I planned on going to our Dartmouth reunion, but we missed it for a good reason! We welcomed our daughter Lauren Julianna Scheer on June 8. She is delicate and delicious and we are thrilled to be blessed with such a wonderfully sweet baby. I am currently on maternity leave from my position as executive administrator of obstetrics and gynecology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Most days Lauren and I are hanging out at our home in Weston, Massachusetts, enjoying life together.” Brandi (Jones) Salomone writes: “My husband and I are enjoying the birth of our fourth child, Patrick Jones Salomone, on July 17. He joins older sister Riley and brothers Gavin and Brandon. We’re trying to stay cool during the hot Florida summer. I am having a terrific time on maternity leave but plan to return to the clinical practice of endocrinology in October.”


Alyse (Kornfeld) Streicher, Sara (Wasserbauer) Carlson and Linda (Blumberg) Smith also found themselves busy with newborns around our reunion. Alyse’s son Lev Perry was born May 28, weighing 6 pounds, 12 ounces, and measuring 18.5 inches long. He joined big sisters Lilly and Maya and the expanding Streicher family has moved out of New York City (adios Upper East Side, hello big yard!) Sara welcomed her second son Casimir “Caz” Winston on June 16, at a healthy 8 pounds, 13 ounces, and 21.25 inches long. The Carlson Family lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Sara has an expanding hair restoration practice. (Check out Sara doing an eyelash transplant on national television at The Doctors website. Very cool!) And Linda writes from Alaska: “Talia joined our family in April. So far Hatcher is a great big brother and very helpful. We expect that to end any minute now!”


I’ll take the opportunity of my first column to update you on a few of our new class officers. Lou Spelios, our fantastic reunion chair, is now our class president. He works at Bryan Cave in Atlanta, where he was named one of Georgia’s 2010 “Super Lawyers and Rising Stars.” Lou joined Alumni Council this fall and is also involved with the Atlanta alumni club. Alex (Morgan) Mareiniss lives in Baltimore with her husband, Darren P. Mareiniss ’94, their 2-year-old son Marty and basset mix Winthorpe. She’s looking forward to serving as class newsletter editor, “though how to juggle that with raising a toddler is still a mystery.” Rebecca Slisz will chair our 20th reunion and is already thinking about how to top our 15th (a tough assignment)! Rebecca and her husband, Steve Blank ’89, live in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has worked at 3M for almost six years but started a new role in August as a new products marketer in the infection prevention division of 3M’s healthcare business. Outside of work Rebecca and Steve like biking, running, cooking/eating and traveling.


Finally, Laurel Shanks writes: “I haven’t written in 15 years so I guess I should start with a quick note. I’ve been living in the Washington, D.C., area pretty much since 1995. I’m an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice. My husband, Mark Wegner, and I have two wonderful and fun daughters, Daphne (5) and Amelia (1). We’ve done a lot of fun traveling over the past 15 years, including more recently baby-backpacking around Vietnam and hiking in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego with Daphne in tow (all before Thing 2’s arrival). I’m afraid we might be slowing down now, though.”


—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 345 Commonwealth Ave., No. 8, Boston, MA 02115; kaja@alum.dartmouth.org


Thanks to everyone who participated in our class survey. Our class president, Lou Speilos, and the class executive committee look forward to incorporating your feedback and suggestions into our activities in the months ahead. Here’s some news gleaned from the survey for your reading pleasure.


Congratulations to Scott Thompson and his wife, Rebecca, who welcomed their daughter Eva Louise on December 12, 2013. Chad Boucher and his wife recently celebrated the first birthday of their daughter Dilara. Alexa Lessow and her husband, Pete, enjoy playing with their daughter in their new home outside New York City. She writes: “We’ve finally moved out of the city into a house! Now I can see the fall foliage that reminds me fondly of Hanover, and the commute to work isn’t so bad. Hope everyone is doing well.” Eric Waters and his wife, Michelle (Erickson) Waters ’96, have been blessed with six children and live in Ohio, where Eric is a pastor at the Upper Arlington Lutheran Church.


Lori Hurley graduated from the University of Illinois with a master’s in library and information science in December and is now embarking on a new career as an information specialist in the Chicago area. “Very exciting after many years at home with my three children, now 13, 12 and 10.” Rose Hughes is a pediatric optometrist, working at a practice in the Princeton, New Jersey, area. She has two rescued bassett hounds and a rescued beagle and in November she ran her second 5k after starting the couch-to-5k program two months earlier. 


Adam Weiner found himself in The Boston Globe in December. He is the managing partner of Weiner Ventures, a real estate development company in Massachusetts. According to the Globe, Adam successfully secured air rights to develop a hotel, residences and retail shops over the Massachusetts Pike in Boston, at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Boylston Street. This will be the first property developed over the pike in 30 years. Good luck, Adam!


Do you find yourself craving those great campy dramas and action programs of your childhood? Now you can get your fix, thanks to Shawn Makhijani! He lives in New York City and works at NBC, where he is senior vice president of business development and strategy for NBC Universal-owned stations. His group recently launched a new broadcast network called Cozi TV, which runs classic shows such as Magnum P.I., Six Million Dollar Man and Fantasy Island. Check out Cozitv.com to see if it’s available in your town and get ready to quote along with Tattoo: “Da plane! Da plane!”


The 95th day of the year is coming up on Saturday, April 5. I hope you find yourself celebrating your Dartmouth days with some classmates, either virtually or in person. And keep your news coming!


—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA, 02043; kaja@alum.dartmouth.org


Any guesses on the most popular baby names of 1973? Strangely enough, Kaja did not even make the list (at least, not in the United States.) No, the top girl’s name was Jennifer (surprise, surprise) and the top boy’s name was Michael. I checked in with some of the 24 Jennifers and 15 Michaels in our class to see what they are up to these days.


After eight years in technology business journalism after college, Jennifer Lien quit to pursue her love of classical singing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Now she is finishing her doctorate in voice from the University of Wisconsin-Madison while living in Schenectady, New York, and juggling 3-year-old Olivia and newborn Paul. Jen’s husband, Cheong Soon Gan, is a professor of history, and this fall the Lien-Gan family will move to Duluth, Minnesota, for his new job at the University of Wisconsin-Superior.


Gigi (Widham) Freeman (given name Jennifer) writes: “My husband, Ion and I have two precocious boys, Brooks (3) and Gordon (1). We live in Brooklyn Heights, New York, and love it for its numerous playgrounds and many neighborhood friends within blocks. I am currently the head of online client experience and coverage education at MSCI Inc., an investment tools company. MSCI produces indices, risk measurements models and software. I have been with MSCI for more than seven years now. I love seeing all the updates via Facebook from Dartmouth friends, so keep posting!”


Congratulations to Michael Hauser, who just had his fifth child, David. He works as a tax attorney in the Detroit area and writes that life is good! Life is also good for Mike DiPietro, whose e-mail moniker, shmike95, made me smile. Mike writes: “My wife, Jenn Altbuch ’98, and I had our 11th anniversary in June. This anniversary was special because for our 10th we were consumed with her treatments for cancer, while this year we were celebrating the end of that process. Our daughter Anathea (7) just finished first grade while her little sister Phoebe (5) is gearing up for kindergarten in the fall. Both are excited to go to summer camp then Disney this summer. I’ve been at IBM for the past eight years in a variety of sales and strategy roles. Right now I am responsible for IBM’s relationship with 10 clients around Boston, mostly in the life sciences. Add to our two old cats a new flat coat retriever puppy, Willow, and our lives are crazy busy, but wonderful.”


A couple of creative classmates had some celebrating to do recently. Chris Foley’s one-man show, Off The Desk: Tales of a Mediocre Stockbroker, was accepted into the New York Fringe Festival. Chris performed five shows during the August festival. For more about Chris’ show, check out his website at chrisfoley.com. (By the by, Christopher was the No. 2 boy’s name of 1973.) Katya Czaja was selected earlier this year to compete in Ed Decaria’s March Madness Poetry Tournament. Her aptly titled entry was March Madness:


The school’s bereft of noise,


of running feet,


of shouting voices,


of raised hands,


enthusiasms,


and laughter.


Must be testing week.


Remember, President Hanlon’s inauguration is September 20 and Homecoming is October 11-13 this year (beat Yale!). I hope I’ll see you on the Green for one of these fall events. Keep your news coming!


—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA, 02043; kaja@alum.dartmouth.org


Let’s begin in California with Rahul Mathur, who has been married to his wife Pooja, for nine years and has “two beautiful and intelligent children.” Since finishing his M.B.A. at Wharton, Rahul has worked in a variety of senior finance roles for pre- and post-IPO technology companies, most recently spending two years in India as the India CFO for a San Francisco-based tech company. 


Julie (Kanarowski) Turner has been in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1995. She’s been in product marketing at Electronic Arts for more than 10 years, most recently working on the Sims game for Facebook. She and her husband have two little kiddos, Vivian (4) and Sebastian (1). “They certainly are keeping us both on our toes and teaching us to savor the surprise and delight of life’s little and big moments.” J.W. Beard is also in theBay Area, where he lives with his wife, Anita, their son Aidan (2) and their dog Calvin. “We are fortunate to live two miles from Brian Jaquet and his family. Brian and I will host the 7 Maple reunion in Lafayette, Louisiana, Labor Day weekend, when the tree pong tourney will feature our first ever 40-plus competitor, Dave Robinson. Other ’95s who will be in attendance (and not coping well with pong) are Andrew Housser, Dave Shearer, Matt Puryear, Chris Gelsdorf and Brian Radics. The favored team is Housser-Beard.” 


From the East Coast, Chantell Dalpe continues to practice obstetrics-gynecology in Syracuse, New York. Her husband is an ear-nose-and-throat doctor, and both are partners in their own private practices. She writes: “We have two boys (ages 6 and 8) who keep us busy with all of their activities and boundless energy. This weekend we are meeting up with Jodi Walker, Jeff Crisan and their two adorable sons (ages 5 and 7) for a little reunion in the Berkshires.” Rodrigo Martinez and his wife, Sara Solin ’96, live in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with their two little ones Lulu (6) and Sebastian (4). “We try not to dwell on the fact that this represents Sara and my 14th address since 1997 and send our condolences to those who’ve sent us mail to residences that are now three to four houses old.” Sara’s been enjoying her work with Big Think, particularly the opportunity to collaborate with Andrea Useem. About two and a half years ago Rodrigo made a leap from clinical practice to the world of healthcare IT consulting. He works with the small, dynamic D.C.-based firm Clinovations and particularly enjoys the occasional noon run in the Mall. “We’ve enjoyed reconnecting with Dartmouth friends and meeting their families and we hope to continue to do so. If anyone’s around and wants to get together, look me up.”


Gonzalo Lira has had a fascinating journey since graduation: “After writing thrillers in English and experimental novels in Spanish during the 1990s, I made big-budget movies in Chile during the early 2000s. Then I got into venture capital in the mid-2000s. Then I managed money just as the 2008 global financial crisis happened—perfect timing! I started writing a blog about finance and economics in 2010. Somehow—for no reason that I can fathom—it’s become the 10th most read blog on the subject, according to gongol.com. I’m also a media figure in the alternative press, if you can believe it. After Dartmouth I lived in L.A., New York, Paris, Amsterdam and Zermatt. I now split my time between Chile and Europe.” You can check out Gonzalo’s website at liraspg.com. 


Finally, congratulations to Nikki Vines, who got engaged in Ireland this spring and will marry Ryan Verlin in November! 


—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 345 Commonwealth Ave., No. 8, Boston, MA 02115; kaja@alum.dartmouth.org


Everyone’s moving these days! Debbie Rosenbaum’s family has recently relocated from Chicago to Madison, Wisconsin, where her husband, Jason, has started his residency at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “I still work for AT Kearney (a little more than seven years now) but I recently stepped away from client delivery to take on staffing for North America and India. Which means I get to work from home, which is wonderful, as it allows me more time with Jason and my son Max (2). We all miss Chicago very much and I especially miss my Dartmouth friends—Jen (Evers) Shakeshaft, Melissa (Trumbull) Mitchell and Meghan (Sherlock) Welch ’96—whom I used to see Monday nights to watch a certain train-wreck reality TV show. I would love to hear from anyone in the Madison area (and have already been in touch with Emily Winslow who lives in the area).”


Alexandra (Lesk) Blomerus and her family have moved from England back to her hometown of Vancouver, Canada, to be closer to her parents. She writes: “I have my two boys and am having such fun with them, most of the time. Boys’ capacity for naughtiness never ceases to amaze.” Alex is teaching English and history at her boys’ school, “a bit of a change from physics.” She looks forward to seeing everyone more often now that she is back on the right continent. A former Dartmouth Glee Club member, Alex also hopes to rejoin the adult section of the choir that she sang with in Vancouver as a child.


Ken “Flash” Gordon sends greetings from Bristol, Connecticut, where he remains with ESPN as in-house counsel. He and his wife, Christy (Horner) Gordon, are doing well and spent the first part of the summer “trashing, packing and moving—lots of fun (not really)” as they relocated from Cromwell, Connecticut, to Glastonbury, Connecticut. They have two children: Julia (5), who started first grade this fall, and Kenny III (2). Ken went to this year’s Major League Baseball All-Star game with Dan Glazer in Arizona and, as of the deadline for this column, planned to “be in Hanover in the fall for the Penn game for the first of many victories for the Big Green!”


That’s it for submitted news this month, so I now resort once again to my R95MBDG (Random ’95 Midnight-Before-Deadline Google Report) feature. The first name I googled—Yasaman Ayat—yielded a nice Dartmouth-related hit. Did you know that 13 of our classmates had their artwork purchased for installation in Dartmouth undergraduate residence halls our senior year? A scavenger hunt may be in order for our 20th reunion. Yasaman’s photography composite was purchased, along with works by Katina Foy, Priscilla Gilman, Jake Hobson, Andrew Kim, Alicia Lisowski, Laura Lutsk, Abigail Neisius, Malika Ra, Marcin Ramocki, Enrico Riley, Charles Ross and Manushka Martine Solomon. 


So where are they now? Alicia wrote under her painting (you can see all of the works on the Dartmouth website by searching “art acquisition program”): “After graduating from Dartmouth I pursued a career in marketing/advertising, though I have kept up my painting on the side. I’m currently head of global web/e-commerce strategy for NAVTEQ, the world’s leading provider of digital images. I am very proud to have my art displayed at Dartmouth.” Enricois currently a senior lecturer in the studio art department at Dartmouth and there is really nice profile on him in the Dartmouth Now’s archives at now.dartmouth.edu. As for the rest of these talented artists, write in and let us know what you’re up to!


Keep your news coming!


—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 345 Commonwealth Ave., No. 8, Boston, MA 02115; kaja@alum. dartmouth.org


First, a friendly hello to the class of 1995 from Jon Landy: “Tammy and I have three kids, Matthew (11), Alex (8) and Emma (7). We live in Bethesda, Maryland, very close to Phyllis and Steve Fagell, who also have three kids of roughly similar ages.”


Congratulations to Zack Lehman, who has been named headmaster of the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He joins the Hill this July, after serving for six years as the assistant head of school for advancement at Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine. Zack and his wife, Amy, also have three children (seems to be a trend): Mitchell (13), Griffin (11) and Avery (8). The press release on Zack’s appointment reads: “Zack stood out as an exceptionally intelligent, energetic and entrepreneurial leader, educator and fundraiser who is devoted to young people.” Best of luck with your new role! 


Casque & Gauntlet celebrates its 125th anniversary this year, so I reached out to some of the knights and ladies of the 1995 delegation to find out what they are up to. I heard back from two members who, coincidentally, both have interesting ties to Africa.


Joe Dadzie, originally from Accra, Ghana,wrote in to share: “I’ve been with Microsoft since graduation and still enjoy it. I took a sabbatical last summer and visited Dartmouth with my wife, Miyuki, and our 9-year-old son. While we were there we visited friends on the East Coast, including Alyse (Kornfeld) Streicher and family in Scarsdale, New York. I also went to Ghana for the inauguration of the new campus of Ashesi University. A good friend of mine, Patrick Awuah, founded the university to make a liberal arts education—similar to that offered at Dartmouth or Swarthmore—available in Ghana. My wife and I have been supporters (financial, raising awareness, volunteering, etc.) of the university since its founding. The new campus has a seminar room named after my wife and me and a dormitory quad named after my parents. I still play soccer and keep in touch with John Griffin and Gretchen Freeman Cappio.”


Rukmini Callimachi is living in Dakar, Senegal, where she is the West Africa bureau chief for the Associated Press. She has been with the AP since 1993 and has worked in Africa for the past five years. She also spent a year reporting for the AP on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina from New Orleans. Rukmini was too modest to share this, but thanks to Google I learned that she was a 2009 Pulitzer Prize finalist for her in-depth investigation of the exploitation of impoverished children in West and Central Africa and in 2011 she won the Eugene S. Pulliam National Journalism Writing Award from Ball State University for her article, “Haiti-Hotel Montana.” I look forward to reading your work, Rukmini. Congratulations on the accolades!


Joe Santos will attend the spring session of the Alumni Council May 17-19. If you have any questions or issues you’d like him to address while he is on campus, please drop him a line at ajsantos2000@gmail.com. The deadline for this column caught me in the thick of rehearsals for a Cole Porter revue in Boston so it is a bit lighter on news than usual. Mea culpa. To make up for it, let me pose a question to you all: Where will you spend Memorial Day weekend? Send your answers to me for our next class column, and as always, keep your news coming!


—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 345 Commonwealth Ave., No. 8, Boston, MA 02115; kaja@alum.dartmouth.org


Lordy, Lordy, we’re turning 40! Okay, I know that some of us have already crossed into the next decade, but for many of our classmates 2013 is the Year of the Big 4-0, so I thought I’d check in with a few ’95s who hit that milestone this spring to see what they are up to.


Alex Morss dropped a quick line on his way out of the country for a 40th-birthday vacation to South Africa. He is a cardiologist with Harbor Medical Associates, a private practice south of Boston.


Laura Roth is celebrating a number of milestones this year: her 40th birthday, her husband Pete’s 45th and their 15th wedding anniversary. “We plan to celebrate with family and friends at the Japanese restaurant where we had our first date!” Laura’s son Logan (7) dances ballet with Marat Daukayev Ballet Theater Company and was cast in a professional production of The Nutcracker this past Christmas season, when he performed four roles in all five shows. Laura proudly writes that his Russian dance is particularly impressive! Her daughter Callie (4) was the caterpillar in her school play, and also enjoys performing in a group called Funky Divas. “She aspires to be just like her Auntie Annamaria (Annamaria Steward Dymond), who is also a dance diva!” They just bought a new house, which is very exciting, and plan to move about 10 minutes south of their current place in Los Angeles.


Evelyn Brady and her husband, Drew Brady ’96, live in Greenville, Delaware. They recently celebrated another 40th birthday, that of the Black Alumni at Dartmouth Association (BADA). “Our family visited the Big Green this past Homecoming for the 40th anniversary of BADA and Theta Zeta chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha. It was great to be back at Dartmouth to celebrate these milestone anniversaries and to see so many friends.” 


Drew is a partner at First State Orthopaedics and Evelyn is a stay-at-home mom who is busy with Tower Hill School Home and School Association, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority (Zeta Omega chapter) and the New Castle County chapter of Jack and Jill. They have two children, Ashleigh (13) and Nicholas (7). The Bradys are thrilled that Natalie Herring has moved to Philadelphia. She is the new associate dean for opportunity and access in the admissions office at the University of Pennsylvania. “Don’t worry, she still bleeds green!”


Evelyn joined Candace Howell on a trip to San Diego in October to help Baryona Billington celebrate her 40th. Candace and Evelyn both turn 40 in March, so they’re getting their best friends and family—including Natalie and Baryona—together to party in Las Vegas! 


Just before New Year’s I had the opportunity to catch up with Nat Schindler by phone. Thanks to his wife, Jennifer (Chapman) Schindler, Natgets to celebrate his 40th twice, with a Whistler ski trip with a bunch of ’93 buddies in January and then with his family in Hawaii in March. Lucky guy! Jen and Nat live in Menlo Park, California, and have two kids, Devon (7) and Allison (4). Jen has worked for Google for 10 years (Nat thinks she was about the 900th employee of the company) and loves it. Nat is with Bank of America Merrill Lynch as an equity research analyst. Since he covers Internet stocks, the family dinner table conversation legally cannot be about work, which Nat says is just as well. Jen, I hope you’re planning a fabulous girls getaway for your 40th this fall.


What will you do/did you do to celebrate your 40th? Keep your news coming!


—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA, 02043; kaja@alum.dartmouth.org


Brian Greenberg writes: “Life is great in the Bay Area. Christina and I welcomed our second child, Daniella, almost a year ago. She is a joy and adores her brother Jonah (now 3 1/2). I help run the Envision Schools, a network of four charter schools that sends low-income students to college. Not quite Waiting for Superman but we are trying to do our part. Between the two kids, four schools and trying to get iPhone reception in San Francisco, I’m keeping busy. But no complaints and actually a lot to be thankful for.” Katie Davis writes: “I live in the Boston area and am a developmental-behavioral pediatrician at Tufts Medical Center. My husband, Bill Weidman, and I welcomed our son Grant Phillips on August 24, 2010. He is a happy little guy with lots of dimpled smiles and is doted on by his two older sibs Summer (8) and Will (10).”


Thanks to Beth (Wilson) Webster for filling the rest of this column with a flurry of news (enough for two columns, so more next issue!) She writes: “This spring I’ll hit my 10-year mark with the Department of State. I joined the Foreign Service in 2001, and I’ve been stationed in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Astana, Kazakhstan; and Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. I also traveled to Tajikistan, where my husband, Mark (married in 2004), served while I was in Astana. I had an opportunity to work at Incirlik Airbase processing evacuees during the 2006 Lebanon evacuation. We’ve been stationed in D.C. since 2008, living in Falls Church, Virginia. I started out in the visa office and now I’m working on NATO-Russia policy. It’s been an exciting career so far, and we’re looking at possibilities for our next overseas posting in a year or so. We have a son, Nathaniel (3) and a daughter, Eleanor (1). We brought them up for reunions and Nathaniel now recognizes pictures of Baker Library and Dartmouth Hall, much to Mark’s amusement. Juggling everything leaves not nearly enough time to keep in touch, but a bunch of us have gotten together at least once or twice a year since graduation, which has kept us all sane as we balance the working mom thing. 


“My roommate from Dartmouth, Deb (Volland) Achkire, lives in San Francisco with her husband, Younes, and their son Julian (2). After years with large firms in D.C. and San Francisco, Deb moved in-house to practice law with Morgan Stanley. She works with Melissa Maccarone Muehlfeld, a UCSD transfer student who spent a year at Dartmouth and with whom we’ve stayed in touch. Melissa and her husband, Owen, have a 1-year-old daughter Avery.”


Also from Beth, Nicole Vines just joined Sterling Publishers, an imprint owned by Barnes and Noble, as director of special sales. She’s been in New York since graduation, apart from a few years in San Francisco, and she travels a lot, both for work and pleasure. Jennifer Apgar and her husband, Mike Christopher, live in West Hartford, Connecticut, where they both work in reinsurance. They have two daughters: Riley (3) and Piper (almost 1). Tim and Lori Korpan Hurley live in Mt. Prospect, Illinois, with their three kids Ben, Matt and Ella. Lori is amazing—juggling three kids, while teaching Spanish and doing an unbelievable amount of volunteer work. She just started a master’s in library science. 


I’ve saved room this month for a plug for our class dues. Our dues cover class communications and activities but first and foremost they cover our subscriptions to this great magazine. Please send your $45 dues to our treasurer Judi Flynn-Echeverria or pay through our class website. If you love your Alumni Magazine, please pay your dues. Thanks!


—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 345 Commonwealth Ave., No. 8, Boston, MA 02115; kaja@alum. dartmouth.org


It is Olympics season, and Melissa Norton says hello from across the pond. She moved from St. Louis, Missouri, to Cambridge, England, seven years ago with her husband, Paul Flicek, for a “short adventure” as Paul assumed a two-year postdoctoral research position in computational biology. Formerly a hospitalist, Melissa has embarked on a second career as deputy editor of PLoS Medicine, an “open-access medical journal with a strong focus on global health.”


As of this deadline Melissa had just gone on leave in anticipation of the birth of her first child, due May 14. Congratulations, Melissa! She writes: “We will be here during the Olympics, and actually have tickets to the opening ceremony, along with one or two other events. If anyone is going to be in England and looking to escape from London for a bit, drop us a line! I am at nortonmelissa@yahoo.com if anyone wants to get in touch.”


Dan Glazer may be able to make an appearance at the Olympics too. This spring he joined the partnership at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP as one of the leaders of the firm’s intellectual property and technology transactions practice. He is based in the New York office but will travel frequently to London, Paris and Frankfurt “in order to more effectively advise on the United States aspects of cross-border intellectual property and information technology matters.”


From China, the home of the last Olympics, Steven Tseng writes that he has lived on and off in Shanghai since 2005. He is married and he and his wife, Anne, have a 4-year-old son, Ethan. Despite his Shanghai address Steven is technically a New York-based partner at PwC, a firm he started during his senior year at Dartmouth. He holds an M.B.A. from Tuck and worked for 10 years at KPMG in Europe and Asia before returning to PwC in 2010 as the global leader for value chain transformation, “a cross-line of service initiative helping large multinationals undergo business transformation.” Steven sees fellow Shanghai resident Pete Jolicoeur often. Pete, what are you up to?


From nearby Hong Kong Michael Chen sends greetings. He has been there since our graduation and writes: “I came out here to see the 1997 handover and overstayed until now, raising two kids in one of the most expensive places in the world.” He tries to live as simple a life as possible in the bustling metropolis. Keith Li also lives in Hong Kong and welcomes you to be his guest if you are visiting the island. He lives in both Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China, “a life of dual cities.”


I received a note from one of our classmate’s proud spouses. Shamyune (Truman) Jones’husband, David, wrote in to share that Shammy was promoted last fall to the position of general counsel for the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority in Philadelphia. The convention center is ranked as one of the top 10 centers in the country, and David writes: “This promotion establishes Shammy as one of the youngest and one of a select few African-American women to hold the position of general counsel in Philadelphia.” Shammy earned her law degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1999 and is a 2011 graduate of Core Class for Leadership Philadelphia, “the premier community-leadership organization in the greater Philadelphia region.” David and Shammy have two sons, Bryce and Vaughn, and David writes: “The boys and I simply want the Dartmouth community to know how extremely proud we are of her for all her accomplishments, and for her hard work both on the job and at home!” Pretty sweet.


Keep your news coming!


—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 345 Commonwealth Ave., No. 8, Boston, MA 02115; kaja@alum.dartmouth.org


As I write this column Hurricane Sandy is descending on the Northeast. I hope all of our East Coast classmates came through the worst of it safe and sound.


In October I had a wonderful visit with Brigg Noyes, who was in New England exploring some opportunities for relocation (don’t let the freak hurricanes dissuade you, Brigg—we’d love to have you back in the area)! Brigg opened a private practice in counseling psychology in Salt Lake City, Utah, about four years ago. His specialty is helping men function more effectively in relationships, especially teaching them how to communicate more openly and genuinely with those people they really care about as a path to happier and more satisfactory lives. His favorite work is couples and family counseling, “as simultaneously attending to multiple thoughts, feelings and behaviors while helping everybody try to understand each other always tends to keep things exciting!” Check out Brigg’s website (designed by his talented wife, Deborah) at www.briggnoyes.com. Deborah and Brigg have three beautiful children: Aeltie, 9, Frances, 6, and Pepper, 3.


Ready for a blast from the past? I connected with Erik Vaveris recently and he shared that he has surfaced some live Skaboodah cassettes from back in the day and plans to get them digitized and posted somewhere soon. For those who don’t remember, Skaboodah was the band that Erik formed in college with talented friends and classmates Brian Eyster, Rodrigo Martinez, Luis Scheker, Andrew Bennett, Pete Jolicoeur and Pete Ellman. Erik lives in Arlington Heights, Illinois, with his wife, Jane, and their 5-year-old daughter Gwen. He works in product management for Shure, a maker of microphones and audio electronics, and occasionally plays some music, mainly playing bass. Erik, let us know when you’ve got those tracks online!


Michelle Butler took an ancestral pilgrimage with her family to Eastern Europe in the fall. She writes: “It was great! The four of us enjoyed identifying the differences and similarities between the four cities we visited, Tallin, Estonia; Riga, Latvia; Vilnius, Lithuania; and Warsaw, Poland. Each one seemed to be doing a little better than the last, and Poland was just booming. My mom joked that I looked like I belonged on the streets of Latvia or Lithuania as I look a lot like the Baltic people. We also loved the food. Lithuanian restaurants are the first places I’ve ever found that cooked food just like my grandmother!


“We were fortunate to have a University of Krakow history professor as a tour director and loved his lectures even though the history of that region is pretty dark at times. There was a decent amount of anti-Soviet feeling and still some signs of World War II’s impact in places but also a lot of booming capitalism.”


Michelle has other news to add. “After 13 fun years in the cable industry, I am leaving to become the executive director of a science society based in Bethesda, Maryland.”


After a long career with Fidelity, Tara Gulla has taken a new role with T. Rowe Price and moved to Baltimore. She writes: “I began my career in foreign institutional investing in 1995 straight from college because I really liked the people and felt there would be a lot of growth opportunity. I have had a fantastic experience and a lot of great managers, mentors and peers through the years who have helped me grow professionally.” Congratulations, and good luck with this next chapter, Tara!


Charlotte (Flower) Streidel is sleepless and happy with her twin girls Riley and Skylar, born in August in Washington, D.C. Two new Redskins fans in the world!


Keep your news coming!


—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA, 02043; kaja@alum.dartmouth.org