Class Note 1975

Your class secretary has slowly emerged from the whirlwind that was our reunion. There were so many familiar faces and stories to catch up on, I am sure that I missed writing about some of you. I am also certain that I missed connecting with some of you altogether. One group that I was sheepishly trying to avoid was the cyclists. I had every intention of joining them for a nice hilly ride until I didn’t. I am pretty sure that Lon Cross led a group of stalwarts through the backwoods, including Hanover Center. I am hoping that someone will read this and send me the full list of participants, but I think Dave Cook and Dale Edmunds were among the Tour de Wheelock. Larry Johnson may have been involved as well, although I think he may have missed by one day. Please set me straight on the actual attendance.

One resolution I made was to reach out to more female classmates, but I have had little luck in tracking you all down. Perhaps you are miffed that it has taken me so long to seek you out, perhaps you are trying to hide (I am not asking for money, really!) or maybe you have better things to do. However, I will find you. I will enlist the help of those I do have some contact with to rat you out. Cate Wadell was in attendance at reunion, along with hubby, Rick, and I am sure she will assist me in this task. I suspect that between Cate, Pamela Brewer Smyth, Pamela Schlobohm,and others we will get this sorted.

However, I did track down Bill Barmeier, who sends this fairly complete update. After graduating from Dartmouth and Stanford’s J.D.-M.B.A. program, he joined a law firm in San Francisco, then moved to a general counsel role in a tech company—VeriFone—in the Bay Area. A few years later VeriFone was acquired, after which Bill joined a startup, then a venture capital firm, and then eBay, which recruited him to run the company’s mergers and acquisitions activities. At eBay he was tapped to run a new unit focused on products for social impact, after which he joined Omidyar Network to manage the firm’s impact investments.  

Bill retired in 2016 and, in his words, “My retirement is a new journey, and I’m carving out some new paths. I’ve joined the board of a nonprofit affiliated with PayPal that facilitates charitable donations. My wife and I are working on a local farm that produces vegetables for the homeless. And for recreation, we frequently go hiking. We have a daughter living just outside Washington, D.C., and we have a son in San Francisco. As you undoubtedly feel, our respective ‘young adults’ have grown too quickly.”

Now if only each of you would send such an update to me, we would know what everyone is up to!

Vox clamantis in Tejas.

—Stephen D. Gray, 3627 Avenue M, Galveston, TX 77550; (650) 302-8739; fratergray@gmail.com