Class Note 1981
I am playing puck again. I have not been on an organized team since my days teaching at Tabor, some 15 years ago, and it is a gas—the up and down the ice, the slap shots sprayed all over the place, the creaky good feeling I have the next day (and the day after that). I missed it those 15 years and am very glad to be back.
And it’s a small ovoid world on that ice surface. I asked a teammate who teaches at the Potomac School, “Do you know Ned Mandel?” And he sure did—the son Ned Mandel, that is. I know the father Ned Mandel and had a great visit with our classmate at the start of June. Ned is the new development director at the Septima Clark Public Charter School, the only all-male public charter school in the District of Columbia. At the moment the school has preschool through second grade and will continue to add a grade each year until eighth grade. Ned and the team at Septima Clark are working hard at raising money and looking for new space, the bane of many startup charters. If you live in D.C. keep your eyes open for space, Ned asks, and visit him at Septima Clark. It is a cool and important little place.
Ray Hiley wrote some time ago that his oldest daughter Alexa just finished her frosh year at Bates College, where she played junior varsity soccer. Megan, daughter No. 2, just finished her junior year at the local high school and is deep into her college search. Ray’s wife, Lisa, is an editor at Storey Publishing in North Adams, Massachusetts, and specializes in books about animals, which is more than appropriate given that the Hiley household includes a horse, dog, three cats and a bird. When not keeping the cats away from the bird Ray is the in-house environmental lawyer for Momentive Performance Materials, an Albany, New York-based global chemical manufacturer. He also bikes, hikes and plays squash.
Six faculty members in Johns Hopkins’ Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences were among the 180 artists, scholars and scientists named Guggenheim Fellows by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and classmate Amanda Anderson was one of those recipients. Amanda is the Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature and chair of the department and specializes in critical theory and 19th-century British literature and culture. Her Guggenheim project “reconsiders the relation between liberal aesthetics and philosophical liberalism, focusing on the way that a dialectic of skepticism and hope characterizes both traditions,” Anderson said. “I will spend the grant period in Baltimore researching and writing.”
Had a great Facebook connection with former New Hamp dormitory denizen Doron Ezickson. A partner at McDermott, Will and Emery, Doron wrote that we “have lived in London for three years and it’s all that we hoped.” Doron, his wife, Kelly, and their kids Josh (16), Zach (14), Noah (11) and Abby (5) had embarked on what they had thought would be a one-year adventure, which they have obviously extended and plan to continue for a few more years. “The children are getting an expanded world view at the American School of London,” wrote Doron. “Highlights include music performances in Qatar, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Morocco; history in Wales, Italy, France and Spain; and sports tournaments in Belgium, Holland and Scotland. While rejecting cricket, the boys have committed to rugby and (European) football and young Abby can speak ‘posh’ English on cue. Any ’81s visiting London should drop us a line.”
—Abner Oakes, 4807 Dover Road, Bethesda, MD 20816-1772; aoakes4@gmail.com; Julie Koeninger, 2 Wilson St., Wellesley, MA 02482; jkoeninger@comcast.net
